Steric sea level change in twentieth century historical climate simulation and IPCC-RCP8.5 scenario projection: A comparison of two versions of FGOALS model

To reveal the steric sea level change in 20th century historical climate simulations and future climate change projections under the IPCC’s Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 (RCP8.5) scenario, the results of two versions of LASG/IAP’s Flexible Global Ocean-Atmosphere-Land System model (FGOALS) are analyzed. Both models reasonably reproduce the mean dynamic sea level features, with a spatial pattern correlation coefficient of 0.97 with the observation. Characteristics of steric sea level changes in the 20th century historical climate simulations and RCP8.5 scenario projections are investigated. The results show that, in the 20th century, negative trends covered most parts of the global ocean. Under the RCP8.5 scenario, global-averaged steric sea level exhibits a pronounced rising trend throughout the 21st century and the general rising trend appears in most parts of the global ocean. The magnitude of the changes in the 21st century is much larger than that in the 20th century. By the year 2100, the global-averaged steric sea level anomaly is 18 cm and 10 cm relative to the year 1850 in the second spectral version of FGOALS (FGOALS-s2) and the second grid-point version of FGOALS (FGOALS-g2), respectively. The separate contribution of the thermosteric and halosteric components from various ocean layers is further evaluated. In the 20th century, the steric sea level changes in FGOALS-s2 (FGOALS-g2) are largely attributed to the thermosteric (halosteric) component relative to the pre-industrial control run. In contrast, in the 21st century, the thermosteric component, mainly from the upper 1000 m, dominates the steric sea level change in both models under the RCP8.5 scenario. In addition, the steric sea level change in the marginal sea of China is attributed to the thermosteric component.     

The impact of ecosystem functional type changes on the La Plata Basin climate

In this paper, the effects of land cover changes on the climate of the La Plata Basin in southern South America are investigated using the Weather and Research Forecasting (WRF) Model configured on a 30/10km two-way interactive nested grid. To assess the regional climate changes resulting from land surface changes, the standard land cover types are replaced by time-varying Ecosystem Functional Types (EFTs), which is a newly devised land-cover classification that characterizes the spatial and interannual variability of surface vegetation dynamics. These variations indicate that natural and anthropogenic activities have caused changes in the surface physical parameters of the basin, such as albedo and roughness length, that contributed to regional climate changes. EFTs are obtained from functional attributes of vegetation computed from properties of the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) to represent patches of the land surface with homogeneous energy and gas exchanges with the atmosphere. Four simulations are conducted, each experimental period ranging from September to November in two contrasting years, 1988 and 1998. The influence of an identical EFT change on the surface heat fluxes, 2-m temperature and humidity, 10-m winds, convective instabilities and large-scale moisture fluxes and precipitation are explored for 1988 (a dry year) and 1998 (a wet year). Results show that the surface and atmospheric climate has a larger response to the same EFT changes in a dry year for 2-m temperature and 10-m wind; the response is larger in a wet year for 2-m water vapor mixing ratio, convective available potential energy, vertically integrated moisture fluxes and surface precipitation. For EFTs with high productivity and a weak seasonal cycle, the nearsurface temperature during the spring of 1988 and 1998 increased by as much as 1℃ in the central and western portions of La Plata Basin. Additionally, for higher productivity EFTs, precipitation differences were generally positive in both dry and wet years, although the patterns are not uniform and exhibit certain patchiness with drier conditions.     

Clean development mechanism: leverage for development?

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to show that the investments through the clean development mechanism (CDM) can exert a leverage effect to (i) make attractive to developing countries non-binding commitments and the adoption of national policies and measures; this comes as a guarantee of non-conditionally of the mechanism to strictly environmental concerns and (ii) create a flow of additional investments and technological transfer from Annex B countries to non-Annex B countries.

The Indian power sector has been chosen as an example of a sector where institutional barriers, market imperfections, and tariff distortions create a great space for Pareto improvements and leave an important potential for no-regret measures: technological transfer, air conditioned systems, transport infrastructures and removal of subsidies on consumption.

