New research, December 4-10, 2017

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

The figure is from paper #26.

Climate change mitigation

1. The fiscal benefits of stringent climate change mitigation: an overview

"We find that national climate policy often aligns with other objectives, provided that climate policies and fiscal policies are integrated well. A first class of interactions concerns public revenue-raising: carbon pricing can replace distortionary taxes and alleviate international tax competition; climate policy also changes asset values, which impacts the base of non-climate taxes and boosts productive investment. Second, they concern public spending, which needs to be restructured as a part of climate policy, while carbon pricing revenues may be recycled for public investment. Third, distributional impacts of climate policies include changes to household expenditures, to asset values and to employment; balancing them often requires fiscal policies."

2. The 1.5°C target and coal sector transition: at the limits of societal feasibility

"A survey of major coal using countries shows that each is a long way from putting in place a long-term framework to transition the coal sector."

3. China’s future emission reduction challenge and implications for global climate policy

"Our results suggest that even achieving China’s highly optimistic renewable energy targets will be very far from sufficient to reduce China’s CO2 emissions from 9.1?Gt it emitted in 2015 to much below 3?Gt by 2050. Even reducing its emissions to 5?Gt will be challenging, yet this falls far short of what is needed if the world is to meet its ‘well below’ 2°C commitment."

4. Who owns the Brazilian carbon?

"Roughly 70% of the AGC stock in Brazil is estimated to be under legal protection, and an additional 20% is expected to be protected after areas in the Amazon with currently undesignated land undergo a tenure regularization. About 30% of the AGC stock is on private land, of which roughly two-thirds are protected."

5. Ten key short-term sectoral benchmarks to limit warming to 1.5°C

6. Underwriting 1.5°C: competitive approaches to financing accelerated climate change mitigation

7. The international climate finance accounting muddle: is there hope on the horizon?

8. Public perception of the relationship between climate change and unconventional gas development (‘fracking’) in the US

9. Foreign, Domestic, and Cultural Factors in Climate Change Reporting: Swedish Media’s Coverage of Wildfires in Three Continents

10. The US News Media, Polarization on Climate Change, and Pathways to Effective Communication

11. “Stop Blaming the Cows!”: How Livestock Production is Legitimized in Everyday Discourse on Facebook

12. The influence of social movements on policies that constrain fossil fuel supply

13. Gridded estimates of CO2 emissions: uncertainty as a function of grid size

14. Nitrogen rate strategies for reducing yield-scaled nitrous oxide emissions in maize

15. Solar radiation management: a proposal for immediate polycentric governance

16. Evaluating the Effectiveness of Mitigation Options on Heat Stress for Sydney, Australia

17. Managing energy efficiency of buildings in China: A survey of energy performance contracting (EPC) in building sector

18. Assessing transformational change potential: the case of the Tunisian cement Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Action (NAMA)

Climate change

19. The SPARC water vapor assessment II: intercomparison of satellite and ground-based microwave measurements

"We find that the variation in the interannual difference in the mean H2O measured by any two instruments is typically  ∼ ?1%. Most of the datasets start in or after 2004 and show annual increases in H2O of 0–1?%?yr−1. In particular, MLS shows a trend of between 0.5?%?yr−1 and 0.7?%?yr−1 at the comparison sites. However, the two longest measurement datasets used here, with measurements back to 1996, show much smaller trends of +0.1?%?yr−1 (at Mauna Loa, Hawaii) and −0.1?%?yr−1 (at Lauder, New Zealand)."

20. Satellite-derived submarine melt rates and mass balance (2011–2015) for Greenland's largest remaining ice tongues

"At Ryder Glacier, melt is strongly concentrated around regions where subglacier channels likely enter the fjord. At the 79 North Glacier, we find a large volume imbalance in which melting removes a greater quantity of ice than is replaced by inflow over the grounding line. This leads us to suggest that a reduction in the spatial extent of the ice tongue is possible over the coming decade."

21. Centuries of intense surface melt on Larsen C Ice Shelf

"Results show that, as well as recent surface melt, a period of strong melt occurred during the 18th century. Surface melt is thought to be a factor in causing recent ice-shelf break-up."

22. Ice-Shelf Melt Response to Changing Winds and Glacier Dynamics in the Amundsen Sea Sector, Antarctica

23. Blowing snow detection from ground-based ceilometers: application to East Antarctica

24. Direct evidence of meltwater flow within a firn aquifer in Southeast Greenland

25. Do Southern Ocean cloud feedbacks matter for 21st century warming?

26. Drivers of 2016 record Arctic warmth assessed using climate simulations subjected to Factual and Counterfactual forcing

