Fingerprinting of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation in climate models to aid in the design of proxy investigations

It is desirable to design proxy investigations that target regions where properties reconstructed from calibrated parameters potentially carry high-fidelity information concerning changes in large-scale climate systems. Numerical climate models can play an important role in this task, producing simulations that can be analyzed to produce spatial “fingerprints” of the expected response of various properties under a variety of different scenarios. We will introduce a new method of fingerprinting the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) that not only provides information concerning the sensitivity of the response at a given location to changes in the large-scale system, but also quantifies the linearity, monotonicity and symmetry of the response. In this way, locations that show high sensitivities to changes in the AMOC, but that exhibit, for example, strongly nonlinear behavior can be avoided during proxy investigations. To demonstrate the proposed approach we will use the example of the response of seawater temperatures to changes in the strength of the AMOC. We present results from an earth-system climate model which has been perturbed with an idealized freshwater forcing scenario in order to reduce the strength of the AMOC in a systematic manner. The seawater temperature anomalies that result from the freshwater forcing are quantified in terms of their sensitivity to the AMOC strength in addition to the linearity and monotonicity of their response. A first-order reversal curve (FORC) approach is employed to investigate and quantify the irreversibility of the temperature response to a slowing and recovering AMOC. Thus, FORCs allow the identification of areas that are unsuitable for proxy reconstructions because their temperature versus AMOC relationship lacks symmetry.     

Ocean-atmosphere CO2 exchange: An accessible lab simulation for considering biological effects

Phytoplankton is considered a key component mediating the ocean-atmospheric exchange of carbon dioxide and oxygen. Lab simulations which model biological responses to atmospheric change are difficult to translate into natural settings owing in part to the vertical migration of phytoplankton. In the sea this vertical migration acts to regulate actual carbon dioxide consumption. To capture some critical properties of this vertical material transfer, we monitored the effects of atmospheric CO₂ on dense suspensions of bioconvecting microorganisms. Bioconvection refers to the spontaneous patterns of circulation which arise among such upwardly swimming cells as alga, protozoa, zoospore and large bacteria. Gravity, phototaxis and chemotaxis have all been implicated as affecting pattern-forming ability. The ability of a biologically active suspension to detect atmospheric changes offers a unique method to quantify organism adjustment and vertical migration. With increasing CO₂, bioconvection patterns in alga (P. parva) and protozoa (T. pyriformis) lose their robustness, and surface cell populations retreat from the highest CO₂ regions. Cell movement (both percent motile and mean velocity) generally diminishes. A general program of image analysis yields statistically significant variations in macroscopic migration patterns; both fractal dimension and various crystallographic parameters correlate strongly with carbon dioxide content.     

Sensitivity of hurricane intensity forecasts to physical initialization

Summary Intensity forecasts of a hurricane are shown to be quite sensitive to the initial meso-convective scale precipitation distributions. These are included within the data assimilation using a physical initialization that was developed at Florida State University. We show a case study of a hurricane forecast where the inclusion of the observed precipitation did provide reasonable intensity forecasts. Further experimentation with the inclusion or exclusion of individual meso-convective rainfall elements, around and over the storm, shows that the intensity forecasts were quite sensitive to these initial rainfall distributions. The exclusion of initial rain in the inner rain area of a hurricane leads to a much reduced intensity forecast, whereas that impact is less if the rainfall of an outer rain band was initially excluded.Intensity forecasts of hurricanes may be sensitive to a number of factors such as sea surface temperature anomalies, presence or absence of concentric eye walls, potential vorticity interactions in the upper troposphere and other environmental factors.This paper is a sequel to a recent study, Krishnamurti et al., 1997, on the prediction of hurricane OPAL of 1995 that was a category III storm over the Gulf of Mexico. In that study we showed successful forecasts of the storm intensity from the inclusion of observed rainfall distributions within physical initialization. In that paper we examined the issues of diabatic potential vorticity and the angular momentum in order to diagnose the storm intensity. All of the terms of the complete Ertel potential vorticity equation were evaluated and it was concluded that the diabatic contributions to the potential vorticity were quite important for the diagnosis of the storm's intensity. The present paper addresses some sensitivity issues related to the individual mesoconvective precipitating elements.With 4 Figures     

