Posted on 9 February 2018 by Ari Jokimäki

A selection of new climate related research articles is shown below.

Climate change impacts

Mankind

1. A quantitative method for determining the impact threshold of climate change for agriculture

"We calculated the ITCC of spring wheat in Wuchuan County as an example and identified warming and drying trends in Wuchuan County from 1961 to 2013, especially during the period from 1991 to 2013 (i.e., the period after mutation or the change period). Over the past 53 years, spring wheat yield increased with an average rate of 81.3 kg ha−1 dec−1. Over the change period, however, yield decreased with an average rate of 13.8 kg ha−1 dec−1 and the fluctuation range increased. The appropriate threshold for average temperature during the growth period of spring wheat was 11.4 °C, and the stressed thresholds were 8.2 and 14.6 °C. The appropriate threshold for precipitation during the growth period was 391.1 mm, and the stressed thresholds were 247.4 and 534.9 mm. During the period before mutation (i.e., the basic period), the average temperature was below the upper temperature threshold, and precipitation was 26.9 mm above the lower precipitation threshold. During the change period, the average temperature was 0.3 °C above the upper temperature threshold, and precipitation was 9.8 mm above the lower precipitation threshold."

2. Vulnerability of crops and croplands in the US Northern Plains to predicted climate change

"Projected climatic changes will influence agricultural productivity directly as well as indirectly due to changes in weed pressure, insect populations, and diseases. A warmer, longer growing season will change the crops and distribution of those crops grown within the region. An increase in the number of extreme temperature events (high daytime highs or nighttime lows) will decrease crop yields due to increased plant stress during critical pollination and grain fill periods."

3. Suitable areas of Phakopsora pachyrhizi, Spodoptera exigua, and their host plant Phaseolus vulgaris are projected to reduce and shift due to climate change

4. Adaptation strategies to lessen negative impact of climate change on grain maize under hot climatic conditions: A model-based assessment

5. Food security outcomes under a changing climate: impacts of mitigation and adaptation on vulnerability to food insecurity

6. Adaptation to climate change in perennial cropping systems: Options, barriers and policy implications

7. Climate change-induced hazards and local adaptations in agriculture: a study from Koshi River Basin, Nepal

8. National guidance for adapting to coastal hazards and sea-level rise: Anticipating change, when and how to change pathway

9. Mainstreaming climate adaptation in Switzerland: How the national adaptation strategy is implemented differently across sectors

10. Governance matters: climate change, corruption, and livelihoods in Bangladesh

11. Cardiovascular diseases, cold exposure and exercise

12. Fair weather voters: do Canadians stay at home when the weather is bad?

Biosphere

13. Increased intrusion of warming Atlantic water leads to rapid expansion of temperate phytoplankton in the Arctic

"Using over three decades of continuous satellite observations, we show that increased inflow and temperature of Atlantic waters in the Barents Sea resulted in a striking poleward shift in the distribution of blooms of Emiliania huxleyi, a marine calcifying phytoplankton species. This species’ blooms are typically associated with temperate waters and have expanded north to 76°N, five degrees further north of its first bloom occurrence in 1989. E. huxleyi's blooms keep pace with the changing climate of the Barents Sea, namely ocean warming and shifts in the position of the Polar Front, resulting in an exceptionally rapid range shift compared to what is generally detected in the marine realm."

14. Trends and variability in temperature sensitivity of lilac flowering phenology

15. Are Scots pine forest edges particularly prone to drought-induced mortality?

16. Transpiration dominates ecosystem water use efficiency in response to warming in an alpine meadow

17. Time-lagged effects of weather on plant demography: drought and Astragalus scaphoides

18. Environmental controls on the elemental composition of a Southern Hemisphere strain of the coccolithophore Emiliania huxleyi

19. Interactive effects of ocean acidification and temperature on PSII function and protection in the diatom Thalassiosira pseudonana

20. Growth responses to climate and drought at the southernmost European limit of Mediterranean Pinus pinaster forests

Other impacts

21. Pyroconvection Risk in Australia: Climatological Changes in Atmospheric Stability and Surface Fire Weather Conditions

Climate change mitigation

22. The safe carbon budget

"This safe carbon budget is low if uncertainty about the transient climate response is high and risk tolerance (willingness to accept risk of overshooting the temperature target) is low."

