Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
Asian monsoon amplifies semi-direct effect of biomass burning aerosols on low cloud formation
Published: 2020-05-11
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Meteorology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Low clouds play a key role in the Earth-atmosphere energy balance and influence agricultural production and solar-power generation. Smoke aloft has been found to enhance marine stratocu-mulus over the Southeast Atlantic in austral spring through aerosol-cloud interactions, but its role in regions with strong human activities and complex monsoon circulation remains unclear. Here we show that [...]
Macroscopic flow disequilibrium over aeolian dune fields
Published: 2020-05-08
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Earth Sciences, Geomorphology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology
Aeolian dune fields are self-organized patterns formed by wind-blown sand. Dunes are topographic roughness elements that impose drag on the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL), creating a natural coupling between form and flow. While the steady-state influence of drag on the ABL is well studied, non-equilibrium effects due to roughness transitions are less understood. Here we examine the large-scale [...]
How waves are accelerating global coastal overtopping
Published: 2020-05-08
Subjects: Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The world’s coastal areas are home to about 10% of the human population and support unique and dynamic ecosystems, offering € trillions worth of environmental and societal benefits. Climate change and anthropogenic pressures are however exacerbating devastating hazards such as episodic coastal flooding, the magnitudes of which remain highly uncertain to date. This study, for the first time, [...]
Aerosols bias daily weather prediction
Published: 2020-05-07
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Meteorology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Weather prediction is essential to human daily life. Current numerical weather prediction (NWP) models are still subject to substantial forecast bias and rarely consider the impact of atmospheric aerosols, despite of the consensus of aerosols as the most important sources of uncertainty in predicting climate change. Here we show aerosols as an important driver biasing daily temperature [...]
EC-Earth Global Climate Simulations: Ireland’s Contributions to CMIP6
Published: 2020-05-07
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The global climate simulations described in this report constitute Ireland’s contribution to the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) (phase 6) (CMIP6) and will be included for assessment in the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6). Since 1995, CMIP has co-ordinated climate model experiments involving multiple international [...]
Estimating Submicron Aerosol Mixing State at the Global Scale with Machine Learning and Earth System Modeling
Published: 2020-05-07
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Computational Engineering, Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
This study integrates machine learning and particle-resolved aerosol simulations to develop emulators that predict sub-micron aerosol mixing state indices from the Earth System Model (ESM) simulations. The emulators predict aerosol mixing state using only ESM bulk aerosol species concentrations, which do not by themselves carry mixing state information. Here we used PartMC as the [...]
Projections of global delta land loss from sea-level rise in the 21st century
Published: 2020-05-06
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geomorphology, Hydrology, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology
River deltas will likely experience significant land loss because of relative sea-level rise (RSLR), but predictions have not been tested against observations. Here, we use global data of RSLR and river sediment supply to build a model of delta response to RSLR for 6,402 deltas, representing 86% of global delta land. We validate this model against delta land area change observations from [...]
Constraining global changes in temperature and precipitation from observable changes in surface radiative heating
Published: 2020-04-30
Subjects: Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Physics
Changes in the atmospheric composition alter the magnitude and partitioning between the downward propagating solar and atmospheric longwave radiative fluxes heating the Earths surface. These changes are computed by radiative transfer codes in Global Climate Models and measured with high precision at surface observation networks. Changes in radiative heating signify changes in the global surface [...]
Predicting outbreak-level tornado counts and casualties from environmental variables
Published: 2020-04-30
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Earth Sciences, Life Sciences, Meteorology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Environmental variables are used routinely in forecasting when and where an outbreak of tornadoes are likely to occur, but more work is needed to understand how characteristics of severe weather outbreaks vary with the larger scale environmental factors. Here the authors demonstrate a method to quantify `outbreak-level tornado and casualty counts with respect to variations in large-scale [...]
Large-eddy simulation of traffic-related air pollution at a very high-resolution in a mega-city: Evaluation against mobile sensors and insights for influencing factors
Published: 2020-04-30
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Urban air pollution has tremendous spatial variability at scales ranged from kilometer to meters due to unevenly distributed emission sources, complex flow patterns, and photochemical reactions. However, high-resolution air quality information is not available through traditional approaches such as ground-based measurements and regional air quality models (with typical resolution >1 km). Here [...]
Global projections of compound coastal meteorological extremes
Published: 2020-04-29
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Compound coastal and inland flooding can result in catastrophic impacts in densely populated low-lying coastal areas. The dynamics and interactions between the underlying meteorological drivers in view of climate change are not fully understood at global scale. Here, we show that under a high emissions scenario the concurrence probability of extreme meteorological tides and inland precipitation [...]
Inter-model spread in the pattern effect and its contribution to climate sensitivity in CMIP5 and CMIP6 models
Published: 2020-04-24
Subjects: Climate, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Radiative feedbacks depend on the spatial patterns of sea-surface temperature (SST) and thus can change over time as SST patterns evolve – the so-called ‘pattern effect’. This study investigates inter-model differences in the magnitude of the pattern effect and how these differences contribute to the spread in the effective equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) within CMIP5 and CMIP6 models. [...]
Palaeotidal atlas of the UK for the last 10,000 years
Published: 2020-04-18
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Over the past 10,000 years the UK has seen dramatic changes to its coastline due to sea-level rise. Past changes in sea level can be estimated from analysis of sedimentary deposits, including any microfossil assemblages found within. Once dated and the elevation is know, these data become sea level index points (SLIPs). In recreating past sea level in this way there is an implicit assumption of [...]
Spontaneous Cyclogenesis without Radiative and Surface-Flux Feedbacks
Published: 2020-04-18
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Tropical cyclones (TCs) are among the most intense and feared storms in the world. What physical processes lead to cyclogenesis remains the most mysterious aspect of TC physics. Here, we study spontaneous TC genesis in rotating radiative-convective equilibrium using cloud-resolving simulations over an f-plane with constant sea-surface temperature. Previous studies proposed that spontaneous TC [...]
Do atmospheric plastics act as fomites for novel viruses?
Published: 2020-04-15
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Plastic particles are ubiquitous in various environmental compartments, the atmosphere being the least explored compartment in terms of plastic pollution. The way that atmospheric plastics affect the biological systems has not yet been explored when compared to aquatic ecosystems. There are many speculated human health impacts, one definite and direct impact of atmospheric plastics would be [...]