Changes in temporal concentration property of summer precipitation in China during 1961–2010 based on a new index

Based on the property of entropy, a new index Q was defined to measure the temporal concentration property of summertime daily rainfall in China, based on daily precipitation data collected at 553 observation stations in China during 1961–2010. Furthermore, changes in the temporal concentration property of summer precipitation in China were investigated. The results indicate that the regions with larger Q values were located in most parts of Northwest China and the north of the Yellow River, where daily precipitation tended to become temporally concentrated during the study period. On the contrary, smaller Q values were found in eastern Tibetan Plateau, southeastern Northwest China, and most parts of Southwest and South China. The most obvious increasing trend of Q index was found in South China and most parts of Southwest China, where precipitation showed a temporal concentration trend. However, a decreasing trend of Q index was found in Northwest China, the Tibetan Plateau, and the north of the Huaihe River. Variations of the Q index and the summer rainfall total during 1961–2010 in China both exhibited an increasing trend, implying larger temporal variability in rainfall attributes. It is illustrated that the summer precipitation in general became more temporally concentrated with more intense rainfall events and wetter days.     

Chronology of ‘dry fogs’ in Italy, 1374–1891

Summary A chronology and some comments about the occurrence of dry fogs i.e. clouds of volcanic aerosols trapped in the planetary boundary layer (PBL) are reported. The dry fogs have severely affected the biosphere, and they also had local climatic effects affecting the terrestrial albedo. In the most severe cases the fog persisted for months and obscured the sun, in the lesser ones a mist persisted for a few days and the sun was seen as weak and the moon with a red halo. The volcanic aerosols were trapped in the PBL in the warm season, when the atmosphere is particularly stable over the relatively cold Mediterranean waters and the Azores Anticyclone causes the absence of winds.     

‘Evolution of a Storm-driven Cloudy Boundary Layer in the Arctic’

To investigate the processes of development and maintenance of low-level clouds during major synoptic events, the cloudy boundary layer under stormy conditions during the summertime Arctic has been studied using observations from the Surface Heat Budget of the Arctic Ocean (SHEBA) experiment and large-eddy simulations (LES). On 29 July 1998, a stable Arctic cloudy boundary-layer event was observed after the passage of a synoptic low pressure system. The local dynamic and thermodynamic structure of the boundary layer was determined from aircraft measurements including the analysis of turbulence, cloud microphysics and radiative properties. After the upper cloud layer advected over the existing cloud layer, the turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) budget indicated that the cloud layer below 200 m was maintained predominantly by shear production. Observations of longwave radiation showed that cloud-top cooling at the lower cloud top has been suppressed by radiative effects of the upper cloud layer. Our LES results demonstrate the importance of the combination of shear mixing near the surface and radiative cooling at the cloud top in the storm-driven cloudy boundary layer. Once the low-level cloud reaches a certain height, depending on the amount of cloud-top cooling, the two sources of TKE production begin to separate in space under continuous stormy conditions, suggesting one possible mechanism for the cloud layering. The sensitivity tests suggest that the storm-driven cloudy boundary layer is possibly switched to the shear-driven system due to the advection of upper clouds or to the buoyantly driven system due to the lack of wind shear. A comparison is made of this storm-driven boundary layer with the buoyantly driven boundary layer previously described in the literature.     

Changes of precipitation pattern in China: 1961–2010

Theoretical and Applied Climatology - Based on the precipitation records of 2474 meteorological stations, this study investigated precipitation characteristics and trends in China from 1961 to...     

Addressing human vulnerability to climate change: Toward a ‘no-regrets’ approach

This paper presents and applies a conceptual framework to address human vulnerability to climate change. Drawing upon social risk management and asset-based approaches, the conceptual framework provides a unifying lens to examine links between risks, adaptation, and vulnerability. The result is an integrated approach to increase the capacity of society to manage climate risks with a view to reduce the vulnerability of households and maintain or increase the opportunities for sustainable development. We identify ‘no-regrets’ adaptation interventions, meaning actions that generate net social benefits under all future scenarios of climate change and impacts. We also make the case for greater support for community-based adaptation and social protection and propose a research agenda.     

