Uncertainty of Climate Response to Natural and Anthropogenic Forcings Due to Different Land Use Scenarios

The A.M.Obukhov Institute of Atmospheric Physics,Russian Academy of Sciences (IAP RAS) climate model (CM) of intermediate complexity is extended by a spatially explicit terrestrial carbon cycle module.Numerical experiments with the IAP RAS CM are performed forced by the reconstructions of anthropogenic and natural forcings for the 16th to the 20th centuries and by combined SRES (Special Report on Emission Scenarios) A2-LUH (Land Use Harmonization) anthropogenic scenarios for the 21st century.Hereby,the impact of uncertainty in land-use scenarios on results of simulations with a coupled climate-carbon cycle model is tested.The simulations of the model realistically reproduced historical changes in carbon cycle characteristics.In the IAP RAS CM,climate warming reproduced in the 20th and 21st centuries enhanced terrestrial net primary production but terrestrial carbon uptake was suppressed due to an overcompensating increase in soil respiration.Around year 2100,the simulations the model forced by different land use scenarios diverged markedly,by about 70 Pg (C) in terms of biomass and soil carbon stock but they differed only by about 10 ppmv in terms of atmospheric carbon dioxide content.     

21世纪西北太平洋台风变化预估

对近年多个气候模式考虑不同的人类排放情景作了总结,并对21世纪西北太平洋台风变化作了预估。研究表明,集成多个气候模式考虑人类排放情景,预估到21世纪后期,西北太平洋年总编号台风数可能减少,但强台风数及其降水和风速可能增强。需要强调的是,台风的长期预估是极其困难的,存在极大的不确定性,有待作更深入的研究。     

Climatic Change and Desert Vegetation Distribution: Assessing Thirty Years of Change in Southern Nevada's Mojave Desert

A major theme in physical geography and biogeography is understanding how vegetation changes across geographic gradients during climate change. We assess shifts in distributions of fifteen Mojave Desert plant species based on a 2008 resurvey of 103 vegetation transects that were established in 1979. We model changes in species distributions using Maximum Entropy (Maxent) with environmental and climate variables to predict probability of species’ occurrences. Climate during the ten-year period preceding the 2008 vegetation survey was 1.5°C warmer and 3 cm per year of precipitation drier than the ten years preceding 1979. Species inhabiting the highest elevations and strongly correlated with precipitation displayed areal reductions from 1979 through 2008.     

Choosing a Suitable Projection for Navigation in the Arctic

Navigation at sea is based on Electronic Chart Display and Information Systems (ECDIS) that allow for the use of a limited number of projections. As navigation in the Arctic region becomes a reality due to the progressive melting of the polar ice cap, a re-examination of the most suitable projections for navigation in the Arctic becomes timely. Several projections are proposed in the literature for this area. In our approach, the selection is based on an analytical study utilizing three criteria: the control of the magnitude of distortions within acceptable limits, the shape of great circles (GCs) and rhumb lines/loxodromes, and the shape of the graticule lines portrayed on the chart. The analysis carried out shows that to fulfill the set criteria, the arctic area should be divided into Arctic and sub-Arctic regions. More specifically, for the Arctic region the Azimuthal Polar Equidistant projection and the Azimuthal Polar Stereographic projection are the most suitable ones. For the sub-Arctic region, the Lambert Conformal Conic and the Conic Equidistant projection are considered more appropriate. All four projections proposed can be used for both the traditional nautical chart and the ECDIS, and both are considered as the starting point for further study of specific ECDIS requirements.     

