Perspectives on present-day sea level change: a tribute to Christian le Provost

In this paper, we first discuss the controversial result of the work by Cabanes et al. (Science 294:840–842, 2001), who suggested that the rate of past century sea level rise may have been overestimated, considering the limited and heterogeneous location of historical tide gauges and the high regional variability of thermal expansion which was supposed to dominate the observed sea level. If correct, this conclusion would have solved the problem raised by the IPCC third assessment report [Church et al, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 881, 2001], namely, the factor two difference between the 20th century observed sea level rise and the computed climatic contributions. However, recent investigations based on new ocean temperature data sets indicate that thermal expansion only explains part (about 0.4 mm/year) of the 1.8 mm/year observed sea level rise of the past few decades. In fact, the Cabanes et al.’s conclusion was incorrect due to a contamination of abnormally high ocean temperature data in the Gulf Stream area that led to an overestimate of thermal expansion in this region. In this paper, we also estimate thermal expansion over the last decade (1993–2003), using a new ocean temperature and salinity database. We compare our result with three other estimates, two being based on global gridded data sets, and one based on an approach similar to that developed here. It is found that the mean rate of thermosteric sea level rise over the past decade is 1.5±0.3 mm/year, i.e. 50% of the observed 3 mm/year by satellite altimetry. For both time spans, past few decades and last decade, a contribution of 1.4 mm/year is not explained by thermal expansion, thus needs to be of water mass origin. Direct estimates of land ice melt for the recent years account for about 1 mm/year sea level rise. Thus, at least for the last decade, we have moved closer to explaining the observed rate of sea level rise than the IPCC third assessment report.     

21世纪初极端天气气候事件研究进展

由于极端天气气候事件的严重影响，越来越多的研究开始关注其变化情况。从观测分析到模拟研究，几乎都发现极端气温、降水事件发生了显著变化，而且在全球变暖的大背景下，未来有些极端事件可能会发生频数更高或强度更强。当然，研究结论也存在一定程度的不确定性，从模式模拟来看，目前模拟结果仍存在不确定性，不同模式的结果间常常存在较大的差异；而从观测分析来看，研究主要局限于20世纪后半叶，如果对更长时间作分析，结论或许会有所不同。文章从最基本的极端天气气候事件的定义出发，结合观测事实和模拟研究两个主要方面来介绍近几年来极端事件研究取得的主要进展，最后简单地总结了这些进展，并提出了进一步研究的思路。      

Analysis and modeling of the seasonal South China Sea temperature cycle using remote sensing

The present paper describes the analysis and modeling of the South China Sea (SCS) temperature cycle on a seasonal scale. It investigates the possibility to model this cycle in a consistent way while not taking into account tidal forcing and associated tidal mixing and exchange. This is motivated by the possibility to significantly increase the model’s computational efficiency when neglecting tides. The goal is to develop a flexible and efficient tool for seasonal scenario analysis and to generate transport boundary forcing for local models. Given the significant spatial extent of the SCS basin and the focus on seasonal time scales, synoptic remote sensing is an ideal tool in this analysis. Remote sensing is used to assess the seasonal temperature cycle to identify the relevant driving forces and is a valuable source of input data for modeling. Model simulations are performed using a three-dimensional baroclinic-reduced depth model, driven by monthly mean sea surface anomaly boundary forcing, monthly mean lateral temperature, and salinity forcing obtained from the World Ocean Atlas 2001 climatology, six hourly meteorological forcing from the European Center for Medium range Weather Forecasting ERA-40 dataset, and remotely sensed sea surface temperature (SST) data. A sensitivity analysis of model forcing and coefficients is performed. The model results are quantitatively assessed against climatological temperature profiles using a goodness-of-fit norm. In the deep regions, the model results are in good agreement with this validation data. In the shallow regions, discrepancies are found. To improve the agreement there, we apply a SST nudging method at the free water surface. This considerably improves the model’s vertical temperature representation in the shallow regions. Based on the model validation against climatological in situ and SST data, we conclude that the seasonal temperature cycle for the deep SCS basin can be represented to a good degree. For shallow regions, the absence of tidal mixing and exchange has a clear impact on the model’s temperature representation. This effect on the large-scale temperature cycle can be compensated to a good degree by SST nudging for diagnostic applications.     

塔里木河流域冰川洪水对气候变暖的响应

In past 50 years, the air temperature fluctuation was raising trend in Tarim River Basin. The annual mean temperature has increased by 0.3℃ in the whole Tarim River Basin, and by 0.6℃ in the mountain areas. With global warming, the frequency of unstable and extreme climatic events increased, glaciers retreating accelerated and snow meltwater increased have resulted in the more frequency of snow-ice disasters such as glacier debrisflow and glacier flash flood etc. Since 1980s, in the process of intense climate warming, glaciers melting intensified, ice temperature rose and glaciers flows accelerated, and lead to more glacial lakes and extending water storage capacity and stronger glacial lake outburst floods occurrence. It is proposed that the monitoring and evaluating of the impact of climate change on water resources and floods should be enhanced.     

