Impacts of shifting phenology on boundary layer dynamics in North America in the CESM

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Implementation of FAIR principles in the IPCC: the WGI AR6 Atlas repository

The Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has adopted the FAIR Guiding Principles. We present the Atlas chapter of Working Group I (WGI) as a test case. We describe the application of the FAIR principles in the Atlas, the challenges faced during its implementation, and those that remain for the future. We introduce the open source repository resulting from this process, including coding (e.g., annotated Jupyter notebooks), data provenance, and some aggregated datasets used in some figures in the Atlas chapter and its interactive companion (the Interactive Atlas), open to scrutiny by the scientific community and the general public. We describe the informal pilot review conducted on this repository to gather recommendations that led to significant improvements. Finally, a working example illustrates the re-use of the repository resources to produce customized regional information, extending the Interactive Atlas products and running the code interactively in a web browser using Jupyter notebooks.Peer reviewe

Spotlight on Differentially Expressed Genes in Urinary Bladder Cancer

INTRODUCTION: We previously identified common differentially expressed (DE) genes in bladder cancer (BC). In the present study we analyzed in depth, the expression of several groups of these DE genes. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Samples from 30 human BCs and their adjacent normal tissues were analyzed by whole genome cDNA microarrays, qRT-PCR and Western blotting. Our attention was focused on cell-cycle control and DNA damage repair genes, genes related to apoptosis, signal transduction, angiogenesis, as well as cellular proliferation, invasion and metastasis. Four publicly available GEO Datasets were further analyzed, and the expression data of the genes of interest (GOIs) were compared to those of the present study. The relationship among the GOI was also investigated. GO and KEGG molecular pathway analysis was performed to identify possible enrichment of genes with specific biological themes. RESULTS: Unsupervised cluster analysis of DNA microarray data revealed a clear distinction in BC vs. control samples and low vs. high grade tumors. Genes with at least 2-fold differential expression in BC vs. controls, as well as in non-muscle invasive vs. muscle invasive tumors and in low vs. high grade tumors, were identified and ranked. Specific attention was paid to the changes in osteopontin (OPN, SPP1) expression, due to its multiple biological functions. Similarly, genes exhibiting equal or low expression in BC vs. the controls were scored. Significant pair-wise correlations in gene expression were scored. GO analysis revealed the multi-facet character of the GOIs, since they participate in a variety of mechanisms, including cell proliferation, cell death, metabolism, cell shape, and cytoskeletal re-organization. KEGG analysis revealed that the most significant pathway was that of Bladder Cancer (p = 1.5×10(-31)). CONCLUSIONS: The present work adds to the current knowledge on molecular signature identification of BC. Such works should progress in order to gain more insight into disease molecular mechanisms

Megadroughts in the Common Era and the Anthropocene

Exceptional drought events, known as megadroughts, have occurred on every continent outside Antarctica over the past ~2,000 years, causing major ecological and societal disturbances. In this Review, we discuss shared causes and features of Common Era (Year 1–present) and future megadroughts. Decadal variations in sea surface temperatures are the primary driver of megadroughts, with secondary contributions from radiative forcing and land–atmosphere interactions. Anthropogenic climate change has intensified ongoing megadroughts in south-western North America and across Chile and Argentina. Future megadroughts will be substantially warmer than past events, with this warming driving projected increases in megadrought risk and severity across many regions, including western North America, Central America, Europe and the Mediterranean, extratropical South America, and Australia. However, several knowledge gaps currently undermine confidence in understanding past and future megadroughts. These gaps include a paucity of high-resolution palaeoclimate information over Africa, tropical South America and other regions; incomplete representations of internal variability and land surface processes in climate models; and the undetermined capacity of water-resource management systems to mitigate megadrought impacts. Addressing these deficiencies will be crucial for increasing confidence in projections of future megadrought risk and for resiliency planning

Projected Hydroclimate Changes on Hispaniola Island through the 21st Century in CMIP6 Models

Climate change might increase the frequency and severity of longer-lasting drought in the Caribbean, including in Hispaniola Island. Nevertheless, the hydroclimate changes projected by the state-of-the-art earth system models across the island remain unknown. Here, we assess 21st-century changes in hydroclimate over Hispaniola Island using precipitation, temperature, and surface soil moisture data from the 6th Phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6). The resulting analysis indicates, as with the previous 5th Phase of CMIP (CMIP5) models, that Hispaniola Island might see a significant drying through the 21st century. The aridity appears to be robust in most of the island following the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP) 5–8.6, which assumes the “worst case” greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. We find a significant reduction in both annual mean precipitation and surface soil moisture (soil’s upper 10 cm), although it appears to be more pronounced for precipitation (up to 26% and 11% for precipitation and surface soil moisture, respectively). Even though we provide insights into future hydroclimate changes on Hispaniola Island, CMIP6’s intrinsic uncertainties and native horizontal resolution precludes us to better assess these changes at local scales. As such, we consider future dynamical downscaling efforts that might help us to better inform policy-makers and stakeholders in terms of drought risk

Data from: Exacerbation of the 2013–2016 Pan-Caribbean Drought by Anthropogenic Warming

