太平洋潜热通量及其与黄淮夏季降水的关系

研究了1979—2010年太平洋潜热通量的变化特征及其与中国黄淮夏季降水的关系。结果表明,潜热通量的气候场和方差场均存在着明显的季节变化,且各季节气候场的极值中心也是变化幅度较大的区域。黄淮地区降水与前期春季的潜热场相关性最好。定义了黄淮夏季降水指数来研究影响降水的潜热场关键区,发现春季潜热关键区为10°~20°N之间的中东太平洋和热带东太平洋沿岸海区。春季当上述两个海区净潜热通量增多时,后期夏季500hPa和850hPa位势高度异常场中,在太平洋西海岸-阿拉斯加南部一线上均表现为"正—负—正"的分布型,黄淮降水偏多。     

1971-2010年河南省霜期的时空分布及其对气温的响应

利用1971-2010年河南省均匀分布的110个地面气象站霜的观测资料,采用线性倾向率和单相关分析法,对近40 a河南省初霜期、终霜期和无霜期的时空分布特征及其对气温的响应进行研究,利用M-K法分析霜期的突变特征。结果表明：1971-2010年河南省平均无霜期为221.3 d,纬度与初霜期（R=-0.806）和无霜期（R=-0.707）均呈显著负相关,与终霜期（R=0.557）呈显著正相关;初霜期以2.6 d/10 a的速率呈明显推迟（p<0.01）,而终霜期的线性变化趋势不明显,无霜期以4.7 d/10 a的速率呈明显延长（p<0.01）;初霜期、终霜期和无霜期的突变点均在1998年。从各地区看,初霜期在各地区呈明显推迟,豫西地区推迟趋势最大（3.5 d/10 a,p<0.01）;终霜期仅在豫西和豫南地区呈显著提前;除豫东地区外,无霜期在其余5个地区均呈明显延长,豫西地区延长趋势最大（7.7 d/10 a,p<0.01）。从各观测站霜期的变化趋势空间分布来看,初霜期显著推后、终霜期显著提前和无霜期明显延长的站点分布在豫西和豫南地区。河南省初霜期与10月、终霜期与3月气温因子相关性较强;初霜期推迟和终霜期提前主要由气温升高引起的,其中平均最低气温是最重要的影响因素。初霜期推迟和终霜期提前导致无霜期延长。     

The Project Siberian High in CMIP5 Models

The Siberian high(SH)experienced a decline from the 1970s to 1990s and a recovery in recent years.The evolution of the SH under global warming is unclear.In this study,41 Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5(CMIP5)climate models are evaluated in terms of their ability to simulate the temporal evolution of the SH in the 19th and 20th centuries and the spatial pattern of the SH during 1981–2005.The results show that 12models can capture the temporal evolution of the SH center intensity(SHCI)for 1872–2005.The linear correlation coefficient between the SHCI from the Twentieth Century Reanalysis and the simulated SHCI from the multi-model ensemble(MME)of the 12 models is 0.3 on annual and inter-annual scales(above the 99%confidence level).On decadal and multi-decadal time scales,the MME also captures the pronounced reduction(between 1981–2000and 1881–1900 period)and the recovery(during1991–2005)of the SH intensity.Finally,the future evolution of the SH is investigated using the MME of the 12models under the+4.5 and+8.5 W m-2 Representative Concentration Pathway(RCP)scenarios(RCP4.5 and RCP8.5).It is shown that the SHCI,similar to the SHCI in the 20th century,has no significant long-term trend in the 21st century under global warming(RCP8.5 scenario).At the end of 21st century(2081–2100),the SH shows stronger interannual variability than the SH at the end of20th century(1981–2000).The increased interannual variability likely favors the increased interannual variability in winter air temperature over midlatitude Eurasia at the end of 21st century.     

