Impact of carbonaceous aerosol emissions on regional climate change

The past and future evolution of atmospheric composition and climate has been simulated with a version of the Max Planck Institute Earth System Model (MPI-ESM). The system consists of the atmosphere, including a detailed representation of tropospheric aerosols, the land surface, and the ocean, including a model of the marine biogeochemistry which interacts with the atmosphere via the dust and sulfur cycles. In addition to the prescribed concentrations of carbon dioxide, ozone and other greenhouse gases, the model is driven by natural forcings (solar irradiance and volcanic aerosol), and by emissions of mineral dust, sea salt, sulfur, black carbon (BC) and particulate organic matter (POM). Transient climate simulations were performed for the twentieth century and extended into the twenty-first century, according to SRES scenario A1B, with two different assumptions on future emissions of carbonaceous aerosols (BC, POM). In the first experiment, BC and POM emissions decrease over Europe and China but increase at lower latitudes (central and South America, Africa, Middle East, India, Southeast Asia). In the second experiment, the BC and POM emissions are frozen at their levels of year 2000. According to these experiments the impact of projected changes in carbonaceaous aerosols on the global mean temperature is negligible, but significant changes are found at low latitudes. This includes a cooling of the surface, enhanced precipitation and runoff, and a wetter surface. These regional changes in surface climate are caused primarily by the atmospheric absorption of sunlight by increasing BC levels and, subsequently, by thermally driven circulations which favour the transport of moisture from the adjacent oceans. The vertical redistribution of solar energy is particularly large during the dry season in central Africa when the anomalous atmospheric heating of up to 60 W m⁻² and a corresponding decrease in surface solar radiation leads to a marked surface cooling, reduced evaporation and a higher level of soil moisture, which persists throughout the year and contributes to the enhancement of precipitation during the wet season.     

Relation between flow,surface‐layer armoring and sediment transport in gravel‐bed rivers

This study investigates trends in bed surface and substrate grain sizes in relation to reach‐scale hydraulics using data from more than 100 gravel‐bed stream reaches in Colorado and Utah. Collocated measurements of surface and substrate sediment, bankfull channel geometry and channel slope are used to examine relations between reach‐average shear stress and bed sediment grain size. Slopes at the study sites range from 0·0003 to 0·07; bankfull depths range from 0·2 to 5 m and bankfull widths range from 2 to 200 m. The data show that there is much less variation in the median grain size of the substrate, D_50s, than there is in the median grain size of the surface, D₅₀; the ratio of D₅₀ to D_50s thus decreases from about four in headwater reaches with high shear stress to less than two in downstream reaches with low shear stress. Similar trends are observed in an independent data set obtained from measurements in gravel‐bed streams in Idaho. A conceptual quantitative model is developed on the basis of these observations to track differences in bed load transport through an idealized stream system. The results of the transport model suggest that downstream trends in total bed load flux may vary appreciably, depending on the assumed relation between surface and substrate grain sizes. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Climate effect of ozone changes caused by present and future air traffic

 The potential of aircraft-induced ozone changes to force a substantial climate impact is investigated by means of simulations with an atmospheric general circulation model, coupled to a mixed layer ocean model. We present results from several numerical experiments that are based on ozone change patterns for 1992 aviation and on a future scenario for the year 2015. In both cases, the climate signal is statistically significant. The strength of the ozone impact is of comparable magnitude to that arising from aircraft CO₂ emissions, thus meaning a non-negligible contribution to the total climate effect of aviation emissions. There are indications of a characteristic signature of the aircraft ozone related temperature response pattern, distinctly different from that associated with the increase of well-mixed greenhouse gases. Likewise, the climate sensitivity to non-uniform ozone changes including a strong concentration perturbation at the tropopause may be higher than the climate sensitivity to uniform changes of a greenhouse gas. In a hierarchy of experiments, for which the spatial structure of an aircraft-related ozone perturbation was left fixed, while the amplitude of the perturbation was artificially increased, the climate signal depends in a non-linear way on the radiative forcing. Received: 10 September 1998 / Accepted: 4 May 1999     

