Climatic bisection of the last interglacial warm period in the Polar North Atlantic

New multiproxy marine data of the Eemian interglacial (MIS5e) from the Norwegian Sea manifest a cold event with near-glacial surface ocean summer temperatures (3–4 °C). This mid-Eemian cooling divided the otherwise relatively warm interglacial climate and was associated with widespread expansions of winter sea-ice and polar water masses due to changes in atmospheric circulation and ocean stability. While the data also verify a late rather than early last interglacial warm peak, which is in general disharmony with northern hemisphere insolation maximum and the regional climatic progression of the early Holocene, the cold event itself was likely instrumental for delaying the last interglacial climate development in the Polar North when compared with regions farther south. Such a ‘climatic decoupling’ of the Polar region may bear profound implications for the employment of Eemian conditions to help evaluate the present and future state of the Arctic cryosphere during a warming interglacial.     

Response of precipitation over Greenland and the adjacent ocean to North Pacific warm spells during Dansgaard–Oeschger stadials

ABSTRACT Palaeoceanographic reconstructions from the North Atlantic indicate massive ice breakouts from East Greenland near the onset of cold Dansgaard–Oeschger (D–O) stadials. In contrast to these coolings in the North Atlantic area, a new sea-surface temperature record reveals concomitant warm spells in the northern North Pacific. A sensitivity experiment with an atmospheric general circulation model is used to test the potential impact of sea-surface warmings by 3.5 °C in the North Pacific, on top of otherwise cold stadial climate conditions, on the precipitation regime over the Northern Hemisphere ice sheets. The model predicts a maximum response over East Greenland and the Greenland Sea, where a 40% increase in net annual snow accumulation occurs. This remote effect of North Pacific warm spells on the East Greenland snow-accumulation rate may play an important role in generating D–O cycles by rebuilding the ice lost during ice breakouts. In addition, the increased precipitation over the Greenland Sea may help to sustain the D–O stadial climate state.     

Separation of gamma and hadron initiated air showers with energies between 20 and 500 TeV

The discrimination between air showers initiated by γ rays and by hadrons is one of the fundamental problems in experimental cosmic-ray physics. The physics of this ‘γ/hadron separation’ is discussed in this paper. We restrict ourselves to the energy range from about 20 to 500 TeV, and take only the information contained in the lateral Čerenkov light distribution and the number of electrons at the detector level into consideration. An understanding of the differences between air showers generated by γ rays and those due to hadrons leads us to formulate suitable observables for the separation process. Angle integrating Čerenkov arrays (AICA) offer a promising new approach to ground-based γ-ray astronomy in the energy region from about 20 to 500 TeV. In order to establish this technique, an efficient suppression of the overwhelming hadronic background radiation is required. As an example for our general discussion, we present one method for γ/hadron separation in AICAs called ‘LES’. It is based on the simultaneous determination of the shower size and some characteristic parameters of the lateral distribution of the Čerenkov light. The potential inherent within this technique is demonstrated in quantitative detail for the existing ‘AIROBICC’ AICA. We also propose an objective measure of the intrinsic sensitivity of a detection scheme in ground-based γ-ray astronomy, the ‘reduced quality factor’. It is shown that AICAs may reach a sensitivity to γ-ray point sources in the high VHE range similar to that of the Čerenkov-telescope imaging technique in the low VHE region.     

Exact Bianchi type VIo cosmological models with matter and an electromagnetic field

Self-similar solution for isothermal flows driven by an expanding piston are investigated in the presence of magnetic field. The total energy of the flow between the shock and the piston is taken to be dependent on time obeying a power law. The shock is assumed to be strong and propagating into a perfect gas at rest with non uniform density and magnetic field.     

A comment on some oscillatory models of adiabatic stars

Three different oscillatory models of adiabatic stars are reinvestigated. These are the homogenous model, the inverse square model and the Roche model. The ratio between the amplitude of the oscillations and the distance from the center is developed in a power series. For physical conclusions to be drawn, it turns out to be crucial if the power series is divergent or convergent. Mathematical arguments are given which show that the power series are really divergent for all three models.     

Holocene climate variability as derived from alkenone sea surface temperature and coupled ocean-atmosphere model experiments

Holocene climate modes are identified by the statistical analysis of reconstructed sea surface temperatures (SSTs) from the tropical and North Atlantic regions. The leading mode of Holocene SST variability in the tropical region indicates a rapid warming from the early to mid Holocene followed by a relatively weak warming during the late Holocene. The dominant mode of the North Atlantic region SST captures the transition from relatively warm (cold) conditions in the eastern North Atlantic and the western Mediterranean Sea (the northern Red Sea) to relatively cold (warm) conditions in these regions from the early to late Holocene. This pattern of Holocene SST variability resembles the signature of the Arctic Oscillation/North Atlantic Oscillation (AO/NAO). The second mode of both tropical and North Atlantic regions captures a warming towards the mid Holocene and a subsequent cooling. The dominant modes of Holocene SST variability emphasize enhanced variability around 2300 and 1000 years. The leading mode of the coupled tropical-North Atlantic Holocene SST variability shows that an increase of tropical SST is accompanied by a decrease of SST in the eastern North Atlantic. An analogy with the instrumental period as well as the analysis of a long-term integration of a coupled ocean-atmosphere general circulation model suggest that the AO/NAO is one dominant mode of climate variability at millennial time scales.     

The influence of synoptic airflow on UK daily precipitation extremes. Part II: regional climate model and E-OBS data validation

We investigate how well the variability of extreme daily precipitation events across the United Kingdom is represented in a set of regional climate models and the E-OBS gridded data set. Instead of simply evaluating the climatologies of extreme precipitation measures, we develop an approach to validate the representation of physical mechanisms controlling extreme precipitation variability. In part I of this study we applied a statistical model to investigate the influence of the synoptic scale atmospheric circulation on extreme precipitation using observational rain gauge data. More specifically, airflow strength, direction and vorticity are used as predictors for the parameters of the generalised extreme value (GEV) distribution of local precipitation extremes. Here we employ this statistical model for our validation study. In a first step, the statistical model is calibrated against a gridded precipitation data set provided by the UK Met Office. In a second step, the same statistical model is calibrated against 14 ERA40 driven 25?km resolution RCMs from the ENSEMBLES project and the E-OBS gridded data set. Validation indices describing relevant physical mechanisms are derived from the statistical models for observations and RCMs and are compared using pattern standard deviation, pattern correlation and centered pattern root mean squared error as validation measures. The results for the different RCMs and E-OBS are visualised using Taylor diagrams. We show that the RCMs adequately simulate moderately extreme precipitation and the influence of airflow strength and vorticity on precipitation extremes, but show deficits in representing the influence of airflow direction. Also very rare extremes are misrepresented, but this result is afflicted with a high uncertainty. E-OBS shows considerable biases, in particular in regions of sparse data. The proposed approach might be used to validate other physical relationships in regional as well as global climate models.