Posted on 2 March 2018 by Ari Jokimäki

A selection of new climate related research articles is shown below.

Climate change impacts

Biosphere

1. Warmer winters reduce the advance of tree spring phenology induced by warmer springs in the Alps

"Our results showed that for similar preseason (i.e. after dormancy break) temperatures, warmer winters significantly delayed budburst and flowering along the elevation gradient (+0.9 to +5.6?days?°C⁻¹) except for flowering of Corylus and budburst of Picea. For similar cold winter temperatures, warmer preseasons significantly advanced budburst and flowering along the elevation gradient (−5.3 to −8.4?days?°C⁻¹). On average, the effect of winter warming was 2.3 times lower than the effect of spring warming. We also showed that warmer winter temperature conditions have a significantly larger effect at lower elevations. As a consequence, the observed delaying effect of winter warming might be beneficial to trees by reducing the risk of exposure to late spring frost on a short term. This could further lead to partial dormancy break at lower elevations before the end of the 21st century, which, in turn, may alter bud development and flowering and so tree fitness."

2. Precipitation alters temperature effects on ecosystem respiration in Tibetan alpine meadows

3. Non-uniform time-lag effects of terrestrial vegetation responses to asymmetric warming

"NPP responds to asymmetric warming (AW) with near 12-month lags globally."

4. Contrasting shrub species respond to early summer temperatures leading to correspondence of shrub growth patterns

"We found that annual growth variability of both species at this site is strongly driven by early summer temperatures, despite their contrasting traits and habitats."

5. Warmer temperatures reduce net carbon uptake, but do not affect water use, in a mature southern Appalachian forest

"Warm temperatures in early 2012 caused leaf-out to occur two weeks earlier than in cooler years and led to higher seasonal carbon uptake. However, these warmer temperatures also drove higher winter ecosystem respiration, offsetting much of the springtime carbon gain. Interannual variability in net carbon uptake was high (147 to 364?g?C?m⁻²?y⁻¹), but unrelated to growing season length. Instead, years with warmer growing seasons had 10% higher respiration and sequestered ∼40% less carbon than cooler years."

6. Limitations to winter and spring photosynthesis of a Rocky Mountain subalpine forest

"We tested the hypothesis that this warming has been significant enough to allow photosynthesis during sunny warm days in winter. Using thermal imagery, we found that foliage in winter was sometimes near the temperature optimum for photosynthesis, but no net carbon gain occurred for most of the cold season."

7. Predatory strategies and behaviours in cephalopods are altered by elevated CO2

8. Drought timing and local climate determine the sensitivity of eastern temperate forests to drought

9. Antagonistic effects of growing season and autumn temperatures on the timing of leaf coloration in winter deciduous trees

10. Ocean acidification affects coral growth by reducing skeletal density

"Here, we show that skeletal density is directly sensitive to changes in seawater carbonate ion concentration and thus, to OA, whereas extension is not."

11. Tundra plant above-ground biomass and shrub dominance mapped across the North Slope of Alaska

12. Macroalgal response to a warmer ocean with higher CO₂concentration

13. Climate Change Impacts on Net Ecosystem Productivity in a Subtropical Shrubland of Northwestern México

14. Sea surface temperatures and seagrass mortality in Florida Bay: Spatial and temporal patterns discerned from MODIS and AVHRR data

15. Experimental strategies to assess the biological ramifications of multiple drivers of global ocean change – a review

16. It takes a few to tango: Changing climate and fire regimes can cause regeneration failure of two subalpine conifers

17. Partitioning of ecosystem respiration in a beech forest

Mankind

18. Understanding the Changes in Global Crop Yields through Changes in Climate and Technology

19. Analysis of the relationship between rainfall and economic growth in Indian states

20. Climate change impacts on regional rice production in China

21. Climate change and potential impacts on tourism: evidence from the Zimbabwean side of the Victoria Falls

22. Impacts of 1.5 versus 2.0 °C on cereal yields in the West African Sudan Savanna

23. Economic development and declining vulnerability to climate-related disasters in China

24. Multi-scale assessment of social vulnerability to climate change: An empirical study in coastal Vietnam

25. Managing Climate Risks on the Ranch with Limited Drought Information

26. Emergence of new knowledge for climate change adaptation

27. Coastal low cloudiness and fog enhance crop water use efficiency in a California agricultural system

Climate change mitigation

28. Not carbon neutral: Assessing the net emissions impact of residues burned for bioenergy

29. Have fossil fuels been substituted by renewables? An empirical assessment for 10 European countries

"The paper provides evidence for the substitution effect in solar PV and hydropower, but not in wind power sources."

