Abrupt Climate Change in an Oscillating World.

This is the final version of the article. Available from Nature Publishing Group via the DOI in this record.The notion that small changes can have large consequences in the climate or ecosystems has become popular as the concept of tipping points. Typically, tipping points are thought to arise from a loss of stability of an equilibrium when external conditions are slowly varied. However, this appealingly simple view puts us on the wrong foot for understanding a range of abrupt transitions in the climate or ecosystems because complex environmental systems are never in equilibrium. In particular, they are forced by diurnal variations, the seasons, Milankovitch cycles and internal climate oscillations. Here we show how abrupt and sometimes even irreversible change may be evoked by even small shifts in the amplitude or time scale of such environmental oscillations. By using model simulations and reconciling evidence from previous studies we illustrate how these phenomena can be relevant for ecosystems and elements of the climate system including terrestrial ecosystems, Arctic sea ice and monsoons. Although the systems we address are very different and span a broad range of time scales, the phenomena can be understood in a common framework that can help clarify and unify the interpretation of abrupt shifts in the Earth system.This work was carried out under the program of the Netherlands Earth System Science Centre (NESSC), financially supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW). We are grateful to Chris Huntingford for his constructive comments that helped us to improve the manuscript. We would also like to acknowledge Michel Crucifix, Henk Dijkstra, and Peter Cox for their helpful comments. S.B. is eternally grateful to Nina Engelhardt and the University of Edinburgh for the inspiring working conditions

Trends in sea-ice variability on the way to an ice-free Arctic

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the publisher via the DOI in this record. The final author version was published under the title: Statistical indicators of Arctic sea-ice stability-prospects and limitations and is available in ORE via https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/handle/10871/23493It has been widely debated whether Arctic sea-ice loss can reach a tipping point beyond which a large sea-ice area disappears abruptly. The theory of dynamical systems predicts a slowing down when a system destabilises towards a tipping point. In simple stochastic systems this can result in increasing variance and autocorrelation, potentially yielding an early warning of an abrupt change. Here we aim to establish whether the loss of Arctic sea ice would follow these conceptual predictions, and which trends in sea ice variability can be expected from pre-industrial conditions toward an Arctic that is ice-free during the whole year. To this end, we apply a model hierarchy consisting of two box models and one comprehensive Earth system model. We find a consistent and robust decrease of the ice volume's annual relaxation time before summer ice is lost because thinner ice can adjust more quickly to perturbations. Thereafter, the relaxation time increases, mainly because the system becomes dominated by the ocean water's large heat capacity when the ice-free season becomes longer. Both trends carry over to the autocorrelation of sea ice thickness in time series. These changes are robust to the nature and origin of climate variability in the models and hardly depend on the balance of feedbacks. Therefore, characteristic trends can be expected in the future. As these trends are not specific to the existence of abrupt ice loss, the prospects for early warnings seem very limited. This result also has implications for statistical indicators in other systems whose effective mass changes over time, affecting the trend of their relaxation time. However, the robust relation between state and variability would allow an estimate of sea-ice variability from only short observations. This could help one to estimate the likelihood and persistence of extreme events in the future.This work was carried out under the programme of the Netherlands Earth System Science Centre (NESSC), financially supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW). We also acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme’s Working Group on Coupled Modelling, which is responsible for CMIP, and we thank the climate modelling groups for producing and making available their model output. We thank Vasilis Dakos for helping to apply his early warnings R package and Chao Li for making available the MPI-ESM model output. S. B. gratefully acknowledges Arie Staal for his fruitful and revealing approaches to savour scientific achievements. We are also indebted to Till Wagner and Ian Eisenman for their valuable comments and their very amiable and cooperative spirit

Early neuroimaging markers of FOXP2 intragenic deletion

FOXP2 is the major gene associated with severe, persistent, developmental speech and language disorders. While studies in the original family in which a FOXP2 mutation was found showed volume reduction and reduced activation in core language and speech networks, there have been no imaging studies of different FOXP2 mutations. We conducted a multimodal MRI study in an eight-year-old boy (A-II) with a de novo FOXP2 intragenic deletion. A-II showed marked bilateral volume reductions in the hippocampus, thalamus, globus pallidus, and caudate nucleus compared with 26 control males (effect sizes from −1 to −3). He showed no detectable functional MRI activity when repeating nonsense words. The hippocampus is implicated for the first time in FOXP2 diseases. We conclude that FOXP2 anomaly is either directly or indirectly associated with atypical development of widespread subcortical networks early in life