A GCM study of future climate response to aerosol pollution reductions

We use the global atmospheric GCM aerosol model ECHAM5-HAM to asses possible impacts of future air pollution mitigation strategies on climate. Air quality control strategies focus on the reduction of aerosol emissions. Here we investigate the extreme case of a maximum feasible end-of-pipe abatement of aerosols in the near term future (2030) in combination with increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations. The temperature response of increasing GHG concentrations and reduced aerosol emissions leads to a global annual mean equilibrium temperature response of 2.18 K. When aerosols are maximally abated only in the Industry and Powerplant sector, while other sectors stay with currently enforced regulations, the temperature response is 1.89 K. A maximum feasible abatement applied in the Domestic and Transport sector, while other sectors remain with the current legislation, leads to a temperature response of 1.39 K. Increasing GHG concentrations alone lead to a temperature response of 1.20 K. We also simulate 2–5% increases in global mean precipitation among all scenarios considered, and the hydrological sensitivity is found to be significantly higher for aerosols than for GHGs. Our study, thus highlights the huge potential impact of future air pollution mitigation strategies on climate and supports the need for urgent GHG emission reductions. GHG and aerosol forcings are not independent as both affect and are influenced by changes in the hydrological cycle. However, within the given range of changes in aerosol emissions and GHG concentrations considered in this study, the climate response towards increasing GHG concentrations and decreasing aerosols emissions is additive.     

Influence of Nocturnal Low-level Jets on Eddy-covariance Fluxes over a Tall Forest Canopy

Observations of low-level jets (LLJs) at the Howland AmeriFlux site in the USA and the jet’s impact on nocturnal turbulent exchange and scalar fluxes over a tall forest canopy are discussed. Low-frequency motions and turbulent bursts characterize moderately strong LLJs, whereas low-frequency motions are suppressed during periods with strong LLJs and enhanced shear. An analysis based on the shear-sheltering hypothesis seeks to elucidate the effect of LLJs on flux measurements. In the absence of shear sheltering, large eddies penetrate the roughness sublayer causing enhanced mixing while during periods with shear sheltering, mixing is reduced. In the absence of the latter, ‘upside-down’ eddies are primarily responsible for the enhanced velocity variances, scalar and momentum fluxes. The integral length scales over the canopy are greater than the canopy height. The variance spectra and cospectra from the wavelet analysis indicate that large eddies (spatial scale greater than the low-level jet height) interact with active canopy-scale turbulence, contributing to counter-gradient scalar fluxes.     

New Apparatus and Experimental Setup for Long-Term Swelling Tests on Sulphatic Claystones

An apparatus and experimental setup were developed to carry out a series of extremely slow and long-lasting swelling, creep or chemo-mechanics tests simultaneously. The equipment was designed specifically for investigating the behaviour of sulphatic claystones. The tests will take at least 10–15 years to complete and will provide unprecedented information about the so-called swelling law, i.e. the relationship between swelling strain and swelling stress. The swelling law is very important for designing tunnels in swelling rock. Our knowledge of the swelling law, however, is only sufficiently reliable with respect to claystones without anhydrite (e.g. marls, opalinus clay). The swelling law for sulphatic claystones remains unknown, even in qualitative terms. This is due to the underlying physico-chemical mechanisms, which are fundamentally different from those of purely argillaceous rocks. Another reason is the extremely long duration of the swelling process of clay-sulphate rocks, which makes systematic field or laboratory investigations very difficult. In order to close this knowledge gap, a series of 25 long-term simultaneous swelling tests has been started.     

Numerical simulation of the effect of interface friction of a bounding structure on shear deformation in a granular soil

Recently, the shear behavior of a cohesionless granular strip that is in contact with a very rough surface of a moving bounding structure has been numerically investigated by several authors by using a micropolar hypoplastic continuum model. It was shown that the micropolar boundary conditions assumed along the interface have a strong influence on the deformations within the granular layer. In previous investigations, only interface friction angles for very rough bounding structures were assumed. In contrast, the focus of the present paper is on the influence of the interface roughness on the deformation behavior of the granular strip when the interface friction angle is lower than the peak friction angle of the granular material. In addition to the interface friction angle, particular attention is also paid to the influence of the mean grain diameter, the solid hardness, the initial void ratio, and the vertical stress on the maximum horizontal shear displacement within the granular layer before sliding is started. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.