This paper presents a micro-economic formalisation on (i) the evolution of profitability of current emitting technologies used in the power sector under the adoption of national policies and measures and (ii) the impact on renewable energy technologies competitiveness of emission credits in the context of CDM. This formalisation has been developed to enable quantitative simulation. A first exercise using the Markal model (used in 77 countries) on the electric sector in India enabled us to simulate the leverage effect of emission credits on additional incomes taken as a proxy for development.     

Low velocity shock-cloud encounters I.

Shocks propagating in the interstellar medium (ISM) play an important role in the life of molecular clouds. Through a theoretical study of interaction between clouds and shocks we can understand, for example, the density distribution of observed molecular clouds and the first steps of star formation. The only way to study of interaction in detail is via a numerical hydrodynamical simulation. In this paper we present the first results of a hydrocode which is able to follow the processes after the collision between the cloud and shock front.Our main theoretical result is that the chemical processes (e.g. H₂ dissociation) can affect the dynamical processes significantly. Global parameters of the cloud are calculated for the comparision of the simulation and the observations.     

NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF INTERANNUAL AND INTERDECADAL VARIABILITY OF SURFACE WIND OVER THE TROPICAL PACIFIC

A global atmospheric general circulation model (L9R15 AGCMs) forced by COADS SST was integrated from 1945 to 1993. Interannual and interdecadal variability of the simulated surface wind over the tropical Pacific was analyzed and shown to agree vey well with observation. Simulation of surface wind over the central-western equatorial Pacific was more successful than that over the eastern Pacific. Zonal propagating feature of interannual variability of the tropical Pacific wind anomalies and its decadal difference were also simulated successfully. The close agreement between simulation and observation on the existence of obvious interdecadal variability of tropical Pacific surface wind attested to the high simulation capability of AGCM.     

Modelling water infiltration in cracked paddy field soil

Periodic paddy field flooding is a major source of groundwater recharge. Many paddy fields thus are used as groundwater recharge ponds after harvesting the first crop of the summer. Following rice harvesting, paddy field surfaces may crack into fissures as a result of drainage and exposure to sunlight. Field observation indicates that applying precipitation to the paddy field can increase the rate of infiltration. To quantitatively evaluate the amount of infiltration in a cracked paddy field, this study sets up a simple soil crack model to simulate the field infiltration process. A three‐dimensional groundwater model FEMWATER is adopted to simulate water movement in the paddy field subjected to various crack conditions. Using the field and laboratory data of irrigation water requirements, soil physical properties, hydraulic conductivities and soil profiles obtained from Ten‐Chung, FEMWATER simulates the water movement in the dry cracked paddy. Simulation results show that if the cracks develop extensively and penetrate the ploughed soil, the infiltration rate may increase significantly. The infiltration fluxes of crack with depths of 80, 60 and 27·5 cm are 18·77, 14·50 and 8·06 times higher than that of 20 cm, respectively. The simulation results of cracks with 80 cm depth correlated closely with field observations. The results of the study elucidate the processes of unsaturated water movement in a dry cracked paddy field. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Numerical Simulation Study on the Impacts of Tropospheric O3 and CO2 Concentration Changes on Winter Wheat.Part I: Model Description

