229 research outputs found
Past and future interannual variability in Arctic sea ice in coupled climate models
The diminishing Arctic sea ice pack has been widely studied, but previous research has mostly focused on time-mean changes
in sea ice rather than on short-term variations that also have important physical and societal consequences. In this study we test the
hypothesis that future interannual Arctic sea ice area variability will
increase by utilizing 40Â independent simulations from the Community Earth
System Model's Large Ensemble (CESM-LE) for the 1920â2100 period and augment
this with simulations from 12Â models participating in the Coupled Model
Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5). Both CESM-LE and CMIP5 models
project that ice area variability will indeed grow substantially but not
monotonically in every month. There is also a strong seasonal dependence in
the magnitude and timing of future variability increases that is robust among
CESM ensemble members. The variability generally correlates with the average
ice retreat rate, before there is an eventual disappearance in both terms as
the ice pack becomes seasonal in summer and autumn by late century. The peak
in variability correlates best with the total area of ice between 0.2 and
0.6 m monthly thickness, indicating that substantial future thinning of the
ice pack is required before variability maximizes. Within this range, the
most favorable thickness for high areal variability depends on the season,
especially whether ice growth or ice retreat processes dominate. Our findings
suggest that thermodynamic melting (top, bottom, lateral) and growth (frazil,
congelation) processes are more important than dynamical mechanisms, namely
ice export and ridging, in controlling ice area variability.</p
Late Holocene climate: Natural or anthropogenic?
For more than a decade, scientists have argued about the warmth of the current interglaciation. Was the warmth of the preindustrial late Holocene natural in origin, the result of orbital changes that had not yet driven the system into a new glacial state? Or was it in considerable degree the result of humans intervening in the climate system through greenhouse gas emissions from early agriculture? Here we summarize new evidence that moves this debate forward by testing both hypotheses. By comparing late Holocene responses to those that occurred during previous interglaciations (in section 2), we assess whether the late Holocene responses look different (and thus anthropogenic) or similar (and thus natural). This comparison reveals anomalous (anthropogenic) signals. In section 3, we review paleoecological and archaeological syntheses that provide ground truth evidence on early anthropogenic releases of greenhouse gases. The available data document large early anthropogenic emissions consistent with the anthropogenic ice core anomalies, but more information is needed to constrain their size. A final section compares natural and anthropogenic interpretations of the ÎŽ13C trend in ice core CO2
Divergent consensuses on Arctic amplification influence on midlatitude severe winter weather
The article of record as published may be found at https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-019-0662-yWe thank R. Blackport, C. Deser, L. Sun, J. Screen and D. Smith for discussions and
suggested revisions to the manuscript. We also thank J. Screen and L. Sun for model data.
A. Amin helped to create Fig. 2. US CLIVAR logistically and financially supported the
Arctic-Midlatitude Working Group and Arctic Change and its Influence on Mid-Latitude
Climate and Weather workshop that resulted in this article. J.C. is supported by the US
National Science Foundation grants AGS-1657748 and PLR-1504361, 1901352. M.W.
acknowledges funding by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft project no. 268020496â
TRR 172, within the Transregional Collaborative Research Center âArctic Amplification:
Climate Relevant Atmospheric and Surface Processes, and Feedback Mechanisms (AC)3
â.
T.V. was supported by the Academy of Finland grant 317999. J.O. was supported by the
NOAA Arctic Research Program. J.F. was supported by the Woods Hole Research Center.
