Anthropogenic global warming threatens world cultural heritage

1748-9326Numerous cultural sites of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) world cultural Heritage are located in low-lying coastal regions. Because of anthropogenic global warming and induced sea level rise, many of these sites will be partially or totally flooded in the coming centuries/millennia. This is shown in a recent study by Marzeion and Levermann (2014 Environ. Res. Lett. 9 [http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/9/3/034001] 034001 ). Projecting future sea level rise and associated regional variability, these authors investigate which sites will be at risk. Because UNESCO cultural sites represent the common heritage of human beings and reflect the Earth and humanity history, they need to be protected for future generations

ESD Ideas: A 6-year oscillation in the whole Earth system?

An oscillation of about 6 years has been reported in Earth&rsquo;s fluid core motions, magnetic field, rotation, and crustal deformations. Recently, a 6-year cycle has also been detected in several climatic parameters (e.g., sea level, surface temperature, precipitation, land ice, land hydrology, and atmospheric angular momentum). Here we suggest that the 6-year oscillations detected in the Earth&rsquo;s deep interior, mantle rotation, and atmosphere are linked together, and that the core processes previously proposed as drivers of the 6-year cycle in the Earth&rsquo;s rotation, cause in addition the atmosphere to oscillate together with the mantle, inducing fluctuations in the climate system with similar periodicities.</p

Tropical Pacific spatial trend patterns in observed sea level: internal variability and/or anthropogenic signature?

In this study we focus on the sea level trend pattern observed by satellite altimetry in the tropical Pacific over the 1993–2009 time span (i.e. 17 yr). Our objective is to investigate whether this 17-yr-long trend pattern was different before the altimetry era, what was its spatio-temporal variability and what have been its main drivers. We try to discriminate the respective roles of the internal variability of the climate system and of external forcing factors, in particular anthropogenic emissions (greenhouse gases and aerosols). On the basis of a 2-D past sea level reconstruction over 1950–2009 (based on a combination of observations and ocean modelling) and multi-century control runs (i.e. with constant, preindustrial external forcing) from eight coupled climate models, we have investigated how the observed 17-yr sea level trend pattern evolved during the last decades and centuries, and try to estimate the characteristic time scales of its variability. For that purpose, we have computed sea level trend patterns over successive 17-yr windows (i.e. the length of the altimetry record), both for the 60-yr long reconstructed sea level and the model runs. We find that the 2-D sea level reconstruction shows spatial trend patterns similar to the one observed during the altimetry era. The pattern appears to have fluctuated with time with a characteristic time scale of the order of 25–30 yr. The same behaviour is found in multi-centennial control runs of the coupled climate models. A similar analysis is performed with 20th century coupled climate model runs with complete external forcing (i.e. solar plus volcanic variability and changes in anthropogenic forcing). Results suggest that in the tropical Pacific, sea level trend fluctuations are dominated by the internal variability of the ocean–atmosphere coupled system. While our analysis cannot rule out any influence of anthropogenic forcing, it concludes that the latter effect in that particular region is stillhardly detectable

Well-Posedness for Semi-Relativistic Hartree Equations of Critical Type

We prove local and global well-posedness for semi-relativistic, nonlinear Schr\"odinger equations $i \partial_t u = \sqrt{-\Delta + m^2} u + F(u)$ with initial data in $H^s(\mathbb{R}^3)$, $s \geq 1/2$. Here $F(u)$ is a critical Hartree nonlinearity that corresponds to Coulomb or Yukawa type self-interactions. For focusing $F(u)$, which arise in the quantum theory of boson stars, we derive a sufficient condition for global-in-time existence in terms of a solitary wave ground state. Our proof of well-posedness does not rely on Strichartz type estimates, and it enables us to add external potentials of a general class.Comment: 18 pages; replaced with revised version; remark and reference on blow up adde

Distributed Nested Rollout Policy for Same Game

Nested Rollout Policy Adaptation (NRPA) is a Monte Carlo search heuristic for puzzles and other optimization problems. It achieves state-of-the-art performance on several games including SameGame. In this paper, we design several parallel and distributed NRPA-based search techniques, and we provide a number of experimental insights about their execution. Finally, we use our best implementation to discover 15 better scores for 20 standard SameGame boards

Is anthropogenic sea level fingerprint already detectable in the Pacific ocean ?

Sea level rates up to three times the global mean rate are being observed in the western tropical Pacific since 1993 by satellite altimetry. From recently published studies, it is not yet clear whether the sea level spatial trend patterns of the Pacific Ocean observed by satellite altimetry are mostly due to internal climate variability or if some anthropogenic fingerprint is already detectable. A number of recent studies have shown that the removal of the signal corresponding to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO)/Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO) from the observed altimetry sea level data over 1993–2010/2012 results in some significant residual trend pattern in the western tropical Pacific. It has thus been suggested that the PDO/IPO-related internal climate variability alone cannot account for all of the observed trend patterns in the western tropical Pacific and that the residual signal could be the fingerprint of the anthropogenic forcing. In this study, we investigate if there is any other internal climate variability signal still present in the residual trend pattern after the removal of IPO contribution from the altimetry-based sea level over 1993–2013. We show that subtraction of the IPO contribution to sea level trends through the method of linear regression does not totally remove the internal variability, leaving significant signal related to the non-linear response of sea level to El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO). In addition, by making use of 21 CMIP5 coupled climate models, we study the contribution of external forcing to the Pacific Ocean regional sea level variability over 1993–2013, and show that according to climate models, externally forced and thereby the anthropogenic sea level fingerprint on regional sea level trends in the tropical Pacific is still too small to be observable by satellite altimetry

On the density-potential mapping in time-dependent density functional theory

The key questions of uniqueness and existence in time-dependent density functional theory are usually formulated only for potentials and densities that are analytic in time. Simple examples, standard in quantum mechanics, lead however to non-analyticities. We reformulate these questions in terms of a non-linear Schr\"odinger equation with a potential that depends non-locally on the wavefunction.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figure

A Nonlinear Adiabatic Theorem for Coherent States

We consider the propagation of wave packets for a one-dimensional nonlinear Schrodinger equation with a matrix-valued potential, in the semi-classical limit. For an initial coherent state polarized along some eigenvector, we prove that the nonlinear evolution preserves the separation of modes, in a scaling such that nonlinear effects are critical (the envelope equation is nonlinear). The proof relies on a fine geometric analysis of the role of spectral projectors, which is compatible with the treatment of nonlinearities. We also prove a nonlinear superposition principle for these adiabatic wave packets.Comment: 21 pages, no figur