Glacier recession and human vulnerability in the Yanamarey watershed of the Cordillera Blanca, Peru   总被引：2，自引：0，他引：2  

Jeffrey T. Bury  Bryan G. Mark  Jeffrey M. McKenzie  Adam French  Michel Baraer  Kyung In Huh  Marco Alfonso Zapata Luyo  Ricardo Jes��s G��mez L��pez 《Climatic change》2011,105(1-2):179-206

Glaciers in the Cordillera Blanca, Peru, are undergoing rapid retreat, in large part due to climate change. These changes are significantly altering water availability in the region and pose critical risks to local populations that are highly dependent on these resources for livelihoods. We examine these issues through an interdisciplinary and linked evaluation of hydrological change and livelihood vulnerability in the Yanamarey watershed. Physical observations of the Yanamarey glacier show acceleration in frontal retreat at a rate of 8 m decade^???1 since 1970, accompanied by total volume loss on the order of 0.022 km³. Hydrological and hydrochemical analyses document a possible transformation of stream flow over the past decade as the seasonal storage capacity of the glacier has degraded. Recent stream discharge measurements from the proglacial lake below the glacier are more coincident with the highly variable seasonal precipitation than they were during the 1998?C1999 hydrological year. Local household perceptions of glacier recession and seasonal hydrological variability agree with this trend, which is increasing human vulnerability in the watershed. Household case-study survey results demonstrate that shifting water resources, increasing weather extremes and climate-related threats to tourism are all new vectors of vulnerability for household livelihoods.  相似文献   

Synoptic conditions of extreme windstorms over Switzerland in a changing climate     

St��phane Goyette 《Climate Dynamics》2011,36(5-6):845-866

This paper reports on a method using composites for studying synoptic conditions of a series of windstorm events selected on the basis of maximum wind speeds in Switzerland. The composite storm-averaged conditions indicate how flow fields, as well as related surface conditions, are organised so as to produce high wind speeds near the surface. On average, high winds in Switzerland, mainly generated by transient synoptic-scale eddies, are characterised by a minimum in the mean sea level pressure field over southern Norway, anticyclonic conditions south of 35°N and a steep pressure gradient over continental western Europe. The geopotential aloft has a predominant zonal structure, producing high winds between 45°N and 50°N over the eastern Atlantic and further inland; the jet stream has its maximum speed at 50°N over the Celtic Sea and Brittany at 250?hPa. Close to the surface, large temperature contrasts between the warm waters of the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea and the cooler continent are diagnosed. The results thus obtained differ to those produced by other methods based on the analysis of deep cyclones or of strong vorticity in the northern North Atlantic Ocean basin. Differences of the composite mean synoptic conditions for current (1961?C1990) and future climate (2071?C2100) as simulated by the Global Climate Model HadAM3H in the context of the EU PRUDENCE project indicate that windstorms in a warmer world are generated by a subtle modification of the atmospheric baroclinicity, especially over the ocean and where greater ocean-continent temperature contrasts are simulated during winters. However, there are no signs of reduced storm activity as the climate warms by the end of the twenty-first century.  相似文献   

Aridity changes in the Temperate-Mediterranean transition of the Andes since ad 1346 reconstructed from tree-rings     

Duncan A. Christie  Jos�� A. Boninsegna  Malcolm K. Cleaveland  Antonio Lara  Carlos Le Quesne  Mariano S. Morales  Manfred Mudelsee  David W. Stahle  Ricardo Villalba 《Climate Dynamics》2011,36(7-8):1505-1521

The Andes Cordillera acts as regional ??Water Towers?? for several countries and encompasses a wide range of ecosystems and climates. Several hydroclimatic changes have been described for portions of the Andes during recent years, including glacier retreat, negative precipitation trends, an elevation rise in the 0° isotherm, and changes in regional streamflow regimes. The Temperate-Mediterranean transition (TMT) zone of the Andes (35.5°?C39.5°S) is particularly at risk to climate change because it is a biodiversity hotspot with heavy human population pressure on water resources. In this paper we utilize a new tree-ring network of Austrocedrus chilensis to reconstruct past variations in regional moisture in the TMT of the Andes by means of the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI). The reconstruction covers the past 657?years and captures interannual to decadal scales of variability in late spring?Cearly summer PDSI. These changes are related to the north?Csouth oscillations in moisture conditions between the Mediterranean and Temperate climates of the Andes as a consequence of the latitudinal position of the storm tracks forced by large-scale circulation modes. Kernel estimation of occurrence rates reveals an unprecedented increment of severe and extreme drought events during the last century in the context of the previous six centuries. Moisture conditions in our study region are linked to tropical and high-latitude ocean-atmospheric forcing, with PDSI positively related to Ni?o-3.4 SST during spring and strongly negatively correlated with the Antarctic Oscillation (AAO) during summer. Geopotential anomaly maps at 500-hPa show that extreme dry years are tightly associated with negative height anomalies in the Ross?CAmundsen Seas, in concordance with the strong negative relationship between PDSI and AAO. The twentieth century increase in extreme drought events in the TMT may not be related to ENSO but to the positive AAO trend during late-spring and summer resulting from a gradual poleward shift of the mid-latitude storm tracks. This first PDSI reconstruction for South America demonstrates the highly significant hindcast skill of A. chilensis as an aridity proxy.  相似文献   

