The European security treaty: ‘The Moor has done his duty, let him go’?

The idea of a legally binding European Security Treaty (EST), voiced by Dmitry MedvedevEuropa in June 2008 in Berlin during his first European visit as the President of Russia, stirred up a keen interest. He left the West wondering whether he was signalising a change of Putin’s foreign policy course. Naturally, there was certain continuity as the new Russian President also emphasised Moscow’s well known security concerns and complaints about the West: for example, when he stood for the indivisibility of European security as opposed to a bloc approach. Nevertheless, Medvedev has visibly shifted the accents, showing Moscow’s desire and readiness to scale down the degree of contention between Russia and the West, and to look for a cooperative perspective. Moreover, the Kremlin – maybe for the first time over the last years – has outlined a proactive approach and proposed a positive agenda to the West, instead of the previous futile, sharp criticism and of keeping itself in strong opposition to any initiatives

"On the estimation of a large sparse Bayesian system: the Snaer program"

The Snaer program calculates the posterior mean and variance of variables on some of which we have data (with precisions), on some we have prior information (with precisions), and on some prior indicator ratios (with precisions) are available. The variables must satisfy anumber of exact restrictions. The system is both large and sparse. Two aspects of the sta-tistical and computational development are a practical procedure to solve a linear integer system, and a stable linearization routine for ratios. We test our numerical method to solve large sparse linear least-squares estimation problems, and find that it performs well, even when the n ~k design matrix is large(nk equivalent 2^27.5).

Some equivalences in linear estimation (in Russian)

Under normality, the Bayesian estimation problem, the best linear unbiased estimation problem, and the restricted least-squares problem are all equivalent. As a result we need not compute pseudo-inverses and other complicated functions, which will be impossible for large sparse systems. Instead, by reorganizing the inputs, we can rewrite the system as a new but equivalent system which can be solved by ordinary least-squares methods.Linear Bayes estimation, best linear unbiased, least squares, sparse problems, large-scale optimization

OPTIMIZATION OF THE ALGORITHM FOR DETERMINING THE HAUSDORFF DISTANCE FOR CONVEX POLYGONS

The paper provides a brief historical analysis of problems that use the Hausdorff distance; provides an analysis of the existing Hausdorff distance optimization elements for convex polygons; and demonstrates an optimization approach. The existing algorithm served as the basis to propose low-level optimization with super-operative memory, ensuring the finding a precise solution by a full search of the corresponding pairs of vertices and sides of polygons with exclusion of certain pairs of vertices and sides of polygons. This approach allows a significant acceleration of the process of solving the set problem

An extreme event of enhanced Arctic Ocean export west of Greenland caused by the pronounced dynamic sea level drop in the North Atlantic subpolar gyre in the mid-to-late 2010s

The North Atlantic subpolar gyre influences the climate in many different ways. Here, we identified that it is also responsible for a recent extreme event of Arctic Ocean freshwater export west of Greenland. A shift in climate regimes occurred in the mid-2000s, with a significant negative trend in the dynamic sea level in the subpolar gyre since then. We found that the dynamic sea level drop induced a strong increase in freshwater export west of Greenland, in particular from 2015 to 2017, when the sea level was close to the minimum. Sea ice melting and atmospheric variability in the Arctic had only a small contribution to this event. As the exported water from the Arctic Ocean has low salinity and constituents of chemical tracers very different from those in the North Atlantic, such events might have impacts on the North Atlantic ecosystem and the climate as well. Our study suggests that such events might be predictable if the subpolar gyre sea level has certain predictability

Simple algorithms to compute meridional overturning and barotropic streamfunctions on unstructured meshes

Abstract. Computation of barotropic and meridional overturning streamfunctions for models formulated on unstructured meshes is commonly preceded by interpolation to a regular mesh. This operation destroys the original conservation, which can be then artificially imposed to make the computation possible. An elementary method is proposed that avoids interpolation and preserves conservation in a strict model sense. The method is described as applied to the discretization of the Finite volumE Sea ice – Ocean Model (FESOM2) on triangular meshes. It, however, is generalizable to colocated vertex-based discretization on triangular meshes and to both triangular and hexagonal C-grid discretizations. </jats:p