Is There a Link between Arctic Sea Ice Loss and Increasing Frequency of Extremely Cold Winters in Eurasia and North America? Synthesis of Current Research

Studies dealing with impact of the Arctic warming and related sea ice decline on the Northern Hemisphere atmospheric circulation are considered. The causes of occurrence of extremely cold winters over the mid-latitude continents observed in the recent decades against the warming background are discussed. Several conceptions are outlined which explain potential reasons for occurrence of this phenomenon. The paper discusses impacts of the Arctic sea ice loss on the large-scale atmospheric circulation, oscillations of planetary waves. It also discusses issues related to sea ice changes in the Barents and Kara seas and their link to the frequency of extremely cold winters observed in Eurasia and North America, the contribution of internal atmospheric variability to the increasing frequency of cold weather, and the role of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation in the Arctic sea ice reduction.     

阿尔山地区积雪变化特征

选取阿尔山气象站1981—2015年冷季(10月—次年4月)气象资料,利用滑动平均、线性倾向估计和Mann-Kendall等方法,对年最大积雪深度、积雪日数、气温和降水量进行分析。结果表明,阿尔山地区年最大积雪深度主要发生在1月至3月,其中2月份概率最大,达50%;34 a内最大积雪深度呈上升趋势(2.77 cm/10a),年平均增加0.98%,且年最大积雪深度在1998年发生了突变,即在1998年之前增长缓慢,在2000年以后上升趋势显著。积雪日数的统计分析表明,初始积雪日数和有效积雪日数呈现略微减少趋势,而稳定积雪日数有微弱的增加趋势;通常初始积雪日数比有效积雪日数大30天左右。年最大积雪深度与稳定积雪时期的降水量、积雪日数、日照时数有显著的相关性,相关系数分别为0.647、0.515、0.584,但与稳定积雪时期的气温没有明显的相关性。在全球变暖的大环境下,积雪深度随着降水量和日照时数的增加而增加,且积雪深度受降水量的影响大于日照时数的影响。     

Estimation of Regional Evapotranspiration by Combining Aircraftand Ground-Based Measurements

Two methods are examined for combining measurements from instrumented aircraftand towers to estimate regional scale evapotranspiration. Aircraft data provided spatially averaged values of properties of the surface, the evaporative fraction and maximum stomatal conductance. These quantities are less sensitive to meteorological conditions than the turbulent fluxes of heat and water vapour themselves. The methods allowed aircraft data collected over several days to be averaged and thus to reduce the random error associated with the temporal under-sampling inherent in aircraft measurements. Evaporative fraction is estimated directly from the aircraft data, while maximum stomatal conductance is estimated by coupling the Penman–Monteith equation to a simple model relating surface conductance to the incoming shortwave radiation and specific humidity saturation deficit. The spatial averages of evaporative fraction and maximum stomatal conductance can then be used with routine tower data to estimate the regional scale evapotranspiration. Data from aircraft flights and six ground based sites during the OASIS field campaign in south–east New South Wales in 1995 have been used to check the methods. Both the evaporative fraction and the maximum stomatal conductance derived from the aircraft data give information on the spatial variability of the surface energy budget at scales from 10 to 100 km. Daily averaged latent heat fluxes estimated using these methods for the OASIS study region agree with the available observations in quasi-stationary conditions or in weakly non-stationary conditions when the data from several aircraft flights are averaged to reduce the impact of short term imbalances in the surface energy budget.     

