Consistent global responses of marine ecosystems to future climate change across the IPCC AR5 earth system models

Climate Dynamics - We analyze for the first time all 16 Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 models with explicit marine ecological modules to identify the common mechanisms involved in...     

Assessment of uncertainties in the response of the African monsoon precipitation to land use change simulated by a regional model

Land use and land cover (LULC) over Africa have changed substantially over the last 60 years and this change has been proposed to affect monsoon circulation and precipitation. This study examines the uncertainties of model simulated response in the African monsoon system and Sahel precipitation due to LULC change using a set of regional model simulations with different combinations of land surface and cumulus parameterization schemes. Although the magnitude of the response covers a broad range of values, most of the simulations show a decline in Sahel precipitation due to the expansion of pasture and croplands at the expense of trees and shrubs and an increase in surface air temperature. The relationship between the model responses to LULC change and the climatologists of the control simulations is also examined. Simulations that are climatologically too dry or too wet compared to observations and reanalyses have weak response to land use change because they are in moisture or energy limited regimes respectively. The ones that lie in between have stronger response to the LULC changes, showing a more significant role in land–atmosphere interactions. Much of the change in precipitation is related to changes in circulation, particularly to the response of the intensity and latitudinal position of the African Easterly Jet, which varies with the changes in meridional surface temperature gradients. The study highlights the need for measurements of the surface fluxes across the meridional cross-section of the Sahel to evaluate models and thereby allowing human impacts such as land use change on the monsoon to be projected more realistically.     

Impacts of enhanced CCN on the organization of convection and recent reduced counts of monsoon depressions

Monsoon depressions, that form during the Indian summer monsoon season (June to September) are known to be baroclinic disturbances (horizontal scale 2,000–3,000 km) and are driven by deep convection that carries a very large vertical slope towards cold air aloft in the upper troposphere. Deep convection is nearly always organized around the scale of these depressions. In the maintenance of the monsoon depression the generation of eddy kinetic energy on the scale of the monsoon depression is largely governed by the “in scale” covariance of heating and temperature and of vertical velocity and temperature over the region of the monsoon depression. There are normally about 6–8 monsoon depressions during a summer monsoon season. Recent years 2009, 2010 and 2011 saw very few (around 1, 0 and 1 per season respectively). The best numerical models such as those from ECMWF and US (GFS) carried many false alarms in their 3–5 day forecasts, more like 6–8 disturbances. Even in recent years with fewer observed monsoon depressions a much larger number of depressions is noted in ECMWF forecasts. These are fairly comprehensive models that carry vast data sets (surface and satellite based), detailed data assimilation, and are run at very high resolutions. The monsoon depression is well resolved by these respective horizontal resolutions in these models (at 15 and 35 km). These models carry complete and detailed physical parameterizations. The false alarms in their forecasts leads us to suggest that some additional important ingredient may be missing in these current best state of the art models. This paper addresses the effects of pollution for the enhancement of cloud condensation nuclei and the resulting disruption of the organization of convection in monsoon depressions. Our specific studies make use of a high resolution mesoscale model (WRF/CHEM) to explore the impacts of the first and second aerosol indirect effects proposed by Twomey and Albrecht. We have conducted preliminary studies including examination of the evolution of radar reflectivity (computed inversely from the model hydrometeors) for normal and enhanced CCN effects (arising from enhanced monsoon pollution). The time lapse histories show a major disruption in the organization of convection of the monsoon depressions on the time scale of a week to 10 days in these enhanced CCN scenarios.     

Climate change projections of the North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program (NARCCAP)

We investigate major results of the NARCCAP multiple regional climate model (RCM) experiments driven by multiple global climate models (GCMs) regarding climate change for seasonal temperature and precipitation over North America. We focus on two major questions: How do the RCM simulated climate changes differ from those of the parent GCMs and thus affect our perception of climate change over North America, and how important are the relative contributions of RCMs and GCMs to the uncertainty (variance explained) for different seasons and variables? The RCMs tend to produce stronger climate changes for precipitation: larger increases in the northern part of the domain in winter and greater decreases across a swath of the central part in summer, compared to the four GCMs driving the regional models as well as to the full set of CMIP3 GCM results. We pose some possible process-level mechanisms for the difference in intensity of change, particularly for summer. Detailed process-level studies will be necessary to establish mechanisms and credibility of these results. The GCMs explain more variance for winter temperature and the RCMs for summer temperature. The same is true for precipitation patterns. Thus, we recommend that future RCM-GCM experiments over this region include a balanced number of GCMs and RCMs.     

Special features of cyclotron radiation in anisotropic plasmas

We analyze the special features of cyclotron radiation in four different modes radiated by a mildly relativistic electron current in an anisotropic plasma, taking into consideration that the radiation is transmitted along the group velocity, rather than the wave normal direction. A systematic series of numerical analysis is carried out, to demonstrate the characteristics of the focussing effect and Doppler effect of the radiation, arising from anisotropy. The parameters used pertain to plasmas and radiators of the types encountered in the terrestrial upper atmosphere and the solar corona.     

Towfish orientation and position estimation

The towfish location and orientation problems that arise in using side-scan sonar to detect objects on the sea bottom are treated separately. Data which locate the towfish relative to the ship are usually deteriorated by multipath receptions and other effects. In order to overcome this serious degradation in the location measurements, a modified Kalman filter is proposed. An estimate of the state transition matrix for this filter is derived, and a means of switching between two Kalman gains is suggested. The feasibility of the proposed filter is justified by a case study. Improved estimates of towfish pitch and heading measurements are obtained by a separate system employing model identification and subsequent Kalman filtering. Application of these methods to data from similar towed side-scan sonar systems should yield significant gains in object location accuracy     

Numerical solutions for flow in porous media

A numerical approach is proposed to model the flow in porous media using homogenization theory. The proposed concept involves the analyses of micro‐true flow at pore‐level and macro‐seepage flow at macro‐level. Macro‐seepage and microscopic characteristic flow equations are first derived from the Navier–Stokes equation at low Reynolds number through a two‐scale homogenization method. This homogenization method adopts an asymptotic expansion of velocity and pressure through the micro‐structures of porous media. A slightly compressible condition is introduced to express the characteristic flow through only characteristic velocity. This characteristic flow is then numerically solved using a penalty FEM scheme. Reduced integration technique is introduced for the volumetric term to avoid mesh locking. Finally, the numerical model is examined using two sets of permeability test data on clay and one set of permeability test data on sand. The numerical predictions agree well with the experimental data if constraint water film is considered for clay and two‐dimensional cross‐connection effect is included for sand. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.