Identification of the distinctive circulation patterns of storminess on the Atlantic margin of Europe forms the main objective of this study; dealing with storm frequency, intensity and tracking. The climatology of the extratropical cyclones that affect this region has been examined for the period 1940–1998. Coastal meteorological data from Ireland to Spain have been linked to the cyclone history for the North Atlantic in the analysis of storm records for European coasts. The study examines the evolution in the occurrence of storms since the 1940s and also their relationship with the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). Results indicate a seasonal shift in the wind climate, with regionally more severe winters and calmer summers established. This pattern appears to be linked to a northward displacement in the main North Atlantic cyclone track.
An experiment with the ECHAM4 A-GCM at high resolution (T106) has also been used to model the effect of a greenhouse gases induced warming climate on the climatology of coastal storms in the region. The experiment consists of (1), a 30-year control time-slice representing present-day equivalent CO2 concentrations and (2), a 30-year perturbed period corresponding to a time when the radiative forcing has doubled in terms of equivalent CO2 concentrations. The boundary conditions have been obtained from an atmosphere-ocean coupled OA-GCM simulation at low horizontal resolution. An algorithm was developed to allow the identification of individual cyclone movements in selected coastal zones. For most of the northern part of the study region, covering Ireland and Scotland, results describe the establishment by ca. 2060 of a tendency for fewer but more intense storms.
The impacts of these changes in storminess for the vulnerability of European Atlantic coasts are considered. For low-lying, exposed and ‘soft’ sedimentary coasts, as in Ireland, these changes in storminess are likely to result in significant localised increases in coastal erosion. 相似文献
A series of over 6 000 research-trawl samples collected along the west and south coasts of South Africa between 1987 and 2014 were analysed for the presence and biomass of two parapagurid hermit crabs, Sympagurus dimorphus and Parapagurus bouvieri. The percentage of trawls that landed S. dimorphus and P. bouvieri and the mean caught biomass were higher on the west than on the south coast for both the more-abundant S. dimorphus (30.59 vs 5.81% success and 287.88 vs 31.37 kg km–2, respectively) and for the less-abundant P. bouvieri (13.76 vs 3.58% success and 38.56 vs 16.32 kg km–2, respectively). Very few parapagurids were caught shallower than 150 m; thereafter, the proportion of trawls containing hermit crabs increased, peaking over the depth range 201–250 m for S. dimorphus (54%) and 401–450 m for P. bouvieri (51%), and declining steadily thereafter. On the west coast, the relative caught biomass of S. dimorphus increased significantly from north to south, but there was no apparent latitudinal trend in relative biomass for P. bouvieri. Similarly, there was a significant decline in caught biomass of S. dimorphus with increasing longitude along the south coast, but no apparent trend for P. bouvieri. Although this represents by far the most comprehensive global analyses of distribution and abundance patterns for parapagurids to date, extremely little remains known about the biology and ecological relationships of these species, or indeed of other members of the group. 相似文献
Tide gauges distributed all over the world provide valuable information for monitoring mean sea level changes. The statistical models used in estimating sea level change from the tide gauge data assume implicitly that the random model components are stationary in variance. We show that for a large number of global tide gauge data this is not the case for the seasonal part using a variate-differencing algorithm. This finding is important for assessing the reliability of the present estimates of mean sea level changes because nonstationarity of the data may have marked impact on the sea level rate estimates, especially, for the data from short records. 相似文献
In the central part of the East China Sea, the activity of CO2 in the surface water and total carbonate, pH and alkalinity in the water column were determined in winter and autumn of 1993.
The activity of CO2 in the continental shelf water was about 50 ppm lower than that of surface air. This decrease corresponds to the absorption
of about 40 gC/m2/yr of atmospheric CO2 in the coastal zone or 1 GtC/yr in the global continental shelf, if this rate is applicable to entire coastal seas. The normalized
total carbonate contents were higher in the water near the coast and near the bottom. This increase toward the bottom may
be due to the organic matter deposited on the bottom. This conclusion is supported by the distribution of pH. The normalized
alkalinity distribution also showed higher values in the near-coast water, but in the surface water, indicating the supply
of bicarbonate from river water. The residence time of the East China Sea water, including the Yellow Sea water, has been
calculated to be about 0.8 yr from the excess alkalinity and the alkalinity input. Using this residence time and the excess
carbonate, we can estimate that the amount of dissolved carbonate transported from the coastal zone to the oceanic basin is
about 70 gC/m2/yr or 2 GtC/yr/area-of-global-continental-shelf. This also means that the rivers transport carbon to the oceans at a rate
of 30 gC/m2/yr of the coastal sea or 0.8 GtC/yr/ area-of-global shelf, the carbon consisting of dissolved inorganic carbonate and terrestrial
organic carbon decomposed on the continental shelf. 相似文献