The ‘ultimate objective’ of the framework convention on climate change requires a new approach in climate change research

In the Framework Convention on Climate Change an ultimate objective is formulated that calls for stabilization of the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at a level that would allow ecosystems to adapt naturally, safeguard food supply and enable sustainable development to proceed in a sustainable manner. This paper addresses the possible contribution of science to translate this rather vague and ambiguous objective into more practicable terms. We propose a regionalized, risk-based six-step approach that couples an analysis of ecosystem vulnerability to the results of simulations of climate change. An ultimate objective level could be determined in terms of stabilized concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The level and timing of this stabilization would be determined by a political appreciation of associated risks for managed and unmanaged ecosystems. These risks would be assessed by region in an internationally coordinated scientific effort, followed by a global synthesis.     

Coping with scarcity: The construction of the water conservation imperative in newspapers (1999–2018)

As water-stressed areas are expanding worldwide due to climate change, water conservation has become an important tool for managing water resources in drought contexts. Within a political ecology framework, our research questions the success story of water conservation. To do so, we conducted a quantitative textual analysis of 520 daily local press articles dealing with drought and water issues in Phoenix and Tucson (Arizona, USA). Using two open-access lexicometric software, our analysis traces the rise of the water conservation narrative in the press. Our results show how newspapers can become an instrument of public policies to work towards their social acceptance. Moreover, water conservation is framed as a consensual tool. It reassures that threats associated with water scarcity will be successfully managed to sustain urban growth in arid regions. In this sense, water conservation operates following a logic of fix, in line with the successive hydrosocial fixes that helped the development of arid lands and does not question inherited power structures in water management.     

A Model to Calculate what a Remote Sensor ‘Sees’ of an Urban Surface

Whilst the measurement of radiation emissions from a surface is relatively straightforward, correct interpretation and proper utilization of the information requires that the surface area seen be known accurately. This becomes non-trivial when the target is an urban surface, due to its complex three-dimensional form and the different thermal, radiative and moisture properties of its myriad surface facets. The geometric structure creates shade patterns in combination with the solar beam and obscures portions of the surface from the sensor, depending on where it is pointing and its field-of-view (FOV). A model to calculate these surface-sensor-sun relations (SUM) is described. SUM is tested against field and scale model observations, and theoretical calculations, and found to perform well. It can predict the surface area seen by a sensor of known FOV pointing in any direction when placed at any point in space above a specified urban surface structure. Moreover, SUM can predict the view factors of the roof, wall and ground facets seen and whether they are sunlit or shaded at any location and time of day. SUM can be used to determine the optimal placement and orientation of remote sensors to study urban radiation emissions; if the facet temperatures are known or modelled it can calculate the average temperature of the system, and it can determine the directional variation of temperature (anisotropy) due to any particular surface-sensor-sun geometric combination. The present surface geometry used in SUM is relatively simple, but there is scope to make it increasingly realistic.     

Ten years to prevent catastrophe?: Discourses of climate change and international development in the UK press

The science of climate change is full of uncertainty, but the greater vulnerability of poor countries to the impacts of climate change is one aspect that is widely acknowledged. This paper adapts Dryzek's ‘components’ approach to discourse analysis to explore the media construction of climate change and development in UK ‘quality’ newspapers between 1997 and 2007. Eight discourses are identified from more than 150 articles, based on the entities recognised, assumptions about natural relationships, agents and their motives, rhetorical devices and normative judgements. They show a wide range of opinions regarding the impacts of climate change on development and the appropriate action to be taken. Discourses concerned with likely severe impacts have dominated coverage in the Guardian and the Independent since 1997, and in all four papers since 2006. Previously discourses proposing that climate change was a low development priority had formed the coverage in the Times and the Telegraph. The classification of different discourses allows an inductive, nuanced analysis of the factors influencing representation of climate change and development issues; an analysis which highlights the role of key events, individual actors, newspaper ideology and wider social and political factors. Overall the findings demonstrate media perceptions of a rising sense of an impending catastrophe for the developing world that is defenceless without the help of the West, perpetuating to an extent views of the poor as victims.     

Transformational adaptation on the farm: Processes of change and persistence in transitions to ‘climate-smart’ regenerative agriculture

