A note on waves,wavegroups, and local influence

The observed meridional motions of atmospheric systems or wavegroups are shown to be related to the shape‐preserving (normal mode, eigenfunction) waves discussed in linearized perturbation theory through the concepts of group velocity, dispersion and interference pattern. Although all phase velocities are east‐west, the group velocity vector can lie in any direction. Phase velocities with a meridional component can occur if the Coriolis parameter is replaced by a linear function of latitude only because the proper periodic boundary condition cannot then be imposed. Orographic effects make the phase velocity non‐existent in a hydrostatic atmosphere, but the concept of group velocity remains valid.     

A fast response,open path,infrared hygrometer,using a semiconductor source

Investigations were carried out as to the feasibility of using a semiconductor source in the design of a new rapid response, open-path hygrometer. A single-beam instrument was constructed employing an infrared light emitting diode (LED) as a source instead of the usual high energy, wideband filament. The spectral emission envelope encompassed the 1.87 m water absorption band. Electronic modulation and thermoelectrical cooling of the diode eliminated the conventional chopper wheel and stabilized the peak wavelength emission. Path length was 200 mm. Over a water vapour concentration range of 0–16 g m^–3, absorption varied by 2% in a linear fashion. At 10 Hz, the noise level was 0.1 g m^–3 rms. Hygrometer resolution and stability are constrained by the detector noise level, the small source emission in the absorption band and low frequency drift in the optical filter. Despite these problems, the new instrument showed comparable performance characteristics to a commercial Lyman- hygrometer. Latent heat fluxes measured with both instruments and a Kaijo-Denki, 3-D sonic anemometer agreed to within 4% over a range 0–350 W m^–2. Further improvements in performance can be anticipated with advances in detector and LED technology.     

A low-carbon society: global visions,pathways, and challenges

The feasibility of two low-carbon society (LCS) scenarios, one with and one without nuclear power and carbon capture and storage (CCS), is evaluated using the AIM/Enduse[Global] model. Both scenarios suggest that achieving a 50% emissions reduction target (relative to 1990 levels) by 2050 is technically feasible if locally suited technologies are introduced and the relevant policies, including necessary financial transfers, are appropriately implemented. In the scenario that includes nuclear and CCS options, it will be vital to consider the risks and acceptance of these technologies. In the scenario without these technologies, the challenge will be how to reduce energy service demand. In both scenarios, the estimated investment costs will be higher in non-Annex I countries than in Annex I countries. Finally, the enhancement of capacity building to support the deployment of locally suited technologies will be central to achieving an LCS.

Policy relevance

Policies to reduce GHG emissions up to 2050 are critical if the long-term target of stabilizing the climate is to be achieved. From a policy perspective, the cost and social acceptability of the policy used to reduce emissions are two of the key factors in determining the optimal pathways to achieve this. However, the nuclear accident at Fukushima highlighted the risk of depending on large-scale technologies for the provision of energy and has led to a backlash against the use of nuclear technology. It is found that if nuclear and CCS are used it will be technically feasible to halve GHG emissions by 2050, although very costly. However, although the cost of halving emissions will be about the same if neither nuclear nor CCS is used, a 50% reduction in emissions reduction will not be achievable unless the demand for energy service is substantially reduced.     

A precipitation-dominated,mid-latitude glacier system: Mount Shasta,California

Temperature is often seen as the dominant control on inter-decadal glacier volume changes. However, despite regional warming over the past half-century, the glaciers of Mount Shasta have continued to expand following a contraction during a prolonged drought in the early twentieth century, indicating a greater sensitivity to precipitation than temperature. We use the 110 year record of fluctuations in Mount Shasta’s glaciers and climate to calibrate numerical glacier models of the two largest glaciers. The reconstructed balance and volume histories show a much greater correlation to precipitation than temperature and significant correlation to oscillatory modes of Pacific Ocean climate. An approximately 20% increase in precipitation is needed for every 1°C increase in temperature to maintain stability. Under continued historical trends, oscillations in climate modes and random variability will dominate inter-decadal variability in ice volume. Under the strong warming trend predicted by a regional climate model, the temperature trend will be the dominant forcing resulting in near total loss of Mount Shasta’s glaciers by the end of the twenty-first century.Electronic Supplementary Material Supplementary material is available to authorised users in the online version of this article at .     

