Microsatellite analysis of traditional eastern grapevine varieties and wild accessions from Geisenheim collection in Germany

The Geisenheim collection contains a number of old traditional grapevines obtained during the last century from many countries including wild grapevine accessions. Over 60 samples originating from Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Dagestan, Egypt, Greece, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Moldova, Romania, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine and Uzbekistan were probed for analysis. Additionally 25 accessions of wild grapevines some acquired in Germany were included to the tested panel. Accessions were analysed on 9 microsatellite loci (VVS2, VVMD5, VVMD7, VVMD25, VVMD27, VVMD28, VVMD32, VrZAG62 and VrZAG79) for standard grapevine identification done in 4 multiplex PCRs. We obtained 13.56 overall average alleles per locus (12.44 in cultivated and 7.56 in wild grapevines). Expected and observed heterozygosity in cultivated grapevines were 0.826 and 0.644, while among wild accessions it was 0.693 and 0.464 respectively. The most informative locus proved to be VVMD28 in Vitis vinifera L. ssp. sativa and VVMD7 within V. vinifera L. ssp. sylvestris GMELIN. Microsatellite profiling will enable proper identification of cultivars by obtaining groups of synonyms and homonyms through comparative analysis as well assessment future estimation of relatedness between cultivated and wild accessions

Global warming: is weight loss a solution?

The current climate change has been most likely caused by the increased greenhouse gas emissions. We have looked at the major greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide (CO2), and estimated the reduction in the CO2 emissions that would occur with the theoretical global weight loss. The calculations were based on our previous weight loss study, investigating the effects of a low-carbohydrate diet on body weight, body composition and resting metabolic rate of obese volunteers with type 2 diabetes. At 6 months we observed decreases in weight, fat mass, fat free mass and CO2 production. We estimated that a 10 kg weight loss of all obese and overweight people would result in a decrease of 49.560 Mt of CO2 per year, which would equal to 0.2 % of the CO2 emitted globally in 2007. This reduction could help meet the CO2 emission reduction targets and unquestionably would be of a great benefit to the global health

Ocean chlorofluorocarbon and heat uptake during the twentieth century in the CCSM3

Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society 2006. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Climate 19 (2006): 2366–2381, doi:10.1175/JCLI3758.1.An ensemble of nine simulations for the climate of the twentieth century has been run using the Community Climate System Model version 3 (CCSM3). Three of these runs also simulate the uptake of chlorofluorocarbon-11 (CFC-11) into the ocean using the protocol from the Ocean Carbon Model Intercomparison Project (OCMIP). Comparison with ocean observations taken between 1980 and 2000 shows that the global CFC-11 uptake is simulated very well. However, there are regional biases, and these are used to identify where too much deep-water formation is occurring in the CCSM3. The differences between the three runs simulating CFC-11 uptake are also briefly documented. The variability in ocean heat content in the 1870 control runs is shown to be only a little smaller than estimates using ocean observations. The ocean heat uptake between 1957 and 1996 in the ensemble is compared to the recent observational estimates of the secular trend. The trend in ocean heat uptake is considerably larger than the natural variability in the 1870 control runs. The heat uptake down to 300 m between 1957 and 1996 varies by a factor of 2 across the ensemble. Some possible reasons for this large spread are discussed. There is much less spread in the heat uptake down to 3 km. On average, the CCSM3 twentieth-century ensemble runs take up 25% more heat than the recent estimate from ocean observations. Possible explanations for this are that the model heat uptake is calculated over the whole ocean, and not just in the regions where there are many observations and that there is no parameterization of the indirect effects of aerosols in CCSM3.Support provided by the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, and the Earth Simulator Center of the Japan Agency for Marine- Earth Science and Technology

Sensitivity of simulated regional Arctic climate to the choice of coupled model domain

