华北地区夏季一次致雹强风暴的分析

文章对2007年7月9日下午华北中部地区一次区域性强对流性天气过程中风暴单体的短时临近预报方法进行研究。对实际探测资料和数值模式产品的分析发现以下特点：高空槽将由后倾槽转为前倾槽、底层不稳定层结会明显加大,在地面冷锋东移冲击下在沿锋面伸展的露点锋区内可能将有强雷暴系统发展;全球谱模式T213、中尺度MM5模式的产品对区域性对流天气发生、影响的区域有3h以上的预报时效,具有一定的区域预报能力,但落点预报能力明显有限。对多普勒雷达产品的分析表明：多普勒雷达产品对灾害性天气的落点、影响区域具有30分钟以上的预测时效,通过基本反射率、相对风暴速度等产品的特征判断一个对流风暴具有类似强降水超级单体特征,可据此预报该雷暴中心经过区域可能有冰雹、大风等灾害性天气;风廓线产品在3-7km高度层内垂直风切变矢量具有顺时针旋转特点,有利于风暴发展成强风暴;风暴追踪信息基本能反映风暴移动路径的变化,其路径预报时效最长达1h,在雷暴初期预报准确率随雷暴数目增多、移动异向性明显而越低,在雷暴中后期则明显提高并对临近预报具有明显的指示性。     

天津春季沙尘天气日数变化规律及小波变换特征

根据沙尘天气标准确定了1961～2003年天津逐年的春季沙尘天气日数且形成序列，分析了春季沙尘天气的演变规律，并应用小波分析方法分析了其多时间尺度的变化特征。结果表明：天津地区春季的沙尘天气以每10年-5.9天的变化速率呈显著的下降趋势；20世纪60-70年代处于沙尘多发期，90年代最少；春季沙尘天气具有40年、4～6年和16年的明显周期。t检验结果显示，气候突变大约发生在1980年前后。     

The first meteorological measurements in the Iberian Peninsula: evaluating the storm of November 1724

Early instrumental series can play a key role in the study of recent climate change or assessments of specific extreme events. Unfortunately in the Iberian Peninsula few series are available relative to the 18th century. In this article we retrieved and make available the first daily instrumental series obtained in Iberia. The observations were made in Lisbon between 1 November 1724 and 11 January 1725 by Diogo Nunes Ribeiro. While pressure and temperature values were registered twice a day, the remaining variables, i.e. the state of the sky, wind direction and force, have only one value per day. Despite the relatively short period covered by this series, we were very fortunate to discover that it helps to characterize one of the strongest storms that struck Lisbon since the early 17th century. In particular, the data provide evidence for an outstanding pressure drop of 28.61 hPa from 1010.76 hPa on the 18 November to just 982.15 hPa on the 19 November. Using recently digitized pressure data for Lisbon since 1863, we can state that this 24 h decrease of surface pressure has been surpassed only once on the 28 November 1879. Moreover, the extreme winds associated with this “bomb” affected severely the entire Lisbon area as well as large sections of central and northern Portugal during the afternoon of 19 November and caused important damage in the eastern coast of Madeira the night before (18 November). This storm resembles the rare tropical storms that have reached the Iberian Peninsula as a tropical storm (Vince 2005) or the low intense hurricane that occurred in 1842.     

