Arguments
New research, November 6-12, 2017
Posted on 17 November 2017 by Ari Jokimäki
A selection of new climate related research articles is shown below.
The figure is from paper #32.
Climate change impacts
"Results suggest that the rate of global GPP increase is overestimated by 85% during 2000-2015 without N limitation. This limitation is found to occur in many tropical and boreal forests, where a negative leaf N trend indicates a reduction in photosynthetic capacity, thereby suppressing the positive vegetation response to enhanced CO2 fertilization."
2. Climatic variability and dengue risk in urban environment of Delhi (India)
"Findings reveal significant changes in weather across the year having significant and positive association with dengue cases at specified lags. Weeks in April and July to October with gaps have been identified as the high risk weeks based on the estimated relative risk. There has been intra-annual expansion in dengue risk period extending beyond monsoon and post-monsoon."
3. Introduction to Special Issue: Disciplinary Perspectives on Climate Change and Conflict
"These authors find little evidence for direct pathways from climate change to violence, especially for group-level violence and armed conflict. However, there is stronger evidence for indirect effects in agricultural and other vulnerable settings and for exacerbating ongoing violence rather than initiating new violence. The authors also emphasize the importance of governance and institutions, adaptive capacity, and potential cooperative behavior in moderating violence."
7. Climate change impact on the potential yield of Arabicacoffee in southeast Brazil
8. Potential rice exposure to heat stress along the Yangtze River in China under RCP8.5 scenario
9. Influence of climate variability and length of rainy season on crop yields in semiarid Botswana
12. Irrigation offsets wheat yield reductions from warming temperatures
14. Impacts of temperature extremes on European vegetation during the growing season
16. Rapid responses of plants to temperature changes
17. Lags in the response of mountain plant communities to climate change
19. Nitrogen limitation of decomposition and decay: how can it occur?
21. Carbon cycle confidence and uncertainty: exploring variation among soil biogeochemical models
22. Multidecadal fCO2 Increase Along the United States Southeast Coastal Margin
Climate change mitigation
26. How much do direct livestock emissions actually contribute to global warming?
"We find that direct livestock non-CO2 emissions caused about 19% of the total modelled warming of 0.81°C from all anthropogenic sources in 2010. CO2 from pasture conversions contributed at least another 0.03°C, bringing the warming directly attributable to livestock to 23% of the total warming in 2010."
27. Role of e-reader adoption in life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of book reading activities
"Adopting e-readers was discovered to reduce both the GWP per person and the GWP per person-book of book reading activities. The GWP of e-books read with an e-reader and the GWP of paper books were found to break even at 4.7 books per year, provided consumers read less than 11 h a day. According to the web survey, e-reader users purchase more than seven e-books annually on average, which resulted in a smaller GWP per person-book relative to that of one paper book."
"We find that under current hydrocarbon prices, oil and gas from the European offshore Arctic is not competitive on world markets."
29. Variability and correlation of renewable energy sources in the Portuguese electrical system
33. An initial scoping of transitional justice for global climate governance
36. Uncertainties in modelling the climate impact of irrigation
37. Greenhouse Gas Emissions under Different Drainage and Flooding Regimes of Cultivated Peatlands
38. Reduction of solar photovoltaic resources due to air pollution in China
Climate change
39. Changing world extreme temperature statistics
"In contrast to this earlier work, we find that in every region except North America all-time high records were set at a rate significantly (at least 3σ) higher than in the null hypothesis of a stationary climate. Except in Antarctica, all-time low records were set at a rate significantly lower than in the null hypothesis. In Europe, North Africa and North Asia the rate of setting new all-time highs increased suddenly in the 1990s, suggesting a change in regional climate regime; in most other regions there was a steadier increase."
"We examine the effects of non-linear interactions between surface albedo, water vapor and cloud cover (referred to as climate variables) on amplified warming of the polar regions, using a new energy balance model. Our simulations show that the sum of the contributions to surface temperature changes due to any variable considered in isolation is smaller than the temperature changes from coupled feedback simulations. This non-linearity is strongest when all three climate variables are allowed to interact. Surface albedo appears to be the strongest driver of this non-linear behavior, followed by water vapor and clouds. This is because increases in longwave radiation absorbed by the surface, related to increases in water vapor and clouds, and increases in surface absorbed shortwave radiation caused by a decrease in surface albedo, amplify each other. Furthermore, our results corroborate previous findings that while increases in cloud cover and water vapor, along with the greenhouse effect itself, warm the polar regions, water vapor also significantly warms equatorial regions, which reduces polar amplification. Changes in surface albedo drive large changes in absorption of incoming shortwave radiation, thereby enhancing surface warming. Unlike high latitudes, surface albedo change at low latitudes are more constrained. Interactions between surface albedo, water vapor and clouds drive larger increases in temperatures in the polar regions compared to low latitudes. This is in spite of the fact that, due to a forcing, cloud cover increases at high latitudes and decreases in low latitudes, and that water vapor significantly enhances warming at low latitudes."
