Arguments
New research, September 11-17, 2017
Posted on 22 September 2017 by Ari Jokimäki
A selection of new climate related research articles is shown below.
Climate change
1. Modelling past, present and future peatland carbon accumulation across the pan-Arctic region
"We found that peatlands in Scandinavia, Europe, Russia and central and eastern Canada will become C sources, while Siberia, far eastern Russia, Alaska and western and northern Canada will increase their sink capacity by the end of the 21st century."
2. Annual and seasonal tornado trends in the contiguous United States and its regions
"The annual analyses indicate that the number of tornadoes per year declined in the West, North Great Plains, South Great Plains, and Midwest regions, but increased in the Southeast." ... "Seasonal analyses suggest that the proportion of tornadoes occurring in the contiguous United States in summer is decreasing whereas the proportion occurring in fall is increasing. This is especially apparent in the Southeast."
3. Beyond equilibrium climate sensitivity
"Newer metrics relating global warming directly to the total emitted CO2 show that in order to keep warming to within 2 °C, future CO2 emissions have to remain strongly limited, irrespective of climate sensitivity being at the high or low end."
"We show that the Milne Ice Shelf, Ellesmere Island, was stable before 2004, after which time the ice shelf thinned rapidly."
5. Future changes in tropical cyclone activity in high-resolution large-ensemble simulations
"The global number of TCs decreases by 33% in the future projection. Although geographical TC occurrences decrease generally, they increase in the central and eastern parts of the extratropical North Pacific. Meanwhile, very intense (category 4 and 5) TC occurrences increase over a broader area including the south of Japan and south of Madagascar. The global number of category 4 and 5 TCs significantly decreases, contrary to the increase seen in several previous studies. Lifetime maximum surface wind speeds and precipitation rate are amplified globally. "
"The model projected that the global frequency of TCs is reduced by 22.7%, the ratio of intense TCs is increased by 6.6%, and the precipitation rate within 100 km of the TC center increased by 11.8% under warmer climate conditions. These tendencies are consistent with previous studies using hydrostatic global model with cumulus parameterization." ... "Hence, this study shows that the horizontal scale of TCs defined by the radius of 12 m s-1 surface wind is projected to increase compared with the same intensity categories for SLP less than 980 hPa."
7. Air-Sea CO2 Exchange in the Ross Sea, Antarctica
"We find that the Ross Sea is a lesser atmospheric CO2 sink (-7.5±0.5 Tg C yr−1, -1.3±0.1 mol C m−2 yr−1) than previously reported (-13 Tg C yr−1, -1.7 to -4.2 mol C m−2 yr−1)."
9. Mechanistic drivers of re-emergence of anthropogenic carbon in the Equatorial Pacific
11. Observational uncertainty and regional climate model evaluation: a pan-European perspective
12. Estimation of melt pond fractions on first year sea ice using compact polarization SAR
16. Chemical feedback from decreasing carbon monoxide emissions
19. NMME-based hybrid prediction of Atlantic hurricane season activity
20. Robust projected weakening of winter monsoon winds over the Arabian Sea under climate change
21. Sources, Sinks and Subsidies: Terrestrial Carbon Storage in Mid-Latitude Fjords
22. Observed co-variations of aerosol optical depth and cloud cover in extratropical cyclones
24. Climate change in the Hindu Kush Himalaya
25. Simulation of tropical cyclone activity over the western North Pacific based on CMIP5 models
26. On the causes of trends in the seasonal amplitude of atmospheric CO2
27. The evolution and volcanic forcing of the southern annular mode during the past 300 years
28. Year-to-year variability of surface air temperature over China in winter
29. Multidecadal anomalies of Bohai Sea ice cover and potential climate driving factors during 1988–2015
32. Precipitation–fire linkages in Indonesia (1997–2015)
33. Quantifying the Lead Time Required for a Linear Trend to Emerge from Natural Climate Variability
Climate change impacts
36. Glacier shrinkage driving global changes in downstream systems
"Here, we synthesize current evidence of how glacier shrinkage will alter hydrological regimes, sediment transport, and biogeochemical and contaminant fluxes from rivers to oceans. This will profoundly influence the natural environment, including many facets of biodiversity, and the ecosystem services that glacier-fed rivers provide to humans, particularly provision of water for agriculture, hydropower, and consumption."
37. Analysis of climate signals in the crop yield record of Sub-Saharan Africa
"We found that improved agricultural technology and country fixed effects are three times more important than climate variables for explaining changes in crop yields in SSA. We also found that increasing temperatures reduced yields for all three crops in the temperature range observed in SSA, while precipitation increased yields up to a level roughly matching crop evapotranspiration."
"In cooler years, fish ate more large prey from shallow nearshore regions, resulting in higher growth and condition than in warmer years, when fish ate more small prey from deep offshore regions. This suggests that the impacts of warming on aquatic ecosystems can scale from the individual to the food web level."
