Changes in mean flow and atmospheric wave activity in the North Atlantic sector

In recent years, the midlatitudes are characterized by more intense heatwaves in summer and sometimes severe cold spells in winter that might emanate from changes in atmospheric circulation, including synoptic‐scale and planetary wave activity in the midlatitudes. In this study, we investigate the heat and momentum exchange between the mean flow and atmospheric waves in the North Atlantic sector and adjacent continents by means of the physically consistent Eliassen–Palm flux diagnostics applied to reanalysis and forced climate model data. In the long‐term mean, momentum is transferred from the mean flow to atmospheric waves in the northwest Atlantic region, where cyclogenesis prevails. Further downstream over Europe, eddy fluxes return momentum to the mean flow, sustaining the jet stream against friction. A global climate model is able to reproduce this pattern with high accuracy. Atmospheric variability related to atmospheric wave activity is much more expressed at the intraseasonal rather than the interannual time‐scale. Over the last 40 years, reanalyses reveal a northward shift of the jet stream and a weakening of intraseasonal weather variability related to synoptic‐scale and planetary wave activity. This pertains to the winter and summer seasons, especially over central Europe, and correlates with changes in the North Atlantic Oscillation as well as regional temperature and precipitation. A very similar phenomenon is found in a climate model simulation with business‐as‐usual scenario, suggesting an anthropogenic trigger in the weakening of intraseasonal weather variability in the midlatitudes

Evaluation and effects of the simulation quality of leading climate modes in a multi-model ensemble