Scenario archetypes reveal risks and opportunities for global mountain futures

Mountain social-ecological systems (MtSES) are transforming rapidly due to changes in multiple environmental and socioeconomic drivers. However, the complexity and diversity of MtSES present challenges for local communities, researchers and decision makers seeking to anticipate change and promote action towards sustainable MtSES. Participatory scenario planning can reveal potential futures and their interacting dynamics, while archetype analysis aggregates insights from site-based scenarios. We combined a systematic review of the global MtSES participatory scenarios literature and archetype analysis to identify emergent MtSES archetypal configurations. An initial sample of 1983 rendered 42 articles that contained 142 scenarios within which were 852 ‘futures states’. From these future states within the scenarios, we identified 59 desirable and undesirable futures that were common across studies. These ‘common futures’ were grouped into four clusters that correlated significantly with three social-ecological factors (GDP per capita, income inequality, and mean annual temperature). Using these clusters and their associated significant factors, we derived four MtSES scenario archetypal configurations characterized by similar key adaptation strategies, assumptions, risks, and uncertainties. We called these archetypes: (1) “revitalization through effective institutions and tourism”; (2) “local innovations in smallholder farming and forestry”; (3) “upland depopulation and increased risk of hazards”; and (4) “regulated economic and ecological prosperity”. Results indicate risks to be mitigated, including biodiversity loss, ecosystem degradation, cultural heritage change, loss of connection to the land, weak leadership, market collapse, upland depopulation, increased landslides, avalanches, mudflows and rock falls, as well as climate variability and change. Transformative opportunities lie in adaptive biodiversity conservation, income diversification, adaptation to market fluxes, improving transport and irrigation infrastructure, high quality tourism and preserving traditional knowledge. Despite the uncertainties arising from global environmental changes, these archetypes support better targeting of evidence-informed actions across scales and sectors in MtSES.     

Temporal and spatial distributions of wind storm damages in the United States

High wind caused catastrophes, storms causing property losses >$1 million, during 1952–2006 averaged 3.1 events per year in the U.S. The average loss per event was $90 million, and the annual average loss was $354 million. High wind catastrophes were most frequent in the Northeast, Central, and West Coast areas. Storm losses on the West Coast were the nation’s highest, averaging $115 million per event. High wind losses are the nation’s only form of severe weather that maximizes on the West Coast. High wind catastrophes were most frequent in winter, and were infrequent in the late spring and early fall seasons. Loss areas were frequently confined to one state. Losses in the western U.S. and nationally have increased during the 1952–2006 period, both with statistically significant upward trends.     

Preliminary evaluation of the benefits of a participatory regional integrated assessment software

This paper provides a preliminary evaluation of the Regional Impact Simulator—a user-friendly, PC-based tool designed with stakeholders for stakeholders wishing to assess the effects of climate and/or socio-economic change on the important sectors and resources in the UK at a regional scale, in particular, impacts to coastal and river flooding, agriculture, water resources and biodiversity. While integrated assessments are relatively new, simulators that help stakeholders visualize and think about potential changes in the environment or society at a regional scale are very new. An earlier project, RegIS1, was the first local/regional integrated assessment conducted in the UK. It developed a method for engaging stakeholders in a “stakeholder-led” integrated assessment process. The RegIS2 project developed a simulation tool and followed the same “stakeholder-led” principle in designing and testing the tool. The role of stakeholders in informing the design of the simulator is discussed here, as is a stakeholder evaluation survey on its success in meeting its objectives. We also reflect on the need and desire of stakeholders to have such a tool. And because the Steering Committee – made up of stakeholders – was so invaluable in ensuring the usefulness of research outputs, a series of Steering Committee ‘rules’ is proposed intending to maximise the benefits of this valuable resource. Finally, we outline how our experience with the ‘Regional Impact Simulator’ serves as a test-bed for further studies of stakeholder-led, regional, integrated assessment.     

Quasi-stationarity of centennial Northern Hemisphere midlatitude winter storm tracks

The winter storm activity on the Northern Hemisphere during the last one thousand years in a global climate simulation was analyzed by determining all midlatitude storms and their tracks, then consecutively clustering them for hundred years’ segments. Storm track clusters with longest lifetime and largest deepening rates are found over the oceans. The numbers of extratropical winter storms exhibit notable yearly variability but hardly any variability on centennial time scales. The clusters of these storm tracks also show only small differences between the centuries. The numbers of members in neighboring oceanic clusters are negatively correlated. A linear relationship was found between the numbers of members per storm track clusters over the Pacific or Atlantic Ocean and seasonal mean atmospheric circulation patterns by a canonical correlation analysis.     