"The model projects that yield losses due to high air temperatures and water deficit will increase, while losses due to frost will decrease. Nevertheless, extra losses are offset by the CO2 fertilization effect, resulting in a small net increase of the average Brazilian Arabica coffee yield of 0.8% to 1.48 t ha−1 in 2040–2070, assuming growing locations and irrigation remain unchanged. Simulations further indicate that future yields can reach up to 1.81 t ha−1 provided that irrigation use is expanded."
41. Multitrophic interactions mediate the effects of climate change on herbivore abundance
44. Multi-model comparison highlights consistency in predicted effect of warming on a semi-arid shrub
45. Increasing atmospheric humidity and CO2 concentration alleviate forest mortality risk
46. Limits to growth, planetary boundaries, and planetary health
47. Nutrients and temperature additively increase stream microbial respiration
48. Readiness for climate change adaptation in the Arctic: a case study from Nunavut, Canada
49. Native and agricultural forests at risk to a changing climate in the Northern Plains
50. Assessment of ecosystem resilience to hydroclimatic disturbances in India
51. Forest biomass, productivity and carbon cycling along a rainfall gradient in West Africa
52. Climate change and national crop wild relative conservation planning
53. Influence of climate change on summer cooling costs and heat stress in urban office buildings
Climate change mitigation
55. Consideration of carbon dioxide release during shell production in LCA of bivalves
"When we recalculated the total kg CO2 released in past studies including CO2 release from shell production, the additional CO2 release increased the total global warming impact category (CO2equivalents) in cradle-to-gate studies by approximately 250% of the original reported value."
"In the drained (GDS) vs. intact (AR) CDR sites, carbon accumulation rates were similar with 137Cs (87GDS vs. 92AR g C m-2 yr-1) and somewhat less at the GDS than AR as determined with 210Pb (111GDS vs. 159AR g C m-2 yr-1)."
"We find that, after accounting for federal subsidies and local rebates and assuming a discount rate of 7%, the private benefits of new installations will exceed private costs only in seven of the 19 states for which we have data and only if customers can sell excess power to the electric grid at the retail price. These states are characterized by abundant sunshine (California, Texas and Nevada) or by high electricity prices (New York)."
59. Public willingness to pay for a US carbon tax and preferences for spending the revenue
60. Quantifying CO2 emissions from individual power plants from space
61. Climate change and the transition to neoliberal environmental governance
62. Global wetland contribution to 2000–2012 atmospheric methane growth rate dynamics
63. Baseline manipulation in voluntary carbon offset programs
Other papers
"The level of warming from 1989 to 2014 is unprecedented over the past five centuries."
65. An update on ozone profile trends for the period 2000 to 2016
"Thanks to the 1987 Montreal Protocol and its amendments, ozone-depleting chlorine (and bromine) in the stratosphere has declined slowly since the late 1990s. Improved and extended long-term ozone profile observations from satellites and ground-based stations confirm that ozone is responding as expected and has increased by about 2 % per decade since 2000 in the upper stratosphere, around 40 km altitude. At lower altitudes, however, ozone has not changed significantly since 2000."
"These results suggest that global ocean temperatures best predict patterns of extinction and recovery across several ecological metrics, and that thermal episodes during the initial extinction event and subsequently in the Early Triassic recovery period significantly suppressed benthic marine community health."
67. Constructing a long-term monthly climate data set in central Asia
68. Quantifying climate changes of the Common Era for Finland
Lots of new research results at the upcoming AGU meeting. I will present forcing models for ENSO and QBO. The model forcing uses precise lunisolar data to match the behavior for cross-validated intervals over the instrumental record. The general model was derived from Laplace's Tidal Equations, which form the basis of all GCMs.
Context/Earth.com
See you there!
Have a question. In 1981, Hansen published a paper which includes a mean average, the baseline global surface temp, of 288 Kelvin (14.85 degrees celsius or roughly 59 degrees Farenheit) for the years 1950-1980. He testified before Congress that 3 of the hottest years were in the 80s and also stated 59 degrees was the average from 1950-1980.
Jones stated 6 of the hottest years up that point were in the 80s and listed them in 1988 and also stated that the average from 1950-1980 was "roughly 59 degrees." Of course, in the 90s, same message of more hottest years and same with the 2000s.
However, we have not seen one single year since those comments and warnings were made where the average global surface temperature exceeded 59 degrees. Just hasn't happened.
So what's up with that?
I noted some have argues the base-line doesn't mean anything but just the trend. But if the baseline of 59 degrees was accurate, then the trend has been down, not up, right? It appears that what has happened is merely retroactively lowering the mean temperature from 1950-1980, which raises some pretty serious questions.
Why? The data itself has not changed. The temperature readings didn't retroactively change. Adjusting past readings doesn't change what they actually were, right?
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