news sciences: New research, May 14-20, 2018

A selection of new climate related research articles is shown below.

Climate change impacts

Mankind

Assessing the Impacts of Extreme Agricultural Droughts in China Under Climate and Socioeconomic Changes (open access)

"Our simulations project a rise of 2.5~3.3% in average rice, maize, and wheat productivity before 2050 but decrease thereafter if climate warming continues."

Climate change adaptation strategies and food productivity in Nepal: a counterfactual analysis

"Based on a survey of 720 farming households in Nepal, our results show that adoption of adaptation strategies has significantly increased food productivity. Among the adaptation strategies, soil and water management are shown to have the largest impact on food productivity followed by adjustments to the timing of farm operations and crop and varietal adjustment."

Strengthening climate change adaptation capacity in Africa- case studies from six major African cities and policy implications

Adaptation to climate change at local level in Europe: An overview

The changing sensitivity of power systems to meteorological drivers: a case study of Great Britain (open access)

Interpreting nonlinear semi-elasticities in reduced-form climate damage estimation

The economic impacts of ocean acidification on shellfish fisheries and aquaculture in the United Kingdom

Human damage assessments of coastal flooding for Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta due to climate change-related sea level rise in the twenty-first century

Global exposure and vulnerability to multi-sector development and climate change hotspots (open access)

Evaluating climate change adaptation efforts on the US 50 states’ hazard mitigation plans

Coastal hazard risk assessment for small islands: assessing the impact of climate change and disaster reduction measures on Ebeye (Marshall Islands)

Differences between low-end and high-end climate change impacts in Europe across multiple sectors (open access)

"For example, for the 2080s, mitigation consistent with the Paris Agreement would reduce aggregate Europe-wide impacts on the area of intensive agriculture by 21% (on average across climate models), on the area of managed forests by 34%, on water stress by 14%, on people flooded by 10% and on biodiversity vulnerability by 16%."

The effect of meteorological conditions and air pollution on the occurrence of type A and B acute aortic dissections

Biosphere

Phytoplankton Do Not Produce Carbon‐Rich Organic Matter in High CO₂ Oceans

How training citizen scientists affects the accuracy and precision of phenological data

21st century tundra shrubification could enhance net carbon uptake of North America Arctic tundra under an RCP8.5 climate trajectory (open access)

Plant cuticle under global change: Biophysical implications

Ecological genomics predicts climate vulnerability in an endangered southwestern songbird

Explaining European fungal fruiting phenology with climate variability

Roles of climate niche conservatism and range dynamics in woody plant diversity patterns through the Cenozoic

Coupled climate–forest growth shifts in the Chilean Patagonia are decoupled from trends in water–use efficiency

As temperature increases, predator attack rate is more important to survival than a smaller window of prey vulnerability

Catalytic power of enzymes decreases with temperature: New insights for understanding soil C cycling and microbial ecology under warming

Heat waves and their significance for a temperate benthic community: A near‐natural experimental approach

Spring phenology at different altitudes is becoming more uniform under global warming in Europe

Metapopulation dynamics in a changing climate: Increasing spatial synchrony in weather conditions drives metapopulation synchrony of a butterfly inhabiting a fragmented landscape (open access)

Global importance of large‐diameter trees

Other impacts

Climate Change Projected to Exacerbate Impacts of Coastal Eutrophication in the Northern Gulf of Mexico

Climate change mitigation

Energy production

Clean vehicles as an enabler for a clean electricity grid (open access)

Changes in European wind energy generation potential within a 1.5 °C warmer world (open access)

Climate, air quality and human health benefits of various solar photovoltaic deployment scenarios in China in 2030 (open access)

Climate Policy

Research on carbon market price mechanism and influencing factors: a literature review

Regional Climate Change Policy Under Positive Feedbacks and Strategic Interactions

Climate change

Temperature, precipitation, wind

Identification and analysis of recent temporal temperature trends for Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India

Preceding winter La Niña reduces Indian summer monsoon rainfall (open access)

Potential impact of 1.5 °C and 2 °C global warming on consecutive dry and wet days over West Africa (open access)

Global Character of Latent Heat Release in Oceanic Warm Rain Systems

Reduced Urban Heat Island intensity under warmer conditions (open access)

Extreme events

Risks from climate extremes change differently from 1.5°C to 2.0°C depending on rarity (open access)

A comprehensive flash flood defense system in China: overview, achievements, and outlook

Future heat waves and surface ozone (open access)

Can Regional Climate Modeling Capture the Observed Changes in Spatial Organization of Extreme Storms at Higher Temperatures?