Societies and nature in the Sahel: ecological diversity and social dynamics

This paper, based on the results of a comprehensive interdisciplinary research programme focused on five countries of the Western Sahel, suggests a framework for analysing the complex and constantly changing dynamics of the relations that Sahelian societies maintain with their environment. Firstly, tools for understanding local variability are required. Demographic variables and the diversity of the modes of land use are combined to show that the type and intensity of exploitation of natural resources varies dramatically from one locality to another. There are significant differences between Sahelian social systems and cultures, and these influence their relations with the ‘nature’ they exploit and transform. Secondly, understanding social, economical and technical changes in the Sahel requires that we recognise that powerful and conflicting processes of transformation are taking place (in contrast to the image of “tradition” widely associated with Sahelian societies). These changes are found to be the result of an interaction between the state, rural producers, urban speculators, international development agencies, and other actors. Practical lessons emerge from the analysis. Access and negotiation over natural resources must be facilitated between many actors who compete for them, and local social and environmental problems must be seen in the context of broader patterns of influence and change. The State will retain its importance in the region. “Participation” in development must not only involve local “populations”, but also the “developers” of all types, in contributing to and understanding the human dimensions of environmental change in the Sahel.     

威海市冰雹天气气候特征

利用威海市1960年1月－1997年12月的的观测资料和灾情报告以及1986年1月－1995年12月的欧亚高空探测资料，分析了威海市冰雹的时空分布特征和天气气候特征。结果表明：威海市冰雹灾害的季节变化存在明显的双峰现象，春末夏初（5－6月）和夏末秋初（9－10月）次数最多，夏季较少。地理分布是半岛内陆多于沿海，西部多于东部。造成威海市冰雹的天气形势可分为低涡型、低槽型、西北气流小槽型和横槽型，其中以横槽型最少。各型冰雹天气中，山东半岛东部边界层有较强的暖湿平流，对流层中下部层结分布不稳定，湿区呈块状分布，范围较小，对流层中层是较强的干冷平流，对流层中上部是高空急流出口左侧的辐散区。     

Public microblogging on climate change: One year of Twitter worldwide

Public perceptions of climate change are traditionally measured through surveys. The exploding popularity of social networks, however, presents a new opportunity to research the spatiotemporal pattern of public discourse in relation to natural and/or socio-economic events. Among the social networks, Twitter is one of the largest microblogging services. The architecture of Twitter makes the question “what's happening?” the cornerstone of information exchange. This inspired the notion of using Twitter users as distributed sensors, which has been successfully employed in both the natural and social sciences. In 2012 and 2013, we collected 1.8 million tweets on “climate change” and “global warming” in five major languages (English, German, Russian, Portuguese, and Spanish). We discuss the geography of tweeting, weekly and daily patterns, major news events that affected tweeting on climate change, changes in the central topics of discussion over time, the most authoritative traditional media, blogging, and the most authoritative organizational sources of information on climate change referenced by Twitter users in different countries. We anticipate that social network mining will become a major source of data in the public discourse on climate change.     

Future climate resources for tourism in Europe based on the daily Tourism Climatic Index

Climate is an important resource for many types of tourism. One of several metrics for the suitability of climate for sightseeing is Mieczkowski’s “Tourism Climatic Index” (TCI), which summarizes and combines seven climate variables. By means of the TCI, we analyse the present climate resources for tourism in Europe and projected changes under future climate change. We use daily data from five regional climate models and compare the reference period 1961–1990 to the A2 scenario in 2071–2100. A comparison of the TCI based on reanalysis data and model simulations for the reference period shows that current regional climate models capture the important climatic patterns. Currently, climate resources are best in Southern Europe and deteriorate with increasing latitude and altitude. With climate change the latitudinal band of favourable climate is projected to shift northward improving climate resources in Northern and Central Europe in most seasons. Southern Europe’s suitability for sightseeing tourism drops strikingly in the summer holiday months but is partially compensated by considerable improvements between October and April.     

