Hurricanes and Climate: The U.S. CLIVAR Working Group on Hurricanes

While a quantitative climate theory of tropical cyclone formation remains elusive, considerable progress has been made recently in our ability to simulate tropical cyclone climatologies and to understand the relationship between climate and tropical cyclone formation. Climate models are now able to simulate a realistic rate of global tropical cyclone formation, although simulation of the Atlantic tropical cyclone climatology remains challenging unless horizontal resolutions finer than 50 km are employed. This article summarizes published research from the idealized experiments of the Hurricane Working Group of U.S. Climate and Ocean: Variability, Predictability and Change (CLIVAR). This work, combined with results from other model simulations, has strengthened relationships between tropical cyclone formation rates and climate variables such as midtropospheric vertical velocity, with decreased climatological vertical velocities leading to decreased tropical cyclone formation. Systematic differences are shown between experiments in which only sea surface temperature is increased compared with experiments where only atmospheric carbon dioxide is increased. Experiments where only carbon dioxide is increased are more likely to demonstrate a decrease in tropical cyclone numbers, similar to the decreases simulated by many climate models for a future, warmer climate. Experiments where the two effects are combined also show decreases in numbers, but these tend to be less for models that demonstrate a strong tropical cyclone response to increased sea surface temperatures. Further experiments are proposed that may improve our understanding of the relationship between climate and tropical cyclone formation, including experiments with two-way interaction between the ocean and the atmosphere and variations in atmospheric aerosols

Role of genetic testing for inherited prostate cancer risk: Philadelphia prostate cancer consensus conference 2017

Purpose: Guidelines are limited for genetic testing for prostate cancer (PCA). The goal of this conference was to develop an expert consensus-dri

Extended seasonal prediction of precipitation in Fiji

A seasonal rainfall forecasting scheme for Fiji is currently operational, taking advantage of strong relationships between the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) and rainfall in Fiji. In this scheme, the three-month mean of the SOI is used to forecast the immediately following three-month total rainfall (e.g. July-September SOI predicting October-December rainfall). In the present study, exploratory data analysis is undertaken using correlation coefficients to determine whether this forecast lead-time can be increased. Strong correlations are demonstrated out to four months in advance for some periods of the year. Correlation coefficients between equatorial sea-surface temperatures and Fiji rainfall are found to be higher in many periods of the year than those between SOI and rainfall. The hindcast skill of a seasonal prediction scheme was then evaluated for lead-times longer than the currently operational scheme. Strong skill was shown several months in advance for a few periods of the year, for both predictions based on the SOI and on equatorial sea-surface temperatures. This suggests that the current operational scheme could usefully be extended out to longer lead-times. For forecasts of the wet season rainfall as a whole, substantial skill was shown in one region of Fiji for predictions made as much as four months in advance

Ішлі, бралі валачэбнічкі

Ішлі, бралі валачэбнічкі, / Ішлі яны ды маліліся, / Добрага мужа пыталіся. / Пыталіся ў Іваначкі, / Падыйшлі да варот, / Стукнулі ботам. / – У доме гаспадар? / – Хоць есць да нема. / Да не здаецца / Ды не кажацца,Не пакажацц

Estimation of the maximum annual number of North Atlantic tropical cyclones using climate models

Using millennia-long climate model simulations, favorable environments for tropical cyclone formation are examined to determine whether the record number of tropical cyclones in the 2005 Atlantic season is close to the maximum possible number for the present climate of that basin. By estimating both the mean number of tropical cyclones and their possible year-to-year random variability, we find that the likelihood that the maximum number of storms in the Atlantic could be greater than the number of events observed during the 2005 season is less than 3.5%. Using a less restrictive comparison between simulated and observed climate with the internal variability accounted for, this probability increases to 9%; however, the estimated maximum possible number of tropical cyclones does not greatly exceed the 2005 total. Hence, the 2005 season can be used as a risk management benchmark for the maximum possible number of tropical cyclones in the Atlantic.This work was funded by the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences’ Risk Prediction Initiative (RPI). L.-P.C.’s contract is cofinanced by the Ministerio de Economı́a y Competitividad (MINECO) under Juan de la Cierva Incorporacion postdoctoral fellowship number IJCI-2015-23367. This research was partially supported through funding from the Earth System and Climate Change Hub of the Australia’s National Environmental Science Programme. L.-P.C. acknowledges financial support from MINECO (project CGL2015-70353-R). Author contributions: K.J.E.W. and L.-P.C. designed the research. S.L.L., K.J.E.W., M.K., and S.M. performed the analysis with input from L.-P.C., B.H., and M.G. The CSIRO Mk2 and EC-Earth data were made available by B.H. and Q.Z., respectively. S.L.L. wrote the article with input from all living authors. Competing interests: The authors declare that they have no competing interests. Data and materials availability: Datasets used in this report can be made available upon request from the lead and second authors. In addition, these data are archived by RPI. The MRI data were available from the database for Policy Decision Making for Future Climate Change (d4PDF), which was produced under the SOUSEI program. EC-Earth simulation was performed on resources provided by the Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing (SNIC) at Linköping University and ECMWF’s computing and archive facilities.Peer Reviewe

Microindentation of fresh soft biological tissue: A rapid tissue sectioning and mounting protocol

Microindentation of fresh biological tissues is necessary for the creation of 3D biomimetic models that accurately represent the native extracellular matrix microenvironment. However, tissue must first be precisely sectioned into slices. Challenges exist in the preparation of fresh tissue slices, as they can tear easily and must be processed rapidly in order to mitigate tissue degradation. In this study, we propose an optimised mounting condition for microindentation and demonstrate that embedding tissue in a mixture of 2.5% agarose and 1.5% gelatin is the most favourable method of tissue slice mounting for microindentation. This protocol allows for rapid processing of fresh biological tissue and is applicable to a variety of tissue types.ISSN:1932-620