Comment on “Kinetics of the reactions of Cl atoms with 2-buten-1-ol, 2-methyl-2-propen-1-ol, and 3-methyl-2-buten-1-ol as a function of temperature” by Rodriguez et al. (J. Atmos. Chem. (2008) 59:187–197)

The Arrhenius expressions and the data plotted in Figure 2 of Rodriguez et al. 2008 give rate coefficients of approximately 2?×?10^-8 cm³ molecule^-1 s^-1 at 255 K. Such values are approximately two orders of magnitude larger than expected from simple collision theory (Finlayson-Pitts and Pitts 1986). The rate coefficients reported at sub-ambient temperatures are substantially greater than the gas kinetic limit and are not physically plausible. The rate coefficients reported by Rodriguez et al. imply a long range attraction between the reactants which is not reasonable for reaction of neutral species such as chlorine atoms and unsaturated alcohols. We also note that the pre-exponential A factors (10^-23-10^-20) and activation energies (?15 kcal mol^-1) are not physically plausible. We conclude that there are large systematic errors in the study by Rodriguez et al. (Atmos Chem 59:187–197, 2008).     

The influence of atmospheric circulation on the type of precipitation (Krak��w, southern Poland)

The paper discusses the impact of atmospheric circulation on the occurrence of various types of precipitation. A 146-year-long precipitation record from Kraków spanning the period 1863?C2008 was used alongside a calendar prepared by Nied?wied? (1981, 2009) describing circulation types covering the period 1873?C2008 and air masses and atmospheric fronts covering the period 1951?C2008 in southern Poland. The influence of atmospheric circulation on precipitation was measured using the frequency, conditional probability and average daily totals of precipitation. Circulation types, air masses and atmospheric fronts exerted influences on precipitation as a result of the seasonal variations of the thermal and moisture properties of air masses. The impact is best expressed by circulation types as these combine the aspect of cyclonicity/anticyclonicity with that of the direction of air advection, the two elements which determine the physical properties of the air. On average, liquid precipitation prevailed in all circulation types, except the Ea type in which snowfall dominated over liquid precipitation. Depending on the season, one of the three types of circulation, Wa, Wc and Bc, were shown to coincide with the greatest amount of liquid and thunderstorm precipitation. There was no single dominant circulation type for mixed precipitation or snowfall. In summer, the circulation types Nc, NEc, Cc and Bc were the most favourable to liquid and thunderstorm precipitation in terms of both probability and totals. In winter, snowfall was the most favoured by the Ec type. Frontal precipitation was twice as likely to occur as air mass precipitation, with the exception of snowfall which was predominantly an air mass type of precipitation in terms of probability, but its greatest totals were recorded on atmospheric fronts.     

Author Index of AMS(Vols.1—10)

Ai Wanxiu 09一2一06.每Bai Lesheng 07一4一01Bai Yuerning 09一4一11Bailey,W.G.06一2一06Bian Huisheng 07一3一02Bian Lingen 09一1一12Bougeault PhilipPe 07一1一01,07一2一09BOurke,W.04一1一04Chen Xiaoyuan 04一l一12ChenX一ng 02一3一07Chen Yanjuan 01一1一12Chen Yi一Leng 06一3一08Chen Yinsheng 06一3一02Chen Zhenhua 01一1一08Chen Zhonglian 04一2一13Cheng Linsheng 06一2一10Cheng Qiuying 02一3一09Chennl〕elin 02一1一13Cho,H. R.06一3一05Chou Jifan 01一l一05,03一5一05, .09一2一12.09一3一03Co…     

Effects of Microphysical Latent Heating on the Rapid Intensification of Typhoon Hato(2017)