Regenerative agriculture, an alternative form of food and fiber production, concerns itself with enhancing and restoring resilient systems supported by functional ecosystem processes and healthy, organic soils capable of producing a full suite of ecosystem services, among them soil carbon sequestration and improved soil water retention. As such, climate change mitigation and adaptation are incidental to a larger enterprise that employs a systems approach to managing landscapes and communities. The transformative potential of regenerative agriculture has seen growing attention in the popular press, but few empirical studies have explored the processes by which farmers enter into, navigate, and, importantly, sustain the required paradigm shift in their approach to managing their properties, farm businesses, and personal lives. We draw on theories and insights associated with relational thinking to analyze the experiences of farmers in Australia who have undertaken and sustained transitions from conventional to regenerative agriculture. We present a conceptual framework of “zones of friction and traction” occurring in personal, practical, and political spheres of transformation that both challenge and facilitate the transition process. Our findings illustrate the ways in which deeply held values and emotions influence and interact with mental models, worldviews, and cultural norms as a result of regular monitoring; and how behavioral change is sustained through the establishment of self-amplifying positive feedbacks involving biophilic emotions, a sense of well-being, and an ever-expanding worldview. We conclude that transitioning to regenerative agriculture involves more than a suite of ‘climate-smart’ mitigation and adaptation practices supported by technical innovation, policy, education, and outreach. Rather, it involves subjective, nonmaterial factors associated with culture, values, ethics, identity, and emotion that operate at individual, household, and community scales and interact with regional, national and global processes. Findings have implications for strategies aimed at facilitating a large-scale transition to climate-smart regenerative agriculture.     

‘Telling a different tale’: literary, historical and meteorological readings of a Norfolk heatwave

Articulated initially by physical scientists, the idea of anthropogenic global climate change has been subject to increasingly diverse examinations in recent years. The idea has been appropriated by economists, worked with by engineers and, more recently, scrutinised by social scientists and humanities scholars. Underlying these examinations are different, yet rarely exposed, presumptions about what kind of ??thing?? climate is: a physical abstraction, a statistical construct, an imaginative idea. If the ontological status of climate is rarely made explicit it becomes difficult to know whether the different epistemologies used to reveal climates ?? and their changing properties ?? are appropriate. This study offers one way in which the different worlds inhabited by the idea of climate may be revealed. It does so by examining a heatwave: a powerful meteorological phenomenon one would think and one which scientific accounts of climate change tell us will become more frequent in the future. The heatwave in question occurred in July 1900 in the county of Norfolk, England. This heatwave inhabits three very different worlds: the imaginative world of L P Hartley in his novel The Go Between; the historical world of late Victorian Norfolk; and the digital world of the climate sciences. The traces of the heatwave left in these different worlds are varied and access to them is uneven. Constructing an adequate interpretation of this singular climatic event and its meaning is challenging. The study suggests that grasping the idea of climate may be harder than we think. Climates may be ineffable. Yet the approach to the study of climate illustrated here opens up new ways of thinking about the meaning and significance of climate change.     

On the long-term context of the 1997–2009 ‘Big Dry’ in South-Eastern Australia: insights from a 206-year multi-proxy rainfall reconstruction

This study presents the first multi-proxy reconstruction of rainfall variability from the mid-latitude region of south-eastern Australia (SEA). A skilful rainfall reconstruction for the 1783–1988 period was possible using twelve annually-resolved palaeoclimate records from the Australasian region. An innovative Monte Carlo calibration and verification technique is introduced to provide the robust uncertainty estimates needed for reliable climate reconstructions. Our ensemble median reconstruction captures 33% of inter-annual and 72% of decadal variations in instrumental SEA rainfall observations. We investigate the stability of regional SEA rainfall with large-scale circulation associated with El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Inter-decadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO) over the past 206 years. We find evidence for a robust relationship with high SEA rainfall, ENSO and the IPO over the 1840–1988 period. These relationships break down in the late 18th–early 19th century, coinciding with a known period of equatorial Pacific Sea Surface Temperature (SST) cooling during one of the most severe periods of the Little Ice Age. In comparison to a markedly wetter late 18th/early 19th century containing 75% of sustained wet years, 70% of all reconstructed sustained dry years in SEA occur during the 20th century. In the context of the rainfall estimates introduced here, there is a 97.1% probability that the decadal rainfall anomaly recorded during the 1998–2008 ‘Big Dry’ is the worst experienced since the first European settlement of Australia.     

Integrated assessment of smallholder farming’s vulnerability to drought in the Brazilian Semi-arid: a case study in Ceará

Smallholder farming is among the most vulnerable sectors due to its great social and economic sensitivity. Despite future climate change, current climate variability is already an issue of concern that justifies adaptation efforts. In Brazil, the Semi-Arid Region is a climate hotspot, well known for both historic socioeconomic setbacks, and agriculture failures caused by dry spells and severe droughts. In 2010, the Brazilian government enacted the National Policy on Climate Change, which states as one of its key goals the identification of vulnerabilities and the adoption of adequate measures of adaptation to climate change. The improvement of vulnerability assessment tools is a response to the growing demand of decision makers for regular information and indicators with high spatial and temporal resolution. This article aims at undertaking a comparative assessment of smallholder farming’s vulnerability to droughts. An integrated assessment system has been developed and applied to seven municipalities located in the Brazilian Semi-Arid Region (within the State of Ceará). Results show regional vulnerability contrasts driven by institutional and socioeconomic factors, beyond climatic stressors.     

