Diurnal temperature range over Europe between 1950 and 2005

International audienceIt has been widely accepted that diurnal temperature range (DTR) decreased on a global scale during the second half of the twentieth century. Here we show however, that the long-term trend of annual DTR has reversed from a decrease to an increase during the 1970s in Western Europe and during the 1980s in Eastern Europe. The analysis is based on the high-quality dataset of the European Climate Assessment and Dataset Project, from which we selected approximately 200 stations, covering the area from Iceland to Algeria and from Turkey to Russia for 1950 to 2005. We investigate national and regional annual means as well as the pan-European mean with respect to trends and reversal periods. 17 of the 24 investigated regions including the pan-European mean show a statistical significant increase since 1990 at the latest. Of the remaining 7 regions, 2 show a non-significant increase, 3 a significant decrease and the remaining 2 no significant trend. The long-term change in DTR is governed by both surface shortwave and longwave radiation, the former of which has undergone a change from dimming to brightening. Consequently, we discuss the connections between DTR, shortwave radiation and sulfur emissions which are thought to be amongst the most important factors influencing the incoming solar radiation through the primary and secondary aerosol effect. We find reasonable agreement between trends in SO2 emissions, radiation and DTR in areas affected by high pollution. Consequently, we conclude that the long-term trends in DTR are mostly determined by changes in emissions and the associated changes in incoming solar radiation

Superconductivity under pressure in the Dirac semimetal PdTe2

The Dirac semimetal PdTe$_2$ was recently reported to be a type-I superconductor ($T_c =$1.64 K, $\mu_0 H_c (0) = 13.6$ mT) with unusual superconductivity of the surface sheath. We here report a high-pressure study, $p \leq 2.5$ GPa, of the superconducting phase diagram extracted from ac-susceptibility and transport measurements on single crystalline samples. $T_c (p)$ shows a pronounced non-monotonous variation with a maximum $T_c =$1.91 K around 0.91 GPa, followed by a gradual decrease to 1.27 K at 2.5 GPa. The critical field of bulk superconductivity in the limit $T \rightarrow 0$, $H_c(0,p)$, follows a similar trend and consequently the $H_c(T,p)$-curves under pressure collapse on a single curve: $H_c(T,p)=H_c(0,p)[1-(T/T_c(p))^2]$. Surface superconductivity is robust under pressure as demonstrated by the large superconducting screening signal that persists for applied dc-fields $H_a > H_c$. Surprisingly, for $p \geq 1.41$ GPa the superconducting transition temperature at the surface $T_c^S$ is larger than $T_c$ of the bulk. Therefore surface superconductivity may possibly have a non-trivial nature and is connected to the topological surface states detected by ARPES. We compare the measured pressure variation of $T_c$ with recent results from band structure calculations and discuss the importance of a Van Hove singularity.Comment: manuscript 9 pages with 8 figures + supplemental material 3 pages with 6 figure

New approach to extract important degrees of freedom in quantum dynamics using singular value decomposition: Application to linear optical spectrum in two-dimensional Mott insulators

We propose a new approach to extract the important degrees of freedom in quantum dynamics induced by an external stimulus. We calculate the coefficient matrix numerically, where the $i-l$ element of the matrix is the coefficient of the lth basis state at the ith discretized time in the solution of the time-dependent Schr\"odinger equation induced by the external stimulus. By performing a randomized singular value decomposition of the coefficient matrix, a practically exact solution is obtained using a linear combination of the important modes, where the number of modes is much smaller than the dimensions of the Hilbert space in many cases. We apply this method to analysis of the light absorption spectrum in two-dimensional (2D) Mott insulators using an effective model of the 2D Hubbard model in the strong interaction case. From the dynamics induced by an ultrashort weak light pulse, we find that the practically exact light absorption spectrum can be reproduced by as few as 1000 energy eigenstates in the $1.7 \times 10^{7}$-dimension Hilbert space of a 26-site cluster. These one-photon active energy eigenstates are classified into free holon and doublon (H-D) and localized H-D states. In the free H-D states, the main effect of the spin degrees of freedom on the transfer of a holon (H) and a doublon (D) is the phase shift, and the H and the D move freely. In the localized H-D states, an H and a D are localized with relative distances of $\sqrt{5}$ or $\sqrt{13}$. The antiferromagnetic (AF) spin orders in the localized H-D states are much stronger than those in the free H-D states, and the charge localization is of magnetic origin. There are sharp peaks caused by excitations to the localized H-D states below the broad band caused by excitations to the free H-D states in the light absorption spectrum

Dactylospora anziae, a new lichenicolous ascomycete on Anzia from East Asia

Dactylospora anziae growing on species of Anzia is described from Russia and Japan