Emissions, Concentrations, & Temperature: A Time Series Analysis

We use recent advances in time series econometrics to estimate the relation among emissions of CO₂ and CH₄, the concentration of these gases, and global surface temperature. These models are estimated and specified to answer two questions; (1) does human activity affect global surface temperature and; (2) does global surface temperature affect the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide and/or methane. Regression results provide direct evidence for a statistically meaningful relation between radiative forcing and global surface temperature. A simple model based on these results indicates that greenhouse gases and anthropogenic sulfur emissions are largely responsible for the change in temperature over the last 130 years. The regression results also indicate that increases in surface temperature since 1870 have changed the flow of carbon dioxide to and from the atmosphere in a way that increases its atmospheric concentration. Finally, the regression results for methane hint that higher temperatures may increase its atmospheric concentration, but this effect is not estimated precisely.     

Coasts, water levels, and climate change: A Great Lakes perspective

The North American Laurentian Great Lakes hold nearly 20 % of the earth’s unfrozen fresh surface water and have a length of coastline, and a coastal population, comparable to frequently-studied marine coasts. The surface water elevations of the Great Lakes, in particular, are an ideal metric for understanding impacts of climate change on large hydrologic systems, and for assessing adaption measures for absorbing those impacts. In light of the importance of the Great Lakes to the North American and global economies, the Great Lakes and the surrounding region also serve as an important benchmark for hydroclimate research, and offer an example of successful adaptive management under changing climate conditions. Here, we communicate some of the important lessons to be learned from the Great Lakes by examining how the coastline, water level, and water budget dynamics of the Great Lakes relate to other large coastal systems, along with implications for water resource management strategies and climate scenario-derived projections of future conditions. This improved understanding fills a critical gap in freshwater and marine global coastal research.     

A study of interacting multi-scale wind systems, Canterbury plains, New Zealand

Summary The wind regime of the Canterbury region, New Zealand, is composed of several interacting multi-scale wind systems all of which show strong diurnal periodicity. The dynamic orographic effect of the Southern Alps on the prevailing westerly flow results in perturbations to the pressure field and localized antitriptic airflow. Superimposed on this larger scale process are thermotopographic effects resulting from both regional and local land-sea thermal contrasts and slope heating. These processes act within an hierarchy of scales to produce a complex wind regime characterized by marked temporal variability, a layered vertical structure and the frequent occurrence of convergence lines and shear zones. The synergistic nature of the forcing mechanisms and the tendency for nocturnal decoupling of the boundary layer due to stability variations makes it difficult to differentiate and label discrete wind components.Attempts to simulate this regime using the Colorado State University mesoscale model showed that the model was unable to adequately resolve both the dynamic orographic effect and the local thermotopographic effect because of their differing scales of influence. These results suggest that a more holistic approach to both empirical and theoretical studies in such environments is required if more accurate wind field forecasting is to be achieved.

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Eine Studie zusammenwirkender Windsysteme verschiedener Größenordnungen, Canterbury Plains, Neuseeland

Zusammenfassung Das Windregime des Gebiets von Canterbury, Neuseeland, setzt sich aus verschiedenen zusammenwirkenden Windsystemen verschiedener Größenordnungen zusammen, die alle einen starken Tagesgang aufweisen. Der dynamisch-orographische Effekt der neuseeländischen Alpen auf die vorherrschende Westströmung führt zu Störungen im Druckfeld und lokalen Luftbewegungen im Lee. Diesem großräumigen Prozeß sind thermisch-topographische Effekte überlagert, die sowohl durch regionale als auch lokale thermische Unterschiede zwischen Land und Meer und die Erwärmung der Hangregion hervorgerufen werden. Die Vorgänge spielen sich in einer Hierarchie von Größenordnungen ab. Sie erzeugen ein kompliziertes Windsystem, das durch hohe zeitliche Variabilität, eine schichtweise thermische Struktur und häufige Konvergenz- und Scherungszonen gekennzeichnet ist. Die synergetische Natur der Antriebe und die Tendenz zum nächtlichen Entkoppeln der planetaren Grenzschicht aufgrund von Stabilitätsschwankungen macht es schwer, die einzelnen Windkomponenten zu trennen und zuzuordnen.Die Versuche, dieses Regime mit Hilfe des Mesoscale-Modells der Colorado State University zu simulieren, zeigten, daß es aufgrund der verschiedenen Größenordnungen des Einflusses nicht geeignet war, gleichzeitig den dynamisch-orographischen und den thermo-topographischen Effekt zu reproduzieren. Diese Ergebnisse legen sowohl für empirische wie für theoretische Untersuchungen einen holistischeren Ansatz nahe, um eine genauere Prognose des Windfeldes zu ermöglichen.

