Public climate-change skepticism,energy preferences and political participation     

Anita Engels  Otto Hüther  Mike Schäfer  Hermann Held 《Global Environmental Change》2013,23(5):1018-1027

Many studies have shown a general decline of public concern about climate change or vice versa a rise in public climate-change skepticism, in particular in the U.S. and other Anglo-Saxon countries. There is a vivid debate on whether this is a global phenomenon, on which factors explain the decline, and on the broader societal implications of these trends in the context of the transformation toward a low-carbon society. We add to this literature by presenting the results of a recent general population survey in Germany in which we looked for systematic linkages between public climate-change skepticism on one hand, and energy preferences and political participation on the other. Germany is an interesting testbed as it is currently involved in a large-scale restructuring of its system of energy supply toward renewable energy sources (the “Energiewende”). Our results indicate that climate-change skepticism has not diffused widely in Germany, but that it correlates with less support of renewable energy sources. However, skepticism correlates negatively with political participation, and there is no strong political outlet for public climate-change skepticism in Germany. Alternative potential barriers for the successful implementation of the “Energiewende” are also discussed.  相似文献   

Synthesis of refractory metal nuggets and constraints on the thermal histories of nugget‐bearing Ca,Al‐rich inclusions          下载免费PDF全文

D. Schwander  S. Buhre  G. Schönhense  U. Ott 《Meteoritics & planetary science》2015,50(5):893-903

Tiny refractory metal nuggets are mainly observed inside Ca, Al‐rich inclusions (CAIs) from chondritic meteorites and are commonly assumed to be condensates from a solar composition gas. However, recent detailed studies of metal nugget compositions and their comparison with predictions from condensation show that the observed abundance patterns are extremely difficult to achieve in this way. As a test for the proposed alternative, precipitation from a silicate liquid, we conducted melting experiments, in which nine different refractory metals (nugget components) were equilibrated with each other along with a CAI‐like liquid at reducing conditions. When quenched, minerals similar to those in CAIs formed from such liquids including refractory metal nuggets exhibiting compositions and appearances similar to those of the meteoritic nuggets. The run products and their comparison with a meteoritic nugget‐bearing CAI is evidence for formation of refractory metal nuggets during cooling of Ca, Al‐rich liquids at rates about 1000°/40 s (in the interval from 1900 to 900 °C). To achieve the formation of refractory metal nuggets and the textures observed in the host inclusions, during cooling the rate probably changed. Refractory metal nuggets apparently formed during quenching before spinel crystallized.  相似文献   

European summer climate variability in a heterogeneous multi-model ensemble     

P. L. Vidale  D. Lüthi  R. Wegmann  C. Schär 《Climatic change》2007,81(1):209-232

Recent results from an enhanced greenhouse-gas scenario over Europe suggest that climate change might not only imply a general mean warming at the surface, but also a pronounced increase in interannual surface temperature variability during the summer season (Schär et al., Nature 427:332–336, 2004). It has been proposed that the underlying physical mechanism is related to land surface-atmosphere interactions. In this study we expand the previous analysis by including results from a heterogeneous ensemble of 11 high-resolution climate models from the PRUDENCE project. All simulations considered comprise 30-year control and enhanced greenhouse-gas scenario periods. While there is considerable spread in the models’ ability to represent the observed summer variability, all models show some increase in variability for the scenario period, confirming the main result of the previous study. Averaged over a large-scale Central European domain, the models simulate an increase in the standard deviation of summer mean temperatures between 20 and 80%. The amplification occurs predominantly over land points and is particularly pronounced for surface temperature, but also evident for precipitation. It is also found that the simulated changes in Central European summer conditions are characterized by an emergence of dry and warm years, with early and intensified depletion of root-zone soil moisture. There is thus some evidence that the change in variability may be linked to the dynamics of soil-moisture storage and the associated feedbacks on the surface energy balance and precipitation.  相似文献   

Probing the Earth’s Interior with the LENA Detector     

Kathrin A. Hochmuth  Franz V. Feilitzsch  Teresa Marrodán Undagoitia  Lothar Oberauer  Walter Potzel  Michael Wurm  Brian D. Fields 《Earth, Moon, and Planets》2006,99(1-4):253-264

A future large-volume liquid scintillator detector such as the proposed 50 kton LENA (Low Energy Neutrino Astronomy) detector would provide a high-statistics measurement of terrestrial antineutrinos originating from β-decays of the uranium and thorium chains. Additionally, the neutron is scattered in the forward direction in the detection reaction . Henceforth, we investigate to what extent LENA can distinguish between certain geophysical models on the basis of the angular dependence of the geoneutrino flux. Our analysis is based on a Monte-Carlo simulation with different levels of light yield, considering an unloaded PXE scintillator. We find that LENA is able to detect deviations from isotropy of the geoneutrino flux with high significance. However, if only the directional information is used, the time required to distinguish between different geophysical models is of the order of severals decades. Nonetheless, a high-statistics measurement of the total geoneutrino flux and its spectrum still provides an extremely useful glance at the Earth’s interior.  相似文献   

Thermal properties of sediments in southern Israel: a comprehensive data set for heat flow and geothermal energy studies     