Influence of the orographic roughness of glacier valleys across the Transantarctic Mountains in an atmospheric regional model     

Nicolas C. Jourdain  Hubert Gall��e 《Climate Dynamics》2011,36(5-6):1067-1081

Glacier valleys across the Transantarctic Mountains are not properly taken into account in climate models, because of their coarse resolution. Nonetheless, glacier valleys control katabatic winds in this region, and the latter are thought to affect the climate of the Ross Sea sector, frsater formation to snow mass balance. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of the production of turbulent kinetic energy by the subgrid-scale orography in the Transantarctic Mountains using a 20-km atmospheric regional model. A classical orographic roughness length parametrization is modified to produce either smooth or rough valleys. A one-year simulation shows that katabatic winds in the Transantarctic Mountains are strongly improved using smooth valleys rather than rough valleys. Pressure and temperature fields are affected by the representation of the orographic roughness, specifically in the Transantarctic Mountains and over the Ross Ice Shelf. A smooth representation of escarpment regions shows better agreement with automatic weather station observations than a rough representation. This work stresses the need to improve the representation of subgrid-scale orography to simulate realistic katabatic flows. This paper also provides a way of improving surface winds in an atmospheric model without increasing its resolution.  相似文献   

Developing coastal adaptation to climate change in the New York City infrastructure-shed: process, approach, tools, and strategies   总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1  

Cynthia Rosenzweig  William D. Solecki  Reginald Blake  Malcolm Bowman  Craig Faris  Vivien Gornitz  Radley Horton  Klaus Jacob  Alice LeBlanc  Robin Leichenko  Megan Linkin  David Major  Megan O��Grady  Lesley Patrick  Edna Sussman  Gary Yohe  Rae Zimmerman 《Climatic change》2011,106(1):93-127

While current rates of sea level rise and associated coastal flooding in the New York City region appear to be manageable by stakeholders responsible for communications, energy, transportation, and water infrastructure, projections for sea level rise and associated flooding in the future, especially those associated with rapid icemelt of the Greenland and West Antarctic Icesheets, may be outside the range of current capacity because extreme events might cause flooding beyond today??s planning and preparedness regimes. This paper describes the comprehensive process, approach, and tools for adaptation developed by the New York City Panel on Climate Change (NPCC) in conjunction with the region??s stakeholders who manage its critical infrastructure, much of which lies near the coast. It presents the adaptation framework and the sea-level rise and storm projections related to coastal risks developed through the stakeholder process. Climate change adaptation planning in New York City is characterized by a multi-jurisdictional stakeholder?Cscientist process, state-of-the-art scientific projections and mapping, and development of adaptation strategies based on a risk-management approach.  相似文献   

Detecting abrupt climate changes on different time scales     

Istv��n Matyasovszky 《Theoretical and Applied Climatology》2011,105(3-4):445-454

Two concepts are introduced for detecting abrupt climate changes. In the first case, the sampling frequency of climate data is high as compared to the frequency of climate events examined. The method is based on a separation of trend and noise in the data and is applicable to any dataset that satisfies some mild smoothness and statistical dependence conditions for the trend and the noise, respectively. We say that an abrupt change occurs when the first derivative of the trend function has a discontinuity and the task is to identify such points. The technique is applied to Northern Hemisphere temperature data from 1850 to 2009, Northern Hemisphere temperature data from proxy data, a.d. 200?C1995 and Holocene ??¹⁸O values going back to 11,700 years BP. Several abrupt changes are detected that are, among other things, beneficial for determining the Medieval Warm Period, Little Ice Age and Holocene Climate Optimum. In the second case, the sampling frequency is low relative to the frequency of climate events studied. A typical example includes Dansgaard?COeschger events. The methodology used here is based on a refinement of autoregressive conditional heteroscedastic models. The key element of this approach is the volatility that characterises the time-varying variance, and abrupt changes are defined by high volatilities. The technique applied to ??¹⁸O values going back to 122,950 years BP is suitable for identifying DO events. These two approaches for the two cases are closely related despite the fact that at first glance, they seem quite different.  相似文献   

Comparison of models calculating the sky view factor used for urban climate investigations     

Martin H?mmerle  Tam��s G��l  J��nos Unger  Andreas Matzarakis 《Theoretical and Applied Climatology》2011,105(3-4):521-527