Der rezente und zukünftige Anstieg der atmosphärischen Treibhausgaskonzentration bedeutet für das terrestrische Klimasystem einen grundlegenden Wandel, der für die globale Gesellschaft schwer zu bewältigende Aufgaben und Herausforderungen bereit hält. Eine effektive, rühzeitige Anpassung an diesen Klimawandel profitiert dabei enorm von möglichst genauen Abschätzungen künftiger Klimaänderungen. Das geeignete Werkzeug hierfür sind Gekoppelte Atmosphäre Ozean Modelle (AOGCMs). Für solche Fragestellungen müssen allerdings weitreichende Annahmen über die zukünftigen klimarelevanten Randbedingungen getroffen werden. Individuelle Fehler dieser Klimamodelle, die aus der nicht perfekten Abbildung der realen Verhältnisse und Prozesse resultieren, erhöhen die Unsicherheit langfristiger Klimaprojektionen. So unterscheiden sich die Aussagen verschiedener AOGCMs im Hinblick auf den zukünftigen Klimawandel insbesondere bei regionaler Betrachtung, deutlich. Als Absicherung gegen Modellfehler werden üblicherweise die Ergebnisse mehrerer AOGCMs, eines Ensembles an Modellen, kombiniert. Um die Abschätzung des Klimawandels zu präzisieren, wird in der vorliegenden Arbeit der Versuch unternommen, eine Bewertung der Modellperformance der 24 AOGCMs, die an der dritten Phase des Vergleichsprojekts für gekoppelte Modelle (CMIP3) teilgenommen haben, zu erstellen. Auf dieser Basis wird dann eine nummerische Gewichtung für die Kombination des Ensembles erstellt. Zunächst werden die von den AOGCMs simulierten Klimatologien für einige grundlegende Klimaelemente mit den betreffenden klimatologien verschiedener Beobachtungsdatensätze quantitativ abgeglichen. Ein wichtiger methodischer Aspekt hierbei ist, dass auch die Unsicherheit der Beobachtungen, konkret Unterschiede zwischen verschiedenen Datensätzen, berücksichtigt werden. So zeigt sich, dass die Aussagen, die aus solchen Ansätzen resultieren, von zu vielen Unsicherheiten in den Referenzdaten beeinträchtigt werden, um generelle Aussagen zur Qualität von AOGCMs zu treffen. Die Nutzung der Köppen-Geiger Klassifikation offenbart jedoch, dass die prinzipielle Verteilung der bekannten Klimatypen im kompletten CMIP3 in vergleichbar guter Qualität reproduziert wird. Als Bewertungskriterium wird daher hier die Fähigkeit der AOGCMs die großskalige natürliche Klimavariabilität, konkret die hochkomplexe gekoppelte El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), realistisch abzubilden herangezogen. Es kann anhand verschiedener Aspekte des ENSO-Phänomens gezeigt werden, dass nicht alle AOGCMs hierzu mit gleicher Realitätsnähe in der Lage sind. Dies steht im Gegensatz zu den dominierenden Klimamoden der Außertropen, die modellübergreifend überzeugend repräsentiert werden. Die wichtigsten Moden werden, in globaler Betrachtung, in verschiedenen Beobachtungsdaten über einen neuen Ansatz identifiziert. So können für einige bekannte Zirkulationsmuster neue Indexdefinitionen gewonnen werden, die sich sowohl als äquivalent zu den Standardverfahren erweisen und im Vergleich zu diesen zudem eine deutliche Reduzierung des Rechenaufwandes bedeuten. Andere bekannte Moden werden dagegen als weniger bedeutsame, regionale Zirkulationsmuster eingestuft. Die hier vorgestellte Methode zur Beurteilung der Simulation von ENSO ist in guter Übereinstimmung mit anderen Ansätzen, ebenso die daraus folgende Bewertung der gesamten Performance der AOGCMs. Das Spektrum des Southern Oscillation-Index (SOI) stellt somit eine aussagekräftige Kenngröße der Modellqualität dar. Die Unterschiede in der Fähigkeit, das ENSO-System abzubilden, erweisen sich als signifikante Unsicherheitsquelle im Hinblick auf die zukünftige Entwicklung einiger fundamentaler und bedeutsamer Klimagrößen, konkret der globalen Mitteltemperatur, des SOIs selbst, sowie des indischen Monsuns. Ebenso zeigen sich signifikante Unterschiede für regionale Klimaänderungen zwischen zwei Teilensembles des CMIP3, die auf Grundlage der entwickelten Bewertungsfunktion eingeteilt werden. Jedoch sind diese Effekte im Allgemeinen nicht mit den Auswirkungen der anthropogenen Klimaänderungssignale im Multi-Modell Ensemble vergleichbar, die für die meisten Klimagrößen in einem robusten multivariaten Ansatz detektiert und quantifiziert werden können. Entsprechend sind die effektiven Klimaänderungen, die sich bei der Kombination aller Simulationen als grundlegende Aussage des CMIP3 unter den speziellen Randbedingungen ergeben nahezu unabhängig davon, ob alle Läufe mit dem gleichen Einfluss berücksichtigt werden, oder ob die erstellte nummerische Gewichtung verwendet wird. Als eine wesentliche Begründung hierfür kann die Spannbreite der Entwicklung des ENSO-Systems identifiziert werden. Dies bedeutet größere Schwankungen in den Ergebnissen der Modelle mit funktionierendem ENSO, was den Stellenwert der natürlichen Variabilität als Unsicherheitsquelle in Fragen des Klimawandels unterstreicht. Sowohl bei Betrachtung der Teilensembles als auch der Gewichtung wirken sich dadurch gegenläufige Trends im SOI ausgleichend auf die Entwicklung anderer Klimagrößen aus, was insbesondere bei letzterem Vorgehen signifikante