How much does dry‐season fog matter? Quantifying fog contributions to water balance in a coastal California watershed

The seasonally‐dry climate of Northern California imposes significant water stress on ecosystems and water resources during the dry summer months. Frequently during summer, the only water inputs occur as non‐rainfall water, in the form of fog and dew. However, due to spatially heterogeneous fog interaction within a watershed, estimating fog water fluxes to understand watershed‐scale hydrologic effects remains challenging. In this study, we characterized the role of coastal fog, a dominant feature of Northern Californian coastal ecosystems, in a San Francisco Peninsula watershed. To monitor fog occurrence, intensity, and spatial extent, we focused on the mechanisms through which fog can affect the water balance: throughfall following canopy interception of fog, soil moisture, streamflow, and meteorological variables. A stratified sampling design was used to capture the watershed's spatial heterogeneities in relation to fog events. We developed a novel spatial averaging scheme to upscale local observations of throughfall inputs and evapotranspiration suppression and make watershed‐scale estimates of fog water fluxes. Inputs from fog water throughfall (10–30 mm/year) and fog suppression of evapotranspiration (125 mm/year) reduced dry‐season water deficits by 25% at watershed scales. Evapotranspiration suppression was much more important for this reduction in water deficit than were direct inputs of fog water. The new upscaling scheme was analyzed to explore the sensitivity of its results to the methodology (data type and interpolation method) employed. This evaluation suggests that our combination of sensors and remote sensing allows an improved incorporation of spatially‐averaged fog fluxes into the water balance than traditional interpolation approaches.     

Systematic optimisation and climate simulation of FAMOUS, a fast version of HadCM3

FAMOUS is an unfluxadjusted coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation model (AOGCM) based on the Met Office Hadley Centre AOGCM HadCM3. Its parametrisations of physical and dynamical processes are almost identical to those of HadCM3, but by virtue of reduced horizontal and vertical resolution and increased timestep it runs about ten times faster. The speed of FAMOUS means that parameter sensitivities can be investigated more thoroughly than in slower higher-resolution models, with the result that it can be tuned closer to its target climatology. We demonstrate a simple method for systematic tuning of parameters, resulting in a configuration of FAMOUS whose climatology is significantly more realistic than would be expected for a model of its resolution and speed. FAMOUS has been tuned to reproduce the behaviour of HadCM3 as nearly as possible, in order that experiments with each model are of maximum relevance to the physical interpretation of the other. Analysis of the control climate and climate change simulation of FAMOUS show that it possesses sufficient skill for its intended purposes in Earth system science as a tool for long-timescale integrations and for large ensembles of integrations, when HadCM3 cannot be afforded. Thus, it can help to bridge the gap between models of intermediate complexity and the higher-resolution AOGCMs used for policy-relevant climate prediction.     

Enabling adaptation? Lessons from the new ‘Green Revolution’ in Malawi and Kenya

This article explores the extent to which efforts to improve productivity of smallholder agriculture through a new ‘Green Revolution’ in Sub Saharan Africa are likely to enhance the capacity of smallholder farmers to adapt to the impacts of climate change. Drawing on empirical material from Malawi and Kenya, the paper finds more conflicts than synergies between the pursuit of higher productivity through the promotion of hybrid maize adoption and crop diversification as a strategy for climate change adaptation. This is despite an oft-assumed causal link between escape from the ‘low maize productivity trap’ and progression towards crop diversification as an adaptive strategy. In both countries, a convergence of interests between governments, donors and seed companies, combined with a historical preference for, and dependence on maize as the primary staple, has led to a narrowing of options for smallholder farmers, undermining the development of adaptive capacities in the longer term. This dynamic is linked to the conflation of market-based variety of agricultural technologies, as viewed ‘from the top down’, with diversity-in-context, as represented by site-specific and locally derived and adapted technologies and institutions that can only be developed ‘from the bottom up’.     

The impact of perturbations to ocean-model parameters on climate and climate change in a coupled model

Assessments of the impacts of uncertainties in parameters on mean climate and climate change in complex climate models have, to date, largely focussed on perturbations to parameters in the atmosphere component of the model. Here we expand on a previously published study which found the global impacts of perturbed ocean parameters on the rate of transient climate change to be small compared to perturbed atmosphere parameters. By separating the climate-change-induced ocean vertical heat transport in each perturbed member into components associated with the resolved flow and each parameterisation scheme, we show that variations in global mean heat uptake in different perturbed versions are an order of magnitude smaller than the average heat uptake. The lack of impact of the perturbations is attributed to (1) the relatively small impact of the perturbation on the direct vertical heat transport associated with the perturbed process and (2) a compensation between those direct changes and indirect changes in heat transport from other processes. Interactions between processes and changes appear to combine in complex ways to limit ensemble spread and uncertainty in the rate of warming. We also investigate regional impacts of the perturbations that may be important for climate change predictions. We find variations across the ensemble that are significant when measured against natural variability. In terms of the experimental set-up used here (models without flux adjustments) we conclude that perturbed physics ensembles with ocean parameter perturbations are an important component of any probabilistic estimate of future climate change, despite the low spread in global mean quantities. Hence, careful consideration should be given to assessing uncertainty in ocean processes in future probabilistic assessments of regional climate change.     

