Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Climate
21st-century stagnation in sand-sea activity
Published: 2022-05-04
Subjects: Climate, Geomorphology
Sand seas are vast expanses of Earth’s surface containing large areas of aeolian dunes—topographic patterns manifest from above-threshold winds and a supply of loose sand. Predictions of the role of future climate change for sand-sea activity are sparse and contradictory. Here we examine the impact of climate on all of Earth’s presently-unvegetated sand seas, using ensemble runs of an Earth [...]
Expansion and intensification of the North American Monsoon during the Pliocene
Published: 2022-04-14
Subjects: Climate, Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
Southwestern North America, like many subtropical regions, is predicted to become drier in response to anthropogenic warming. However, during the Pliocene, when carbon dioxide was above pre-industrial levels, multiple lines of evidence suggest that southwestern North America was much wetter. While existing explanations for a wet Pliocene invoke increases in winter rain, recent modeling studies [...]
Abrupt shift to El Niño-like mean state conditions in the tropical Pacific during the Little Ice Age
Published: 2022-03-11
Subjects: Climate, Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Hydrology
The mean state of the tropical Pacific ocean-atmosphere climate, in particular its east-west asymmetry, has profound consequences for regional climates and for the El Niño/ Southern Oscillation variability. Here we present a new high-resolution paleohydrological record using the stable-hydrogen-isotopic composition of terrestrial-lipid biomarkers (δDwax) from a 1,400-year-old lake sedimentary [...]
Interannual variability of the Australian summer monsoon sustained through internal processes: wind-evaporation feedback, dynamical air-sea interaction and soil moisture memory
Published: 2022-02-25
Subjects: Climate, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
In northern Australia (NAUS), mean rainfall during the Australian summer monsoon (AUSM) season exhibits distinct interannual variability despite weak influence from tropical sea surface temperature (SST) variability. The present study investigates mechanisms for the strong and persistent rainfall anomalies throughout the AUSM season. When the AUSM is stronger than normal, the low-level monsoonal [...]
Uncertainty and sensitivity analysis for probabilistic weather and climate risk modelling: an implementation in CLIMADA v.3.1.
Published: 2022-02-23
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Climate, Design of Experiments and Sample Surveys, Earth Sciences, Environmental Studies, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Nature and Society Relations, Numerical Analysis and Computation, Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing, Risk Analysis, Statistical Methodology
Modelling the risk of natural hazards for society, ecosystems, and the economy is subject to strong uncertainties, even more so in the context of a changing climate, evolving societies, growing economies, and declining ecosystems. Here we present a new feature of the climate risk modelling platform CLIMADA which allows to carry out global uncertainty and sensitivity analysis. CLIMADA underpins [...]
2021 North American Heatwave Amplified by Climate-Change-Driven Nonlinear Interactions
Published: 2022-02-03
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Heat conditions in North America in summer 2021 exceeded prior heatwaves by margins many would have considered impossible under current climate conditions. Associated severe impacts highlight the need for understanding the heatwave’s physical drivers and relations to climate change, to improve the projection and prediction of future extreme heat risks. Here, we find that slow- and fast-moving [...]
Evaluation of changes in dry and wet precipitation extremes in warmer climates using a passive water vapor modelling approach
Published: 2022-01-22
Subjects: Climate, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
Hydroclimatic extremes, such as heavy daily rainfall and dry spells, are expected to intensify under anthropogenic warming. Often, these changes are diagnostically related to thermodynamic increases in humidity with warming. Here, we develop a framework that uses an on-line calculation of the thermodynamically induced changes of the full precipitation distribution with warming in an idealized [...]
Evidences of horizontal urban heat advection in London using 6 years of data from a citizen weather station network
Published: 2021-12-05
Subjects: Climate, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Meteorology, Physical and Environmental Geography
Recent advances in citizen weather station (CWS) networks, with data accessible via crowd-sourcing, provide relevant climatic information to urban scientists and decision makers. In particular, CWS can provide long-term measurements of urban heat and valuable information on spatio-temporal heterogeneity related to horizontal heat advection. In this study, we make the first compilation of a [...]
C3S Energy: A climate service for the provision of power supply and demand indicators for Europe based on the ERA5 reanalysis and ENTSO-E data
Published: 2021-11-17
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Statistical Models
The EU Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) has produced an operational climate service, called C3S Energy, designed to enable the energy industry and policymakers to assess the impacts of climate variability and climate change on the energy sector in Europe. The C3S Energy service covers different time horizons, for the past 40 years and the future. It provides time series of electricity [...]
Geographically-resolved social cost of anthropogenic emissions accounting for both direct and climate-mediated effects
Published: 2021-11-17
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Environmental Sciences, Physical and Environmental Geography, Sustainability
The magnitude and distribution of physical and societal impacts from long-lived greenhouse gases are insensitive to the emission source location; the same is not true for major co-emitted short-lived pollutants like aerosols. Here we combine novel global climate model simulations with established response functions to show that identical aerosols emitted from different regions (Brazil, China, [...]
Climate change, fire return intervals and the growing risk of permanent forest loss in boreal Eurasia
Published: 2021-11-16
Subjects: Climate, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Other Environmental Sciences, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science
Climate change has driven an increase in the frequency and severity of fires in Eurasian boreal forests. A growing number of field studies have linked the change in fire regime to post-fire recruitment failure and permanent forest loss. In this study we used four burnt area and two forest loss datasets to calculate the landscape-scale fire return interval (FRI) and associated risk of permanent [...]
Nonlinear time series analysis of palaeoclimate proxy records
Published: 2021-11-08
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Climate, Dynamic Systems, Earth Sciences, Geology, Longitudinal Data Analysis and Time Series, Multivariate Analysis, Non-linear Dynamics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology, Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics
Identifying and characterising dynamical regime shifts, critical transitions or potential tipping points in palaeoclimate time series is relevant for improving the understanding of often highly nonlinear Earth system dynamics. Beyond linear changes in time series properties such as mean, variance, or trend, these nonlinear regime shifts can manifest as changes in signal predictability, [...]
A 18,000 yr record of tropical land temperature, convective activity and rainfall seasonality from the maritime continent
Published: 2021-10-27
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Climate, Earth Sciences, Geology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Planetary Hydrology
The maritime continent exports an enormous amount of heat and moisture to the rest of the globe via deep atmospheric convection. How this export has changed through time during the last deglacial period and through the Holocene, is hardly known yet critical for the understanding of global climate dynamics. Here we present a continuous paleoclimate record from southern Thailand covering the last [...]
Different Pathways to an Early Eocene Climate
Published: 2021-10-27
Subjects: Climate
The early Eocene was characterised by much higher temperatures and a smaller equator-to-pole surface temperature gradient than today. Comprehensive climate models have been reasonably successful in simulating many features of that climate in the annual average. However, good simulations of the seasonal variations, and in particular the much reduced Arctic land temperature seasonality and [...]
Volcanic hazard exacerbated by future global warming–driven increase in heavy rainfall.
Published: 2021-10-15
Subjects: Climate, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Volcanology
Heavy rainfall drives a range of eruptive and noneruptive volcanic hazards; over the Holocene, the incidence of many such hazards has increased due to rapid climate change. Here we show that extreme heavy rainfall is projected to increase with continued global warming throughout the 21st century in most subaerial volcanic regions, dramatically increasing the potential for rainfall-induced [...]