mittlere Effekte des Ansatzes, verglichen mit der Verwendung des üblichen arithmetischen Multi-Modell Mittelwert, verhindert.The recent and future increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases will cause fundamental change in the terrestrial climate system, which will lead to enormous tasks and challenges for the global society. Effective and early adaptation to this climate change will benefit hugley from optimal possible estimates of future climate change. Coupled atmosphere-ocean models (AOGCMs) are the appropriate tool for this. However, to tackle these questions, it is necessary to make far reaching assumptions about the future climate-relevant boundary conditions. Furthermore there are individual errors in each climate model. These originate from flaws in reproducing the real climate system and result in a further increase of uncertainty with regards to long-range climate projections. Hence, concering future climate change, there are pronounced differences between the results of different AOGCMs, especially under a regional point of view. It is the usual approach to use a number of AOGCMs and combine their results as a safety measure against the influence of such model errors. In this thesis, an attempt is made to develop a valuation scheme and based on that a weighting scheme, for AOGCMs in order to narrow the range of climate change projections. The 24 models that were included in the third phase of the coupled model intercomparsion project (CMIP3) are used for this purpose. First some fundamental climatologies simulated by the AOGCMs are quantitatively compared to a number of observational data. An important methodological aspect of this approach is to explicitly address the uncertainty associated with the observational data. It is revealed that statements concerning the quality of climate models based on such hindcastig approaches might be flawed due to uncertainties about observational data. However, the application of the Köppen-Geiger classification reveales that all considered AOGCMs are capable of reproducing the fundamental distribution of observed types of climate. Thus, to evaluate the models, their ability to reproduce large-scale climate variability is chosen as the criterion. The focus is on one highly complex feature, the coupled El Niño-Southern Oscillation. Addressing several aspects of this climate mode, it is demonstrated that there are AOGCMs that are less successful in doing so than others. In contrast, all models reproduce the most dominant extratropical climate modes in a satisfying manner. The decision which modes are the most important is made using a distinct approach considering several global sets of observational data. This way, it is possible to add new definitions for the time series of some well-known climate patterns, which proof to be equivalent to the standard definitions. Along with this, other popular modes are identified as less important regional patterns. The presented approach to assess the simulation of ENSO is in good agreement with other approaches, as well as the resulting rating of the overall model performance. The spectrum of the timeseries of the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) can thus be regarded as a sound parameter of the quality of AOGCMs. Differences in the ability to simulate a realistic ENSO-system prove to be a significant source of uncertainty with respect to the future development of some fundamental and important climate parameters, namely the global near-surface air mean temperature, the SOI itself and the Indian monsoon. In addition, there are significant differences in the patterns of regional climate change as simulated by two ensembles, which are constituted according to the evaluation function previously developed. However, these effects are overall not comparable to the multi-model ensembles’ anthropogenic induced climate change signals which can be detected and quantified using a robust multi-variate approach. If all individual simulations following a specific emission scenario are combined, the resulting climate change signals can be thought of as the fundamental message of CMIP3. It appears to be quite a stable one, more or less unaffected by the use of the derived weighting scheme instead of the common approach to use equal weights for all simulations. It is reasoned that this originates mainly from the range of trends in the SOI. Apparently, the group of models that seems to have a realistic ENSO-system also shows greater variations in terms of effective climate change. This underlines the importance of natural climate variability as a major source of uncertainty concerning climate change. For the SOI there are negative Trends in the multi-model ensemble as well as positive ones. Overall, these trends tend to stabilize the development of other climate parameters when various AOGCMs are combined, whether the two distinguished parts of CMIP3 are analyzed or the weighting scheme is applied. Especially in case of the latter method, this prevents significant effects on the mean change compared to the arithmetic multi-model mean

