New research, February 26 - March 4, 2018

Posted on 9 March 2018 by Ari Jokimäki

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

The figure is from paper #57.

Climate change mitigation

1. How modifications of China's energy data affect carbon mitigation targets

"After revision, China's mitigation challenges increase by 5%."

2. The contribution of sectoral climate change mitigation options to national targets: a quantitative assessment of dairy production in Kenya

3. An optimal mix of conventional power systems in the presence of renewable energy: A new design for the German electricity market

4. Effect of major policy disruptions in energy system transition: Case Finland

5. Intermediaries’ perspectives on the public’s role in the energy transitions needed to deliver UK climate change policy goals

6. Factoring in the forgotten role of renewables in CO₂ emission trends using decomposition analysis

7. Development of a high-resolution spatial inventory of greenhouse gas emissions for Poland from stationary and mobile sources

8. Implication of the cluster analysis using greenhouse gas emissions of Asian countries to climate change mitigation

9. Bridging the gap: Do fast-reacting fossil technologies facilitate renewable energy diffusion?

10. Designing sustainable landuse in a 1.5 °C world: the complexities of projecting multiple ecosystem services from land

11. Applying a systems approach to assess carbon emission reductions from climate change mitigation in Mexico’s forest sector

12. What role can a livelihood strategy play in addressing climate change? Lessons in improving social capital from an agricultural cooperative in Ukraine

13. Pricing Carbon and Adjusting Capital to Fend Off Climate Catastrophes

14. Climate for women in climate science: Women scientists and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

"While we find that some women reported a positive experience, others felt women were poorly represented and heard and encountered barriers beyond their gender including race, nationality, command of English, and discipline."

15. Are renewable energy subsidies in Nepal reaching the poor?

16. The implications of how climate funds conceptualize transformational change in developing countries

17. Relationship between economic growth and residential energy use in transition economies

18. Deconstructing resilience: why gender and power matter in responding to climate stress in Bangladesh

19. Framing clean energy campaigns to promote civic engagement among parents

"In both studies, we find the odds of taking action are reduced by over 90% when participants are asked to make a phone call and leave a voicemail message, versus signing an online petition. Among the parents already engaged in advocacy, we observe a ceiling effect regarding attitudes towards clean energy and find the cost campaign produces unintended consequences. Among our public sample, we find that participants who believe the campaign to be credible and comprehendible are more likely to take action than those who discredit the campaign or do not understand its message. Additionally, we find parents who have children under the age of 18 negatively adjust their attitudes towards fossil fuels after being presented with health information. Ultimately, we find that campaign messages can influence energy attitudes and parents are willing to take action on the topic if the advocacy action seems like an effective approach."

20. Potential environmental benefits from woodfuel transitions in Haiti: Geospatial scenarios to 2027

21. A historical analysis of US climate change policy in the Pan-American context

22. Bearing Witness? Polar Bears as Icons for Climate Change Communication in National Geographic

23. Greenhouse gas emissions of hydropower in the Mekong River Basin

24. Does risk perception limit the climate change mitigation behaviors?

25. Carbon emission scenarios of China's power sector: Impact of controlling measures and carbon pricing mechanism

26. How Climate Change Risk Perceptions Are Related to Moral Judgment and Guilt in China

27. Exploring News Frames, Sources and Editorial Lines on Newspaper Coverage of Nuclear Energy in Spain

28. Land-use, land-use history and soil type affect soil greenhouse gas fluxes from agricultural landscapes of the East African highlands

Climate change

29. Enlargement of the semi-arid region in China from 1961 to 2010

30. The seasons’ length in 21st century CMIP5 projections over the eastern Mediterranean

Temperature and precipitation

31. Causes and probability of occurrence of extreme precipitation events like Chennai 2015

32. Variability of precipitation in Poland under climate change

33. Urban surface effects on current and future climate

"Projection of urban land surface temperature shows urban regions get warmer by up to 13 °C at the end of 21st century under RCP85 scenario and the urban heat island intensity also increases by from 1 to 1.5 °C."