30. Multi-model comparison of CO₂ emissions peaking in China:Lessons from CEMF01 study

31. Effectiveness of pilot carbon emissions trading systems in China

32. National contributions to climate change mitigation from agriculture: allocating a global target

33. The impact of global dietary guidelines on climate change

"Our results show a wide disparity in the emissions intensity of recommended healthy diets, ranging from 687?kg of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO₂e) capita⁻¹?yr⁻¹ for the guideline Indian diet to the 1579?kg?CO₂e capita⁻¹?yr⁻¹ in the USA. Most of this variability is introduced in recommended dairy intake."

34. The impact of the Tokyo Metropolitan Emissions Trading Scheme on reducing greenhouse gas emissions: findings from a facility-based study

35. Optimize emission reduction commitments for international environmental agreements

36. The challenge of coordinated civic climate change education

37. A comparative study of the economy’s environmental impact between states in the USA and provinces in China

38. Would constraining US fossil fuel production affect global CO2 emissions? A case study of US leasing policy

39. Integrated Assessment of Carbon Dioxide Removal

40. Participatory arts and affective engagement with climate change: The missing link in achieving climate compatible behaviour change?

41. Coastal people dispute offshore oil exploration: toward a study of embedded seascapes, submersible knowledge, sacrifice, and marine justice

42. Household air pollution, health, and climate change: cleaning the air

Climate change

43. Observation-based detection and attribution of 21st century climate change

44. Deciphering the contrasting climatic trends between the central Himalaya and Karakoram with 36 years of WRF simulations

Temperature and precipitation

45. Human influence on Canadian temperatures

"Most of the observed warming of 1.7 °C increase in annual mean temperature during 1948–2012 [90% confidence interval (1.1°, 2.2 °C)] can only be explained by external forcing on the climate system, with anthropogenic influence being the dominant factor. It is estimated that anthropogenic forcing has contributed 1.0 °C (0.6°, 1.5 °C) and natural external forcing has contributed 0.2 °C (0.1°, 0.3 °C) to the observed warming. Up to 0.5 °C of the observed warming trend may be associated with low frequency variability of the climate such as that represented by the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO) and North Atlantic oscillation (NAO)."

46. Northern Galápagos corals reveal twentieth century warming in the eastern tropical Pacific

47. Mean and extreme temperatures in a warming climate: EURO CORDEX and WRF regional climate high-resolution projections for Portugal

48. Air temperature changes in Toru? (central Poland) from 1871 to 2010

49. Impacts of internal variability on temperature and precipitation trends in large ensemble simulations by two climate models

"Because of ICV, local and regional P trends may remain statistically insignificant and differ greatly among individual model simulations over most of the globe until the later part of the twenty-first century even under a high emissions scenario, while local Tas trends since 1979 are already statistically significant over many low-latitude regions and are projected to become significant over most of the globe by the 2030s."

50. Underestimated interannual variability of East Asian summer rainfall under climate change

51. Contributions of natural climate changes and human activities to the trend of extreme precipitation

52. Bias correction and projection of surface air temperature in LMDZ multiple simulation over central and eastern China

53. An assessment of high-resolution gridded temperature datasets over California

54. Precipitation and temperature trends over central Italy (Abruzzo Region): 1951–2012

55. Role of Natural Climate Variability in the Detection of Anthropogenic Climate Change Signal for Mean and Extreme Precipitation at Local and Regional Scales

56. A three-stage hybrid model for regionalization, trends and sensitivity analyses of temperature anomalies in China from 1966 to 2015

Forcings and feedbacks

57. A New Research Approach for Observing and Characterizing Land-Atmosphere Feedback

58. WIVERN: A new satellite concept to provide global in-cloud winds, precipitation and cloud properties

59. Long-term series and trends in surface solar radiation in Athens, Greece

60. Increase of surface solar irradiance across East China related to changes in aerosol properties during the past decade