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With 11 Figures     

A non-parametric, statistical downscaling algorithm applied to the Rohini River Basin, Nepal

Climate change scenarios generated by general circulation models have too coarse a spatial resolution to be useful in planning disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation strategies at regional to river basin scales. This study presents a new non-parametric statistical K-nearest neighbor algorithm for downscaling climate change scenarios for the Rohini River Basin in Nepal. The study is an introduction to the methodology and discusses its strengths and limitations within the context of hindcasting basin precipitation for the period of 1976?C2006. The actual downscaled climate change projections are not presented here. In general, we find that this method is quite robust and well suited to the data-poor situations common in developing countries. The method is able to replicate historical rainfall values in most months, except for January, September, and October. As with any downscaling technique, whether numerical or statistical, data limitations significantly constrain model ability. The method was able to confirm that the dataset available for the Rohini Basin does not capture long-term climatology. Yet, we do find that the hindcasts generated with this methodology do have enough skill to warrant pursuit of downscaling climate change scenarios for this particularly poor and vulnerable region of the world.     

A review of global stratospheric aerosol: Measurements, importance, life cycle, and local stratospheric aerosol

Stratospheric aerosol, noted after large volcanic eruptions since at least the late 1800s, were first measured in the late 1950s, with the modern continuous record beginning in the 1970s. Stratospheric aerosol, both volcanic and non-volcanic are sulfuric acid droplets with radii (concentrations) on the order of 0.1–0.5 µm (0.5–0.005 cm^− 3), increasing by factors of 2–4 (10–10³) after large volcanic eruptions. The source of the sulfur for the aerosol is either through direct injection from sulfur-rich volcanic eruptions, or from tropical injection of tropospheric air containing OCS, SO₂, and sulfate particles. The life cycle of non-volcanic stratospheric aerosol, consisting of photo-dissociation and oxidation of sulfur source gases, nucleation/condensation in the tropics, transport pole-ward and downward in the global planetary wave driven tropical pump, leads to a quasi steady state relative maximum in particle number concentration at around 20 km in the mid latitudes. Stratospheric aerosol have significant impacts on the Earth's radiation balance for several years following volcanic eruptions. Away from large eruptions, the direct radiation impact is small and well characterized; however, these particles also may play a role in the nucleation of near tropopause cirrus, and thus indirectly affect radiation. Stratospheric aerosol play a larger role in the chemical, particularly ozone, balance of the stratosphere. In the mid latitudes they interact with both nitrous oxides and chlorine reservoirs, thus indirectly affecting ozone. In the polar regions they provide condensation sites for polar stratospheric clouds which then provide the surfaces necessary to convert inactive to active chlorine leading to polar ozone loss. Until the mid 1990s the modern record has been dominated by three large sulfur-rich eruptions: Fuego (1974), El Chichón (1982) and Pinatubo (1991), thus definitive conclusions concerning the trend of non-volcanic stratospheric aerosol could only recently be made. Although anthropogenic emissions of SO₂ have changed somewhat over the past 30 years, the measurements during volcanically quiescent periods indicate no long term trend in non-volcanic stratospheric aerosol.     

2004年夏季广州市一次罕见高温天气过程

对广州市2004年6月27日-7月3日出现的一次罕见高温天气过程及历史上的高温天气进行分析,结果表明：(1)广州出现高温的概率是在增加的,且长时间持续高温发生概率在20世纪80年代以后显著增大;(2)广州历史上38℃及以上的4次高温过程都是由副热带高压和台风外围环流共同影响形成的;(3)粤北南岭山脉“焚风效应”和城市“热岛效应”对广州市2004年6月27日～7月3日出现的罕见高温天气过程也起一定的增幅作用。     

一个精细粒度实时计算资源管理系统

由于相应业务系统软件的缺乏,国家级气象高性能计算机的资源管理措施落后于能力建设的发展。对此,该文提出了一个精细粒度实时计算资源管理系统。系统设计紧密围绕着目前竞争最为激烈的计算资源,采用资源虚拟单元GCU作为资源使用的计量单位,屏蔽了不同高性能计算机系统的体系结构差异,实现了计算资源细粒度的统一量化统计。系统可分为用户接口层、资源管理层、HPC系统层等3个层次,根据与网格平台软件不同结合方式以两种方式运行。在国家气象信息中心完成了系统的研发、部署和试验运行,根据试验运行的部分数据进行了用户单位和用户个人的计算资源使用的统计分析。目前,计算资源管理系统成果已成功应用到国家级气象高性能计算机计算资源的业务管理工作中。