Not all low-carbon energy pathways are environmentally “no-regrets” options

Energy system pathways which are projected to deliver minimum possible deployment cost, combined with low Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, are usually considered as ‘no-regrets’ options. However, the question remains whether such energy pathways present ‘no-regrets’ when also considering the wider environmental resource impacts, in particular those on land and water resources. This paper aims to determine whether the energy pathways of the UK’s Carbon Plan are environmental “no-regrets” options, defined in this study as simultaneously exhibiting low impact on land and water services resulting from resource appropriation for energy provision. This is accomplished by estimating the land area and water abstraction required by 2050 under the four pathways of the Carbon Plan with different scenarios for energy crop composition, yield, and power station locations. The outcomes are compared with defined limits for sustainable land appropriation and water abstraction.The results show that of the four Carbon Plan pathways, only the “Higher Renewables, more energy efficiency” pathway is an environmental “no-regrets” option, and that is only if deployment of power stations inland is limited. The study shows that policies for future low-carbon energy systems should be developed with awareness of wider environmental impacts. Failing to do this could lead to a setback in achieving GHG emission reductions goals, because of unforeseen additional competition between the energy sector and demand for land and water services in other sectors.     

基于数学形态学的三维风暴体自动识别方法研究

基于雷达数据的风暴体识别、追踪及预警方法是重要的临近预报技术之一,其中准确的风暴体自动识别是进行风暴体自动追踪和预警的前提。在风暴体识别中常会碰到的两个问题是:虚假合并和从风暴簇中分离出相距较近的风暴单体。美国国家大气科学研究中心提出的TITAN(Thunderstorm Identification,Tracking,Analysis,and Nowcasting)算法使用单阈值进行识别,容易将相邻的多单体回波识别为一个风暴体。美国国家强风暴实验室提出的SCIT(Storm Cell Identification and Tracking)算法使用7个反射率因子阈值进行识别,可以较好地分离出风暴簇中的风暴单体,但它直接抛弃了低阈值的识别结果,导致风暴体内部结构信息的丢失。SCIT的这种识别策略可能会使处于初生阶段、强度较低的风暴体被错误地抛弃掉。TITAN和SCIT都无法完全识别出相邻风暴的虚假合并。为了解决这两个问题,文章提出了基于数学形态学的识别方法。该方法首先使用第1级阈值进行单阈值识别;其次,对识别得到的风暴体执行基于动态卷积模板的腐蚀操作,以消除虚假合并;然后,使用高一级阈值进行识别,并对识别得到的风暴体进行膨胀操作,当风暴体的边界在膨胀的过程中相互之间接触,或接触到了原来较低阈值识别的风暴体的边界时,则停止膨胀过程;最后,逐次使用更高级别的阈值进行识别,并在每一级阈值的识别过程中执行腐蚀和膨胀操作。试验结果表明,通过在多阈值识别的过程中综合使用膨胀和腐蚀操作,基于数学形态学的三维风暴体识别方法不仅能够成功地识别出风暴体的虚假合并,同时还能在从风暴簇中分离出相距较近的风暴单体时,尽可能多地保留风暴单体的内部结构信息。     

Erratum to: Climate change projections over India by a downscaling approach using PRECIS

The author “Bhaski Bhaskaran” and his affiliation “Fujitsu Laboratory of Europe, Middlesex, UK” should be replaced by “Balakrishnan Bhaskaran”, “Fujitsu Laboratories of Europe Limited, Hayes Park, Middlesex, UK”, respectively.The corrected name and affiliation are shown in this erratum.     