‘New Estimates of Carbon Storage and Sequestration in China’S Forests: Effects of Age–Class and Method On Inventory-Based Carbon Estimation’

We developed a volume-to-biomass method based on age groups representative of forest development stages to estimate live tree biomass, C, and biomass and C accumulation rates of Chinas forests between 1973 and 1993. The data were from plot-level forest inventory, national-level inventory statistics, and ecological site studies specified to estimate biomass in different tree components. Our results indicate that carbon storage in Chinas forests was 4.34 Pg C in the early 1990s, an increase of 13% since the early 1970s. The annual forest C sequestration rate from the late 1980s to early 1990s was 0.068 Pg C/yr and approximately four- to five-times higher than in the 1970s and 1980s. The large C sink in Chinas forests in the early 1990s was likely related to age structure changes that had developed to more productive stages, a consequence of reforestation and afforestation programs from the 1960s. The results were compared with other C store estimates, which were based on the same inventory data. Various methods can produce estimates that differ in the direction of C flux as well as its magnitude. Separating age groups with the volume–biomass method could cause a 27% difference in estimated carbon pools but an 89% difference in C sequestration rates whereas the biomass density method would provide an estimate that differs by 65% in the C pools.     

‘New Estimates of Carbon Storage and Sequestration in China’S Forests: Effects of Age–Class and Method On Inventory-Based Carbon Estimation’

We developed a volume-to-biomass method based on age groups representative of forest development stages to estimate live tree biomass, C, and biomass and C accumulation rates of Chinas forests between 1973 and 1993. The data were from plot-level forest inventory, national-level inventory statistics, and ecological site studies specified to estimate biomass in different tree components. Our results indicate that carbon storage in Chinas forests was 4.34 Pg C in the early 1990s, an increase of 13% since the early 1970s. The annual forest C sequestration rate from the late 1980s to early 1990s was 0.068 Pg C/yr and approximately four- to five-times higher than in the 1970s and 1980s. The large C sink in Chinas forests in the early 1990s was likely related to age structure changes that had developed to more productive stages, a consequence of reforestation and afforestation programs from the 1960s. The results were compared with other C store estimates, which were based on the same inventory data. Various methods can produce estimates that differ in the direction of C flux as well as its magnitude. Separating age groups with the volume–biomass method could cause a 27% difference in estimated carbon pools but an 89% difference in C sequestration rates whereas the biomass density method would provide an estimate that differs by 65% in the C pools.     

Bypassing the ‘ratification straitjacket’: reviewing US legal participation in a climate agreement

The issue of US ratification of international environmental treaties is a recurring obstacle for environmental multilateralism, including the climate regime. Despite the perceived importance of the role of the US to the success of any future international climate agreement, there has been little direct coverage in terms of how an effective agreement can specifically address US legal participation. This article explores potential ways of allowing for US legal participation in an effective climate treaty. Possible routes forward include the use of domestic legislation such as section 115 (S115) of the Clean Air Act (CAA) and the use of sole–executive agreements, instead of Senate ratification. Legal participation from the US through sole–executive agreements is possible if the international architecture is designed to allow for their use. Architectural elements such as varying legality and participation across an agreement (variable geometry) could allow for the use of sole–executive agreements. Two broader models for a 2015 agreement with legal participation through sole–executive agreements are constructed based upon these options: a modified pledge and review system and a form of variable geometry composed of number of opt-out, voting-based protocols on specific issues accompanied by bilateral agreements on mitigation commitments with other major emitters through the use of S115 and sole–executive agreements under the Montreal Protocol and Chicago Convention (‘Critical Mass Governance'). While there is no single solution, Critical Mass Governance appears to provide the optimum combination of tools to effectively allow for US legal participation whilst ensuring an effective treaty.

Policy relevance

This article provides some recommendations on how to create an effective, legally binding treaty that allow for US legal participation without Senate approval. Given the recent election of a Republican majority in the US Senate and Congress, increasing willingness of the President to utilize his executive powers, as well as a strong shift in negotiations to appease US interests, the insights of this research are timely and relevant to delegations and other United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) actors. It will also be of use to domestic US actors involved with climate policy by illustrating how to allow for effective and sustainable US multilateral engagement that bypasses domestic political gridlock.