Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Climate
A century of reduced ENSO variability during the Medieval Climate Anomaly
Published: 2019-08-13
Subjects: Climate, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Climate model simulations of El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) behavior for the last millennium demonstrate interdecadal to centennial changes in ENSO variability that can arise purely from stochastic processes internal to the climate system. That said, the instrumental record of ENSO does not have the temporal coverage needed to capture the full range of natural ENSO variability observed in [...]
Bayesian calibration of the Mg/Ca paleothermometer in planktic foraminifera
Published: 2019-08-06
Subjects: Climate, Earth Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The Mg/Ca ratio of planktic foraminifera is a widely-used proxy for sea-surface temperature, but is also sensitive to other environmental factors. Previous work has relied on correcting Mg/Ca for non-thermal influences. Here, we develop a set of Bayesian models for Mg/Ca in four major planktic groups -- Globigerinoides ruber (including both pink and white chromotypes), Trilobatus sacculifer, [...]
Assessing Climate Model Projections of Anthropogenic Warming Patterns
Published: 2019-07-17
Subjects: Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Projections of future anthropogenic climate change and their uncertainties are determined by analyzing large ensembles of numerical climate models. Since the late 1980s, transient climate models have projected a pronounced global warming, with relatively high warming in the Arctic and over land and low warming over the Southern Ocean. In general, confidence in climate model projections is based [...]
Reducing uncertainties in climate projections with emergent constraints: Concepts, Examples and Prospects
Published: 2019-06-28
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Models disagree on a significant number of responses to climate change, such as climate feedback, regional changes, or the strength of equilibrium climate sensitivity. Emergent constraints aim to reduce these uncertainties by finding links between the inter-model spread in an observable predictor and climate projections. In this paper, the concepts underlying this framework are recalled with an [...]
Is it always Slowdown of the Walker circulation at solar cycle maximum?
Published: 2019-06-27
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
It is a commentary following a published paper in PNAS titled, ‘Slowdown of the Walker circulation at solar cycle maximum’, by Stergios Misios, Lesley J. Gray, Mads F. Knudsen, Christoffer Karoff, Hauke Schmidt, and Joanna D. Haigh (2019). The article of Misios et.al.(2019) claims that there is a slowdown of the Walker Circulation during maximum periods of solar cycles. In support, they provided [...]
Dynamical Systems Theory Sheds New Light on Compound Climate Extremes in Europe and Eastern North America
Published: 2019-06-27
Subjects: Applied Mathematics, Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Dynamic Systems, Earth Sciences, Meteorology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Physics, Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics
We propose a novel approach to the study of compound extremes, grounded in dynamical systems theory. Specifically, we present the co-recurrence ratio (α), which elucidates the dependence structure between variables by quantifying their joint recurrences. This approach is applied to daily climate extremes, derived from the ERA-Interim reanalysis over the 1979-2018 period. The analysis focuses on [...]
Large uncertainty in volcanic aerosol radiative forcing derived from ice cores
Published: 2019-06-21
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Earth Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Volcanology
Reconstructions of volcanic aerosol radiative forcing are required to understand past climate variability. Currently, reconstructions of pre-20th century volcanic forcing are derived from sulfate concentrations measured in polar ice cores, predominantly using a relationship between average ice sheet sulfate deposition and stratospheric sulfate aerosol based on a single explosive eruption - the [...]
Data-driven prediction of a multi-scale Lorenz 96 chaotic system using deep learning methods: Reservoir computing, ANN, and RNN-LSTM
Published: 2019-06-20
Subjects: Applied Mathematics, Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Computer Sciences, Dynamic Systems, Earth Sciences, Fluid Dynamics, Non-linear Dynamics, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Physics
In this paper, the performance of three deep learning methods for predicting short-term evolution and for reproducing the long-term statistics of a multi-scale spatio-temporal Lorenz 96 system is examined. The methods are: echo state network (a type of reservoir computing, RC-ESN), deep feed-forward artificial neural network (ANN), and recurrent neural network with long short-term memory [...]
Optimizing Regional Climate Model Output for Hydro-Climate Applications in the Eastern Nile Basin
Published: 2019-06-18
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Climate, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Hydrology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
This study focuses on the Eastern Nile (EN) Basin, most of whose water flows into the High Aswan Dam (HAD), Egypt. It is, therefore, crucial to have an accurate hydrological assessment overtime to plan water resource management in the area. With complex topography, it is important to capture most of the physics captured with the least bias in meteorological information. Weather Research and [...]
Past and projected weather pattern persistence with associated multi-hazards in the British Isles
Published: 2019-05-30
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Earth Sciences, Meteorology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Hazards such as heatwaves, droughts and floods are often associated with persistent weather patterns. Atmosphere-Ocean General Circulation Models (AOGCMs) are important tools for evaluating projected changes in extreme weather. Here, we demonstrate that 2-day weather pattern persistence, derived from the Lamb Weather Types (LWTs) objective scheme, is a useful concept for both investigating [...]
Concurrent wet and dry hydrological extremes at the global scale
Published: 2019-05-30
Subjects: Climate, Earth Sciences, Hydrology, Meteorology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Multi-hazard events can be associated with larger socio-economic impacts than single-hazard events. Understanding the spatio-temporal interactions that characterise the former is, therefore, of relevance to disaster risk reduction measures. Here, we consider two high-impact hazards, namely wet and dry hydrological extremes, and quantify their global co-occurrence. We define these using the [...]
Lake Level Fluctuations in the Northern Great Basin for the Last 25,000 years
Published: 2019-05-30
Subjects: Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geology, Hydrology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology
During the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM; ~23,000 to 19,000 years ago or ka) and through the last deglaciation, the Great Basin physiographic region in the western United States was marked by multiple extensive lake systems, as recorded by proxy evidence and lake sediments. However, temporal constraints on the growth, desiccation, and timing of lake highstands remain poorly constrained. Studies aimed [...]
Representation of European hydroclimatic patterns with Self-Organizing Maps
Published: 2019-05-15
Subjects: Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Life Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Physics, Planetary Sciences
Self-Organizing Maps provide a powerful, non-linear technique of dimensionality reduction that can be used to identify clusters with similar attributes. Here, they were constructed from a 1000-year-long gridded palaeoclimatic dataset, namely the Old World Drought Atlas, to detect regions of homogeneous hydroclimatic variability across the European continent. A classification scheme of 10 regions [...]
A new method to study inhomogeneities in climate records: Brownian Motion or Random Deviations?
Published: 2019-05-09
Subjects: Climate, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Planetary Sciences
Climate data is affected by inhomogeneities due to historical changes in the way the measurements were performed. Understanding these inhomogeneities is important for accurate estimates of long-term changes in the climate. These inhomogeneities are typically characterized by the number of breaks and the size of the jumps or the variance of the break signal, but a full characterization of the [...]
Trends of hydroclimatic intensity in Colombia
Published: 2019-05-08
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Climate, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Life Sciences, Meteorology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Risk Analysis, Statistics and Probability, Water Resource Management
Prediction of changes in precipitation in upcoming years and decades caused by global climate change associated with the greenhouse effect, deforestation and other anthropic perturbations is a practical and scientific problem of high complexity and huge consequences. To advance toward this challenge we look at the daily historical record of all available rain gauges in Colombia to estimate an [...]