Causes and uncertainty of future summer drying over Europe

Previous studies have shown that the continuing rise in anthropogenic emissions is likely to cause continental European summers to become substantially drier over the coming century. Since this predicted decline in rainfall and soil moisture (SM) would bring significant stress to society and ecosystems, it is essential that its reliability or otherwise is properly assessed. One approach is to gain a better understanding of the model’s mechanisms of regional climate change and integrate this with a knowledge of the model’s strengths and weaknesses. Here we propose a methodology that partitions some of the mechanisms of regional climate change, and apply it to the problem of summer drying over continental Europe. Earlier work suggests that a plausible partition of the mechanisms of future mid-latitude continental summer drying might be as follows: (a) an earlier and more rapid decline in SM during spring, leading to lower SM in summer, and hence less convective rainfall (‘Spring SM’); (b) a larger land–sea contrast in lower tropospheric summer warming, leading to reduced relative humidity in air advected onto the continent, and so reduced rainfall (‘Warming’); (c) other large-scale atmospheric changes, including remotely forced circulation changes (‘Large-Scale’); and (d) a positive feedback mechanism in summer, whereby the reduced rainfall dries the soil further, so reducing convective activity further (‘Summer SM Feedback’). We attempt to isolate these mechanisms by integrating a geographic subset of the high resolution global atmospheric model HadAM3P to assess their relative importance in generating the projected European summer drying. Each mechanism is approximately represented (and so isolated) using an appropriate mix of inputs to the model, with some matching a control integration and others matching a future scenario integration. These mixed inputs are: atmospheric composition (CO₂, aerosol and ozone), surface boundary data (SM and SSTs), and lateral boundary data (temperature, moisture, winds, and surface pressure). We describe this methodology and the experimental suite in some detail, as well as the constraints on our ability to fully separate these mechanisms. It is also shown that the separation of mechanisms is not compromised by interactions between them. For continental and southeastern Europe, it is found that both the ‘Warming’ and ‘Spring SM’ mechanisms are the primary drivers of the projected summer drying. ‘Summer SM Feedback’ plays an important secondary role, and ‘Large-Scale’ mechanisms, as represented here, have least influence. Since the two dominant mechanisms depend on processes in which we have reasonable confidence, this gives us high confidence in the sign of the projected summer drying over continental and southeastern Europe. Nevertheless, uncertainties in model formulation and future anthropogenic emissions mean that the magnitude of this future rainfall anomaly remains unclear. Over Great Britain and southern Scandinavia, our experiments show that the rainfall anomaly is dominated by opposing effects from the ‘Warming’ and ‘Large-Scale’ mechanisms, which in this area dictate increased and decreased rainfall respectively. Given this rivalry, and also that we have low confidence in the ‘Large-Scale’ mechanism, this suggests that even the sign of the projected drying here is uncertain.     

3-D Storm Automatic Identification Based on Mathematical Morphology

The strom identification, tracking, and forecasting method is one of the important nowcasting techniques. Accurate storm identification is a prerequisite for successful storm tracking and forecasting. Storm identification faces two difficulties: one is false merger and the other is failure to isolate adjacent storms within a cluster of storms. The TITAN (Thunderstorm Identification, Tracking, Analysis, and Nowcasting) algorithm is apt to identify adjacent storm cells as one storm because it uses a single reflectivity threshold. The SCIT (Storm Cell Identification and Tracking) algorithm uses seven reflectivity thresholds and therefore is capable of isolating adjacent storm cells, but it discards the results identified by the lower threshold, leading to the loss of the internal structure information of storms. Both TITAN and SCIT have the problem of failing to satisfactorily identify false merger. To overcome these shortcomings, this paper proposes a novel approach based on mathematical morphology. The approach first applies the single threshold identification followed by implementing an erosion process to mitigate the false merger problem. During multi-threshold identification stages, dilation operation is performed against the storm cells which are just obtained by the higher threshold identification, until the storm edges touch each other or touch the edges of the previous storms identified by the lower threshold. The results of experiment show that by combining the strengths of the dilation and erosion operations, this approach is able to mitigate the false merger problem as well as maintain the internal structure of sub-storms when isolating storms within a cluster of storms.     