23. The Trump Administration and environmental policy: Reagan redux?

"Partisan polarization in both congress and the public and changes in the Republican Party will likely preclude an environmental backlash similar to that experienced by Reagan. Instead, environmental advocacy groups and the courts will function as the primary bulwarks against environmental policy retrenchment. Despite their efforts, the Trump Administration is likely to have significant impacts on environmental policy through executive action."

24. Risk implications of long-term global climate goals: overall conclusions of the ICA-RUS project

"The results suggest that, given the uncertainties in climate sensitivity, “net zero emissions of anthropogenic greenhouse gases in the second half of this century” is a more actionable goal for society than the 2 or 1.5 °C temperature goals themselves. If the climate sensitivity is proven to be relatively high and the temperature goals are not met even when the net zero emission goal is achieved, the options left are: (A) accepting/adapting to a warmer world, (B) boosting mitigation, and (C) climate geoengineering, or any combination of these."

25. Knowing climate as a social-ecological-atmospheric construct

26. Public engagement with climate imagery in a changing digital landscape

27. Perceived citizens’ satisfaction with climate change stakeholders using a multicriteria decision analysis approach

28. Political economies of climate change

29. Anti-fossil fuel norms

30. Irrigation enhances local warming with greater nocturnal warming effects than daytime cooling effects

31. The importance of transnational impacts of climate change in a power market

32. How low can you go? The importance of quantifying minimum generation levels for renewable integration

33. Scale and benefit of global carbon markets under the 2 °C goal: integrated modeling and an effort-sharing platform

34. A time-frequency analysis of trade openness and CO₂emissions in France

35. Large-scale bioenergy production: how to resolve sustainability trade-offs?

36. Transmission mechanism between energy prices and carbon emissions using geographically weighted regression

37. Large Ensemble Analytic Framework for Consequence Driven Discovery of Climate Change Scenarios

38. Surveying climate services: What can we learn from a bird’s eye view?

39. Impacts of onshore wind energy production on birds and bats: recommendations for future life cycle impact assessment developments

40. The impact of on-shore and off-shore wind turbine farms on property prices

Climate change

Temperature and Precipitation

41. Observed changes in extreme precipitation in Poland: 1991–2015 versus 1961–1990

42. Future changes over the Himalayas: Mean temperature

43. Regional climate change impact on extreme precipitation and temperature of the Nile river basin

44. An Abrupt Change in Tropospheric Temperature Gradient and Moisture Transport Over East Asia in the Late 1990s

45. When will we detect changes in short-duration precipitation extremes?

46. Spatio-temporal changes in atmospheric precipitation over south-western Poland between the periods 1891–1930 and 1981–2010

Climate Forcings and Feedbacks

47. Internal variability and disequilibrium confound estimates of climate sensitivity from observations

"An emerging literature suggests that estimates of equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) derived from recent observations and energy balance models are biased low because models project more positive climate feedbacks in the far future. Here, we use simulations from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) to show that across models, ECS inferred from the recent historical period (1979-2005) is indeed almost uniformly lower than that inferred from simulations subject to abrupt increases in CO₂ radiative forcing. However, ECS inferred from simulations in which sea surface temperatures are prescribed according to observations is lower still. ECS inferred from simulations with prescribed sea surface temperatures is strongly linked to changes to tropical marine low clouds. However, feedbacks from these clouds are a weak constraint on long-term model ECS. One interpretation is that observations of recent climate changes constitute a poor direct proxy for long term sensitivity."

48. What climate sensitivity index is most useful for projections?

"Here we find that TCR explains more variability across CMIP5 than ECS for global temperature change since pre-industrial, for 50- or 100-year global trends up to the present, and for projected change under representative concentration pathways in regions of delayed warming such as the Southern Ocean. However, unexpectedly we find that ECS correlates higher than TCR for projected change from the present in the global mean and in most regions. This higher correlation doesn’t relate to aerosol forcing, and the physical cause requires further investigation."