S.W. and H.G. are supported by the US DOE Award Number DE-SC0016605. J.Y. was
supported by the Korea Meteorological Administration Research and Development
Program under grant KMI2018-01015 and National Research Foundation grant
NRF_2017R1A2B4007480. D.H. is supported by the Helmholtz Association of German
Research Centers (grant FKZ HRSF-0036, project POLEX). The authors acknowledge the
World Climate Research Programmeâs Working Group on Coupled Modelling, which is
responsible for CMIP, and thank the climate modelling groups (listed in Supplementary
Table 1) for producing and making available their model output. For CMIP, the US
Department of Energyâs PCMDI provides coordinating support and led development of
software infrastructure in partnership with the Global Organization for Earth System
Science Portals.The Arctic has warmed more than twice as fast as the global average since the late twentieth century, a phenomenon known as
Arctic amplification (AA). Recently, there have been considerable advances in understanding the physical contributions to AA,
and progress has been made in understanding the mechanisms that link it to midlatitude weather variability. Observational
studies overwhelmingly support that AA is contributing to winter continental cooling. Although some model experiments sup port the observational evidence, most modelling results show little connection between AA and severe midlatitude weather or
suggest the export of excess heating from the Arctic to lower latitudes. Divergent conclusions between model and observational
studies, and even intramodel studies, continue to obfuscate a clear understanding of how AA is influencing midlatitude weather
Arctic change and possible influence on mid-latitude climate and weather: a US CLIVAR White Paper
The Arctic has warmed more than twice as fast as the global average since the mid 20th century,
a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification (AA). These profound changes to the Arctic system
have coincided with a period of ostensibly more frequent events of extreme weather across the
Northern Hemisphere (NH) mid-latitudes, including extreme heat and rainfall events and recent
severe winters. Though winter temperatures have generally warmed since 1960 over mid-to-high
latitudes, the acceleration in the rate of warming at high-latitudes, relative to the rest of the NH,
started approximately in 1990. Trends since 1990 show cooling over the NH continents, especially
in Northern Eurasia.
The possible link between Arctic change and mid-latitude climate and weather has spurred a rush
of new observational and modeling studies. A number of workshops held during 2013-2014 have
helped frame the problem and have called for continuing and enhancing efforts for improving
our understanding of Arctic-mid-latitude linkages and its attribution to the occurrence of extreme
climate and weather events. Although these workshops have outlined some of the major challenges
and provided broad recommendations, further efforts are needed to synthesize the diversified
research results to identify where community consensus and gaps exist.
Building upon findings and recommendations of the previous workshops, the US CLIVAR Working
Group on Arctic Change and Possible Influence on Mid-latitude Climate and Weather convened an
international workshop at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, on February 1-3, 2017. Experts
in the fields of atmosphere, ocean, and cryosphere sciences assembled to assess the rapidly evolving
state of understanding, identify consensus on knowledge and gaps in research, and develop specific
actions to accelerate progress within the research community. With more than 100 participants,
the workshop was the largest and most comprehensive gathering of climate scientists to address
the topic to date. In this white paper, we synthesize and discuss outcomes from this workshop and
activities involving many of the working group members
Identifying uncertainties in Arctic climate change projections
Wide ranging climate changes are expected in the Arctic by the end of the 21st century, but projections of the size of these changes vary widely across current global climate models. This variation represents a large source of uncertainty in our understanding of the evolution of Arctic climate. Here we systematically quantify and assess the model uncertainty in Arctic climate changes in two CO2 doubling experiments: a multimodel ensemble (CMIP3) and an ensemble constructed using a single model (HadCM3) with multiple parameter perturbations (THC-QUMP). These two ensembles allow us to assess the contribution that both structural and parameter variations across models make to the total uncertainty and to begin to attribute sources of uncertainty in projected changes. We find that parameter uncertainty is an major source of uncertainty in certain aspects of Arctic climate. But also that uncertainties in the mean climate state in the 20th century, most notably in the northward Atlantic ocean heat transport and Arctic sea ice volume, are a significant source of uncertainty for projections of future Arctic change. We suggest that better observational constraints on these quantities will lead to significant improvements in the precision of projections of future Arctic climate change
Evaluation of knowledge levels amongst village AIDS committees after undergoing HIV educational sessions: results from a pilot study in rural Tanzania
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND:
Village AIDS committees (VAC) were formed by the Tanzanian government in 2003 to provide HIV education to their communities. However, their potential has not been realised due to their limited knowledge and misconceptions surrounding HIV, which could be addressed through training of VAC members. In an attempt to increase HIV knowledge levels and address common misconceptions amongst the VACs, an HIV curriculum was delivered to members in rural north western Tanzania.
METHODS:
An evaluation of HIV knowledge was conducted prior to and post-delivery of HIV training sessions, within members of three VACs in Kisesa ward. Quantitative surveys were used with several open-ended questions to identify local misconceptions and evaluate HIV knowledge levels. Short educational training sessions covering HIV transmission, prevention and treatment were conducted, with each VAC using quizzes, role-plays and participatory learning and action tools. Post-training surveys occurred up to seven days after the final training session.