A 72-h cloud-resolving numerical simulation of Typhoon Hato(2017)is performed by using the Weather Research and Forecasting(WRF)model with the Advanced Research WRF(ARW)core(V3.8.1)on a horizontal resolution of2 km.To enhance the background tropical cyclone structure and intensity,a vortex dynamic initialization scheme with a terrain-filtering algorithm is utilized.The model reproduces reasonably well the track,structure,and intensity change of Typhoon Hato.More specifically,the change trend of simulated maximum wind speed is consistent with that of best-track analysis,and the simulated maximum wind of 49 ms^-1 is close to that(52 ms^-1)of the best-track analysis,indicating that the model has successfully captured the rapid intensification(RI)of Typhoon Hato(2017).Analyses of the model outputs reveal that the total microphysical latent heating of the inner-core region associated with enhanced vertical upward motion reaches its maximum at 9-km height in the upper troposphere during the RI stage.The dominant microphysical processes with positive latent heat contributions(i.e.,heating effect)are water vapor condensation into cloud water(67.6%),depositional growth of ice(12.9%),and generation(nucleation)of ice from vapor(7.9%).Those with negative latent heat contributions(cooling effect)are evaporation of rain(47.6%),melting of snow(27.7%),and melting of graupel(9.8%).Sensitivity experiments further show that the intensification speed and peak intensity of this typhoon are highly correlated to the dominant heating effect.A significant increase in graupel over 5-10-km height and snow at 10-14-km height in the inner-core region of Typhoon Hato corresponds well with its RI stage,and the latent heating from nucleation and depositional growth is crucial to the RI of simulated Hato.     

Subscription Information on the Quarterly Journal of Acta Meteorologica Sinica(AMS)

The English Edition of AMS is a window through which foreign meteorologists could see the important findings and latest advances of atmospheric sciences in China, and it has become an international academic journal on atmospheric sciences. From 2005, the Editorial Office of AMS has altered from China Meteorological Press into Chinese Meteorological Society. AMS is intended to provide a base for rein-     

Review of the Researches on Changma and Future Observational Study(KORMEX)

ＲｅｖｉｅｗｏｆｔｈｅＲｅｓｅａｒｃｈｅｓｏｎＣｈａｎｇｍａａｎｄＦｕｔｕｒｅＯｂｓｅｒｖａｔｉｏｎａｌＳｔｕｄｙ（ＫＯＲＭＥＸ）Ｊａｉ－ＨｏＯｈ，Ｗｏｎ－ＴａｅＫｗｏｎａｎｄＳａｎｇ－ＢｏｍＲｙｏＭＥＴＲＩ，ＫｏｒｅａＭｅｔｅｏｒｏｌｏｇｉｃａｌＡ...     

Effects of the Qinghai-Xizang (Tibetan) Plateau on the Circulation Features over the Plateau and Its Surrounding Areas

Areview of the effects of theTibetan Platean on circulation features over the plateau and its surrounding areas has been made, with a special emphasis upon the monsoon circulations in South Asin and East Asia. This includes estimates of heat sources, dynamic and thermal effects of the plateau, adn effects of the plateau on summer and winter monsoons. Major progresses made in this aspect by Chinese meteorologists have been specifically described and are compared with the achievements made by the meteorologists of other countries.     

Influence of climate variability on land degradation (desertification) in the watershed of the upper Paraíba River

The study aimed to evaluate the influence of the rainfall and aridity index variability on the process of land degradation (desertification) in order to establish the current degree of increase or decrease in dryness in the watershed of the upper Paraíba River. It included all or part of 18 municipalities, distributed in the western and eastern Cariri regions of Paraíba state. The monthly average values of reference evapotranspiration according to Penman-Monteith method were applied in the annual hydrological balance for obtaining the annual time series of the aridity index for the period from 1950 to 2013. The Mann-Kendall test (MK) was used for trend identification in the annual time series of rainfall and aridity index, at a significance level of α = 0.05. The slope of the trends was obtained by Sen’s method, and the values of rainfall, aridity index, and statistics MK were spatially kriging, to generate thematic maps. The results indicate an increase in rainfall and reduced dryness in the watershed of the upper Paraíba River, conditions that do not contribute to trigger the process of land degradation (desertification), indicating that the cause of this environmental problem is not climatic. Thus, it can be suggested that the observed manifestations of land degradation (desertification) derive much of human than climatic actions. However, there is a trend of increasing dryness and reducing rainfall in the central portion of the watershed, with stronger core in the location of Camalaú. The spatial distribution of rainfall and aridity index shows that minimum values of rainfall coincide with maximum values of the aridity index. Higher values of rainfall were observed in the northwestern portion of the watershed, while the northeast and southeast portions had the lower rainfall values, with the strongest core in the locality of Cabaceiras. The eastern sector of the watershed has high dryness, unlike the western sector, rainier, with minimum values of dryness. In the western portion of the watershed, the aridity index was in the range considered semiarid, with moderate susceptibility to land degradation process. Similarly, in the eastern portion, the dryness stood in the range considered arid, with high susceptibility. The cores with more pronounced dryness correspond to the municipalities of Cabaceiras, Caraúbas, and São João do Cariri.     

