Climate change and human activities: a case study in Xinjiang, China

We examined both long-term climate variability and anthropogenic contributions to current climate change for Xinjiang province of northwest China. Xinjiang encompasses several mountain ranges and inter-mountain basins and is comprised of a northern semiarid region and a more arid southern region. Climate over the last three centuries was reconstructed from tree rings and temperature series were calculated for the past 50 years using weather station data. Three major conclusions from these analyses are: (1) Although temperature varied considerably in Xinjiang over the last 200 years, it was non-directional until the last 50 years when a substantial warming trend occurred; (2) The semiarid North Xinjiang was representative of the northern hemisphere climate, while the more arid South Xinjiang resembled the southern hemisphere climate, meanwhile, (3) The entire Xinjiang province captured the global-scale climate signal. We also compared human contributions to global change between North and South Xinjiang, including land cover/land use, population, and greenhouse gas production. For both regions, urban areas acted as heat islands; and large areas of grassland and forest were converted to barren land, especially in North Xinjiang. Additionally, North Xinjiang also showed larger increase in population and greenhouse gas emissions mainly associated with animal production than those in South Xinjiang. Although Xinjiang province is a geographically coupled mountain–basin system, the two regions have distinct climate patterns and anthropogenic activities related to land cover conversion and greenhouse gas production.     

Yangtze Delta floods and droughts of the last millennium: Abrupt changes and long term memory

Summary Climate variability and flood events in the Yangtze Delta, which is a low-lying terrain prone to flood hazards, storm tides and typhoons, are studied in terms of a trend and detrended fluctuation analysis of historical records. The data used in this paper were extracted from historical records such as local annuals and chronologies from 1000–1950 and supplemented by instrumental observations since 1950. The historical data includes frequencies of floods, droughts and maritime events on a decadal basis. Flood magnitudes increase during the transition from the medieval warm interval into the early Little Ice Age. Fluctuating climate changes of the Little Ice Age, which are characterised by arid climate events, are followed by wet and cold climate conditions with frequent flood hazards. For trend analysis, the Mann-Kendall test is applied to determine the changing trends of flood and drought frequency. Flood frequency during 1000–1950 shows a negative trend before 1600 A.D. and a positive trend thereafter; drought frequency increases after 1300. The detrended fluctuation analysis of the flood and drought frequencies reveals power law scaling up to centuries; this is related to long-term memory and is similar to the river Nile floods.     

东营市秋冬季大雾天气分析

利用1971-2000年东营市及所辖3个县站的资料分析了地处黄河入海口的东营市大雾天气气候特征，结果表明：每年11月到次年的1月，是一年中大雾出现最岁的月份，广饶县大雾出现得最多，平均每年大雾日有22．7天。针对2006年9月20-23日连续大雾天气，分析了其高、低空环流形势，在此基础上总结了东营秋冬季大雾的预报着眼点。对于连续性大雾的第一天预报，需要湿度条件、辐射降温条件、风力条件均有利时才易出现大雾，而对于连续性的大雾，对辐射降温条件要求不高。     

气象卫星接收天线标校技术及应用

在过去的几十年中,我国气象事业的不断发展,中国风云气象卫星完成了从试验应用型向业务服务性的不断转型,因此对于卫星信号接收天线的可靠性和指向精度要求越来越高。目前用于接收风云系列极轨气象卫星下行信号的天线主要有12m和4.2m天线,其具有动态特性高、波束宽度窄等特点,因此需要在天线安装和运行期间对天线的轴系误差进行精确的标定和校准。本文在传统标校方法的基础上,提出了利用太阳进行的误差标校技术,进一步降低了标校环节的复杂程度,提高了标校精度。     

呼和浩特市区雷电资料分析

通过对比呼和浩特市区两个气象台站,即53463站、53466站,统计分析两台站1991-2010年20a的雷暴观测资料、呼市市区近20a雷暴日数;分析年雷暴日数变化、月雷暴日数变化、雷暴方向等,得出呼和浩特市区雷暴活动规律,为呼市防雷工作、防雷工程建设、雷电灾害风险评估提供理论依据.     

驻马店极端气温分析

利用驻马店10个站气象资料,分析了极端温度的时间变化特征、高温天气与6-8月降水量之间的关系和极端晴热高温、极端湿热高温天气形成的天气背景及影响因子,确定了高温出现的前期预报指标。     

Precise positions of Phoebe determined with CCD image-overlapping calibration

This paper presents 210 positions of Phoebe, the ninth satellite of Saturn, observed with the 1-m telescope at the Yunnan Observatory during the years 2003–2005, using a CCD image-overlapping calibration method proposed recently by Peng et al. After the observed positions of Phoebe are compared with its theoretical positions computed by the new JPL ephemerides DE405 and SAT199, the mean residuals (observed minus computed) are 0.21 and −0.05 arcsec in right ascension and declination, respectively, with a standard deviation of 0.06 arcsec.     

Global sea level change and thermal contribution

The global long-term sea level trend is obtained from the analysis of tide gauge data and TOPEX/Poseidon data. The linear trend of global mean sea level is highly non-umiform spatially, with an average rate of 2.2 mm year-1 in T/P sea-level rise from October 1992 to September 2002. Sea level change duc to temperature vanation (the thermosteric sea level) is discussed. The results are compared with TOPEX/Poseidon altimeter data in the same temporal span at different spatial scales. It is indicated that the ther-mal effect accounts for 86% and 73% of the observed seasonal variability in the northern and southern hemispheres, respectively. The TOPEX/Poseidon observed sea level lags behind the TSI, by 2 months in the zonal band of 40°-60° in both the northern and southern hemispheres. Systematic differences of about 1-2cm between TOPEX/Poseidon observations and thermosteric sea level data are obtained. The potential causes for these differences include water exchange among the atmosphere, land, and oceans, and some pos-sible deviations in thermosteric contribution estimates and geophysical corrections to the TOPEX/Poseidon data.     

A sulfotransferase specific to N-21 of gonyautoxin 2/3 from crude enzyme extraction of toxic dinoflagellate Alexandrium tamarense CI01

Sulfotransferase (ST) is the first enzyme discovered in association with paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) toxin biosynthesis in toxic dinoflagellates. This study investigates the ST activity in crude enzyme extraction of a toxic dinoflagellate species, Alexandrium tamarense CI01. The results show that crude enzyme can transfer a sulfate group from 3’-phosphoadenosine 5’-phosphosulfate (PAPS) to N-21 in the carbamoyl group of gonyautoxin 2/3 (GTX2/3) to produce C1/C2, but is inactive toward STX to produce GTX5. The crude enzyme is optimally active at pH 6.0 and 15°C. The activity is enhanced by Co2 , Mg2 , Mn2 and Ca2 individually, but is inhibited by Cu2 . Moreover, the activity shows no difference when various sulfur compounds are used as sulfate donors. These results demonstrate that the ST specific to GTX2/3 is present in the cells of A. tamarense CI01 and is involved in PSP toxin biosynthesis. In addition, the ST from different dinoflagellates is species-specific, which explains well the various biosynthesis pathways of the PSP toxins in toxic dinoflagellates.