34. South American precipitation changes simulated by PMIP3/CMIP5 models during the Little Ice Age and the recent global warming period

35. Winter Precipitation Efficiency of Mountain Ranges in the Colorado Rockies Under Climate Change

36. Decadal fluctuations in the western Pacific recorded by long precipitation records in Taiwan

37. Skilful seasonal predictions of Summer European rainfall

38. CAUSES: On the role of surface energy budget errors to the warm surface air temperature error over the Central U.S.

Extreme events

39. Floridian heatwaves and extreme precipitation: future climate projections

"Results show a tripling in the frequency, and greater than a sixfold increase in the mean duration of heatwaves over Florida when the current standard of heatwaves was used. The intensity of heatwaves also increased by 4–6 °C due to the combined effects of rising mean temperatures and a 1–2 °C increase attributed to the flattening of the temperature distribution."

40. Projected trends of extreme rainfall events from CMIP5 models over Central Africa

41. Estimates of present and future flood risk in the conterminous United States

"Our data show that the total US population exposed to serious flooding is 2.6–3.1 times higher than previous estimates, and that nearly 41 million Americans live within the 1% annual exceedance probability floodplain (compared to only 13 million when calculated using FEMA flood maps). We find that population and GDP growth alone are expected to lead to significant future increases in exposure, and this change may be exacerbated in the future by climate change."

42. Characteristics of tropical cyclone extreme precipitation and its preliminary causes in Southeast China

43. Trends of cyclone characteristics in the Arctic and their patterns from different re-analysis data

44. Vb cyclones and associated rainfall extremes over Central Europe under present day and climate change conditions

45. Extended-range forecasting of Chinese summer surface air temperature and heat waves

46. Consideration of land-use and land-cover changes in the projection of climate extremes over North America by the end of the twenty-first century

47. Probabilistic assessment of projected climatological drought characteristics over the Southeast USA

Cryosphere

48. Evaluating impacts of recent Arctic sea-ice loss on the northern hemisphere winter climate change

49. Increasing mobility of high Arctic sea ice increases marine hazards off the east coast of Newfoundland

50. Vulnerability of Southeast Greenland glaciers to warm Atlantic Water from Operation IceBridge and Ocean Melting Greenland data

51. A century of stability of Avannarleq and Kujalleq glaciers, West Greenland, explained using high-resolution airborne gravity and other data

"The results reveal a 700-m deep fjord that abruptly ends on a 100-300 m deep sill along the calving fronts. The shallow sills explain the presence of stranded icebergs, the resilience of the glaciers to ocean-induced undercutting by warm Atlantic water, and their remarkable stability over the past century."

52. Spatiotemporal variability of Canadian High Arctic glacier surface albedo from MODIS data, 2001–2016

53. Mechanisms influencing seasonal to inter-annual prediction skill of sea ice extent in the Arctic Ocean in MIROC

54. Effects of short-term variability of meteorological variables on soil temperature in permafrost regions

"In fact, results of the land surface model experiments show that the projected increase of variability of meteorological variables leads to cooler permafrost soil in contrast to an otherwise soil warming in response to climate change."

55. The European mountain cryosphere: a review of its current state, trends, and future challenges

56. Antarctic ice sheet thickness estimation using the horizontal-to-vertical spectral ratio method with single-station seismic ambient noise

Forcings and feedbacks

57. Abundant pre-industrial carbon detected in Canadian Arctic headwaters: implications for the permafrost carbon feedback

58. Human-induced climate change: the impact of land-use change

59. What can decadal variability tell us about climate feedbacks and sensitivity?

"Together these results suggest that some of the physical processes responsible for setting the magnitude of global temperature change in the twenty-first century and climate sensitivity also help set the magnitude of the natural decadal variability. Furthermore, a statistically significant correlation exists between climate sensitivity and decadal variability in the tropics across CMIP5 models, although this is not apparent in the earlier generation of CMIP3 models. Thus although the link to sensitivity is not conclusive, this opens up potential paths to improve our understanding of climate feedbacks, climate sensitivity and decadal climate variability, and has the potential to reduce the associated uncertainty."