Parameterization of the Absorption of the H2O Continuum, CO2, O2, and Other Trace Gases in the Fu-Liou Solar Radiation Program

The absorption properties of the water vapor continuum and a number of weak bands for H2O, O2, CO2, CO, N2O, CH4, and O3 in the solar spectrum are incorporated into the Fu-Liou radiation parameterization program by using the correlated k-distribution method (CKD) for the sorting of absorption lines. The overlap absorption of the H2O lines and the H2O continuum (2500-14500 cm^-1) are treated by taking the two gases as a single-mixture gas in transmittance calculations. Furthermore, in order to optimize the computation efforts, CO2 and CH4 in the spectral region 2850-5250 cm^-1 are taken as a new singlemixture gas as well. For overlap involving other absorption lines in the Fu-Liou spectral bands, the authors adopt the multiplication rule for transmittance computations under which the absorption spectra for two gases are assumed to be uncorrelated. Compared to the line-by-line (LBL) computation, it is shown that the errors in fluxes introduced by these two approaches within the context of the CKD method are small and less than 0.48% for the H20 line and continuum in the 2500-14500 cm^-1 solar spectral region, -1% for H2O (line) H2O (continuum) CO2 CH4 in the spectral region 2850-5250 cm^-1, and -1.5% for H2O (line) H2O (continuum) O2 in the 7700-14500 cm^-1 spectral region. Analysis also demonstrates that the multiplication rule over a spectral interval as wide as 6800 cm^-1 can produce acceptable errors with a maximum percentage value of about 2% in reference to the LBL calculation. Addition of the preceding gases increases the absorption of solar radiation under all sky conditions. For clear sky, the increase in instantaneous solar absorption is about 9%-13% (-12 W m^-2) among which the H20 continuum produces the largest increase, while the contributions from O2 and CO2 rank second and third, respectively. In cloudy sky, the addition of absorption amounts to about 6-9 W m^-2. The new, improved program with the incorporation of the preceding gases produces a smaller solar absorption in clouds due to the reduced solar flux reaching the cloud top.     

Regional Nested Model Simulations of Present Day and 2 × CO2 Climate over the Central Plains of the U.S.

A nested regional climate model is used to generate a scenario of climate change over the MINK region (Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas) due to doubling of carbon dioxide concentration (2 × CO₂) for use in agricultural impact assessment studies. Five-year long present day (control) and 2 × CO₂ simulations are completed at a horizontal grid point spacing of 50 km. Monthly and seasonal precipitation and surface air temperature over the MINK region are reproduced well by the model in the control run, except for an underestimation of both variables during the spring months. The performance of the nested model in the control run is greatly improved compared to a similar experiment performed with a previous version of the nested modeling system by Giorgi et al. (1994). The nested model generally improves the simulation of spatial precipitation patterns compared to the driving general circulation model (GCM), especially during the summer. Seasonal surface warming of 4 to 6 K and seasonal precipitation increases of 6 to 24% are simulated in 2 × CO₂ conditions. The control run temperature biases are smaller than the simulated changes in all seasons, while the precipitation biases are of the same order of magnitude as the simulated changes. Although the large scale patterns of change in the driving GCM and nested RegCM model are similar, significant differences between the models, and substantial spatial variability, occur within the MINK region.     