Designing variable ocean model resolution based on the observed ocean variability

If unstructured meshes are refined to locally represent eddy dynamics in ocean circulation models, a practical question arises on how to vary the resolution and where to deploy the refinement. We propose to use the observed sea surface height variability as the refinement criterion. We explore the utility of this method (i) in a suite of idealized experiments simulating a wind-driven double gyre flow in a stratified circular basin and (ii) in simulations of global ocean circulation performed with FESOM. Two practical approaches of mesh refinement are compared. In the first approach the uniform refinement is confined within the areas where the observed variability exceeds a given threshold. In the second one the refinement varies linearly following the observed variability. The resolution is fixed in time. For the double gyre case it is shown that the variability obtained in a high-resolution reference run can be well captured on variable-resolution meshes if they are refined where the variability is high and additionally upstream the jet separation point. The second approach of mesh refinement proves to be more beneficial in terms of improvement downstream the midlatitude jet. Similarly, in global ocean simulations the mesh refinement based on the observed variability helps the model to simulate high variability at correct locations. The refinement also leads to a reduced bias in the upper-ocean temperatur

Multi-resolution climate modelling with the AWI Climate Model (AWI-CM)

The recently established AWI Climate Model (AWI-CM), a coupled configuration of the Finite Element Sea Ice-Ocean Model (FESOM) with the atmospheric model ECHAM6, uses a novel multi-resolution approach: Its ocean component builds on a finite element dynamical core supporting unstructured triangular surface grids, allowing to distribute the grid points in a flexible manner. This allows to concentrate resolution in dynamically important regions, with a continuous transition zone to the coarser resolution in other areas. The model is an ideal tool to study the influence of explicit resolution of smaller scales in dedicated experiments. The unique – spatially seamless – approach might also be of benefit when it comes to temporally seamless prediction, bridging the gap between numerical weather prediction and climate models. A first benchmark set-up of AWI-CM with moderate resolution in the atmosphere (T63) and 25km in key ocean areas, e.g. around the equator, achieved a similar overall simulation performance in a long control simulation compared to well-established CMIP5 models. In particular, the (isotropically) increased equatorial resolution considerably increased the realism of TIW activity and ENSO-related variability compared to standard resolutions. The potential of AWI-CM is further exploited within the EU project PRIMAVERA in the HighResMIP of CMIP6, where we plan to contribute simulations with eddy-resolving resolutions (1/12° or 9-10 km) in key areas of the global ocean, such as the Gulf Stream-North Atlantic Current region, the Agulhas retroflection zone, or the Arctic basin. First simulations show distinct improvements with respect to the development of deep temperature and salinity biases in the North Atlantic Ocean and an overall improvement of surface biases. At even higher resolutions of 4.5 km locally in the Arctic, linear kinematic features emerge in the simulated sea ice distribution with potentially strong impacts on air-sea fluxes in the coupled system. Although the tested set-ups are computationally very demanding (with numbers of grid points comparable to a regular 0.25° grid), the throughput is high at about 8 simulated years per day because of high scalability. In addition, we are about to finish the development of a finite volume version of the ocean model code (FESOM 2). It is already faster than the original FESOM version by a factor of two to three, which will further enlarge the set of computationally feasible applications

Delayed Antarctic sea-ice decline in high-resolution climate change simulations

Despite global warming and Arctic sea-ice loss, on average the Antarctic sea-ice extent has not declined since 1979 when satellite data became available. In contrast, climate model simulations tend to exhibit strong negative sea-ice trends for the same period. This Antarctic sea-ice paradox leads to low confidence in 21st-century sea-ice projections. Here we present multi-resolution climate change projections that account for Southern Ocean mesoscale eddies. The high-resolution configuration simulates stable September Antarctic sea-ice extent that is not projected to decline until the mid-21st century. We argue that one reason for this finding is a more realistic ocean circulation that increases the equatorward heat transport response to global warming. As a result, the ocean becomes more efficient at moderating the anthropogenic warming around Antarctica and hence at delaying sea-ice decline. Our study suggests that explicitly simulating Southern Ocean eddies is necessary for providing Antarctic sea-ice projections with higher confidence