The simulated atmospheric response to expansion of the Arctic boreal forest biome

Over the last century, the Arctic has warmed at twice the rate of the planet as a whole. Observational evidence indicates that this rapid warming is affecting the tundra and boreal forest biomes by changing their structure and geographic distribution. A global climate model (GCM) was used to explore the atmospheric response to boreal forest expansion by applying a one-grid cell shift of the forest into tundra. This subtle shift is meant to represent the expansion that would occur this century rather than more extreme scenarios predicted by dynamic vegetation models. Results show that this shift causes an average annual warming of 0.3 °C over the region because of a reduction in the surface albedo and an increase in net radiation. A warming of ~1.0 °C occurs in spring when the forest masks the higher albedo snow-covered surface and results in snowmelt and a reduction in cloud cover. Results fail to show a larger-scale dynamical response although some warming of the lower and mid troposphere occurs in July. No changes were found in the position or strength of the Arctic frontal zone as some studies have indicated will occur with a shift in the boreal forest-tundra boundary. These findings suggest that coupled model simulations that predict larger changes in vegetation distribution are likely overemphasizing the amount of Arctic warming that will occur this century. These findings also indicate that a realistic dynamical response to subtle land cover change might not be correctly simulated by GCMs run at coarse spatial resolutions.     

Variations of East African Climate during the Past Two Centuries

The evidence on the climatic history of East Africa over the past two centuries comprises historical accounts of lake levels, observations and analyses of glacier variations, wind and current observations in the Indian Ocean, as well as raingauge measurements. East Africa experiences its rainy seasons in boreal spring and autumn, centered around April–May and October–November; the spring rains being more abundant and the autumn rains more variable. Rains tend to be abundant/deficient with slow/fast westerlies (UEQ) and Eastward Equatorial Jet (EEJ) in the upper hydrosphere of the equatorial Indian Ocean. A drastic climatic dislocation took place during the last two decades of the l9th century, manifest in a drop of lake levels, onset of glacier recession, and acceleration of UEQ and EEJ. The decades immediately preceding 1880 featured high lake stands, extensive glaciation, and slow UEQ and EEJ, as compared to the 20th century. The onset of glacier recession in East Africa after 1880 contrasts with a start of ice shrinkage in New Guinea and the Ecuadorian Andes around the middle of the l9th century. The regional circulation regime characterized by slow UEQ and EEJ in the decades prior to 1880 was conducive to extensive ice cover along with high lake stands in East Africa, and this may account for the onset of glacier recession much later than in the other mountain regions of the equatorial zone. The evolution of East African climate over the first half of the l9th century merits further exploration.     

The Turbulence Structure of the Stable Atmospheric Boundary Layer Around a Coastal Headland: Aircraft Observations and Modelling Results

The turbulence structure of a stable marine atmospheric boundary layer in the vicinity of a coastal headland is examined using aircraft observations and numerical simulations. Measurements are drawn from a flight by the NCAR C-130 around Cape Mendocino on the coast of northern California on June 7 1996 during the Coastal Waves 96 field program. Local similarity scaling of the velocity variances is found to apply successfully within the continuously turbulent layer; the empirical scaling function is similar to that found by several previous studies. Excellent agreement is found between the modelled and observed scaling results. No significant change in scaling behaviour is observed for the region within the expansion fan that forms downstream of the Cape, suggesting that the scaling can be applied to horizontally heterogeneous conditions; however, the precise form of the function relating scaled velocities and stability is observed to change close to the surface. This result, differences between the scaling functions found here and in other studies, and the departure of these functions from the constant value predicted by the original theory, leads us to question the nature of the similarity functions observed. We hypothesize that the form of the functions is controlled by non-local contributions to the velocity variance budgets, and that differences in the non-local terms between studies explain the differences in the observed scaling functions.     

Geomorphological and seismostratigraphic evidence for multidirectional polyphase glaciation of the northern Celtic Sea

High-resolution seismic and bathymetric data offshore southeast Ireland and LIDaR data in County Waterford are presented that partially overlap previous studies. The observed Quaternary stratigraphic succession offshore southeast Ireland (between Dungarvan and Kilmore Quay) records a sequence of depositional and erosional events that supports regional glacial models derived from nearby coastal sediment stratigraphies and landforms. A regionally widespread, acoustically massive facies interpreted as the ‘Irish Sea Till’ infills an uneven, channelized bedrock surface overlying irregular mounds and deposits in bedrock lows that are probably earlier Pleistocene diamicts. The till is truncated and overlain by a thin, stratified facies, suggesting the development of a regional palaeolake following ice recession of the Irish Sea Ice Stream. A north–south oriented seabed ridge to the north is interpreted as an esker, representing southward flowing subglacial drainage associated with a restricted ice sheet advance of the Irish Ice Sheet onto the Celtic Sea shelf. Onshore topographic data reveal streamlined bedforms that corroborate a southerly advance of ice onto the shelf across County Waterford. The combined evidence supports previous palaeoglaciological models. Significantly, for the first time, this study defines a southern limit for a Late Midlandian Irish Ice Sheet advance onto the Celtic Sea shelf. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Why did a vehicle stop? A methodology for detection and classification of stops in vehicle trajectories

ABSTRACT

Trajectory data mining is a lively research field in the domain of spatio-temporal data mining. Trajectory pattern mining comprises a set of specific pattern mining methods, which are applied as consecutive steps on a trajectory with the goal to extract and classify re-occurring spatio-temporal patterns. Despite the common nature and frequent usage of such methods by the GIScience community, a methodological approach is missing so far, especially when it comes to the use of machine learning-based classification methods. The current work closes this gap by proposing and evaluating a machine learning-based 3-steps trajectory data mining methodology using the detection and classification of stop points in vehicle trajectories as example. The work describes in detail the applied methodologies with respect to the three mining steps ‘stop detection’, ‘feature extraction’ and ‘classification in traffic-relevant and non-traffic-relevant stops’ and evaluates six machine learning-based classification algorithms using a real-world dataset of 15,498 vehicle trajectories with 5,899 detected stops (thereof 2,032 manually classified). Due to its exemplary nature, the presented methodology is suited to act as blueprint for similar trajectory data mining problems.     