Statistical indicators of Arctic sea-ice stability-prospects and limitations

This is the final version of the article. Available from the European Geosciences Union via the DOI in this record.We examine the relationship between the mean and the variability of Arctic sea-ice coverage and volume in a large range of climates from globally ice-covered to globally ice-free conditions. Using a hierarchy of two column models and several comprehensive Earth system models, we consolidate the results of earlier studies and show that mechanisms found in simple models also dominate the interannual variability of Arctic sea ice in complex models. In contrast to predictions based on very idealised dynamical systems, we find a consistent and robust decrease of variance and autocorrelation of sea-ice volume before summer sea ice is lost. We attribute this to the fact that thinner ice can adjust more quickly to perturbations. Thereafter, the autocorrelation increases, mainly because it becomes dominated by the ocean water's large heat capacity when the ice-free season becomes longer. We show that these changes are robust to the nature and origin of climate variability in the models and do not depend on whether Arctic sea-ice loss occurs abruptly or irreversibly. We also show that our climate is changing too rapidly to detect reliable changes in autocorrelation of annual time series. Based on these results, the prospects of detecting statistical early warning signals before an abrupt sea-ice loss at a "tipping point" seem very limited. However, the robust relation between state and variability can be useful to build simple stochastic climate models and to make inferences about past and future sea-ice variability from only short observations or reconstructions.This work was carried out under the programme of the Netherlands Earth System Science Centre (NESSC), financially supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW). We also acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme’s Working Group on Coupled Modelling, which is responsible for CMIP, and we thank the climate modelling groups for producing and making available their model output. We thank Vasilis Dakos for helping to apply his early warnings R package and Chao Li for making available the MPI-ESM model output. S. B. gratefully acknowledges Arie Staal for his fruitful and revealing approaches to savour scientific achievements. We are also indebted to Till Wagner and Ian Eisenman for their valuable comments and their very amiable and cooperative spirit. Finally, we acknowledge two anonymous reviewers who helped us to improve the manuscript

Atypical Development of Broca’s Area in a Large Family with Inherited Stuttering

Developmental stuttering is a condition of speech dysfluency, characterised by pauses, blocks, prolongations, and sound or syllable repetitions. It affects around 1% of the population, with potential detrimental effects on mental health and long-term employment. Accumulating evidence points to a genetic aetiology, yet gene-brain associations remain poorly understood due to a lack of MRI studies in affected families. Here we report the first neuroimaging study of developmental stuttering in a family with autosomal dominant inheritance of persistent stuttering. We studied a four-generation family, sixteen family members were included in genotyping analysis. T1-weighted and diffusion weighted MRI scans were conducted on seven family members (6 male; aged 9–63 years) with two age and sex matched controls without stuttering (N = 14). Using Freesurfer, we analysed cortical morphology (cortical thickness, surface area and local gyrification index) and basal ganglia volumes. White matter integrity in key speech and language tracts (i.e. frontal aslant tract and arcuate fasciculus) was also analysed using MRtrix and probabilistic tractography. We identified a significant age by group interaction effect for cortical thickness in the left hemisphere pars opercularis (Broca’s area). In affected family members this region failed to follow the typical trajectory of age-related thinning observed in controls. Surface area analysis revealed the middle frontal gyrus region was reduced bilaterally in the family (all cortical morphometry significance levels set at a vertex-wise threshold of p < 0.01, corrected for multiple comparisons). Both the left and right globus pallidus were larger in the family than in the control group (left p = 0.017; right p=0.037), and a larger right globus pallidus was associated with more severe stuttering (rho =0.86, p=0.01). No white matter differences were identified. Genotyping identified novel loci on chromosomes 1 and 4 that map with the stuttering phenotype. Our findings denote disruption within the cortico-basal ganglia-thalamo-cortical network. The lack of typical development of these structures reflects the anatomical basis of the abnormal inhibitory control network between Broca’s area and the striatum underpinning stuttering in these individuals. This is the first evidence of a neural phenotype in a family with an autosomal dominantly inherited stuttering

Quantifying measures to limit wind driven resuspension of sediments for improvement of the ecological quality in some shallow Dutch lakes