Transfer processes in a simulated urban street canyon

The transfer processes within and above a simulated urban street canyon were investigated in a generic manner. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) was used to aid understanding and to produce some simple operational parameterisations. In this study we addressed specifically the commonly met situation where buoyancy effects arising from elevated surface temperatures are not important, i.e. when mechanical forces outweigh buoyancy forces. In a geophysical context this requires that some suitably defined Richardson number is small. From an engineering perspective this is interpreted as the important case when heat transfer within and above urban street canyons is by forced convection. Surprisingly, this particular scenario (for which the heat transfer coefficient between buildings and the flow is largest), has been less well studied than the situation where buoyancy effects are important. The CFD technique was compared against wind-tunnel experiments to provide model evaluation. The height-to-width ratio of the canyon was varied through the range 0.5–5 and the flow was normal to the canyon axis. By setting the canyon’s facets to have the same or different temperatures or to have a partial temperature distribution, simulations were carried out to investigate: (a) the influence of geometry on the flow and mixing within the canyon and (b) the exchange processes within the canyon and across the canyon top interface. Results showed that the vortex-type circulation and turbulence developed within the canyon produced a temperature distribution that was, essentially, spatially uniform (apart from a relatively thin near-wall thermal boundary layer) This allowed the temperatures within the street canyon to be specified by just one value T _can , the canyon temperature. The variation of T _can with wind speed, surface temperatures and geometry was extensively studied. Finally, the exchange velocity u _E across the interface between the canyon and the flow above was calculated based on a heat flux balance within the canyon and between the canyon and the flow above. Results showed that u _E was approximately 1% of a characteristic wind velocity above the street canyon. The problem of radiative exchange is not addressed but it can, of course, be introduced analytically, or computationally, when necessary.     

915MHz亚铁磁共振升温效应的实验研究

为了改进肿瘤的微波热疗,我们进行９１５ＭＨｚ微波亚铁磁共振的实验研究。结果表明９１５ＭＨｚ微波象２４５０ＭＨｚ一样,有明显而尖锐的亚铁共振升温。实验测量了不同聚集状态,不同饱和磁化强度亚铁磁共振介质的共振升温并用鸡蛋清受热固化来显示共振升温度分布的影响。     

科尔沁地区本世纪温度变化

根据5个代表性台站的温度等级资料,得到了东北科尔沁地区1911－1988年区域平均的温度等级时间变化序列。这个地区冬季温度在年际、年代际和长期趋势上的变化与辽东半岛地区十分相似,但夏季温度的变化在各种时间尺度上同辽东半岛均存在较显著差异。本世纪科尔沁地区冬季温度和辽东半岛一样出现了明显增暖趋势,而夏季温度的变凉趋势却不如后者显著。     

Diurnal timing of warmer air under climate change affects magnitude,timing and duration of stream temperature change

Stream temperature will be subject to changes because of atmospheric warming in the future. We investigated the effects of the diurnal timing of air temperature changes – daytime warming versus nighttime warming – on stream temperature. Using the physically based model, Heat Source, we performed a sensitivity analysis of summer stream temperatures to three diurnal air temperature distributions of +4 °C mean air temperature: i) uniform increase over the whole day, ii) warmer daytime and iii) warmer nighttime. The stream temperature model was applied to a 37‐km section of the Middle Fork John Day River in northeastern Oregon, USA. The three diurnal air temperature distributions generated 7‐day average daily maximum stream temperatures increases of approximately +1.8 °C ± 0.1 °C at the downstream end of the study section. The three air temperature distributions, with the same daily mean, generated different ranges of stream temperatures, different 7‐day average daily maximum temperatures, different durations of stream temperature changes and different average daily temperatures in most parts of the reach. The stream temperature changes were out of phase with air temperature changes, and therefore in many places, the greatest daytime increase in stream temperature was caused by nighttime warming of air temperatures. Stream temperature changes tended to be more extreme and of longer duration when driven by air temperatures concentrated in either daytime or nighttime instead of uniformly distributed across the diurnal cycle. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

棉铃虫发生发展与气候条件的关系研究进展

棉铃虫Helicoverpa armigera 属鳞翅目夜蛾科，是一种世界性的重大害虫，在世界各地均有分布。因其具有远距离迁飞，繁殖力强等特点，条件适宜时常大面积暴发成灾，给农业生产带来较大损失。摸清棉铃虫生活习性、种群变化规律是棉铃虫防治的前提条件。由于棉铃虫是变温昆虫，气候条件对其生长发育、成灾机制等产生极大影响。因此，本文系统综述了气候变暖对棉铃虫影响的研究进展，包括棉铃虫生长发育、体色变化、繁殖、滞育、飞行、越冬、与作物的互作关系等方面，并对未来研究重点进行了展望。以期对棉铃虫的综合治理提供理论依据。