Earth's Energy Imbalance and Implications

Improving observations of ocean heat content show that Earth is absorbing more energy from the sun than it is radiating to space as heat, even during the recent solar minimum. The inferred planetary energy imbalance, 0.59 \pm 0.15 W/m2 during the 6-year period 2005-2010, confirms the dominant role of the human-made greenhouse effect in driving global climate change. Observed surface temperature change and ocean heat gain together constrain the net climate forcing and ocean mixing rates. We conclude that most climate models mix heat too efficiently into the deep ocean and as a result underestimate the negative forcing by human-made aerosols. Aerosol climate forcing today is inferred to be 1.6 \pm 0.3 W/m2, implying substantial aerosol indirect climate forcing via cloud changes. Continued failure to quantify the specific origins of this large forcing is untenable, as knowledge of changing aerosol effects is needed to understand future climate change. We conclude that recent slowdown of ocean heat uptake was caused by a delayed rebound effect from Mount Pinatubo aerosols and a deep prolonged solar minimum. Observed sea level rise during the Argo float era is readily accounted for by ice melt and ocean thermal expansion, but the ascendency of ice melt leads us to anticipate acceleration of the rate of sea level rise this decade.Comment: 39 pages, 18 figures; revised version submitted to Atmos. Chem. Phy

Changes in role perception for breast cancer patients with children

アイデンティティの確立していない子供をもつ壮年期女性の乳癌発病後の役割意識の変化を、病者役割の受け入れと母親役割意識に焦点を当てて、質的帰納的に分析した。役割意識の変化は、母親役割意識と病者役割意識の関係から6群に分類され、母親役割意識内容に特徴があり、群によって乳癌のもたらす意味が異なった。乳癌のもたらす意味は、母親役割葛藤群では母親としての自己を脅かすもの、母親役割拡大群では母親役割維持のために克服するもの、母親役割目覚め群では母親役割の中に取り込み共存するもの、母親役割成長群では母親としての成長を促すチャンスとなるもの、自己改革群では自己自身の生き方を問うもの、変化なし群では簡単に乗り越えられるものであった。また病者役割の受け入れに葛藤を有する母親役割意識は、葛藤の特徴から、母親役割の強要による葛藤、代替不可能な母親役割の脅かしによる葛藤、乳房喪失による葛藤、子供への悪影響による葛藤、死を自覚した母親役割の葛藤の5つの葛藤を有する母親役割意識に分類された。以上から、子供を持つ乳癌患者に対する看護のあり方は、1）病状を正しく認識するための援助、2）患者の役割意識を考慮した援助、3）外来通院時の積極的働きかけの3点を重視する必要がある。This study examined the changes in role perception experienced by breast cancer patients with children, analyzing how they accepted themselves as a sick person and how they perceived themselves as a mother. Data were collected by an interview and analyzed by qualitative and inductive methods. Finding showed six types of changes in role perception, with each type containing a particular meaning for the patients. Five types of maternal role perception were also found specifically for the mothers suffering conflicts in accepting their sick role. These findings indicate that nurses should take due consideration when providing adequate care to their breast cancer patients

Climate Forcing Growth Rates: Doubling Down on Our Faustian Bargain

Rahmstorf et al 's (2012) conclusion that observed climate change is comparable to projections, and in some cases exceeds projections, allows further inferences if we can quantify changing climate forcings and compare those with projections. The largest climate forcing is caused by well-mixed long-lived greenhouse gases. Here we illustrate trends of these gases and their climate forcings, and we discuss implications. We focus on quantities that are accurately measured, and we include comparison with fixed scenarios, which helps reduce common misimpressions about how climate forcings are changing. Annual fossil fuel CO2 emissions have shot up in the past decade at about 3/yr, double the rate of the prior three decades (figure 1). The growth rate falls above the range of the IPCC (2001) 'Marker' scenarios, although emissions are still within the entire range considered by the IPCC SRES (2000). The surge in emissions is due to increased coal use (blue curve in figure 1), which now accounts for more than 40 of fossil fuel CO2 emissions