Techniques for slope stability analysis: Site specific studies from Idukki district,Kerala

The occurrences of slope failures are frequent in Idukki district of Kerala state particularly along the road cuttings and hill slopes causing disruption in traffic, loss of lives and property. This demands a critical evaluation of stability of slopes along the hill roads. This paper deals with stability analysis of a typical hard rock profile at Chuzhappu and a lateritic profile at Kumili along the road connecting Kottayam and Kumili. A large number of factors have been examined and studied; the orientation of discontinuities has been identified as one of the major inherent factors influencing slope instability along Chuzhappu hard rock profile. These have been analysed carefully using stereographic/equal area projection technique in order to determine the vulnerability to slope failure and to understand the type of rock slide that can occur in this profile. The buoyant force of water acting along the discontinuities after heavy rain storm further aids the down slope movement. As the laterite slope is mostly homogeneous, Bishops method and Swedish method were adopted for stability analysis of laterite slope at Kumili. The study also examines the efficacy and applicability of the different methods employed in soil mechanics to assess the stability of laterite slope.The results obtained by this method are compared by actual field conditions. The stability assessment indicates that two sectors at Chuzhappu and one sector at Kumili profile are at the geo-technical threshold of failure, when piezometric head rises during rainstorm. The study indicates that these methods are highly useful in determining the Factor of Safety in profiles with similar geological setting.     

Banach空间中非扩张映像的强收敛性

在实光滑和一致凸Banach空间中通过引入广义度量投影,证明了一个关于非扩张映像的修正Mann迭代序列的强收敛性定理。目的是利用广义度量投影来修改Nakajo与Takahashi的迭代方案,并将Nakajo与Taka—hashi文中所对应的主要结果由Hilbert空间推广到实光滑和一致凸Banach空间。     

The Anomalous Mei-yu Rainfall of Summer 2020 from a Circulation Clustering Perspective: Current and Possible Future Prevalence※

Highly unusual amounts of rainfall were seen in the 2020 summer in many parts of China, Japan, and South Korea. At the intercontinental scale, case studies have attributed this exceptional event to a displacement of the climatological western North Pacific subtropical anticyclone, potentially associated Indian Ocean sea surface temperature patterns and a mid-latitude wave train emanating from the North Atlantic. Using clusters of spatial patterns of sea level pressure, we show that an unprecedented 80％ of the 2020 summer days in East Asia were dominated by clusters of surface pressure greater than normal over the South China Sea. By examining the rainfall and water vapor fluxes in other years when these clusters were also prevalent, we find that the frequency of these types of clusters was likely to have been largely responsible for the unusual rainfall of 2020. From two ensembles of future climate projections, we show that summers like 2020 in East Asia may become more frequent and considerably wetter in a warmer world with an enhanced moisture supply.     

加权残值法与等角投影数值变换

本文介绍了描述等角投影变换的Dirichlet模型和用加权残值法求解该模型的一般原理和方法,并给出了应用上述方法所获得的某些等角投影变换的数值公式。文章最后指出,由于应用数值方法,有可能形成一门新的学科,即计算地图投影学。     

China’s changing economy and emissions trajectory: following global trends

A key climate policy issue and debate is the future trajectory of emissions of carbon dioxide of countries, their peaking dates, and rates of decline after peaking. This article analyses China’s emissions trajectory in terms of global historical trends distinguishing between industry, infrastructure, and urbanization. Growth of emissions from industrialization and infrastructure development has stabilized in 2014 with saturation levels being reached, while the process of urbanization continues with the shift of the economy to the services sector, with reduced energy use, and this is a global trend. The future trajectory of emissions will be shaped largely by growth of transport and building-related services which directly impact on and are shaped by middle-class levels of well-being. These are areas where convergence with levels of services in other urbanized countries is an important element of national policy. This global trend has not been adequately taken into account in modelling and macroeconomic analysis which ignore social processes. The article concludes that China’s 13th Five Year Plan (2016–2020) seeks to achieve a ‘moderately well-off society’ while putting a cap on total energy demand by modifying the drivers of consumption emissions compared with countries that urbanized earlier. The adoption of a public policy priority of dense mixed-use urban form, public transport, energy efficiency to enable energy system reform, and digital economy could be a model for others.

Policy relevance

The article redefines climate change in terms of social processes as urban form and notions of well-being lock-in increasing levels of future emissions of carbon dioxide. There are implications for research in assessing how best drivers of emissions can be modified without affecting well-being, including renewable and digital technologies and human behaviours that drive patterns of natural resource use as well as the identification of leverage points. There are also broader implications for replacing the development cooperation model of global climate governance to focus on new values recognizing interdependencies for sharing responsibility as well as prosperity.