60. Numerical simulation of surface solar radiation over Southern Africa. Part 1: Evaluation of regional and global climate models

61. Improved representation of surface spectral emissivity in a global climate model and its impact on simulated climate

62. Lifetimes, direct and indirect radiative forcing, and global warming potentials of ethane (C2H6), propane (C3H8), and butane (C4H10)

63. Long-term cloud condensation nuclei number concentration, particle number size distribution and chemical composition measurements at regionally representative observatories

64. Chemical and climatic drivers of radiative forcing due to changes in stratospheric and tropospheric ozone over the 21st century

65. Historical tropospheric and stratospheric ozone radiative forcing using the CMIP6 database

"The total ozone RF grows rapidly until the 1970s, slows towards the 2000s, and shows a renewed growth thereafter. Since the 1990s the shortwave RF exceeds the longwave RF. Global stratospheric ozone RF is positive between 1930 and 1970 and then turns negative, but remains positive in the Northern Hemisphere throughout. Derived stratospheric temperature changes show a localized cooling in the sub-tropical lower stratosphere due to tropospheric ozone increases, and cooling in the upper stratosphere due to ozone depletion by more than 1K already prior to the satellite era (1980), and by more than 2K out to the present day (2014)."

66. Evaluating Emergent Constraints on Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity

"For 4 of the 19 constraints, the originally-proposed explanation for correlation is borne out by our analysis. These 4 constraints all predict relatively high climate sensitivity. The credibility of 6 other constraints is called into question due to correlation with ECS coming mainly from unexpected sources and/or lack of robustness to changes in ensembles. Another 6 constraints lack a testable explanation and hence cannot be confirmed. The fact that this study casts doubt upon more constraints than it confirms highlights the need for caution when identifying emergent constraints from small ensembles."

67. An ensemble covariance framework for quantifying forced climate variability and its time of emergence

68. Multi-model surface temperature responses to removal of U.S. sulfur dioxide emissions

Carbon cycle

69. Controls on boreal peat combustion and resulting emissions of carbon and mercury

70. Evaluating humidity and sea salt disturbances on CO₂flux measurements

71. Constraining projection-based estimates of the future North Atlantic carbon uptake

Hydrosphere

72. Quantifying Land and People Exposed to Sea-Level Rise with No Mitigation and 1.5 and 2.0 °C Rise in Global Temperatures to Year 2300

73. Recent acceleration of the terrestrial hydrologic cycle in the U.S. Midwest

74. The influence of water storage in marine sediment on sea-level change

75. Reconstructing Tropical Pacific Sea Level Variability for the Period 1961-2002 Using a Linear Multimode Model

Atmospheric and oceanic circulation

76. Changes in ENSO Activity during the Last 6,000 Years Modulated by Background Climate State

Climate change impacts

Mankind

77. Food security and climate change: the case of rainfed maize production in Mexico

78. Vulnerability of Ghanaian women cocoa farmers to climate change: a typology

79. Climate change adaptations of shrimp farmers: a case study from southwest coastal Bangladesh

80. Fanning the Blame: Media Accountability, Climate and Crisis on the Australian “Fire Continent”

81. Adaptation of global land use and management intensity to changes in climate and atmospheric carbon dioxide

82. Climate variability, rice production and groundwater depletion in India

83. Perspectives on adaptive capacity to climate change in hazardous environments: insights from Broward County, Florida

84. Climate change evidence and community level autonomous adaptation measures in a canal irrigated agriculture system of Pakistan

85. Sovereign insurance to incentivize the shift from disaster response to adaptation to climate change – African Risk Capacity's Extreme Climate Facility

86. How will East African maize yields respond to climate change and can agricultural development mitigate this response?