The climate over the Arctic has undergone changes in recent decades. In order to evaluate the coupled response of the Arctic system to external and internal forcing, our study focuses on the estimation of regional climate variability and its dependence on large-scale atmospheric and regional ocean circulations. A global ocean–sea ice model with regionally high horizontal resolution is coupled to an atmospheric regional model and global terrestrial hydrology model. This way of coupling divides the global ocean model setup into two different domains: one coupled, where the ocean and the atmosphere are interacting, and one uncoupled, where the ocean model is driven by prescribed atmospheric forcing and runs in a so-called stand-alone mode. Therefore, selecting a specific area for the regional atmosphere implies that the ocean–atmosphere system can develop ‘freely’ in that area, whereas for the rest of the global ocean, the circulation is driven by prescribed atmospheric forcing without any feedbacks. Five different coupled setups are chosen for ensemble simulations. The choice of the coupled domains was done to estimate the influences of the Subtropical Atlantic, Eurasian and North Pacific regions on northern North Atlantic and Arctic climate. Our simulations show that the regional coupled ocean–atmosphere model is sensitive to the choice of the modelled area. The different model configurations reproduce differently both the mean climate and its variability. Only two out of five model setups were able to reproduce the Arctic climate as observed under recent climate conditions (ERA-40 Reanalysis). Evidence is found that the main source of uncertainty for Arctic climate variability and its predictability is the North Pacific. The prescription of North Pacific conditions in the regional model leads to significant correlation with observations, even if the whole North Atlantic is within the coupled model domain. However, the inclusion of the North Pacific area into the coupled system drastically changes the Arctic climate variability to a point where the Arctic Oscillation becomes an ‘internal mode’ of variability and correlations of year-to-year variability with observational data vanish. In line with previous studies, our simulations provide evidence that Arctic sea ice export is mainly due to ‘internal variability’ within the Arctic region. We conclude that the choice of model domains should be based on physical knowledge of the atmospheric and oceanic processes and not on ‘geographic’ reasons. This is particularly the case for areas like the Arctic, which has very complex feedbacks between components of the regional climate system

Seasonal-to-decadal predictions with the ensemble Kalman filter and the Norwegian Earth System Model: a twin experiment

Here, we firstly demonstrate the potential of an advanced flow dependent data assimilation method for performing seasonal-to-decadal prediction and secondly, reassess the use of sea surface temperature (SST) for initialisation of these forecasts. We use the Norwegian Climate Prediction Model (NorCPM), which is based on the Norwegian Earth System Model (NorESM) and uses the deterministic ensemble Kalman filter to assimilate observations. NorESM is a fully coupled system based on the Community Earth System Model version 1, which includes an ocean, an atmosphere, a sea ice and a land model. A numerically efficient coarse resolution version of NorESM is used. We employ a twin experiment methodology to provide an upper estimate of predictability in our model framework (i.e. without considering model bias) of NorCPM that assimilates synthetic monthly SST data (EnKF-SST). The accuracy of EnKF-SST is compared to an unconstrained ensemble run (FREE) and ensemble predictions made with near perfect (i.e. microscopic SST perturbation) initial conditions (PERFECT). We perform 10 cycles, each consisting of a 10-yr assimilation phase, followed by a 10-yr prediction. The results indicate that EnKF-SST improves sea level, ice concentration, 2 m atmospheric temperature, precipitation and 3-D hydrography compared to FREE. Improvements for the hydrography are largest near the surface and are retained for longer periods at depth. Benefits in salinity are retained for longer periods compared to temperature. Near-surface improvements are largest in the tropics, while improvements at intermediate depths are found in regions of large-scale currents, regions of deep convection, and at the Mediterranean Sea outflow. However, the benefits are often small compared to PERFECT, in particular, at depth suggesting that more observations should be assimilated in addition to SST. The EnKF-SST system is also tested for standard ocean circulation indices and demonstrates decadal predictability for Atlantic overturning and sub-polar gyre circulations, and heat content in the Nordic Seas. The system beats persistence forecast and shows skill for heat content in the Nordic Seas that is close to PERFECT

Patterns and mechanisms of early Pliocene warmth

About five to four million years ago, in the early Pliocene epoch, Earth had a warm, temperate climate. The gradual cooling that followed led to the establishment of modern temperature patterns, possibly in response to a decrease in atmospheric CO2 concentration, of the order of 100 parts per million, towards preindustrial values. Here we synthesize the available geochemical proxy records of sea surface temperature and show that, compared with that of today, the early Pliocene climate had substantially lower meridional and zonal temperature gradients but similar maximum ocean temperatures. Using an Earth system model, we show that none of the mechanisms currently proposed to explain Pliocene warmth can simultaneously reproduce all three crucial features. We suggest that a combination of several dynamical feedbacks underestimated in the models at present, such as those related to ocean mixing and cloud albedo, may have been responsible for these climate conditions