Future regional projections of extreme temperatures in Europe: a nonstationary seasonal approach     

Maria Dolores Frías  Roberto Mínguez  Jose Manuel Gutiérrez  Fernando J. Méndez 《Climatic change》2012,113(2):371-392

This paper analyzes changes of maximum temperatures in Europe, which are evaluated using two state-of-the-art regional climate models from the EU ENSEMBLES project. Extremes are expressed in terms of return values using a time-dependent generalized extreme value (GEV) model fitted to monthly maxima. Unlike the standard GEV method, this approach allows analyzing return periods at different time scales (monthly, seasonal, annual, etc). The study focuses on the end of the 20th century (1961?C2000), used as a calibration/validation period, and assesses the changes projected for the period 2061?C2100 considering the A1B emission scenario. The performance of the regional models is evaluated for each season of the calibration period against the high-resolution gridded E-OBS dataset, showing a similar South-North gradient with larger values over the Mediterranean basin. The inter-RCM changes in the bias pattern with respect to the E-OBS are larger than the bias resulting from a change in the boundary conditions from ERA-40 to ECHAM5 20c3m. The maximum temperature response to increased green house gases, as projected by the A1B scenario, is consistent for both RCMs. Under that scenario, results indicate that the increments for extremes (e.g. 40-year return values) will be two or three times higher than those for the mean seasonal temperatures, particularly during Spring and Summer in Southern Europe.  相似文献   

Elevation gradients of European climate change in the regional climate model COSMO-CLM   总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1  

S. Kotlarski  T. Bosshard  D. Lüthi  P. Pall  C. Schär 《Climatic change》2012,112(2):189-215

A transient climate scenario experiment of the regional climate model COSMO-CLM is analyzed to assess the elevation dependency of 21st century European climate change. A focus is put on near-surface conditions. Model evaluation reveals that COSMO-CLM is able to approximately reproduce the observed altitudinal variation of 2 m temperature and precipitation in most regions and most seasons. The analysis of climate change signals suggests that 21st century climate change might considerably depend on elevation. Over most parts of Europe and in most seasons, near-surface warming significantly increases with elevation. This is consistent with the simulated changes of the free-tropospheric air temperature, but can only be fully explained by taking into account regional-scale processes involving the land surface. In winter and spring, the anomalous high-elevation warming is typically connected to a decrease in the number of snow days and the snow-albedo feedback. Further factors are changes in cloud cover and soil moisture and the proximity of low-elevation regions to the sea. The amplified warming at high elevations becomes apparent during the first half of the 21st century and results in a general decrease of near-surface lapse rates. It does not imply an early detection potential of large-scale temperature changes. For precipitation, only few consistent signals arise. In many regions precipitation changes show a pronounced elevation dependency but the details strongly depend on the season and the region under consideration. There is a tendency towards a larger relative decrease of summer precipitation at low elevations, but there are exceptions to this as well.  相似文献   

Preparing for climate change in Washington State     

Lara C. Whitely Binder  Jennifer Krencicki Barcelos  Derek B. Booth  Meriel Darzen  Marketa McGuire Elsner  Richard Fenske  Thomas F. Graham  Alan F. Hamlet  John Hodges-Howell  J. Elizabeth Jackson  Catherine Karr  Patrick W. Keys  Jeremy S. Littell  Nathan Mantua  Jennifer Marlow  Don McKenzie  Michael Robinson-Dorn  Eric A. Rosenberg  Claudio O. Stöckle  Julie A. Vano 《Climatic change》2010,102(1-2):351-376

Climate change is expected to bring potentially significant changes to Washington State’s natural, institutional, cultural, and economic landscape. Addressing climate change impacts will require a sustained commitment to integrating climate information into the day-to-day governance and management of infrastructure, programs, and services that may be affected by climate change. This paper discusses fundamental concepts for planning for climate change and identifies options for adapting to the climate impacts evaluated in the Washington Climate Change Impacts Assessment. Additionally, the paper highlights potential avenues for increasing flexibility in the policies and regulations used to govern human and natural systems in Washington.  相似文献   

The meteorological framework and the cultural memory of three severe winter-storms in early eighteenth-century Europe     

Christian Pfister  Emmanuel Garnier  Maria-João Alcoforado  Dennis Wheeler  Jürg Luterbacher  Maria Fatima Nunes  João Paulo Taborda 《Climatic change》2010,101(1-2):281-310