Soil frost effects on streamflow recessions in a subarctic catchment

The Arctic is warming rapidly. Changing seasonal freezing and thawing cycles of the soil are expected to affect river run‐off substantially, but how soil frost influences river run‐off at catchment scales is still largely unknown. We hypothesize that soil frost alters flow paths and therefore affects storage–discharge relations in subarctic catchments. To test this hypothesis, we used an approach that combines meteorological records and recession analysis. We studied streamflow data (1986–2015) of Abiskojokka, a river that drains a mountainous catchment (560 km²) in the north of Sweden (68° latitude). Recessions were separated into frost periods (spring) and no‐frost periods (summer) and then compared. We observed a significant difference between recessions of the two periods: During spring, discharge was linearly related to storage, whereas storage–discharge relationships in summer were less linear. An analysis of explanatory factors showed that after winters with cold soil temperatures and low snowpack, storage–discharge relations approached linearity. On the other hand, relatively warm winter soil conditions resulted in storage–discharge relationships that were less linear. Even in summer, relatively cold antecedent winter soils and low snowpack levels had a propagating effect on streamflow. This could be an indication that soil frost controls recharge of deep groundwater flow paths, which affects storage–discharge relationships in summer. We interpret these findings as evidence for soil frost to have an important control over river run‐off dynamics. To our knowledge, this is the first study showing significant catchment‐integrated effects of soil frost on this spatiotemporal scale.     

Discharge estimation of submarine springs in the Dead Sea based on velocity or density measurements in proximity to the water surface

The Dead Sea is a closed lake, the water level of which is lowering at an alarming rate of about 1 m/year. Factors difficult to determine in its water balance are evaporation and groundwater inflow, some of which emanate as submarine groundwater discharge. A vertical buoyant jet generated by the difference in densities between the groundwater and the Dead Sea brine forms at submarine spring outlets. To characterize this flow field and to determine its volumetric discharge, a system was developed to measure the velocity and density of the ascending submarine groundwater across the center of the stream along several horizontal sections and equidistant depths while divers sampled the spring. This was also undertaken on an artificial submarine spring with a known discharge to determine the quality of the measurements and the accuracy of the method. The underwater widening of the flow is linear and independent of the volumetric spring discharge. The temperature of the Dead Sea brine at lower layers primarily determines the temperature of the surface of the upwelling, produced above the jet flow, as the origin of the main mass of water in the submarine jet flow is Dead Sea brine. Based on the measurements, a model is presented to evaluate the distribution of velocity and solute density in the flow field of an emanating buoyant jet. This model allows the calculation of the volumetric submarine discharge, merely requiring either the maximum flow velocity or the minimal density at a given depth.     

Improvement of surface run‐off in the hydrological model ParFlow by a scale‐consistent river parameterization

We propose an improvement of the overland‐flow parameterization in a distributed hydrological model, which uses a constant horizontal grid resolution and employs the kinematic wave approximation for both hillslope and river channel flow. The standard parameterization lacks any channel flow characteristics for rivers, which results in reduced river flow velocities for streams narrower than the horizontal grid resolution. Moreover, the surface areas, through which these wider model rivers may exchange water with the subsurface, are larger than the real river channels potentially leading to unrealistic vertical flows. We propose an approximation of the subscale channel flow by scaling Manning's roughness in the kinematic wave formulation via a relationship between river width and grid cell size, following a simplified version of the Barré de Saint‐Venant equations (Manning–Strickler equations). The too large exchange areas between model rivers and the subsurface are compensated by a grid resolution‐dependent scaling of the infiltration/exfiltration rate across river beds. We test both scaling approaches in the integrated hydrological model ParFlow. An empirical relation is used for estimating the true river width from the mean annual discharge. Our simulations show that the scaling of the roughness coefficient and the hydraulic conductivity effectively corrects overland flow velocities calculated on the coarse grid leading to a better representation of flood waves in the river channels.     

Projection of glacier runoff in Yarkant River basin and Beida River basin,Western China

Potential changes in glacier area, mass balance and runoff in the Yarkant River Basin (YRB) and Beida River Basin (BRB) are projected for the period from 2011 to 2050 employing the modified monthly degree‐day model forced by climate change projection. Future monthly air temperature and precipitation were derived from the simple average of 17, 16 and 17 General Circulation Model (GCM) projections following the A1B, A2 and B1 scenarios, respectively. These data were downscaled to each station employing the Delta method, which computes differences between current and future GCM simulations and adds these changes to observed time series. Model parameters calibrated with observations or results published in the literature between 1961 and 2006 were kept unchanged. Annual glacier runoff in YRB is projected to increase until 2050, and the total runoff over glacier area in 1970 is projected to increase by about 13%–35% during 2011–2050 relative to the average during 1961–2006. Annual glacier runoff and the total runoff over glacier area in 1970 in BRB is projected to increase initially and then to reach a tipping point during 2011–2030. There are prominent increases in summer, but only small increase in May and October of glacier runoff in YRB, and significant increases during late spring and early summer and significant decreases in July and late summer of glacier runoff in BRB. This study highlights the great differences among basins in their response to future climate warming. The specific runoff from areas exposed after glacier retreat relative to 1970 is projected to general increasing, which must be considered when evaluating the potential change of glacier runoff. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.