Comparing the Lasso Predictor-Selection and Regression Method with Classical Approaches of Precipitation Bias Adjustment in Decadal Climate Predictions

In this study, we investigate the technical application of the regularized regression method Lasso for identifying systematic biases in decadal precipitation predictions from a high-resolution regional climate model (CCLM) for Europe. The Lasso approach is quite novel in climatological research. We apply Lasso to observed precipitation and a large number of predictors related to precipitation derived from a training simulation, and transfer the trained Lasso regression model to a virtual forecast simulation for testing. Derived predictors from the model include local predictors at a given grid box and EOF predictors that describe large-scale patterns of variability for the same simulated variables. A major added value of the Lasso function is the variation of the so-called shrinkage factor and its ability in eliminating irrelevant predictors and avoiding overfitting. Among 18 different settings, an optimal shrinkage factor is identified that indicates a robust relationship between predictand and predictors. It turned out that large-scale patterns as represented by the EOF predictors outperform local predictors. The bias adjustment using the Lasso approach mainly improves the seasonal cycle of the precipitation prediction and, hence, improves the phase relationship and reduces the root-mean-square error between model prediction and observations. Another goal of the study pertains to the comparison of the Lasso performance with classical model output statistics and with a bivariate bias correction approach. In fact, Lasso is characterized by a similar and regionally higher skill than classical approaches of model bias correction. In addition, it is computationally less expensive. Therefore, we see a large potential for the application of the Lasso algorithm in a wider range of climatological applications when it comes to regression-based statistical transfer functions in statistical downscaling and model bias adjustment

Statistical modeling of phenology in Bavaria based on past and future meteorological information

Plant phenology is well known to be affected by meteorology. Observed changes in the occurrence of phenological phases arecommonly considered some of the most obvious effects of climate change. However, current climate models lack a representationof vegetation suitable for studying future changes in phenology itself. This study presents a statistical-dynamical modelingapproach for Bavaria in southern Germany, using over 13,000 paired samples of phenological and meteorological data foranalyses and climate change scenarios provided by a state-of-the-art regional climate model (RCM). Anomalies of severalmeteorological variables were used as predictors and phenological anomalies of the flowering date of the test plantForsythiasuspensaas predictand. Several cross-validated prediction models using various numbers and differently constructed predictorswere developed, compared, and evaluated via bootstrapping. As our approach needs a small set of meteorological observationsper phenological station, it allows for reliable parameter estimation and an easy transfer to other regions. The most robust andsuccessful model comprises predictors based on mean temperature, precipitation, wind velocity, and snow depth. Its averagecoefficient of determination and root mean square error (RMSE) per station are 60% and ± 8.6 days, respectively. However, theprediction error strongly differs among stations. When transferred to other indicator plants, this method achieves a comparablelevel of predictive accuracy. Its application to two climate change scenarios reveals distinct changes for various plants andregions. The flowering date is simulated to occur between 5 and 25 days earlier at the end of the twenty-first century comparedto the phenology of the reference period (1961–1990)

Weights for general circulation models from CMIP3/CMIP5 in a statistical downscaling framework and the impact on future Mediterranean precipitation

This study investigates the projected precipitation changes of the 21st century in the Mediterranean area with a model ensemble of all available CMIP3 and CMIP5 data based on four different scenarios. The large spread of simulated precipitation change signals underlines the need of an evaluation of the individual general circulation models in order to give higher weights to better and lower weights to worse performing models. The models' spread comprises part of the internal climate variability, but is also due to the differing skills of the circulation models. The uncertainty resulting from the latter is the aim of our weighting approach. Each weight is based on the skill to simulate key predictor variables in context of large and medium scale atmospheric circulation patterns within a statistical downscaling framework for the Mediterranean precipitation. Therefore, geopotential heights, sea level pressure, atmospheric layer thickness, horizontal wind components and humidity data at several atmospheric levels are considered. The novelty of this metric consists in avoiding the use of the precipitation data by itself for the weighting process, as state-of-the-art models still have major deficits in simulating precipitation. The application of the weights on the downscaled precipitation changes leads to more reliable and precise change signals in some Mediterranean sub-regions and seasons. The model weights differ between sub-regions and seasons, however, a clear sequence from better to worse models for the representation of precipitation in the Mediterranean area becomes apparent