RESULTS:
Before the training, "good" HIV knowledge was higher amongst men than women (p = 0.041), and among those with previous HIV education (p = 0.002). The trade-centre had a faster turn-over of VAC members, and proximity to the trade-centre was associated with a shorter time on the committee.Training improved HIV knowledge levels with more members achieving a "good" score in the post-training survey compared with the baseline survey (p = < 0.001). The training programme was popular, with 100% of participants requesting further HIV training in the future and 51.7% requesting training at three-monthly intervals.
CONCLUSIONS:
In this setting, a series of HIV training sessions for VACs demonstrated encouraging results, with increased HIV knowledge levels following short educational sessions. Further work is required to assess the success of VAC members in disseminating this HIV education to their communities, as well as up-scaling this pilot study to other regions in Tanzania with different misconceptions
Perennial snow and ice variations (2000â2008) in the Arctic circumpolar land area from satellite observations
Perennial snow and ice (PSI) extent is an important parameter of mountain environments with regard to its involvement in the hydrological cycle and the surface energy budget. We investigated interannual variations of PSI in nine mountain regions of interest (ROI) between 2000 and 2008. For that purpose, a novel MODIS data set processed at the Canada Centre for Remote Sensing at 250 m spatial resolution was utilized. The extent of PSI exhibited significant interannual variations, with coefficients of variation ranging from 5% to 81% depending on the ROI. A strong negative relationship was found between PSI and positive degreeâdays (threshold 0°C) during the summer months in most ROIs, with linear correlation coefficients (r) being as low as r = â0.90. In the European Alps and Scandinavia, PSI extent was significantly correlated with annual net glacier mass balances, with r = 0.91 and r = 0.85, respectively, suggesting that MODISâderived PSI extent may be used as an indicator of net glacier mass balances. Validation of PSI extent in two land surface classifications for the years 2000 and 2005, GLCâ2000 and Globcover, revealed significant discrepancies of up to 129% for both classifications. With regard to the importance of such classifications for land surface parameterizations in climate and land surface process models, this is a potential source of error to be investigated in future studies. The results presented here provide an interesting insight into variations of PSI in several ROIs and are instrumental for our understanding of sensitive mountain regions in the context of global climate change assessment
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Late Holocene climate: Natural or anthropogenic?
For more than a decade, scientists have argued about the warmth of the current interglaciation. Was the warmth of the preindustrial late Holocene natural in origin, the result of orbital changes that had not yet driven the system into a new glacial state? Or was it in considerable degree the result of humans intervening in the climate system through greenhouse gas emissions from early agriculture? Here we summarize new evidence that moves this debate forward by testing both hypotheses. By comparing late Holocene responses to those that occurred during previous interglaciations (in section 2), we assess whether the late Holocene responses look different (and thus anthropogenic) or similar (and thus natural). This comparison reveals anomalous (anthropogenic) signals. In section 3, we review paleoecological and archaeological syntheses that provide ground truth evidence on early anthropogenic releases of greenhouse gases. The available data document large early anthropogenic emissions consistent with the anthropogenic ice core anomalies, but more information is needed to constrain their size. A final section compares natural and anthropogenic interpretations of the ÎŽÂčÂłC trend in ice core COâ
Factors Driving Mercury Variability in the Arctic Atmosphere and Ocean over the Past 30 Years
[1] Long-term observations at Arctic sites (Alert and Zeppelin) show large interannual variability (IAV) in atmospheric mercury (Hg), implying a strong sensitivity of Hg to environmental factors and potentially to climate change. We use the GEOS-Chem global biogeochemical Hg model to interpret these observations and identify the principal drivers of spring and summer IAV in the Arctic atmosphere and surface ocean from 1979â2008. The model has moderate skill in simulating the observed atmospheric IAV at the two sites (râ~â0.4) and successfully reproduces a long-term shift at Alert in the timing of the spring minimum from May to April (râ=â0.7). Principal component analysis indicates that much of the IAV in the model can be explained by a single climate mode with high temperatures, low sea ice fraction, low cloudiness, and shallow boundary layer. This mode drives decreased bromine-driven deposition in spring and increased ocean evasion in summer. In the Arctic surface ocean, we find that the IAV for modeled total Hg is dominated by the meltwater flux of Hg previously deposited to sea ice, which is largest in years with high solar radiation (clear skies) and cold spring air temperature. Climate change in the Arctic is projected to result in increased cloudiness and strong warming in spring, which may thus lead to decreased Hg inputs to the Arctic Ocean. The effect of climate change on Hg discharges from Arctic rivers remains a major source of uncertainty.Earth and Planetary SciencesEngineering and Applied Science
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