49. Does shortwave absorption by methane influence its effectiveness?

50. Ozone trends over the United States at different times of day

Extreme Events

51. Climate change increases the probability of heavy rains in Northern England/Southern Scotland like those of storm Desmond—a real-time event attribution revisited

52. The response of land-falling tropical cyclone characteristics to projected climate change in northeast Australia

53. An analysis of the synoptic and dynamical characteristics of hurricane Sandy (2012)

54. Central-Eastern China persistent heat waves: Evaluation of the AMIP models

Atmospheric and Oceanic Circulation

55. The North Atlantic Ocean is in a state of reduced overturning

"The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is responsible for a variable and climatically important northward transport of heat. Using data from an array of instruments that span the Atlantic at 26°N, we show that the AMOC has been in a state of reduced overturning since 2008 as compared to 2004-2008. This change of AMOC state is concurrent with other changes in the North Atlantic such as a northward shift and broadening of the Gulf Stream, and altered patterns of heat content and sea-surface temperature. These changes resemble the response to a declining AMOC predicted by coupled climate models. Concurrent changes in air-sea fluxes close to the western boundary reveal that the changes in ocean heat transport and SST have altered the pattern of ocean-atmosphere heat exchange over the North Atlantic. These results provide strong observational evidence that the AMOC is a major factor in decadal scale variability of North Atlantic climate."

56. Uncertainty in Indian Ocean Dipole response to global warming: the role of internal variability

57. On the spectral characteristics of the Atlantic multidecadal variability in an ensemble of multi-century simulations

58. Observed Agulhas Current sensitivity to interannual and long-term trend atmospheric forcings

Hydrosphere

59. Questioning the influence of sunspots on Amazon hydrology – even a broken clock tells the right time twice a day

"Consistent with the findings of Antico and Torres, we find a positive correlation between sunspots and the decadal δ18OTR cycle from 1903 to 2012 (r=0.60, p<0.001). However, the relationship does not persist into the preceding century, and even becomes weakly negative (r=–0.30, p=0.11, 1799–1902). This result casts considerable doubt over the mechanism by which sunspots are purported to influence Amazon hydrology."

60. Glacial lakes of the Central and Patagonian Andes

61. Detecting Himalayan glacial lake outburst floods from Landsat time series

Cryosphere

62. Change in Dense Shelf Water and Adélie Land Bottom Water precipitated by iceberg calving

63. Limited impact of subglacial supercooling freeze-on for Greenland Ice Sheet stratigraphy

64. Investigating cold based summit glaciers through direct access to the glacier base: a case study constraining the maximum age of Chli Titlis glacier, Switzerland

65. Consistent biases in Antarctic sea ice concentration simulated by climate models

66. Thin Sea Ice, Thick Snow and Widespread Negative Freeboard Observed During N-ICE2015 North of Svalbard

67. Variability of Arctic sea-ice thickness using PIOMAS and the CESM Large Ensemble

68. A new estimate of North American mountain snow accumulation from regional climate model simulations

69. United States Hail Frequency and the Global Wind Oscillation

Carbon cycle

70. Long-term terrestrial carbon dynamics in the Midwestern United States during 1850-2015: Roles of land use and cover change and agricultural management

71. Variations and determinants of carbon content in plants: a global synthesis

72. Satellite estimation of coastal pCO₂ and air-sea flux of carbon dioxide in the northern Gulf of Mexico

Other papers

73. Climate and colonialism

74. Hurricane with a History: Hawaiian Newspapers Illuminate an 1871 Storm

75. Mars Climate History: Insights from Impact Crater Wall Slope Statistics

"We find that the total amount of crater wall degradation in the Late Noachian is very small in comparison to the circumpolar regions in the Late Amazonian, an observation that we interpret to mean that the Late Noachian climate was not characterized by persistent and continuous warm and wet conditions. A confirmed elevational zonality in degradation in the Early Hesperian is interpreted to mean that the atmosphere was denser than today."