Reports from the Smithsonian’s Global Volcanism Network, July 2009

Information included in this summary is based on more detailed reports published in the Bulletin of the Global Volcanism Network, vol. 34, no. 7, July 2009 (on the Internet at ). Edited by scientists at the Smithsonian, this bulletin includes reports provided by a worldwide network of correspondents. The reports contain the names and contact information for all sources. Please note that these reports are preliminary and subject to change as events are studied in more detail. The Global Volcanism Program welcomes further reports of current volcanism, seismic unrest, monitoring data, and field observations.     

Reports from the Smithsonian’s Global Volcanism Network, February 2010

Information included in this summary is based on more detailed reports published in the Bulletin of the Global Volcanism Network, vol. 35, no. 2, February 2010 (on the Internet at ). Edited by scientists at the Smithsonian, this bulletin includes reports provided by a worldwide network of correspondents. The reports contain the names and contact information for all sources. Please note that these reports are preliminary and subject to change as events are studied in more detail. The Global Volcanism Program welcomes further reports of current volcanism, seismic unrest, monitoring data, and field observations.     

Turbulence in stably stratified fluids: A review of laboratory experiments

This is a review of laboratory studies of mixing in stably stratified fluids away from the direct intluence of boundary layers, and was written to introduce the session on laboratory experiments at the IUCRM Colloquium.Internal waves (Section 2) can lead to turbulence by creating regions of unstable density gradients through their mutual interactions, by individually breaking by forming rotors, and by reducing the local Richardson number until Kelvin-Helmholtz instability results. They may be important in radiating energy from turbulent or spreading regions. Critical-layer absorption of internal waves is not found to be a direct cause of turbulence in experiments with 15 Richardson number 5, although the modification of the vertical density profile may be significant.Turbulent-laminar interfaces without mean shear (Section 3) and with mean shear (Section 4) are described. The source of turbulence in these experiments is partly external, either generated by an oscillating grid or by a (relatively) moving boundary. The development of turbulence generated entirelywithin a stratified layer by Kelvin-Helmholtz instability, is described in detail in Section 5, and the results are compared with measurements in the ocean and in the atmosphere.     

Heat transfer coefficients for leaves on orchard apple trees

The coefficient for heat transfer from apple tree leaves was measured from the energy balance of leaves which were prevented from transpiring by applying Vaseline (petroleum jelly). Vaseline had negligible effect on the absorption of short-wave radiation by the leaves. The Nusselt number (Nu) describing heat flux from a leaf in terms of its average temperature was related to Reynolds numbers (Re) in the range 10³ to 10⁴ by Nu = 0.46 Re^0.54 Pr^0.33, where Pr is the Prandtl number. This supports Landsberg and Powell's (1973) wind-tunnel results for transfer from leaves subject to mutual interference.     

Rare earth evidence concerning the origin of granites of the Isle of Skye,northwest Scotland

Eleven samples of Skye granites, two samples of Torridonian sandstone and one sample of Lewisian gneiss have been analysed for ten rare earth elements (REE) by neutron activation analysis. The granites are representative of the main granite centres and compositional types. All granites have sub-parallel light-REE-enriched patterns with chondrite-normalised Ce(Ce_N) = 78–263,Yb_N = 16–60and Ce_N/Yb_N = 2.9–8.0. REE patterns for the Lewisian gneiss and Torridonian sandstone are similar to each other, withCe_N = 32–61,Yb_N = 3–5and Ce_N/Yb_N = 8–18. These two rock types as well as the Glamaig granite have negligible Eu anomalies (Eu/Eu* > 0.9), and the other granites have Eu/Eu* in the range 0.83-0.34. The REE evidence suggests that Lewisian gneiss or Torridonian sandstone arenot suitable materials from which the granites could be derived by partial melting. The Western Red Hills granite intrusions show a systematic relation of REE content with Eu/Eu*. We suggest that the Glamaig granite is the most primitive, and was derived from a source with no Eu anomaly by fractional crystallization of a more basic magma. The later Western Red Hills granites might then have resulted from further fractional crystallization of magma with a composition like that of the Glamaig granite. The Coire Uaigneich and Eastern Red Hills granites may also be products of fractional crystallization, but from different magmas to those parental to the Western Red Hills granites. The basaltic parent magmas of the Skye granites may be “continental” tholeiites derived by interaction of basalt magma with Lewisian gneiss.