Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Atmospheric Sciences
More biomass burning aerosol is being advected westward over the southern tropical Atlantic since 2003
Published: 2024-07-26
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate
Each year, agricultural fires in southern continental Africa emit approximately one third of the world’s biomass burning aerosol. This is advected westward by the prevailing circulation winds over a subtropical stratocumulus cloud deck. The radiative effects from the aerosol and aerosol-cloud interactions impact regional circulations and hydrology. Here we examine how changes in the coupled [...]
Amplifying Exploration of Regional Climate Risks: Clustering Future Projections on Regionally Relevant Impact Drivers Not Emission Scenarios
Published: 2024-07-17
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Hydrology, Meteorology, Other Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Risk Analysis
In the upcoming decades, climate change impacts will increasingly emerge, requiring regions worldwide to obtain actionable climate information. Global Climate Models (GCMs) are often used to explore future conditions, but the variability of projections among GCMs complicates regional climate risk assessments. Often, multi-model means of climate responses to various emission scenarios are used to [...]
Satellite survey sheds new light on global solid waste methane emissions
Published: 2024-07-09
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Environmental Sciences
Anthropogenic methane emissions are the second most important contributor to climate change, and their rapid reductions could help decrease near-term warming. Solid waste emits methane through the decay of organic material, which amounts to about 10% of total anthropogenic methane emissions. Satellite instruments enable monitoring of strong methane hotspots, including many strongly emitting urban [...]
Increasingly seasonal jet stream drives stormy episodes with joint wind-flood risk in Great Britain
Published: 2024-07-03
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Hydrology, Multivariate Analysis
Ignoring a correlation between flooding and extreme winds underestimates risk to insurers or providers of critical infrastructure such as railways or electricity. We explore this potential underestimation for Northwest Europe, illustrated using Great Britain (GB), using an event-based analysis in regional 12 km UK Climate Projections (UKCP18, 1981-1999, 2061-2079 – RCP8.5). We derive a new [...]
How Will Precipitation Characteristics Associated with Tropical Cyclones in Diverse Synoptic Environments Respond to Climate Change?
Published: 2024-06-22
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Meteorology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Landfalling tropical cyclones (TCs) can produce large rainfall totals which lead to devastating flooding, loss of life, and significant damage to infrastructure. Here we focus on three North Atlantic TCs that impacted the southeastern United States: Hurricanes Floyd (1999), Matthew (2016), and Florence (2018). While these storms were impactful when they occurred, how might the impacts of similar [...]
Exploring coastal climate adaptation through storylines: Insights from Cyclone Idai in Beira, Mozambique
Published: 2024-06-11
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology, Meteorology, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Water Resource Management
Coastal settlements, facing increasing flood risk from Tropical Cyclones (TCs) under climate change, need local and detailed climate information for effective adaptation. Analysis of historical events and their impacts provides such information. This study uses storylines to evaluate adaptation strategies, focusing on Cyclone Idai’s impact on Beira, Mozambique, under different climate [...]
The Overlooked Sub-Grid Air-Sea Flux in Climate Models
Published: 2024-05-18
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing, Oceanography
Understanding air-sea interaction is crucial for our ability to predict future states of the climate system, and to inform economic and societal decision-making. However, the representation of air-sea interactions in climate models is limited by structural errors associated with model resolution. Coarse-resolution climate models do not resolve small-scale structures in the air-sea state, which, [...]
Global mercury records from natural archives reveal ecosystem responses to changing atmospheric deposition
Published: 2024-05-15
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geochemistry, Geography, Physical and Environmental Geography
Global ecosystems face mercury contamination, yet long-term data is scarce, hindering understanding of ecosystem responses to atmospheric Hg input changes and policy evaluation. To address this gap, this study compiled a global mercury accumulation flux database using 221 cores from peat, lake, ice, and marine deposits. From 1700 to 2012, global averaged fluxes in peat, lake, ice, and marine [...]
Numerical simulation of the 2D trajectory of a non-buoyant fluid parcel under the influence of inertial oscillation
Published: 2024-04-24
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Fluid Dynamics, Numerical Analysis and Computation, Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing, Oceanography
The trajectory of non-buoyant fluid parcels under the influence of inertial oscillations is a pivotal phenomenon in geophysical fluid dynamics, impacting processes such as tracer transport, pollutant dispersion, and the dynamics of marine organisms. This study presents a comprehensive numerical investigation of the two-dimensional trajectory of a non-buoyant fluid parcel subjected to inertial [...]
Moist Internally Cooled Convection
Published: 2024-04-17
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences
The response of clouds and moist-convective processes to heat-loss to space by long-wave radiative cooling is an important feedback in the earth's atmosphere. It is known that moist convection increases roughly in equilibrium with radiative cooling, an assumption often made in simplified models of the tropical atmosphere. In this study, we use an idealised 2D model of the atmosphere introduced by [...]
Improving Urban Climate Adaptation Modelling in the Community Earth System Model (CESM) Through Transient Urban Surface Albedo Representation
Published: 2024-04-03
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Civil Engineering, Climate, Computational Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences
Increasing the albedo of urban surfaces, through strategies like white roof installations, has emerged as a promising approach for urban climate adaptation. Yet, modelling these strategies on a large scale is limited by the use of static urban surface albedo representations in the Earth system models. In this study, we developed a new transient urban surface albedo scheme in the Community Earth [...]
An optimized methane retrieval approach based on Kalman filter for mapping methane point emissions from spaceborne imaging spectrometer
Published: 2024-02-29
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences
Methane (CH4) emissions from point sources in the energy sector plays a crucial role in global CH4 budget. Spaceborne imaging spectrometer has shown superior ability for monitoring these emission events over large spatial coverages and extended timeframes. Presently, the Matched Filter (MF), which is a data-driven method, is widely employed for satellite-based retrieval of CH4 emission flux [...]
Satellite-based surveys reveal substantial methane point-source emissions in major oil & gas basins of North America during 2022-2023
Published: 2024-02-28
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Remote Sensing
Utilizing imaging spectroscopy technology to identify methane super-emitters plays a vital role in mitigating methane emissions in the Oil & Gas (O&G) sector. While earlier research has uncovered significant point-source methane emissions from O&G production in the US and Canada, which are key regions with large methane emissions, a comprehensive post-COVID-19 survey has been notably [...]
Graph Characterization of Higher Order Structure in Atmospheric Chemical Reaction Mechanisms
Published: 2024-02-13
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Biogeochemistry, Environmental Chemistry, Other Applied Mathematics, Other Environmental Sciences
Atmospheric chemical reactions play an important role in air quality and climate change. While the structure and dynamics of individual chemical reactions are fairly well understood, the emergent properties of the entire atmospheric chemical system, which can involve many different species that participate in many different reactions, are not well described. In this work, we leverage [...]
Climate and Air Quality Impact of Using Ammonia as an Alternative Shipping Fuel
Published: 2024-02-07
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Oil, Gas, and Energy
As carbon-free fuel, ammonia has been proposed as an alternative fuel to facilitate maritime decarbonization. Deployment of ammonia-powered ships is proposed as soon as 2024. However, emissions of NOx, NH3 and N2O resulting from ammonia combustion could cause impacts on air quality and climate. In this study, we assess whether and under what conditions switching to ammonia fuel might affect [...]