临近预报系统(SWIFT)中风暴产品的设计及应用

介绍了临近预报系统"SWIFT"(Severe Weather Integrated Forecasting Tools)中的风暴产品的设计,包括风暴识别、风暴追踪和风暴预报。在识别风暴时,采用了多反射率因子阈值、特征核抽取和相近单体处理技术,并保留远距离上的强的2D风暴,该方法在面对成串或成簇多单体时,能够分离多个单体核,并准确定位。在风暴追踪和预报算法中,对当前时刻识别出来的风暴,利用匹配方案,将其与前1时刻的风暴建立对应关系,追寻历史轨迹,匹配方案是在空间位置相关的前提下,按照相似原则进行;风暴预报采用TREC(Tracking Radar Echoes by Correlation)技术获取的移动矢量场进行外推,提供未来1小时内的风暴移动位置。在北京奥运会天气预报示范项目(Forecast Demonstration Project,简称FDP)第二次测试期间,该风暴产品得到应用。分析表明:在预报时效为30分钟时,风暴产品在X轴和Y轴上的平均绝对误差为7.1和6.2 km,样本数为3891个;随着预报时效的增加,风暴产品的平均绝对误差增大,且在经向上的误差略大于纬向上;在径向上,风暴产品的预报出现了系统性的偏慢,而在纬向上,预报出现了系统性的偏快。     

Climatology of severe hailstorms in Great Britain

The annual and seasonal frequency, geographical distribution, and intensity of British hailstorms are examined. In 1986, the Tornado and Storm Research Organisation (TORRO) developed a Hailstorm Intensity Scale to characterise around 2500 hailstorms known to have occurred in Great Britain since the first documented hailstorm event of 1141 AD. The most intense British hailstorm reached intensity H8 on the TORRO international scale which extends from intensities H0 to H10. This paper focuses on over 800 hailstorms that reached TORRO intensity of H3 or more, the “severe” category. Analyses are presented for the historical period and the most recent 50-year period, 1950 to 1999. Consideration is given to examining the 50 most intense hailstorms (TORRO intensity H5–6 or more) known to have occurred in Britain since 1650. These storms all occurred between the months of May and September with a well-defined peak during July. These exceptional storms typically followed a track from the S, SSW or SW to the N, NNE or NE with a swath length of 25 km or more (reaching 335 km in one case) and a swath width sometimes in excess of 10 km.     

The occurrence of the typical mesoscale convective system with a flood-producing storm in the wet season over the Greater Jakarta area

A complex convective cloud with a horizontal scale area of more than 100 km, known as the mesoscale convective system (MCS), is important to the study as it brings heavy rainfall from its activity. The analysis of MCS with the flood-producing storm on the Indonesian Maritime Continent (IMC) receives less attention. The purpose of this study is to identify and evaluate the temporal variability of the MCS to the frequency of flood-producing storms in Greater Jakarta (GJ) during the 2013–2015 wet season. The image data of Multi-functional Transport Satellite (MTSAT) -1R, which represents an equivalent blackbody temperature (TBB), and the tracking algorithm “Grab ‘em Tag ‘em Graph ‘em” (GTG) were used to detect the events of MCS. We also used a rainfall graph in this analysis to measure rainfall threshold values in order to classify flood-producing storms. The results show that MCS around GJ has typical characteristics of tropical belt regions. There is a small TBB scale (maximum size ≥13,000 km²) distinguished by a deep cloud up to 14 km in height. Through the active effects of monsoon and ITCZ, the land-breeze and/or sea-breeze circulations that contribute to MCS growth are triggered. However, about 32 percent of the MCS contributed to the flood-producing storm around the GJ region.     

1993年世界气候概况

１９９３年,是世界异常气候事件突出的年份。美国东部春季的“世纪暴风雪”,中西部夏季的特大洪水,日本和中国黄淮,江淮地区罕见的“低温”凉夏,巴西东北,澳大利亚东部严重的干旱,大西洋加勒比海地区猛烈的飓风以及西欧秋冬的洪水……,种种异常天气气候事件,多与热带太平洋１９９２年夏曾宣告结束,而１９９３年春再度发生,并持续至今的厄尔尼诺现象,以及中高纬地区年内多数朋份大气环流的经向型紧密相关。