Following the CC-BY License, these datasets can be freely used by the scientific community, and should be cited as follows: Herrera et al. (2018). Data from: Exacerbation of the 2013–2016 Pan-Caribbean drought by anthropogenic warming [Dataset]. Cornell University Libarary eCommons Repository. https://doi.org/10.7298/X4571961The Caribbean islands are expected to see more frequent and severe droughts from reduced precipitation and increased evaporative demand due to anthropogenic climate change. Between 2013 and 2016, the Caribbean experienced a widespread drought due in part to El Niño in 2015-2016, but it is unknown whether its severity was exacerbated by anthropogenic warming. This work examines the role of recent warming on this drought, using a recently-developed high-resolution self-calibrating Palmer Drought Severity Index dataset. The resulting analysis suggest that anthropogenic warming accounted for ~15–17% of the drought’s severity, and ~7% of its spatial extent. These findings strongly suggest that climate model projected anthropogenic drying in the Caribbean is already underway, with major implications for the more than 43 million people currently living in this region.We thank the Advanced Study Program (ASP) of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) for partially supporting this research through the ASP Graduate Visitor Program. This material is partially supported by a National Science Foundation (NSF) EaSM2 Grant AGS-1243125, and NSF Grant AGS-1602564. J. T. F. and S. C. participation in this work is supported through NSF Grant AGS-1243107, NASA Award Number NNH11ZDA001N, and DOE Award ID DE-SC0012711. B.I.C. and A.P.W are supported by the NASA Modeling, Analysis, and Prediction Program, and A.P.W. is supported by the National Science Foundation grant AGS-1703029

Exacerbation of the 2013-2016 Pan-Caribbean Drought by Anthropogenic Warming

The Caribbean islands are expected to see more frequent and severe droughts from reduced precipitation and increased evaporative demand due to anthropogenic climate change. Between 2013 and 2016 the region experienced a "Pan-Caribbean" drought that was the most widespread event since 1950, due in part to El Nio in 2015/2016, but it is unknown whether its severity was exacerbated by anthropogenic climate change. We examine the role of recent warming on this drought, using new high-resolution self-calibrating Palmer Drought Severity Index datasets. Our findings suggest that anthropogenic warming has accounted for ~15-17% of drought severity, and ~7% of the Pan-Caribbean drought's spatial extent. These findings strongly suggest that climate model projected anthropogenic drying in the Caribbean is already underway, with major implications for more than 43 million people living in this region

Dataset for Intrinsic Century-Scale Variability in Tropical Pacific Sea Surface Temperatures and their Influence on Western US Hydroclimate

These files contain the data supporting the results of the Evans, et al, 2022 paper, “Intrinsic Century Scale Variability in Tropical Pacific Sea Surface Temperatures and their Influence on Southwestern US Hydroclimate”. In Evans et al 2022, we found: Hydroclimate variability of the southwest United States (SWUS) is influenced by the tropical Pacific Ocean, particularly through the teleconnection to El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which is expected to be altered by climate change. Natural variability in this teleconnection has not been robustly quantified, complicating the detection of anthropogenic climate change. Here, we use a linear inverse model (LIM) to quantify natural variability in the ENSO-SWUS teleconnection. The LIM yields realistic teleconnection patterns with century-scale variability comparable to simulations from the Last Millennium Ensemble project and the Climate Model Intercomparison Project Phases 5 and 6. The variability quantified by the LIM illuminates two aspects of our understanding of ENSO and its impacts: the inherent statistics of the observable system can produce century-long periods with a wide range of correlations to SWUS hydroclimate, including nonsignificant correlations, and thus that detecting changes in ENSO-related hydroclimate variability is challenging in a changing climate.This work was made possible through funding from the National Science Foundation awards AGS1751535 and AGS1602564

Implementation of FAIR principles in the IPCC: the WGI AR6 Atlas repository

The Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has adopted the FAIR Guiding Principles. We present the Atlas chapter of Working Group I (WGI) as a test case. We describe the application of the FAIR principles in the Atlas, the challenges faced during its implementation, and those that remain for the future. We introduce the open source repository resulting from this process, including coding (e.g., annotated Jupyter notebooks), data provenance, and some aggregated datasets used in some figures in the Atlas chapter and its interactive companion (the Interactive Atlas), open to scrutiny by the scientific community and the general public. We describe the informal pilot review conducted on this repository to gather recommendations that led to significant improvements. Finally, a working example illustrates the re-use of the repository resources to produce customized regional information, extending the Interactive Atlas products and running the code interactively in a web browser using Jupyter notebooks.We acknowledge partial funding from projects ATLAS (PID2019-111481RB-I00) funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and IS-ENES3 which is funded by the European Union’s H2020 programme under grant agreement No 824084. We also acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme’s Working Group on Coupled Modelling and Working Group on Regional Climate, responsible for CMIP and CORDEX, respectively. We also thank the climate modeling groups for producing and making available their model output, as described in the data-source folder of the repository. We also acknowledge the Earth System Grid Federation infrastructure, an international effort led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison, the European Network for Earth System Modelling and other partners in the Global Organisation for Earth System Science Portals (GO-ESSP). The opinions expressed are those of the author(s) only and should not be considered as representative of the European Commission’s official position. JF and ASC acknowledge support from the CORDyS project (PID2020-116595RB-I00) funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033. JM acknowledges support from MDM-2017-0765 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033. JBM acknowledges support from Universidad de Cantabria and Consejería de Universidades, Igualdad, Cultura y Deporte del Gobierno de Cantabria via the project “instrumentación y ciencia de datos para sondear la naturaleza del universo”. Finally we want to thank the reviewers participating in the Atlas FAIR review described in the paper and the editor and the two anonymous referees for their work and constructive comments, helping us to improve the manuscript