Twentieth century North Atlantic climate change. Part II: Understanding the effect of Indian Ocean warming

Ensembles of atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM) experiments are used in an effort to understand the boreal winter Northern Hemisphere (NH) extratropical climate response to the observed warming of tropical sea surface temperatures (SSTs) over the last half of the twentieth Century. Specifically, we inquire about the origins of unusual, if not unprecedented, changes in the wintertime North Atlantic and European climate that are well described by a linear trend in most indices of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). The simulated NH atmospheric response to the linear trend component of tropic-wide SST change since 1950 projects strongly onto the positive polarity of the NAO and is a hemispheric pattern distinguished by decreased (increased) Arctic (middle latitude) sea level pressure. Progressive warming of the Indian Ocean is the principal contributor to this wintertime extratropical response, as shown through additional AGCM ensembles forced with only the SST trend in that sector. The Indian Ocean influence is further established through the reproducibility of results across three different models forced with identical, idealized patterns of the observed warming. Examination of the transient atmospheric adjustment to a sudden “switch-on” of an Indian Ocean SST anomaly reveals that the North Atlantic response is not consistent with linear theory and most likely involves synoptic eddy feedbacks associated with changes in the North Atlantic storm track. The tropical SST control exerted over twentieth century regional climate underlies the importance of determining the future course of tropical SST for regional climate change and its uncertainty. Better understanding of the extratropical responses to different, plausible trajectories of the tropical oceans is key to such efforts.     

Suburban-rural energy balance comparisons for Vancouver,B.C.: An extreme case?

Synchronous observations of the energy balances of a suburban and a rural area in the Vancouver region are used to investigate the impact of urbanization on energy exchange. Net radiation and rural soil heat flux density were directly measured, suburban heat storage was parameterized, and the turbulent heat flux densities were evaluated using the Bowen ratio-energy balance method. Most comparisons were conducted during a period of drying following an unusually wet early summer. These conditions produced atypical but very interesting results. With cloudless skies and high radiant input, suburban-rural differences of both net radiation and evapotranspiration were contrary to previous results and intuition. In both cases, suburban values were greater than their rural counterparts. In most respects the rural site behaved as expected, and the explanation for these findings is thought to be related to advective assistance of evapotranspiration from the suburban area. Under lesser radiant forcing the suburban budget acted in greater conformity with past experience and suburban-rural differences were similarly more in agreement with expectation.     

循环神经网络在雷达临近预报中的应用

该文将循环神经网络（recurrent neural network,RNN）应用于雷达临近预报。使用预测循环神经网络（predictive RNN）架构,利用雷达历史组合反射率因子建模,给出雷达组合反射率因子未来1 h的预报结果。预测循环神经网络的核心是在长短时记忆单元（long short-term memory,LSTM）中增加时空记忆模块,能够提取雷达回波不同尺度的空间特征,配合循环神经网络架构,可以有效解决反射率因子预测问题。北京大兴雷达和广州雷达长时间序列的独立检验结果和2个强对流天气个例检验结果表明:该方法和传统的基于交叉相关法的1 h雷达外推临近预报相比,在20 dBZ和30 dBZ检验项目内,临界成功指数（CSI）可以提升0.15~0.30,命中率（POD）提高0.15~0.25,虚警率（FAR）降低0.15~0.20,该方法对反射率因子强度变化有一定预报能力。     

Complex study of characteristics of a Cb cloud developing over the Arabian Peninsula under high dew point deficit in the atmosphere. Part 1. Field observations and numerical modeling

Basing on airmass motion trajectory calculations over the Arabian Peninsula on April 10, 2008, it can be assumed that in the lower and middle troposphere, zones with increased air moisture exist due to air inflow from the Red Sea. As a result, mesoscale volumes of dry and moist air are neighboring, though large-scale field is comparatively homogeneous with low humidity. In the mesoscale zones, intense thunderstorm and hailstorm Cb clouds developed, whose characteristics and evolution are studied in the paper. Continuous radar observations of the clouds are carried out during 5 hours. Numerical simulation of the cloud evolution is performed with nonstationary 1.5-dimensional model. It is noted that under the mentioned atmospheric conditions, in the area under consideration, heavy rain and hail from the Cb clouds are observed. The main factors of their origination are high thermal instability of the atmosphere and moist air inflow from outside.