The sky view factor (SVF) describes the surface geometry and is a commonly used and important measure in urban climate investigations whose aim is the exploration of effects of a complex urban surface on climatological processes in built-up areas. A selection of methods and models for calculating the SVF was compared. For this purpose, fish eye images were taken at several locations in the city of Szeged, southern Hungary. The fish eye images equidistantly follow linear transects to cover a range of SVF values and to analyze the reaction of the methods to a continuously changing environment. The fish eye pictures were evaluated by three methods: the method according to Steyn (Atmos-Ocean 18(3):245?C258, 1980) implemented in a GIS-Script, the ??Edit free sky view factor?? tool of the RayMan model and BMSkyView. The SVF values at the coordinates of the fish eye pictures were calculated with three numerical models (SkyHelios, ArcView SVF extension, and SOLWEIG) with a 3D building data base as input. After comparing the results of the first run, a deviation occurs. The deviation disappears after implementing an option to include a weighting factor in some of the models.  相似文献   

Thermally induced wind patterns in the Sahelian city of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso     

Jenny Lind��n  Bj?rn Holmer 《Theoretical and Applied Climatology》2011,105(1-2):229-241

The urban surface wind field in the dry-tropical city of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso was studied based on data collected at one urban and one suburban station during early dry season. An intra-urban thermal breeze, creating almost opposite wind directions at the two sites, was found during nights with high atmospheric stability. The high atmospheric stability suggests a decoupling of the surface wind layer from the layer above, allowing the wind system to develop due to the strong intra-urban temperature gradients in the city. Frequent temporary breakdowns of the thermal wind system were noticed, generally generating a turn in wind direction towards that of the regional wind, thus indicating a re-coupling with a stronger wind flow in the wind layer above.  相似文献   

Sensitivity of ENSO characteristics to a new interactive flux correction scheme in a coupled GCM     

J��rgen Kr?ger  Fred Kucharski 《Climate Dynamics》2011,36(1-2):119-137

A fast coupled global climate model (CGCM) is used to study the sensitivity of El Ni?o Southern Oscillation (ENSO) characteristics to a new interactive flux correction scheme. With no flux correction applied our CGCM reveals typical bias in the background state: for instance, the cold tongue in the tropical east Pacific becomes too cold, thus degrading atmospheric sensitivity to variations of sea surface temperature (SST). Sufficient atmospheric sensitivity is essential to ENSO. Our adjustment scheme aims to sustain atmospheric sensitivity by counteracting the SST drift in the model. With reduced bias in the forcing of the atmosphere, the CGCM displays ENSO-type variability that otherwise is absent. The adjustment approach employs a one-way anomaly coupling from the ocean to the atmosphere: heat fluxes seen by the ocean are based on full SST, while heat fluxes seen by the atmosphere are based on anomalies of SST. The latter requires knowledge of the model??s climatological SST field, which is accumulated interactively in the spin-up phase (??training??). Applying the flux correction already during the training period (by utilizing the evolving SST climatology) is necessary for efficiently reducing the bias. The combination of corrected fluxes seen by the atmosphere and uncorrected fluxes seen by the ocean implies a restoring mechanism that counteracts the bias and allows for long stable integrations in our CGCM. A suite of sensitivity runs with varying training periods is utilized to study the effect of different levels of bias in the background state on important ENSO properties. Increased duration of training amplifies the coupled sensitivity in our model and leads to stronger amplitudes and longer periods of the Nino3.4 index, increased emphasis of warm events that is reflected in enhanced skewness, and more pronounced teleconnections in the Pacific. Furthermore, with longer training durations we observe a mode switch of ENSO in our model that closely resembles the observed mode switch related to the mid-1970s ??climate shift??.  相似文献   

Quantifying internal variability in a regional climate model: a case study for Southern Africa     

Julien Cr��tat  Cl��mence Macron  Benjamin Pohl  Yves Richard 《Climate Dynamics》2011,37(7-8):1335-1356

This study aims at presenting various methodologies to separate the reproducible and irreproducible components of seasonal and intraseasonal climate variability simulated by a regional climate model over Southern Africa (south of 15°S), during an austral summer rainy season representative of the climatology. To that end, a 30-member ensemble simulation is performed using WRF laterally forced by the ERA40 reanalyses. Retained metrics include the analysis of weather regimes, signal-to-noise ratio, inter-member standard deviation and coefficient of variation. At the seasonal timescale, simulated rainfall amounts generally show a strong reproducibility, except in the subtropics and over the southern part of the Mozambique Channel. There, the number of rainy days is roughly similar in all members, while their average intensity varies extensively. At the intraseasonal timescale, the chronology of weather regimes, derived from the 500?hPa geopotential height, is highly reproducible. Rainfall variability is much less reproducible, especially in the central parts of the domain and near its outflow boundaries. Analysis of a South African regional index nonetheless indicates that both wet and dry spells tend to be accurately simulated and occur in phase in most members, demonstrating that they are embedded in large-scale variability patterns. Internal variability is lastly related to the lateral forcings along the domain boundaries. An objective classification of inflow/outflow mass fluxes allows identification of the recurrent synoptic configurations that favor strong or weak regional reproducibility. The main uncertainties concern the basic morphological features of rain-bearing systems (i.e., their spatial extension, location and propagation speed). Consequences for tropical-temperate interactions are then discussed.  相似文献