Regional climate change and national responsibilities

Global warming over the past several decades is now large enough that regional climate change is emerging above the noise of natural variability, especially in the summer at middle latitudes and year-round at low latitudes. Despite the small magnitude of warming relative to weather fluctuations, effects of the warming already have notable social and economic impacts. Global warming of 2 °C relative to preindustrial would shift the 'bell curve' defining temperature anomalies a factor of three larger than observed changes since the middle of the 20th century, with highly deleterious consequences. There is striking incongruity between the global distribution of nations principally responsible for fossil fuel CO2 emissions, known to be the main cause of climate change, and the regions suffering the greatest consequences from the warming, a fact with substantial implications for global energy and climate policies

Reply to Rhines and Huybers: Changes in the Frequency of Extreme Summer Heat

Rhines and Huybers are correct that the decreasing number of measurement stations in recent years contributed slightly to our calculated increase of extreme summer mean temperature anomalies. However, the increased frequency of extreme heat anomalies is accounted for mainly by (i) higher mean temperature of recent decades relative to the base period 1951-1980, and (ii) the continuing upward temperature trend during recent decades. The effect of decreasing stations is shown by comparing our prior analysis with results using only stations with data records in both the base period and recent years (Fig. 1). The distribution is noisier, and the area with temperature anomaly exceeding three SDs during 2001-2011 decreases from 9.6 to 9.3% for the reduced number of stations (1,886 rather than 6,147), but our conclusions are not changed qualitatively. The temperature anomaly distribution shifts to the right and broadens because it is defined relative to a fixed (1951-1980) base period, during which global temperatures were within the Holocene range. We argue on the basis of accelerating ice loss from Greenland and Antarctica and rapidly rising sea level (now exceeding 3 mm/y or 3 m per millennium) that temperatures in the early 21st century are already above the Holocene range, and thus use of a base period preceding the rapid warming of the past three decades has merit

Reply to Stone Et Al.: Human-Made Role in Local Temperature Extremes

Stone et al. find that their analysis is unable to show a causal relation of local temperature anomalies, such as in Texas in 2011, with global warming. It was because of limitations in such local analyses that we reframed the problem in our report, separating the task of attribution of the causes of global warming from the task of quantifying changes in the likelihood of extreme local temperature anomalies

HYDROGEN-BONDING INTERACTION IN DBI POLYMERIZATION

We have reported that intramolecular chain-transfer reaction takes place in radical polymerization of itaconates at high temperatures and/or at low monomer concentrations. In this paper, radical polymerizations of di-n-butyl itaconate (DBI) were carried out in toluene at 60°C in the presence of amide compounds. The 13C NMR spectra of the obtained poly(DBI)s indicated that the intramolecular chain-transfer reaction was suppressed as compared with in the absence of amide compounds. The NMR analysis of DBI and N-ethylacetamide demonstrated both 1:1 complex and 1:2 complex were formed at 60°C through a hydrogen-bonding interaction. The ESR analysis of radical polymerization of diisopropyl itconate (DiPI) was conducted in addition to the NMR analysis of the obtained poly(DiPI). It was suggested that the suppression of the intramolecular chain-transfer reaction with the hydrogen-bonding interaction was achieved by controlling the conformation of the side chain at the penultimate monomeric unit of the propagating radical with an isotactic stereosequence

Remarkable effect of hydrogen-bonding interaction on stereospecificity in the radical polymerization of N-vinylacetamide

Radical polymerization of N-vinylacetamide (NVA) in toluene at low temperatures was investigated. It was found that the addition of Lewis bases or alcohol compounds significantly influenced stereospecificity in NVA polymerization. For example, syndiotacticity increased from 25% to 34% by adding tri-n-butyl phosphate at –40°C. Mono-alcohol compounds increased heterotacticity and heterotactic poly(NVA) with mr triad content of 58% was obtained at –40°C in the presence of 1,1,1,3,3,3-hexafluoro-2-propanol. Furthermore, isotactic poly(NVA) with mm triad = 49% was obtained at –60°C in the presence of diethyl L-tartrate. The NMR analysis demonstrated that complex formation between NVA monomer and the added agents, through hydrogen-bonding interaction, played an important role to induce the stereospecificity