The Effects of Land Cover Change on Regional Climate over the Eastern Part of Northwest China

A regional climate model(Reg CM4) is employed to investigate the impacts of land use/cover change(LUCC) on the climate over the eastern part of Northwest China(ENW) in the periods of 2001 and 2011. The results indicated that the LUCC in ENW, which was characterized by desert retreat, reforestation, and farmland expansion, led to significant local changes in surface air temperature(within ~0.3°C) and slight regional changes in precipitation(within ~15%) in summer. In the desert retreat area, the net absorbed shortwave radiation had a greater influence than evaporative cooling, leading to increases in the daily mean and maximum temperature. Besides, the daily mean and maximum temperatures increased in the reforestation area but decreased in the farmland expansion area. As surface albedo showed no significant change in these regions, the temperature increase in the reforestation area can be attributed to a decrease in evaporation, while the opposite effect appears to have been the case in the farmland expansion area.     

Historical influences on the current provision of multiple ecosystem services

Ecosystem service provision varies temporally in response to natural and human-induced factors, yet research in this field is dominated by analyses that ignore the time-lags and feedbacks that occur within socio-ecological systems. The implications of this have been unstudied, but are central to understanding how service delivery will alter due to future land-use/cover change. Urban areas are expanding faster than any other land-use, making cities ideal study systems for examining such legacy effects. We assess the extent to which present-day provision of a suite of eight ecosystem services, quantified using field-gathered data, is explained by current and historical (stretching back 150 years) landcover. Five services (above-ground carbon density, recreational use, bird species richness, bird density, and a metric of recreation experience quality (continuity with the past) were more strongly determined by past landcover. Time-lags ranged from 20 (bird species richness and density) to over 100 years (above-ground carbon density). Historical landcover, therefore, can have a strong influence on current service provision. By ignoring such time-lags, we risk drawing incorrect conclusions regarding how the distribution and quality of some ecosystem services may alter in response to land-use/cover change. Although such a finding adds to the complexity of predicting future scenarios, ecologists may find that they can link the biodiversity conservation agenda to the preservation of cultural heritage, and that certain courses of action provide win-win outcomes across multiple environmental and cultural goods.     

The PISA grammar decodes diverse human–environment approaches

Human–environment interactions are studied by several groups of scholars who have elaborated different approaches to describe, analyze, and explain these interactions, and eventually propose paths for management. The SETER project (Socio-Ecological Theories and Empirical Research) analyzed and compared how “flag-holders” of distinct school of thought in human–environment scholarship approached a number of empirical problems of environmental management. This paper presents the findings from this experiment by concentrating on how representatives of four schools of thought approached one of these case studies: the plant health crisis in greenhouse tomato production in south of France. Our analysis suggests that these approaches share a common conceptual vocabulary composed of four explanatory elements of change (Power, Incentives, System and Adaptation-PISA). We argue that what distinguishes these schools from one another is the syntax—the “rules” by which researchers in each of the sub-disciplines tend to organize the components of this shared conceptual vocabulary. In other words, the schools under scrutiny are differentiated not so much by what they speak of, but rather in what order, or hierarchy, do they tend to rank the importance and/or the sequence of each of these concepts in human–environment explanations. The results of our experiment support the view that communication and cooperation across the diverse human–environment traditions is possible and productive. At the same time, however, we argue that it is the distinctiveness of the claims yielded by these different schools of thought that augment our collective understanding of complex socio-ecological problems. Attempts to integrate these perspectives in one unitary approach would undermine the intellectual wealth necessary to meet the challenges of the Anthropocene.     