Bias adjustment for decadal predictions of precipitation in Europe from CCLM

A cross-validated model output statistics (MOS) approach is applied to precipitation data from the high-resolution regional climate model CCLM for Europe. The aim is to remove systematic errors of simulated precipitation in decadal climate predictions. We developed a two-step bias-adjustment approach. In step one, we estimate model errors based on a long-term ‘CCLM assimilation run’ (regionalizing data from a global assimilation run) and observational data. In step two, the resulting transfer function is applied to the complete set of decadal hindcast simulations (285 individual runs). In contrast to lead-time-dependent bias-adjustment approaches, this one is designed for variables with poor decadal prediction skill and without dominant lead-time-dependent bias. In terms of the CCLM assimilation run, MOS is shown to be effective in predictor selection, model skill improvement, and model bias reduction. Yet, the positive effect of MOS correction is accompanied with an underestimation of precipitation variability. After MOS application, an estimated mean square skill score of more than 0.5 is observed regionally. Simulated precipitation in decadal hindcasts is further improved when the MOS is trained on the basis of other decadal hindcasts from the same regional climate model but with a large underestimation in forecast uncertainty. Our results suggest that the MOS system derived from the assimilation run is less effective but allows the potential climate predictability in decadal hindcasts and forecasts to be retained. Using hindcasts itself for training is recommended unless a statistical method is capable of distinguishing biases and predictions within a hindcasts dataset

Comparison of climate change from Cenozoic surface uplift and glacial-interglacial episodes in the Himalaya-Tibet region: Insights from a regional climate model and proxy data

Assessing paleo-climatic changes and the underlying driving mechanisms are an essential (and often poorly understood) first-step for understanding if natural variability in Earth's climate system from tectonic processes and orbital forcing could produce observed changes in surface processes. In this study, we take this first step of evaluating climate change in the Tibetan Plateau region for different distinct climate states. We do this using a high-resolution regional climate model parameterized for the Cenozoic rise of the Plateau and prominent Quaternary glacial and interglacial episodes. The main objective is to delimit the range of climate variability due to important natural drivers in the region by comparing climate changes during the main Cenozoic uplift period with climate anomalies during the last glacial maximum and the mid-Holocene optimum. This helps to interpret environmental changes documented by proxy data and to benchmark man-made climate changes expected during the 21st century. The innovative aspects of this study pertain to the use of a consistent high-resolution modeling framework and a multivariate statistical assessment of climate types and their shift during the various paleo-climatic episodes. Reduced plateau elevation leads to regionally differentiated patterns of higher temperature and lower precipitation amounts on the plateau itself, whereas surrounding regions are subject to colder conditions. In particular, Central Asia receives much more precipitation prior to the uplift, mainly due to a shift of the stationary wave train over Eurasia. Cluster analysis indicates that the continental-desert type climate, which is widespread over Central Asia today, appears with the Tibetan Plateau reaching 50% of its present-day elevation. The mid-Holocene is characterized by slightly colder temperatures, and the last glacial maximum by considerably colder conditions over most of central and southern Asia. Precipitation anomalies during these episodes are less pronounced and spatially heterogeneous over the Tibetan Plateau. The simulated changes are in good agreement with available paleo-climatic reconstructions from proxy data. The present-day climate classification is only slightly sensitive to the changed boundary conditions in the Quaternary. However, it is shown that in some regions of the Tibetan Plateau the climate anomalies during the Quaternary have been as strong as the changes occurring during the uplift period

Die Angst vor religiösen Assoziationen (1)

Ein umstrittenes Kunstwerk von Gregor Schneider, 2005-2007 Die Installation Cube sollte 2005 für die Biennale in Venedig auf dem Markusplatz errichtet werden. Sie wurde dort jedoch abgesagt, weil Assoziationen an ein religiöses Heiligtum Konflikte hätten provozieren können. Das Gleiche passierte ein Jahr später in Berlin. Erst im Jahr 2007 konnte das Projekt in Hamburg, im Zusammenhang mit einer Ausstellung, erfolgreich realisiert werden.  Der deutsche Künstler Gregor Schneider gewann mit se..