F. Schütz  B. Norden  A. Förster  DESIRE Group 《Basin Research》2012,24(3):357-376

To decipher the thermal structure of the sedimentary veneer in southern Israel, new values of thermal conductivity and porosity as well as of the radiogenic heat budget are provided. Thermal conductivity is measured for lithotypes and scaled up for geological formations. The new data are higher than most of the previously measured values, in particular for sandstones and siltstones, whose mean values are 5.0 and 2.9 W m^?1 K^?1. Mean values of the most abundant lithotypes, which are dolomites and limestones, are on the order of 4.1 and 2.7 W m^?1 K^?1, respectively. The total radiogenic heat production of the sedimentary cover varies slightly over southern Israel, due to variable lithology and total sediment thickness, yielding a maximum heat flow on the order of 4 mW m^?2 where the sedimentary section is thickest (ca. 7 km). A temperature prognosis was made by calculating temperature profiles to the top of the crystalline basement at five well locations applying the new thermal‐conductivity data set and three scenarios of surface heat flow (50, 55 and 60 mW m^?2). The calculated temperatures best match with measured drillstem‐test temperatures by using heat‐flow values close to the upper bound of range. Surface heat flow on the order of 55–60 mW m^?2 is supported by a reevaluation of an existing temperature log and the application of thermal conductivity from this study. The temperature prediction for southern Israel shows values of 100–120°C at 3500–4500 m depth, indicating a geothermal potential that can be used for heating as well as electricity production.  相似文献   

A Comparison Between Modelled and Measured Mixing-Layer Height Over Munich   总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1  

Aggeliki Dandou  Maria Tombrou  Klaus Schäfer  Stefan Emeis  Anna P. Protonotariou  Elissavet Bossioli  Nikolaos Soulakellis  Peter Suppan 《Boundary-Layer Meteorology》2009,131(3):425-440

An attempt is made to correlate the mixing heights, derived from ceilometer and Sodar measurements, to those simulated by different atmospheric boundary-layer parameterization schemes. The comparison is performed at two sites (one suburban and one rural) close to Munich, Germany for two spring and two winter days. It is found that, under convective conditions, the mixing height determined, by both Sodar and ceilometer, corresponds to the middle or the top of the entrainment zone, respectively, as calculated from the eddy-viscosity profiles. Under stable conditions, the measured mixing height is related to the height where eddy viscosities attain their minimum values (Sodar) or to the height of residual mechanical turbulence (ceilometer). During a foehn case with weak turbulence, the measured mixing height from both Sodar and ceilometer is better inferred by considering the eddy-viscosity profiles during daytime and the height of the low-level jet during nighttime.  相似文献   

Boundedness of Turbulent Temperature Probability Distributions,and their Relation to the Vertical Profile in the Convective Boundary Layer   总被引：3，自引：3，他引：0  

Alexander Graf  Dirk Schüttemeyer  Heiner Geiß  Axel Knaps  Michael Möllmann-Coers  Jan H. Schween  Stefan Kollet  Bruno Neininger  Michael Herbst  Harry Vereecken 《Boundary-Layer Meteorology》2010,134(3):459-486

Higher-order moments, minima and maxima of turbulent temperature and water vapour mixing ratio probability density functions measured with an eddy-covariance system near the ground were related to each other and to vertical boundary-layer profiles of the same scalars obtained through airborne soundings. The dependence of kurtosis on squared skewness showed a kurtosis intercept below the Gaussian expectation, suggesting a compression of the probability density function by the presence of natural boundaries. This hypothesis was corroborated by comparing actual minima and maxima of turbulent fluctuations to estimates obtained from the first four sample moments by fitting a four-parameter beta distribution. The most sharply defined boundaries were found for the minima of temperature datasets during the day, indicating that negative temperature fluctuations at the sensor are limited by the availability of lower temperatures in the boundary layer. By comparison to vertical profiles, it could be verified that the turbulent minimum of temperature near the ground is close to the minimum of potential temperature in the boundary layer. The turbulent minimum of water vapour mixing ratio was found to be equal to the mixing ratio at a height above the minimum of the temperature profile. This height roughly agrees with the top of the non-local unstable domain according to bulk Richardson number profiles. We conclude that turbulence statistics measured near the surface cannot be solely explained by local effects, but contain information about the whole boundary layer including the entrainment zone.  相似文献   

Ocean oxygen minima expansions and their biological impacts     

Lothar Stramma  Sunke Schmidtko  Lisa A. Levin  Gregory C. Johnson 《Deep Sea Research Part I: Oceanographic Research Papers》2010,57(4):587-595

Climate models with biogeochemical components predict declines in oceanic dissolved oxygen with global warming. In coastal regimes oxygen deficits represent acute ecosystem perturbations. Here, we estimate dissolved oxygen differences across the global tropical and subtropical oceans within the oxygen minimum zone (200–700-dbar depth) between 1960–1974 (an early period with reliable data) and 1990–2008 (a recent period capturing ocean response to planetary warming). In most regions of the tropical Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans the oxygen content in the 200–700-dbar layer has declined. Furthermore, at 200 dbar, the area with O₂ <70 μmol kg^?1, where some large mobile macro-organisms are unable to abide, has increased by 4.5 million km². The tropical low oxygen zones have expanded horizontally and vertically. Subsurface oxygen has decreased adjacent to most continental shelves. However, oxygen has increased in some regions in the subtropical gyres at the depths analyzed. According to literature discussed below, fishing pressure is strong in the open ocean, which may make it difficult to isolate the impact of declining oxygen on fisheries. At shallower depths we predict habitat compression will occur for hypoxia-intolerant taxa, with eventual loss of biodiversity. Should past trends in observed oxygen differences continue into the future, shifts in animal distributions and changes in ecosystem structure could accelerate.  相似文献   

Zum 70. Geburtstag von Wolfgang Fischer     

Lothar Tuscher 《Limnologica》2001,31(2):167

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Global environmental change: the northern North Atlantic     

P. Schäfer  J. Thiede  S. Gerlach  G. Graf  B. Zeitzschel 《International Journal of Earth Sciences》1995,84(1):3-10

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