27. Synoptic to large-scale drivers of minimum temperature variability in Australia – long-term changes

28. Tracking the subsurface signal of decadal climate warming to quantify vertical groundwater flow rates

29. A potential predictor of multi-season droughts in Southwest China: soil moisture and its memory

30. Soil response to long-term projections of extreme temperature and precipitation in the southern La Plata Basin

31. Changes in temperature extremes over China under 1.5 °C and 2 °C global warming targets

32. The Imprint of Strong-Storm Tracks on Winter Weather in North America

33. A spatial and temporal analysis of 30-day heavy snowfall amounts in the Eastern United States, 1900-2016

34. Polar Mesoscale Cyclone Climatology for the Nordic Seas based on the ERA-Interim Reanalysis

35. Changing weather extremes call for early warning of potential for catastrophic fire

36. Possible impacts of a changing climate on intense Ligurian Sea rainfall events

37. Empirical methods for the estimation of Southern Ocean CO2: support vector and random forest regression

38. Genesis, Pathways, and Terminations of Intense Global Water Vapor Transport in Association with Large-Scale Climate Patterns

39. Climate-related trends of actual evapotranspiration over the Tibetan Plateau (1961–2010)

40. Modeling the contributions of global air temperature, synoptic-scale phenomena and soil moisture to near-surface static energy variability using artificial neural networks

41. Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation footprint on global high cloud cover

42. Volcano and ship tracks indicate excessive aerosol-induced cloud water increases in a climate model

43. Effects of carbon turnover time on terrestrial ecosystem carbon storage

44. Observation-based Trends of the Southern Ocean Carbon Sink

45. Impact of chlorophyll bias on the tropical Pacific mean climate in an earth system model

Climate change impacts

46. The impacts avoided with a 1.5 °C climate target: a global and regional assessment

"At the global scale, the median proportion of projected impacts avoided by the 1.5 °C target relative to a rise of 4 °C ranges between 62 and 95% across sectors: the greatest reduction is for heat wave impacts. The 1.5 °C target results in impacts that would be between 27 and 62% lower than with the 2 °C target."

47. Thermal anomalies detect critical global land surface changes

"Our findings show that entire biomes are experiencing shifts in their LSTmax distributions driven by extreme climatic events and large-scale land surface changes, such as melting of ice sheets, severe droughts, and with the incremental effects of forest loss in tropical forests. As climate warming and land cover changes continue, it is likely that the Earth’s maximum surface temperatures will experience greater and more frequent directional shifts, increasing the possibility that critical thresholds in the Earth’s ecosystems and climate system will be surpassed resulting in profound and irreversible changes."

48. Shifts in the thermal niche of almond under climate change

"By the mid-21st century, almond phenology in the Central Valley showed ~ 2-week delay in chill accumulation and ~ 1- and ~ 2.5-week advance in the timing of bloom and harvest, respectively."

49. Effects of diurnal temperature range on mortality in Hefei city, China

50. Weather conditions influence the number of psychiatric emergency room patients

51. “The End of the Ice Age?”: Disappearing World Heritage and the Climate Change Communication Imperative

52. The phenology of wilderness use: Backcountry recreation in a changing climate

53. Long-term recovery narratives following major disasters in Southeast Asia

54. Climate change and the water–energy–food nexus: insights from policy and practice in Tanzania

55. Insect damage influences heat and water stress resistance gene expression in field-grown popcorn: implications in developing crop varieties adapted to climate change

56. Climate contributes to the evolution of pesticide resistance

57. Mainstreaming climate change adaptation in small island developing states

58. Managing climate risks through transformational adaptation: Economic and policy implications for key production regions in Australia

59. Development interventions, adaptation decisions and farmers’ well-being: evidence from drought-prone households in rural India

60. Green and socioeconomic infrastructures in the Brazilian Amazon: implications for a changing climate

61. Clusters of community exposure to coastal flooding hazards based on storm and sea level rise scenarios—implications for adaptation networks in the San Francisco Bay region

62. Relationship between subjective well-being and material quality of life in face of climate vulnerability in NE Brazil

63. Urban climate modifies tree growth in Berlin

64. Dry and wet periods drive rapid shifts in community assembly in an estuarine ecosystem

65. Snow Depth, Soil Temperature, and Plant-Herbivore Interactions Mediate Plant Response To Climate Change

66. Growth response of Abies georgei to climate increases with elevation in the central Hengduan Mountains, southwestern China

67. Interactive effects of temperature and food availability on the growth of Arctica islandica (Bivalvia) juveniles

68. Climate change leads to differential shifts in the timing of annual cycle stages in a migratory bird

69. Modeling impacts of climate change and grazing effects on plant biomass and soil organic carbon in the Qinghai–Tibetan grasslands

70. Strengthening hydrological regulation of China's wetland greenness under a warmer climate

Other papers

71. On the reduced North Atlantic storminess during the last glacial period: the role of topography in shaping synoptic eddies

72. Multi-century cool- and warm-season rainfall reconstructions for Australia's major climatic regions

73. Significant weakening of Brewer-Dobson circulation trends over the 21st century as a consequence of the Montreal Protocol

74. Air quality and pollutant emissions in the Moscow megacity in 2005–2014

75. Solar-driven variation in the atmosphere of Uranus 

Posted by Ari Jokimäki on Friday, 15 December, 2017


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