Although phosphorus loadings are considered the main pressure for most shallow lakes, wind-driven resuspension can cause additional problems for these aquatic ecosystems. We quantified the potential effectiveness of measures to reduce the contribution of resuspended sediments, resulting from wind action, to the overall light attenuation for three comparable shallow peat lakes with poor ecological status in the Netherlands: Loosdrecht, Nieuwkoop, and Reeuwijk (1.8–2.7 m depth, 1.6–2.5 km fetch). These measures are: 1. wave reducing barriers, 2. water level fluctuations, 3. capping of the sediment with sand, and 4. combinations of above. Critical shear stress of the sediments for resuspension (Vcrit), size distribution, and optical properties of the suspended material were quantified in the field (June 2009) and laboratory. Water quality monitoring data (2002–2009) showed that light attenuation by organic suspended matter in all lakes is high. Spatial modeling of the impact of these measures showed that in Lake Loosdrecht limiting wave action can have significant effects (reductions from 6% exceedance to 2% exceedance of Vcrit), whereas in Lake Nieuwkoop and Lake Reeuwijk this is less effective. The depth distribution and shape of Lake Nieuwkoop and Lake Reeuwijk limit the role of wind-driven resuspension in the total suspended matter concentration. Although the lakes are similar in general appearance (origin, size, and depth range) measures suitable to improve their ecological status differ. This calls for care when defining the programme of measures to improve the ecological status of a specific lake based on experience from other lakes.

Extinction times in the subcritical stochastic SIS logistic epidemic

Many real epidemics of an infectious disease are not straightforwardly super- or sub-critical, and the understanding of epidemic models that exhibit such complexity has been identified as a priority for theoretical work. We provide insights into the near-critical regime by considering the stochastic SIS logistic epidemic, a well-known birth-and-death chain used to model the spread of an epidemic within a population of a given size $N$. We study the behaviour of the process as the population size $N$ tends to infinity. Our results cover the entire subcritical regime, including the "barely subcritical" regime, where the recovery rate exceeds the infection rate by an amount that tends to 0 as $N \to \infty$ but more slowly than $N^{-1/2}$. We derive precise asymptotics for the distribution of the extinction time and the total number of cases throughout the subcritical regime, give a detailed description of the course of the epidemic, and compare to numerical results for a range of parameter values. We hypothesise that features of the course of the epidemic will be seen in a wide class of other epidemic models, and we use real data to provide some tentative and preliminary support for this theory.Comment: Revised; 34 pages; 6 figure

Positive Feedbacks in Seagrass Ecosystems – Evidence from Large-Scale Empirical Data

Positive feedbacks cause a nonlinear response of ecosystems to environmental change and may even cause bistability. Even though the importance of feedback mechanisms has been demonstrated for many types of ecosystems, their identification and quantification is still difficult. Here, we investigated whether positive feedbacks between seagrasses and light conditions are likely in seagrass ecosystems dominated by the temperate seagrass Zostera marina. We applied a combination of multiple linear regression and structural equation modeling (SEM) on a dataset containing 83 sites scattered across Western Europe. Results confirmed that a positive feedback between sediment conditions, light conditions and seagrass density is likely to exist in seagrass ecosystems. This feedback indicated that seagrasses are able to trap and stabilize suspended sediments, which in turn improves water clarity and seagrass growth conditions. Furthermore, our analyses demonstrated that effects of eutrophication on light conditions, as indicated by surface water total nitrogen, were on average at least as important as sediment conditions. This suggests that in general, eutrophication might be the most important factor controlling seagrasses in sheltered estuaries, while the seagrass-sediment-light feedback is a dominant mechanism in more exposed areas. Our study demonstrates the potentials of SEM to identify and quantify positive feedbacks mechanisms for ecosystems and other complex systems

Positive Feedbacks in Seagrass Ecosystems – Evidence from Large-Scale Empirical Data

Positive feedbacks cause a nonlinear response of ecosystems to environmental change and may even cause bistability. Even though the importance of feedback mechanisms has been demonstrated for many types of ecosystems, their identification and quantification is still difficult. Here, we investigated whether positive feedbacks between seagrasses and light conditions are likely in seagrass ecosystems dominated by the temperate seagrass Zostera marina. We applied a combination of multiple linear regression and structural equation modeling (SEM) on a dataset containing 83 sites scattered across Western Europe. Results confirmed that a positive feedback between sediment conditions, light conditions and seagrass density is likely to exist in seagrass ecosystems. This feedback indicated that seagrasses are able to trap and stabilize suspended sediments, which in turn improves water clarity and seagrass growth conditions. Furthermore, our analyses demonstrated that effects of eutrophication on light conditions, as indicated by surface water total nitrogen, were on average at least as important as sediment conditions. This suggests that in general, eutrophication might be the most important factor controlling seagrasses in sheltered estuaries, while the seagrass-sediment-light feedback is a dominant mechanism in more exposed areas. Our study demonstrates the potentials of SEM to identify and quantify positive feedbacks mechanisms for ecosystems and other complex systems