Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Climate
Meridional atmospheric heat transport constrained by energetics and mediated by large-scale diffusion
Published: 2018-08-31
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Meridional atmospheric heat transport (AHT) has been investigated through three broad perspectives: dynamic perspective, linking AHT to the poleward flux of moist static energy (MSE) by atmospheric motions; an energetic perspective, linking AHT to energy input to the atmosphere by top-of-atmosphere radiation and surface heat fluxes; and a diffusive perspective, representing AHT in terms [...]
Why does Amazon precipitation decrease when tropical forests respond to increasing CO2?
Published: 2018-08-30
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Earth Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Earth system models predict a zonal dipole of precipitation change over tropical South America, with decreases over the Amazon and increases over the Andes. Much of this has been attributed to the physiological response of the rainforest to elevated CO2, which describes a basin-wide reduction in stomatal conductance and transpiration. While robust in Earth system model experiments, details of [...]
Hamiltonian distributed chaos and predictability in large-scale climate dynamics
Published: 2018-08-14
Subjects: Climate, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
It is shown that the large-scale climate dynamics, represented by the daily indices of the North Atlantic (NAO), Pacific/North American (PNA), Arctic (AO) and Antarctic (AAO) oscillations, Asian-Australian Monsoons (ISM, WNPM and AUSM) and El Nino/La Nina phenomenon (Nino indices) as well as global temperature anomalies (land), is dominated by the Hamiltonian distributed chaos with the stretched [...]
Higher potential compound flood risk in Northern Europe under anthropogenic climate change
Published: 2018-07-18
Subjects: Applied Mathematics, Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Multivariate Analysis, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Other Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Other Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Physics, Statistics and Probability
The published version of this article is available at https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/9/eaaw5531. Compound flooding (CF) is an extreme event taking place in low-lying coastal areas as a result of co-occurring high sea level and large amounts of runoff, caused by precipitation. The impact from the two hazards occurring individually can be significantly lower than the result of their [...]
What Even Is Climate?
Published: 2018-06-26
Subjects: Climate, Geography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Other Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Although the concept of climate is easy to understand, there is not any uncontroversial definition of it. Most definitions fall back to the simple formulation that `climate is the statistics of weather. Recent attempts at a definition called versions of this saying vague. Climate is policy-relevant, and discussions on climate and climate change benefit from clarity on the topic. Beyond the policy [...]
A strong role for the AMOC in partitioning global energy transport and shifting ITCZ position in response to latitudinally discrete solar forcing in the CESM1.2
Published: 2018-06-14
Subjects: Climate, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
This preprint is a non peer reviewed version submitted to the Journal of Climate. This work has been accepted for publication with an updated title, A strong role for the AMOC in partitioning global energy transport and shifting ITCZ position in response to latitudinally discrete solar forcing in the CESM1.2. The accepted version is substantially different from the preprint version due to the [...]
Revisiting the surface-energy-flux perspective on the sensitivity of global precipitation to climate change
Published: 2018-05-23
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Climate models simulate an increase in global precipitation at a rate of approximately 1-3% per Kelvin of global surface warming. This change is often interpreted through the lens of the atmospheric energy budget, in which the increase in global precipitation is mostly offset by an increase in net radiative cooling. Other studies have provided different interpretations from the perspective of the [...]
Increasingly Powerful Tornadoes in the United States
Published: 2018-05-11
Subjects: Climate, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Storm reports show an upward trend in the power of tornadoes from longer and wider paths and higher damage ratings. Quantifying the magnitude of the increase is difficult given diurnal and seasonal influences on tornadoes embedded within natural variations and made worse by changes for rating damage. Here the authors solve this problem by fitting a statistical model to a metric of power during [...]
The Extraordinary Mediocrity of the Holocene
Published: 2018-03-15
Subjects: Climate, Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Other Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Planetary Sciences
The extinction of multiple genera of large-bodied mammals during the Holocene interglacial transition has been attributed to three hypothesized causes: human migration, climate change, and an extra-terrestrial impact. Two of these hypotheses, climate change and extra-terrestrial impactor, would predict that the Holocene interglacial transition was uniquely stressful for large-bodied mammals. To [...]
The effect of wind stress anomalies and location in driving Pacific Subtropical cells and tropical climate
Published: 2018-03-12
Subjects: Climate, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The importance of subtropical and extratropical zonal wind stress on Pacific Subtropical Cells (STCs) strength is assessed through several idealized numerical experiments performed with a global ocean model. Different zonal wind stress anomalies are employed, and their intensity is strengthened or weakened with respect to the climatological value throughout a suite of simulations. Strengthened [...]
Uncertainty in sea level rise projections due to the dependence between contributors
Published: 2018-03-08
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Probability, Statistical Models, Statistics and Probability
Sea level rises at an accelerating pace threatening coastal communities all over the world. In this context sea level projections are key tools to help risk mitigation and adaptation. Sea level projections are often made using models of the main contributors to sea level rise (e.g. thermal expansion, glaciers, ice sheets...). To obtain the total sea level these contributions are added, therefore [...]
Radiative feedbacks from stochastic variability in surface temperature and radiative imbalance
Published: 2018-03-02
Subjects: Climate, Earth Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Estimates of radiative feedbacks obtained by regressing fluctuations in top-of-atmosphere (TOA) energy imbalance and surface temperature depend critically on assumptions about the nature of the stochastic forcing and on the sampling interval. Here we develop an energy-balance framework that allows us to model the different contributions of stochastic atmospheric and oceanic forcing on feed- back [...]
On the reduction of trend errors by the ANOVA joint correction scheme used in homogenization of climate station records
Published: 2018-02-16
Subjects: Climate, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Inhomogeneities in climate data are the main source of uncertainty for secular warming estimates. To reduce the influence of inhomogeneities in station data statistical homogenization compares a candidate station to its neighbors to detect and correct artificial changes in the candidate. Many studies have quantified the performance of statistical break detection tests used in this comparison. [...]
Multi-scale modeling of the urban meteorology: integration of a new canopy model in the WRF model
Published: 2018-02-16
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Urban parametrizations have been recently proposed and integrated in mesoscale meteorological models for a better reproduction of urban heat islands and to compute building energy con- sumption. The objective of the present study is to evaluate the value of the use of a module able to produce highly resolved vertical profiles of these variables. For this purpose, the Canopy Interface Model (CIM) [...]
An estimate of equilibrium climate sensitivity from interannual variability
Published: 2018-02-04
Subjects: Climate, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Estimating the equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS; the equilibrium warming in response to a doubling of CO2) from observations is one of the big problems in climate science. Using observations of interannual climate variations covering the period 2000 to 2017 and a model-derived relationship between interannual variations and forced climate change, we estimate ECS is likely 2.4-4.6 K (17-83% [...]