61. Changing response of the North Atlantic/European winter climate to the 11 year solar cycle

62. The role of the water vapor feedback in the ITCZ response to hemispherically asymmetric forcings

63. The climatological impacts of continental surface evaporation, rainout, and sub-cloud processes on δD of water vapor and precipitation in Europe

Cryosphere

64. Changes in glacier dynamics in the northern Antarctic Peninsula since 1985

"Since 1985 a total frontal retreat of 238 km2 and since 1992 regional mean changes in ice flow by up to 58 % are observed. The trends in ice dynamics are correlated with geometric parameters of the glacier catchments and regional climatic settings."

65. New mass-conserving bedrock topography for Pine Island Glacier impacts simulated decadal rates of mass loss

66. Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation modulates the impacts of Arctic sea ice decline

67. Land Ice Freshwater Budget of the Arctic and North Atlantic Oceans. Part I: Data, Methods and Results

68. Climate warming over the past half century has led to thermal degradation of permafrost on the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau

"Approximately 88 % of the permafrost area in the 1960s has been thermally degraded in the past half century over the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau. The mean elevations of the very cold, cold, cool, warm, very warm, and likely thawing permafrost areas increased by 88 m, 97 m, 155 m, 185 m, 161 m, and 250 m, respectively. This degradation may lead to increases in risks to infrastructure, flood, reductions in ecosystem resilience, and positive climate feedback."

69. Optimising assimilation of sea ice concentration in an Earth system model with a multicategory sea ice model

70. Greenland iceberg melt variability from high-resolution satellite observations

Hydrosphere

71. Limited predictability of extreme decadal changes in the Arctic Ocean freshwater content

Extreme events

72. Historical and future drought in Bangladesh using copula-based bivariate regional frequency analysis

73. Future heat-waves, droughts and floods in 571 European cities

"We find that HW days increase across all cities, but especially in southern Europe, whilst the greatest HW temperature increases are expected in central European cities. For the low impact scenario, drought conditions intensify in southern European cities while river flooding worsens in northern European cities. However, the high impact scenario projects that most European cities will see increases in both drought and river flood risks. Over 100 cities are particularly vulnerable to two or more climate impacts. Moreover, the magnitude of impacts exceeds those previously reported highlighting the substantial challenge cities face to manage future climate risks."

74. Examining the role of unusually warm Indo-Pacific sea surface temperatures in recent African droughts

75. Effects of anthropogenic heat due to air-conditioning systems on an extreme high temperature event in Hong Kong

76. Territorial early warning systems for rainfall-induced landslides

77. Changing population dynamics and uneven temperature emergence combine to exacerbate regional exposure to heat extremes under 1.5 °C and 2 °C of warming

Other papers

78. Keep your feet warm? A cryptic refugium of trees linked to a geothermal spring in an ocean of glaciers

79. The Ross Sea Dipole – temperature, snow accumulation and sea ice variability in the Ross Sea region, Antarctica, over the past 2700 years

"Temperature and snow accumulation records from the annually dated Roosevelt Island Climate Evolution (RICE) ice core show that for the past 2 700 years, the eastern Ross Sea warmed, while the western Ross Sea showed no trend and West Antarctica cooled. From the 17th century onwards, this dipole relationship changed. Now all three regions show concurrent warming, with snow accumulation declining in West Antarctica and the eastern Ross Sea."

80. Digitizing the plant phenological dataset (1750–1875) from collections of Professor Adolf Moberg: Towards the development of historical climate records

81. Sensitivity of the Eocene climate to CO₂ and orbital variability

"In the Eocene (~ 55 million years ago), the Earth had high levels of atmospheric CO₂, so studies of the Eocene can provide insights into the likely effects of present-day fossil fuel burning. We ran a low-resolution but very fast climate model with 50 combinations of CO₂ and orbital parameters, and an Eocene layout of the oceans and continents. Climatic effects of CO₂ are dominant but precession and obliquity strongly influence monsoon rainfall and ocean–land temperature contrasts, respectively."

82. Differentiation of high-latitude and polar marine faunas in a greenhouse world