Biosphere

87. Climate change likely to reduce orchid bee abundance even in climatic suitable sites

88. Massive Mortality of a Planktivorous Seabird in Response to a Marine Heatwave

"Carcass deposition followed an effective reduction in the energy content of mesozooplankton, coincident with the loss of cold-water foraging habitat caused by the intrusion of the NE Pacific MHW [Marine HeatWave] into the nearshore environment. Models examining interannual variability in effort-controlled carcass abundance (2001-2014) identified the biomass of lipid-poor zooplankton as the dominant predictor of increased carcass abundance. In 2014, Cassin's Auklets dispersing from colonies in British Columbia likely congregated into a nearshore band of cooler upwelled water, and ultimately died from starvation following the shift in zooplankton composition associated with onshore transport of the NE Pacific MHW."

89. Projected changes of thermal growing season over Northern Eurasia in a 1.5 °C and 2 °C warming world

90. Detecting early warning signals of tree mortality in boreal North America using multi-scale satellite data

91. Reproductive trade-offs in a temperate reef fish under high pCO₂ levels

"Parental pairs in the simulated ocean acidification conditions exhibited increased reproductive output, with 50% more clutches and 44% more eggs per clutch than pairs under control conditions. However, there was an apparent trade-off between offspring number and size, as larvae of parental pairs under high pCO₂ levels hatched significantly smaller, suggesting differences in parental provisioning, which could be related to the fact that these females produce more eggs. Moreover, results support the hypothesis of different energy allocation strategies used by females under high pCO₂ conditions. These changes might, ultimately, affect individual fitness and population replenishment."

92. Carbon quality and soil microbial property control the latitudinal pattern in temperature sensitivity of soil microbial respiration across Chinese forest ecosystems

93. Forest resilience to drought varies across biomes

94. The perpetual state of emergency that sacrifices protected areas in a changing climate

95. Coral reef habitat mapping: A combination of object-based image analysis and ecological modelling

96. Warming weakens facilitative interactions between decomposers and detritivores, and modifies freshwater ecosystem functioning

97. Climate change accelerates local disease extinction rates in a long-term wild host-pathogen association

98. A global comparison of the climatic niches of urban and native tree populations

99. Climate change, disease range shifts, and the future of the Africa lion

100. Atmospheric teleconnection influence on North American land surface phenology

101. Anti-herbivore defences and insect herbivory: Interactive effects of drought and tree neighbours

102. Temperature and aridity regulate spatial variability of soil multifunctionality in drylands across the globe

103. Seasonal, interannual and decadal drivers of tree and grass productivity in an Australian tropical savanna

104. Satellite view of seasonal greenness trends and controls in South Asia

105. Seed banks of native forbs, but not exotic grasses, increase during extreme drought

106. Weakening relationship between vegetation growth over the Tibetan Plateau and large-scale climate variability

"We found consistent weakening relationships between mean growing-season (April–October) NDVI and both PDO and NAO. A similar pattern was also found in the temporal relationship between NPP and PDO. Such weakening relationships were partly attributable to weakening regional summer atmospheric circulation and its causal effects on changes in hydrothermal conditions over the Tibetan Plateau."

107. Long-term stimulatory warming effect on soil heterotrophic respiration in a cool-temperate broad-leaved deciduous forest in northern Japan

108. Long-term variability of macrobenthic community in a shallow coastal lagoon (Valli di Comacchio, northern Adriatic): Is community resistant to climate changes?

109. Contrasting Impact of Future CO₂ Emission Scenarios on the Extent of CaCO₃ Mineral Undersaturation in the Humboldt Current System

Other papers

110. Atmospheric thermal radiation – from historical measurements to investigations of the Earth's greenhouse effect

"Here, we recall first quantitative measurements of terrestrial and atmospheric thermal infrared radiation that were made about hundred years ago, and relate them to present day radiation budget measurements and greenhouse effect investigations through the atmosphere. At the beginning of the 20th century measurements of the effective terrestrial radiation and the counter-radiation of the atmosphere were of great interest primarily to prove theoretical aspects of the Earth radiation balance and the upper temperature inversion."

111. Does public opinion affect air quality? Evidence based on the monthly data of 109 prefecture-level cities in China

112. South Pacific evidence for the long-term climate impact of the Cretaceous/Paleogene boundary event

113. Icebergs in the Nordic Seas throughout the Late Pliocene

114. Mid-depth temperature maximum in an estuarine lake