Three violent eighteenth-century storms that ravaged the North Sea area (1703), western central Europe (1739) and Portugal (1739) are investigated from the point of view of their meteorological setting, their socio-economic impact, and whether and by what means they secured an enduring place in the cultural memory. The evidence draws on individual narrative sources such as chronicles and poems, and institutional sources such as ship’s logbooks and state-organised ‘windthrow’ inventories of tree loss. Each of the three storms had socio-economic impacts that could be described as ‘war-like’ in the damage caused to buildings and the destruction of forests. The “Great Storm” of December 1703 jeopardized English naval supremacy in the War of the Spanish Succession by sinking a number of Royal Navy ships and taking the life of more than 8000 seamen. In January 1739 two similarly destructive storms swept over mainland Europe. The cultural memory of the three events here considered was however strikingly different. The sequence of storms in January 1739 though being the most protracted of the last centuries, and well-chroniceled, did not persist in the collective memories of those in France, Switzerland and elsewhere who experienced them. Likewise, the “Great Storm” was quickly forgotten on the continent, whereas its memory remained deeply rooted in England through the writings of Defoe (1704). In Portugal the 1739 storm won a lasting place in the country’s cultural memory owing to two poems that it inspired. Furthermore, it was recorded in the Kingdom’s official newspaper, in the astronomical prognoses and in written records of the Old Regime’s cultural elite.  相似文献   

The Effect of Source Distribution on Bulk Scalar Transfer between a Rough Land Surface and the Atmosphere     

Vanessa Haverd  Margi Böhm  Michael R. Raupach 《Boundary-Layer Meteorology》2010,135(3):351-368

We investigate the effect of source distribution on the bulk transfer of passive scalars between rough, vegetated land surfaces and the atmosphere, using data from a wind-tunnel experiment in which passive heat was emitted from both the underlying surface and canopy elements of a three-dimensional regular bluff-body array. The experimental results are compared with a simple one-dimensional, two-source model for scalar transfer. We find that: (1) the observed scalar transfer resistance across the boundary layer at the underlying surface is simply related to flat-plate theory by a constant of 0.62, despite the complexity of the turbulent flow within the wind-tunnel canopy; (2) one-dimensional gradient-transfer theory, even with extensions to account for the non-local nature of turbulent transfer within the canopy, does not describe the observed details of scalar concentration gradients in the highly three-dimensional canopy flow, but does provide a reasonable framework for bulk scalar transfer between the composite ground-canopy surface and the flow above the canopy; (3) the kB ⁻¹ parameter (which accounts for bulk excess resistance to scalar transfer over momentum transfer) is highly sensitive to scalar source partition between ground and canopy.  相似文献   

An investigation of the controls on Irish precipitation δ18O values on monthly and event timescales     

Lisa M. Baldini  Frank McDermott  James U. L. Baldini  Matthew J. Fischer  Martin Möllhoff 《Climate Dynamics》2010,35(6):977-993

This two-year study investigates the relative influence of meteorological variables (precipitation amount and temperature), atmospheric circulation, air mass history, and moisture source region on Irish precipitation oxygen isotopes (δ¹⁸O_p) on event and monthly timescales. Single predictor correlations reveal that on the event scale, 20% of δ¹⁸O_p variability is attributable to the amount effect and 7% to the temperature effect while on the monthly timescale the North Atlantic Oscillation accounts for up to 20% of δ¹⁸O_p variability and the amount and temperature effects are not significant. In comparison, multivariate linear regression reveals that the interaction of temperature and precipitation amount explains up to 40% of δ¹⁸O_p variance at event and monthly timescales. Five-day kinematic back trajectories suggest that the amount-weighted mean δ¹⁸O_p value of southerly- and northerly-derived events are lower by 2‰ relative to events derived from the west. Because air mass history and atmospheric circulation appear to influence δ¹⁸O_p in Ireland, Irish paleo-δ¹⁸O_p proxy records are best interpreted as reflecting a combination of parameters, not just paleotemperature or paleorainfall.  相似文献   

Quantifying Arctic contributions to climate predictability in a regional coupled ocean-ice-atmosphere model     

Ralf Döscher  Klaus Wyser  H. E. Markus Meier  Minwei Qian  René Redler 《Climate Dynamics》2010,34(7-8):1157-1176

The relative importance of regional processes inside the Arctic climate system and the large scale atmospheric circulation for Arctic interannual climate variability has been estimated with the help of a regional Arctic coupled ocean-ice-atmosphere model. The study focuses on sea ice and surface climate during the 1980s and 1990s. Simulations agree reasonably well with observations. Correlations between the winter North Atlantic Oscillation index and the summer Arctic sea ice thickness and summer sea ice extent are found. Spread of sea ice extent within an ensemble of model runs can be associated with a surface pressure gradient between the Nordic Seas and the Kara Sea. Trends in the sea ice thickness field are widely significant and can formally be attributed to large scale forcing outside the Arctic model domain. Concerning predictability, results indicate that the variability generated by the external forcing is more important in most regions than the internally generated variability. However, both are in the same order of magnitude. Local areas such as the Northern Greenland coast together with Fram Straits and parts of the Greenland Sea show a strong importance of internally generated variability, which is associated with wind direction variability due to interaction with atmospheric dynamics on the Greenland ice sheet. High predictability of sea ice extent is supported by north-easterly winds from the Arctic Ocean to Scandinavia.  相似文献   