Analysis of the Moberg et al. (2005) hemispheric temperature reconstruction

The Moberg et al. (Nature 433(7026):613–617, 2005. doi:10.1038/nature03265; M05) reconstruction of northern hemisphere temperature variations from proxy data has been criticised; the M05 method may artificially inflate low-frequency variance relative to reality. We test this assertion by undertaking several pseudoproxy experiments in three climate model simulations—one control run and two forced simulations that include several time-varying radiative forcings. The pseudoproxy series are designed to have the same variance spectra as the real M05 proxies, primarily to mimic the low-resolution character of several series. A simple composite-plus-scale (CPS) method is also analysed. In the CPS case all input data behave like annually resolved proxies. The spectral domain performance of both M05 and CPS is found to be dependent on the noise type and noise level in pseudoproxies, on the variance spectrum of the climate model simulation, and on the degree of data smoothing. CPS performs better than M05 in most investigated cases with the control run, but leads to deflated low-frequency variance in some cases. With M05, low-frequency variance tend to be inflated for the control run but not for one of the forced runs and only very slightly with the other forced simulation. Hence, the M05 approach does not routinely inflate low-frequency variance. In our experiment, the M05 approach performs better in the spectral domain than CPS when applied to forced climate model simulations. The results underscore the importance of evaluating the variance spectrum of climate reconstructions.     

Parameterization of the Absorption of the H_2O Continuum,CO_2,O_2,and Other Trace Gases in the Fu-Liou Solar Radiation Program

The absorption properties of the water vapor continuum and a number of weak bands for H2O, O2, CO2, CO, N2O, CH4, and O3 in the solar spectrum are incorporated into the Fu-Liou radiation parameterization program by using the correlated k-distribution method (CKD) for the sorting of absorption lines. The overlap absorption of the H2O lines and the H2O continuum (2500-14500 cm-1) are treated by taking the two gases as a single-mixture gas in transmittance calculations. Furthermore, in order to optimize the computation efforts, CO2 and CH4 in the spectral region 2850-5250 cm-1 are taken as a new single-mixture gas as well. For overlap involving other absorption lines in the Fu-Liou spectral bands, the authors adopt the multiplication rule for transmittance computations under which the absorption spectra for two gases are assumed to be uncorrelated. Compared to the line-by-line (LBL) computation, it is shown that the errors in fluxes introduced by these two approaches within the context of the CKD method are small and less than 0.48% for the H2O line and continuum in the 2500-14500 cm-1 solar spectral region, -1% for H2O (line) H2O (continuum) CO2 CH4 in the spectral region 2850-5250 cm-1, and -1.5% for H2O (line) H2O (continuum) O2 in the 7700-14500 cm-1 spectral region. Analysis also demonstrates that the multiplication rule over a spectral interval as wide as 6800 cm-1 can produce acceptable errors with a maximum percentage value of about 2% in reference to the LBL calculation. Addition of the preceding gases increases the absorption of solar radiation under all sky conditions. For clear sky, the increase in instantaneous solar absorption is about 9%-13% (~12 W m~2) among which the H2O continuum produces the largest increase, while the contributions from O2 and CO2 rank second and third, respectively. In cloudy sky, the addition of absorption amounts to about 6-9 W m-2. The new, improved program with the incorporation of the preceding gases produces a smaller solar absorption in clouds due to the reduced solar flux reaching the cloud top.     

Comment on “Trends and low frequency variability of extra-tropical cyclone activity in the ensemble of twentieth century reanalysis” by Xiaolan L. Wang,Y. Feng,G. P. Compo,V. R. Swail,F. W. Zwiers,R. J. Allan,and P. D. Sardeshmukh,Climate Dynamics, 2012

The main subject of this article is to comment on the issue of storminess trends derived from the twentieth century reanalysis (20CR) and from observations in the North Atlantic region written about in Wang et al. (Clim Dyn 40(11–12):2775–2800, 2012). The statement that the 20CR estimates would be consistent with storminess derived from pressure-based proxies does not hold for the time prior to 1950.     

It’s not just the statistical model. A comment on Seo (2013)

A recent paper in this journal argues that the choice of statistical model is responsible for the divergence in damage estimates of climate change on US agriculture. We provide five arguments why we believe this assertion is misguided.