Ozone is well documented as the air pollutant most damaging to agricultural crops and other plants.It is reported that tropospheric O3 concentration increases rapidly in recent 20 years. Evaluating and predicting impacts of ozone concentration changes on crops are drawing great attention in the scientific community. In China, main study method about this filed is controlled experiments, for example, Open Top Chambers. But numerical simulation study about impacts of ozone on crops with crop model was developed slowly, what is more, the study about combined impacts of ozone and carbon dioxide has not been reported.The improved agroecosystem model is presented to evaluate simultaneously impacts of tropospheric O3 and CO2 concentration changes on crops in the paper by integrating algorithms about impacts of ozone on photosynthesis with an existing agroecosystem biogeochemical model (named as DNDC). The main physiological processes of crop growth (phenology, leaf area index, photosynthesis, respiration, assimilated allocation and so on) in the former DNDC are kept. The algorithms about impacts of ozone on photosynthesis and winter wheat leaf are added in the modified DNDC model in order to reveal impacts of ozone and carbon dioxide on growth, development, and yield formation of winter wheat by coupling the simulation about impacts of carbon dioxide on photosynthesis of winter wheat which exists in the former DNDC. In the paper, firstly assimilate allocation algorithms and some genetic parameters (such as daily thermal time of every development stage) were modified in order that DNDC can be applicable in North China. Secondly impacts of ozone on crops were simulated with two different methods-one was impacts of ozone on light use efficiency , and the other was direct effects of ozone on leaves photosynthesis. The latter simulated results are closer to experiment measurements through comparing their simulating results. At last the method of direct impacts of ozone on leaf growth is adopted and the coe cients about impacts of ozone on leaf growth and death are ascertained. Effects of climate changes, increasing ozone, and carbon dioxide concentration on agroecosystem are tried to be simulated numerically in the study which is considered to be advanced and credible.     

A non‐coaxial critical state soil model and its application to simple shear simulations

The yield vertex non‐coaxial theory is implemented into a critical state soil model, CASM (Int. J. Numer. Anal. Meth. Geomech. 1998; 22 :621–653) to investigate the non‐coaxial influences on the stress–strain simulations of real soil behaviour in the presence of principal stress rotations. The CASM is a unified clay and sand model, developed based on the soil critical state concept and the state parameter concept. Without loss of simplicity, it is capable of simulating the behaviour of sands and clays within a wide range of densities. The non‐coaxial CASM is employed to simulate the simple shear responses of Erksak sand and Weald clay under different densities and initial stress states. Dependence of the soil behaviour on the Lode angle and different plastic flow rules in the deviatoric plane are also considered in the study of non‐coaxial influences. All the predictions indicate that the use of the non‐coaxial model makes the orientations of the principal stress and the principal strain rate different during the early stage of shearing, and they approach the same ultimate values with an increase in loading. These ultimate orientations are dependent on the density of soils, and independent of their initial stress states. The use of the non‐coaxial model also softens the shear stress evolutions, compared with the coaxial model. It is also found that the ultimate shear strengths by using the coaxial and non‐coaxial models are dependent on the plastic flow rules in the deviatoric plane. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Polynomial expansions in likelihoods for spatial data: A case study

This paper illustrates the computational benefits of polynomial representations for quantities in the likelihood function for the spatial linear model based on the power covariance scheme. These benefits include a comprehensive study of likelihoods and maximum likelihood estimators for data. For simplicity, we focus on a relatively simple covariance scheme and data observed at equal intervals along a transect; we briefly indicate how generalizations to more complicated covariance functions and higher dimensions will operate.     

Geostatistical analysis and conditional simulation for estimating the spatial variability of hydraulic conductivity in the Choushui River alluvial fan,Taiwan

This work evaluated the spatial variability and distribution of heterogeneous hydraulic conductivity (K) in the Choushui River alluvial fan in Taiwan, using ordinary kriging (OK) and mean and individual sequential Gaussian simulations (SGS). A baseline flow model constructed by upscaling parameters was inversely calibrated to determine the pumping and recharge rates. Simulated heads using different K realizations were then compared with historically measured heads. A global/local simulated error between simulated and measured heads was analysed to assess the different spatial variabilities of various estimated K distributions. The results of a MODFLOW simulation indicate that the OK realization had the smallest sum of absolute mean simulation errors (SAMSE) and the SGS realizations preserved the spatial variability of the measured K fields. Moreover, the SAMSE increases as the spatial variability of the K field increases. The OK realization yields small local simulation errors in the measured K field of moderate magnitude, whereas the SGS realizations have small local simulation errors in the measured K fields, with high and low values. The OK realization of K can be applied to perform a deterministic inverse calibration. The mean SGS method is suggested for constructing a K field when the application focuses on extreme values of estimated parameters and small calibration errors, such as in a simulation of contaminant transport in heterogeneous aquifers. The individual SGS realization is useful in stochastically assessing the spatial uncertainty of highly heterogeneous aquifers. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.