Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Climate
Revisiting the Climate Narrative
Published: 2023-04-06
Subjects: Agriculture, Climate, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Studies, Food Science, Forest Management, Hydrology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Other Environmental Sciences, Soil Science, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
The rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide is chiefly tied to land stewardship. Farmers and loggers have removed the plants that, until the industrial era, kept the soil fungi alive, kept soil emissions nearby by breaking the wind, and soaked those up. The result is plumes of carbon dioxide. Putting plants back in would curb these emissions. Farmers and loggers could address biodiversity loss [...]
Steady decline in mean annual air temperatures in the first 30 ka after the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary
Published: 2023-03-06
Subjects: Climate, Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Stratigraphy
The Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary marks one of the five major mass extinctions of the Phanerozoic. How the climate system responded to a bolide impact and extensive volcanism at this time over different timescales is highly debated. Here we use the distribution of branched tetraether lipids (brGDGT) from fossil peats at two sites in Saskatchewan, Canada (paleolatitude ~55°N), to generate a [...]
Did hydroclimate conditions contribute to the political dynamics of Majapahit? A preliminary analysis
Published: 2023-02-21
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geography, Human Geography, Nature and Society Relations, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Majapahit was the largest Hindu-Buddhist empire that ruled the Indonesian archipelago from the late 13th to mid-16th centuries CE. Only now there is still a lot of history surrounding the Majapahit era that has yet to be revealed. One is about how environmental factors influenced the political dynamics at that time. This study tries to discuss the influence of hydroclimate regimes using the Paleo [...]
Soil moisture modulation of midlatitude heat waves
Published: 2023-02-10
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Earth Sciences, Hydrology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Heat waves are broadly expected to increase in severity and frequency under climate change. Case studies highlight a number of physical mechanisms that play a role in present-day heat waves, which typically occur during a coalescence of anomalous atmospheric and land surface conditions. However, a unified model of heat wave physics is lacking, primarily owing to difficulty in disentangling the [...]
An Updated Parametrization of Algorithms to Retrieve the Diffuse Attenuation of Light in the Ocean from Remote Sensing and its Impact on Estimates of Net Primary Productivity
Published: 2023-02-09
Subjects: Climate, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Other Environmental Sciences
We recently found a significant bias while validating frequently used ocean color algorithms retrieving the spectral diffuse attenuation coefficient (Kd(λ))(Begouen and Boss, 2022). Here we modify existing algorithms for Kd(λ) to remove the observed bias at Kd(490), and evaluate the impact on global and regional estimates of net primary production (NPP) using two different primary production [...]
Internal gravity waves generated by subglacial discharge: implications for tidewater glacier melt
Published: 2023-02-02
Subjects: Climate, Oceanography
Submarine melting has been implicated in the accelerated retreat of marine-terminating glaciers globally. Energetic ocean flows, such as subglacial discharge plumes, are known to enhance submarine melting in their immediate vicinity. Using observations and a large eddy simulation, we demonstrate that discharge plumes emit high-frequency internal gravity waves that propagate along glacier termini [...]
Benefit-cost ratios of CO2 removal strategies
Published: 2023-01-13
Subjects: Climate
Limiting global warming to 1.5$^\circ$C will very likely require, or to 2$^\circ$C may require, large-scale removal of carbon dioxide (CO$_2$) from the atmosphere. Many CO$_2$ removal strategies (CDRSs), or negative emissions technologies, have been proposed, which vary widely in both price per ton of CO$_2$ removed and storage timescale of this removed CO$_2$, as well as mechanism, maturity, [...]
Improving Shoreline Forecasting Models with Multi-Objective Genetic Programming
Published: 2023-01-10
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Climate, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Monitoring, Geomorphology, Hydrology, Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing, Oceanography, Sedimentology, Statistical Models
Given the current context of climate change and increasing population densities at coastal zones, there is an increasing need to be able to predict the development of our coasts. Recent advances in artificial intelligence allow for automatic analysis of observational data. This work makes use of Symbolic Regression, a type of Machine Learning algorithm, to evolve interpretable shoreline [...]
Weakening of the Indian Ocean Dipole in the mid-Holocene due to the mean oceanic climatology change
Published: 2023-01-10
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Meteorology, Oceanography
The Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) is one of the leading modes of interannual climate variability in the tropical Indian Ocean (IO). Paleoclimate provides real climate scenarios to examine IOD behaviors and the linkage to basic states. Based on 18 models from the Paleoclimate Modelling Intercomparison Project phase 3 and 4 (PMIP 3/4), the IOD change from the preindustrial period to mid-Holocene is [...]
The Dry Sky: Futures for Humanity’s Modification of the Atmospheric Water Cycle
Published: 2022-12-21
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Fresh Water Studies, Hydrology, Meteorology, Natural Resource Economics, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Nature and Society Relations, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Humanity is modifying the atmospheric water cycle, via land use, climate change, air pollution, and weather modification. Given the implications of this, we present a theoretical framing of atmospheric water as an economic good. Historically, atmospheric water was tacitly considered a ‘public good’ since it was neither actively consumed (rival) nor controlled (exclusive). However, given [...]
Global methane pledge versus lower CO2 emissions
Published: 2022-12-05
Subjects: Climate
Methane (CH$_4$) is a potent greenhouse gas whose contribution to anthropogenic radiative forcing of the climate system is second only to carbon dioxide (CO$_2$). CH$_4$ emission reduction has become central to global climate mitigation policy, resulting most notably in the Global Methane Pledge (GMP), pledging a 30\% reduction of CH$_4$ emissions by 2030. Methane is, however, much shorter-lived [...]
Epitomic Data for Community Land Model Standalone Simulations for Prognostic Analyses of Tropical Mountain Glaciation and Lake Temperature in Pre-Industrial, Last Glacial Maximum, and Extreme Glacial Climates
Published: 2022-11-15
Subjects: Climate, Fresh Water Studies, Glaciology, Hydrology
Global climate models typically simulate climate at much larger spatial scales than tropical mountain glaciers and many of the world’s lakes. Yet some of the proxy data that can be used to validate models of past climate on land come from and are related to these geographic features. Validating global climate models using these proxies requires some method of downscaling global climate model [...]
North African dust absorbs less solar radiation than estimated by models and remote-sensing retrievals
Published: 2022-10-17
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate
Desert dust accounts for a large fraction of shortwave radiation absorbed by aerosols, which adds to the climate warming produced by greenhouse gases. However, it remains uncertain exactly how much shortwave radiation dust absorbs. We leverage in-situ measurements of dust single-scattering albedo to constrain absorption at mid-visible wavelength by North African dust, which accounts for [...]
Skilful forecasts of summer rainfall in the Yangtze River Basin from November
Published: 2022-10-10
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate
Variability in the East Asian Summer Monsoon (EASM) brings the risk of heavy flooding or drought to the Yangtze River Basin, with potentially devastating impacts. Early forecasts of the likelihood of enhanced or reduced monsoon rainfall can enable better management of water and hydropower resources by decision-makers, supporting livelihoods and major economic and population centres across Eastern [...]
Deterministic icehouse and greenhouse climates throughout Earth history
Published: 2022-10-06
Subjects: Climate, Geochemistry
Some theories posit that icehouse (with polar ice sheets) and greenhouse (ice-free) states throughout Earth history are not deterministic, but bistable—both states may occur for the same level of radiative forcing. If correct, then the climate state that persists for millions of years can depend on which state already existed, giving the system a `memory’ effect. However, on these timescales the [...]