National indicators for observing ecosystem service change

Earth’s life-support systems are in rapid decline, yet we have few metrics or indicators with which to track these changes. The world’s governments are calling for biodiversity and ecosystem-service monitoring to guide and evaluate international conservation policy as well as to incorporate natural capital into their national accounts. The Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON) has been tasked with setting up this monitoring system. Here we explore the immediate feasibility of creating a global ecosystem-service monitoring platform under the GEO BON framework through combining data from national statistics, global vegetation models, and production function models. We found that nine ecosystem services could be annually reported at a national scale in the short term: carbon sequestration, water supply for hydropower, and non-fisheries marine products, crop, livestock, game meat, fisheries, mariculture, and timber production. Reported changes in service delivery over time reflected ecological shocks (e.g., droughts and disease outbreaks), highlighting the immediate utility of this monitoring system. Our work also identified three opportunities for creating a more comprehensive monitoring system. First, investing in input data for ecological process models (e.g., global land-use maps) would allow many more regulating services to be monitored. Currently, only 1 of 9 services that can be reported is a regulating service. Second, household surveys and censuses could help evaluate how nature affects people and provides non-monetary benefits. Finally, to forecast the sustainability of service delivery, research efforts could focus on calculating the total remaining biophysical stocks of provisioning services. Regardless, we demonstrated that a preliminary ecosystem-service monitoring platform is immediately feasible. With sufficient international investment, the platform could evolve further into a much-needed system to track changes in our planet's life-support systems.     

A brief introduction to BNU-HESM1.0 and its earth surface temperature simulations

Integrated assessment models and coupled earth system models both have their limitations in understanding the interactions between human activity and the physical earth system. In this paper,a new human–earth system model,BNUHESM1.0,constructed by combining the economic and climate damage components of the Dynamic Integrated Model of Climate Change and Economy to the BNU-ESM model,is introduced. The ability of BNU-HESM1.0 in simulating the global CO2 concentration and surface temperature is also evaluated. We find that,compared to observation,BNU-HESM1.0underestimates the global CO2 concentration and its rising trend during 1965–2005,due to the uncertainty in the economic components. However,the surface temperature simulated by BNU-HESM1.0 is much closer to observation,resulting from the overestimates of surface temperature by the original BNU-ESM model. The uncertainty of BNU-ESM falls within the range of present earth system uncertainty,so it is the economic and climate damage component of BNU-HESM1.0 that needs to be improved through further study. However,the main purpose of this paper is to introduce a new approach to investigate the complex relationship between human activity and the earth system. It is hoped that it will inspire further ideas that prove valuable in guiding human activities appropriate for a sustainable future climate.     

Evaluating the economic damage of climate change on global coral reefs

This paper evaluates the global economic damage arising from the effects of climate change and associated carbon dioxide concentrations on the loss of coral reefs. We do this by first estimating the effects of sea surface temperature and carbon dioxide concentrations on coral cover. We develop a statistical relationship between coral coverage and sea surface temperature that indicates that the effects are dependent on the temperature range. For example, we find that increasing sea surface temperature causes coral coverage to decrease when sea surface temperature is higher than 26.85 °C, with the estimated reduction being 2.3% when sea surface temperature increases by 1%. In addition, we find that a 1% carbon dioxide increase induces a 0.6% reduction in global coral coverage. We also estimate the resultant loss in economic value based on a meta-analysis of the recreational and commercial value of reef coverage and a crude proportional approach for other value factors. The meta-analysis shows that the coral reef value decreases by 3.8% when coral cover falls by 1%. By combining these two steps we find that the lost value in terms of the global coral reef value under climate change scenarios ranges from US$3.95 to US$23.78 billion annually.     

Personal experience with climate change predicts intentions to act

The public's willingness to engage in mitigation actions has not received as much attention as the level of belief in Global Warming (GW), especially on the international stage. Research in Western nations indicates that people systematically misunderstand GW and the actions required for mitigation. Important factors that influence judgments about mitigation actions include personal experiences, beliefs, knowledge, values, and worldviews. We present results of an international survey (25 samples from 24 countries) measuring general intentions to act and willingness to engage in specific actions. Our analysis reveals that endorsement of specific actions is (a) lower than general endorsement of mitigation, (b) accompanied by higher intra-individual variance, and (c) more strongly related to personal experiences with GW. This pattern can be attributed to the compatibility between the proximal construal of specific actions and the nature of the personal experience. Lastly we provide recommendations on how these findings can be used to encourage mitigation action.