41. Recent Advances in Our Understanding of the Role of Meltwater in the Greenland Ice Sheet System
"There have been dramatic increases in surface meltwater generation and runoff since the early 1990s, both due to increased air temperatures and decreasing surface albedo. Processes in the subglacial drainage system have similarities to valley glaciers and in a warming climate, the efficiency of meltwater routing to the ice sheet margin is likely to increase. The behaviour of the subglacial drainage system appears to limit the impact of increased surface melt on annual rates of ice motion, in sections of the ice sheet that terminate on land, while the large volumes of meltwater routed subglacially deliver significant volumes of sediment and nutrients to downstream ecosystems."
"We find that previous satellite-based radiative forcing estimates of aerosol–cloud interactions represented in key climate reports are likely exaggerated by up to 50 % due to including retrieval artefacts in the aerosols located near clouds. It is demonstrated that this retrieval artefact can be corrected in current products."
43. On the emergent constraints of climate sensitivity
"The relationships between the contrived metrics and ECS can also be linked statistically to shortwave cloud feedback. Thus any proposed or forthcoming ECS constraint based on the current generation of climate models should be viewed as a potential constraint on shortwave cloud feedback, and physical links with that feedback should be investigated to verify that the constraint is real. In addition, any proposed ECS constraint should not be taken at face value, since other factors influencing ECS besides shortwave cloud feedback could be systematically biased in the models."
44. A consistent sea-level reconstruction and its budget on basin and global scales over 1958-2014
"The global-mean sea-level reconstruction shows a trend of 1.5±0.2 mm/y over 1958-2014 (1σ), compared to 1.3±0.1 mm/y for the sum of contributors. Over the same period, the reconstruction shows a positive acceleration of 0.07±0.02 mm/y2, which is also in agreement with the sum of contributors, which shows an acceleration of 0.07±0.01 mm/y2."
45. The impact of bias correction and model selection on passing temperature thresholds
46. Exceptional airmass transport and dynamical drivers of an extreme wintertime Arctic warm event
47. The role of humidity in determining scenarios of perceived temperature extremes in Europe
48. Warming across decades and deciles: minimum and maximum daily temperatures in China, 1955–2014
51. Simulated changes in aridity from the last glacial maximum to 4xCO 2
52. Comparison of various drought indices to monitor drought status in Pakistan
53. Seasonal predictability of Kiremt rainfall in coupled general circulation models
54. Scale dependency of regional climate modeling of current and future climate extremes in Germany
55. Regional Antarctic snow accumulation over the past 1000 years
57. Blowing snow sublimation and transport over Antarctica from 11 years of CALIPSO observations
58. Heat flux distribution of Antarctica unveiled
59. Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Mass Loss: Recent Developments in Observation and Modeling
60. The modelled liquid water balance of the Greenland Ice Sheet
61. Algae drive enhanced darkening of bare ice on the Greenland ice sheet
62. The distribution and hydrological significance of rock glaciers in the Nepalese Himalaya
64. A new map of permafrost distribution on the Tibetan Plateau
66. Hemispheric asymmetry in stratospheric NO2 trends
67. A two-year forecast for a 60-80% chance of La Niña in 2017-18
70. Inflated uncertainty in multi-model based regional climate projections
72. Changes in terrestrial near-surface wind speed and their possible causes: an overview
73. Uncertainty in recent near-surface wind speed trends: a global reanalysis intercomparison
74. A Statistical Study of Unusual Tracks of Tropical Cyclones near Taiwan Island
75. Severity scale for tornadoes
Other papers
78. Social Resilience to Climate-Related Disasters in Ancient Societies: A Test of Two Hypotheses
"The paper finds that societies allowing greater political participation appear to provide greater resilience to catastrophic climate-related disasters, generally supporting the predominant perspective in contemporary disaster response."
79. The role of African dust in Atlantic climate during Heinrich events
80. Why artificial light at night should be a focus for global change research in the 21st century
Love the first article about nitrogen. Perfect rebuttal to the “CO2 is plant food” arguement.
After all, isn’t saying CO2 is plant food equivalent to saying O2 is people “food??”
@Thiristaer
There's no use in attempting to engage such people with a science based argument, unless you are attempting to reach an audience on the fence who is also mislead by such trolling. Those talking points are catchy, advertising type phrases, not scientific content. A response in scientific terms is bound to be much longer, and the non-scientific reader's eyes will glaze over by the end of the first sentence. Lots of things of plant food, and more is not neccessarily better.
"saying CO2 is plant food equivalent to saying O2 is people “food"
This is better - catchy, and points out some of the idiocy of the talking point. Depending on the audience, one could also answer "dead bodies are even better plant food" or "oh yeah, poor starving plants. You win Hippie-Derp of the Decade." I'm not very good at that sort of thing, perhaps others can think of a better retort.
Driving By, good summation of the problem. CO2 is plant food is disarming and frustrating.
"oh yeah, poor starving plants. You win Hippie-Derp of the Decade."
The trouble is this sort of sarcastic retort runs the risk of turning the climate issue into a sort of comedy show. You also raise the risk of being accused by the sceptic of trivialising the issue. It could cause debate to escalate into something nasty with certain audiences.
However I suppose a witty response can ease tension and bring people together.
But you are right long technical explanations can turn people off. Best overall response might be "yes CO2 is plant food, and like any food there can be problems" Which is basically the truth so can be disarming. It can be expanded on if required, into fuller technical explanation if that is asked for and appropriate in the context.