Cloud Feedback Key to Marine Heatwave off Baja California

Forcings and feedbacks

Observations of Local Positive Low Cloud Feedback Patterns and Their Role in Internal Variability and Climate Sensitivity (open access)

"Objective analysis of two long‐term satellite cloud fraction data sets together with observed sea surface temperature (SST) during the same periods suggest strong patterned SST‐low cloud fraction feedback. Internal modes of variability, the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, emerge from this analysis, and associated with these SST variability modes are corresponding low cloud fraction patterns that suggest a strong and positive local low cloud feedback to the SST anomalies. Such SST‐LCC feedback is important for both internal variability and future climate change. We find that such feedback is too weak in current models, which implies stronger than expected future latent warming and possibly higher climate sensitivity."

Decadal evolution of the surface energy budget during the fast warming and global warming hiatus periods in the ERA-interim (open access)

The Combined Influence of Observed Southern Ocean Clouds and Sea Ice on Top‐of‐Atmosphere Albedo

Feedback mechanisms of shallow convective clouds in a warmer climate as demonstrated by changes in buoyancy (open access)

Global distribution of aerosol optical depth in 2015 using CALIPSO level 3 data

Improved Global Net Surface Heat Flux

Attribution of Local Temperature Response to Deforestation

Cryosphere

Impacts of extratropical storm tracks on Arctic sea ice export through Fram Strait

Links between the Amundsen Sea Low and sea ice in the Ross Sea: seasonal and interannual relationships

Intense Winter Surface Melt on an Antarctic Ice Shelf (open access)

"The station recorded temperatures well above the melting point even in winter. The occurrence of winter melt is confirmed by satellite images and by thermometers buried in the snow, which measured a warming of the snow even at 3 m depth. Between 2014 and 2017, about 23% of all melt in Cabinet Inlet occurred in winter. Winter melt is due to warm winds that descend from the mountains, known as föhn. We have not seen the amount of winter melt increasing since 2000. However, we expect winter melt to happen more frequently if greenhouse gas continues to accumulate in the atmosphere."

Topographic Steering of Enhanced Ice Flow at the Bottleneck Between East and West Antarctica (open access)

The Inferred Formation of a Subice Platelet Layer Below the Multiyear Landfast Sea Ice in the Wandel Sea (NE Greenland) Induced by Meltwater Drainage

Statistical Forecasting of Current and Future Circum‐Arctic Ground Temperatures and Active Layer Thickness

Bedrock Erosion Surfaces Record Former East Antarctic Ice Sheet Extent (open access)

Hydrosphere

Future hydroclimatological changes in South America based on an ensemble of regional climate models

Atmospheric and oceanic circulation

Underestimated AMOC Variability and Implications for AMV and Predictability in CMIP Models

Coherent Circulation Changes in the Deep North Atlantic from 16°N and 26°N Transport Arrays (open access)

The El Niño-Southern Oscillation and associated climatic conditions around the world during the latter half of the 21^st century

Ocean circulation drifts in multi-millennial climate simulations: the role of salinity corrections and climate feedbacks (open access)

The Sensitivity of Future Ocean Oxygen to Changes in Ocean Circulation

Carbon cycle

Climate Sensitivity Controls Uncertainty in Future Terrestrial Carbon Sink

The Ephemeral Signature of Permafrost Carbon in an Arctic Fluvial Network

Dominant regions and drivers of the variability of the global land carbon sink across timescales

Plant Regrowth as a Driver of Recent Enhancement of Terrestrial CO₂ Uptake

"Here using multiple terrestrial biosphere models, we demonstrate that despite a large contribution from CO₂ fertilization, the enhanced CO₂ uptake in the 2000s cannot be fully explained without an increasing uptake by land use change, in particular, plant regrowth. The regrowth effect is most pronounced in North America, Europe, and temperate Eurasia, and they account for 94% of the global total CO₂ uptake enhancement by plant regrowth. The strengthening trends in both CO₂ fertilization and plant regrowth suggest that the deceleration of the atmospheric CO₂ increase continues in the future."

Characterizing biospheric carbon balance using CO₂ observations from the OCO-2 satellite (open access)

Other papers

Palaeoclimatology

Where is the 1-million-year-old ice at Dome A? (open access)

Random and externally controlled occurrences of Dansgaard–Oeschger events (open access)

from Skeptical Science https://ift.tt/2sdnHJp