Future change of climate in South America in the late twenty-first century: intercomparison of scenarios from three regional climate models   总被引：2，自引：1，他引：1  

Jose A. Marengo  Tercio Ambrizzi  Rosmeri P. da Rocha  Lincoln M. Alves  Santiago V. Cuadra  Maria C. Valverde  Roger R. Torres  Daniel C. Santos  Simone E. T. Ferraz 《Climate Dynamics》2010,35(6):1073-1097

Regional climate change projections for the last half of the twenty-first century have been produced for South America, as part of the CREAS (Cenarios REgionalizados de Clima Futuro da America do Sul) regional project. Three regional climate models RCMs (Eta CCS, RegCM3 and HadRM3P) were nested within the HadAM3P global model. The simulations cover a 30-year period representing present climate (1961–1990) and projections for the IPCC A2 high emission scenario for 2071–2100. The focus was on the changes in the mean circulation and surface variables, in particular, surface air temperature and precipitation. There is a consistent pattern of changes in circulation, rainfall and temperatures as depicted by the three models. The HadRM3P shows intensification and a more southward position of the subtropical Pacific high, while a pattern of intensification/weakening during summer/winter is projected by the Eta CCS/RegCM3. There is a tendency for a weakening of the subtropical westerly jet from the Eta CCS and HadRM3P, consistent with other studies. There are indications that regions such of Northeast Brazil and central-eastern and southern Amazonia may experience rainfall deficiency in the future, while the Northwest coast of Peru-Ecuador and northern Argentina may experience rainfall excesses in a warmer future, and these changes may vary with the seasons. The three models show warming in the A2 scenario stronger in the tropical region, especially in the 5°N–15°S band, both in summer and especially in winter, reaching up to 6–8°C warmer than in the present. In southern South America, the warming in summer varies between 2 and 4°C and in winter between 3 and 5°C in the same region from the 3 models. These changes are consistent with changes in low level circulation from the models, and they are comparable with changes in rainfall and temperature extremes reported elsewhere. In summary, some aspects of projected future climate change are quite robust across this set of model runs for some regions, as the Northwest coast of Peru-Ecuador, northern Argentina, Eastern Amazonia and Northeast Brazil, whereas for other regions they are less robust as in Pantanal region of West Central and southeastern Brazil.  相似文献   

Weighting of model results for improving best estimates of climate change   总被引：1，自引：1，他引：0  

Jouni Räisänen  Leena Ruokolainen  Jussi Ylhäisi 《Climate Dynamics》2010,35(2-3):407-422

Climate projections from multi-model ensembles are commonly represented by the multi-model mean (MMM) climate change. As an alternative, various subjectively formulated schemes for performance-based weighting of models have been proposed. Here, a more objective framework for model weighting is developed. A key ingredient of this scheme is a calibration step quantifying the relationship between intermodel similarity in observable climate and intermodel similarity in simulated climate change. Models that simulate the observable climate better are only given higher weight where and when such an intermodel relationship is found, and the difference in weight between better and worse performing models increases with the strength of this relationship. The method is applied to projections of temperature change from the Third Coupled Model Intercomparison Project. First, cross-validation is used to estimate the potential of the method to improve the accuracy of climate change estimates and to search for suitable predictor variables. The decrease in cross-validation error allowed by the weighting is relatively modest but not negligible, and it could potentially be increased if better predictor variables were found. Second, observations are used to weight the models, to study the differences between the weighted mean and MMM estimates of twenty-first century temperature change and the sensitivity of these differences to the predictor variables and observational data sets used.  相似文献   

Unpacking governance: Building adaptive capacity to climate change of river basins in Brazil   总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1  

Nathan L. Engle  Maria Carmen Lemos 《Global Environmental Change》2010,20(1):4-13

Governance and institutions are critical determinants of adaptive capacity and resilience. Yet the make-up and relationships between governance components and mechanisms that may or may not contribute to adaptive capacity remain relatively unexplored empirically. This paper builds on previous research focusing on integrated water resources management in Brazil to ‘unpack’ water governance mechanisms that may shape the adaptive capacity of water systems to climatic change. We construct a river basin index to characterize governance approaches in 18 Brazilian river basins, apply a reliability test to assess the validity of these governance indicators, and use in-depth qualitative data collected in a subsample of the basins to explore the relationship between the governance indicators and adaptive capacity. The analysis suggests a positive relationship between integrated water governance mechanisms and adaptive capacity. In addition, we carry out a cluster analysis to group the basins into types of governance approaches and further unveil potential relationships between the governance variables and overall adaptive capacities. The cluster analysis indicates that tensions and tradeoffs may exist between some of the variables, especially with equality of decision making and knowledge availability; a finding that has implications for decision makers aiming to build adaptive capacity and resilience through governance and institutional means.  相似文献