New research, April 9-15, 2018

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

Climate change mitigation

1. Pathways limiting warming to 1.5°C: a tale of turning around in no time? (open access)

2. Climate change and technology: examining opinion formation of geoengineering

3. The Water-Energy-Food Nexus: A systematic review of methods for nexus assessment (open access)

4. What is the potential of cropland albedo management in the fight against global warming? A case study based on the use of cover crops (open access)

Emission reductions

5. Comparing nutritional, economic, and environmental performances of diets according to their levels of greenhouse gas emissions

"Diets with low GHGEs were characterized by a high nutritional quality. Primary energy consumption and land occupation increased with GHGEs (from Q1: 3978 MJ/year (95%CI = 3958–3997) to Q5: 8980 MJ/year (95%CI = 8924–9036)) and (from Q1: 1693 m²/year (95%CI = 1683–1702) to Q5: 7188 m²/year (95%CI = 7139–7238)), respectively. Finally, participants with lower GHGE related-diets were the highest organic food consumers. After adjustment for sex, age, and energy intake, monetary diet cost increased with GHGEs (from Q1: 6.89€/year (95%CI = 6.84–6.93) to Q5: 7.68€/year (95%CI = 7.62–7.74))."

6. Sustainability indicators in the swine industry of the Brazilian State of Santa Catarina

7. Will China's building sector participate in emission trading system? Insights from modelling an owner's optimal carbon reduction strategies

8. Can carbon pricing jointly promote climate change mitigation and human development in Peru?

9. Transition to low-carbon economy: Assessing cumulative impacts of individual behavioral changes (open access)

10. Steering transformations under climate change: capacities for transformative climate governance and the case of Rotterdam, the Netherlands (open access)

11. Annual emissions of CO₂, CH₄ and N₂O from a temperate peat bog: Comparison of an undrained and four drained sites under permanent grass and arable crop rotations with cereals and potato

12. Carbon storage potential of cacao agroforestry systems of different age and management intensity

Energy production

13. Fukushima Through the Prism of Chernobyl: How Newspapers in Europe and Russia Used Past Nuclear Accidents

"The results show that the memory on the Chernobyl nuclear accident appeared in more than in every third article reporting of the present Fukushima nuclear accident despite the fact that Fukushima carried no direct radiological hazard for the newspaper’s audience and, a frequent use of narratives is related to negative attitudes towards nuclear energy, a higher risk perception of nuclear power plants and to an active nuclear energy industry in the newspaper’s country."

14. The Effects of Emergency Preparedness Communication on People’s Trust, Emotions, and Acceptance of a Nuclear Power Plant

15. Why homeowners strive for energy self-supply and how policy makers can influence them

16. The striking amount of carbon emissions by the construction stage of coal-fired power generation system in China

17. An integrated assessment of pathways for low-carbon development in Africa (open access)

18. Acceptance of wind energy and the role of financial and procedural participation: An investigation with focus groups and choice experiments

19. Could alternative energy sources in the transport sector decarbonise the economy without compromising economic growth?

20. Estimating temperature effects on the Italian electricity market

21. Measurement of natural and cyclical excess capacity in China's coal industry

22. Low-carbon energy generates public health savings in California (open access)

23. The rise and fall of foreign private investment in the jatropha biofuel value chain in Ghana

24. A greener gas grid: What are the options

25. Building or stumbling blocks? Assessing the performance of polycentric energy and climate governance networks

Climate change communication

26. Validating Conspiracy Beliefs and Effectively Communicating Scientific Consensus

"A central challenge to effectively communicating scientific consensus is that people often reject information counter to their prior beliefs. People who believe that human-induced climate change is a hoax, for instance, may dismiss scientific consensus messages that human activity is a primary cause of climate change. We argue that such people can be persuaded, however. We hypothesize that validating an individual’s belief about the existence of conspiracies makes him or her more likely to accept contrary scientific consensus information. We present experimental evidence that such validation leads individuals who previously believed human-induced climate change is a hoax to become more believing in human-induced climate change following exposure to scientific consensus information."

27. Correcting misinformation about climate change: the impact of partisanship in an experimental setting

"We find that corrections from Republicans speaking against their partisan interest are most likely to persuade respondents to acknowledge and agree with the scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change. The extent of these effects vary by the partisanship of the recipient. Our results suggest that the partisan gap on climate change can be reduced by highlighting the views of elite Republicans who acknowledge the scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change."

28. Overcoming barriers to climate change information management in small island developing states: lessons from pacific SIDS

29. Doom and gloom versus optimism: An assessment of ocean-related U.S. science journalism (2001-2015)

30. Conceptualizing climate vulnerability: Understanding the negotiating strategies of Small Island Developing States

Climate change

Temperature, precipitation, and wind

31. Interannual to decadal variability of the upper-ocean heat content in the western North Pacific and its relationship to oceanic and atmospheric variability

32. Northerly wind trends along the Portuguese marine coast since 1950

"Overall, the northerly wind intensity increased throughout the 1960s regardless of the area and dataset. Between 1960 and 2010, the northerly wind increased at a linear rate of 0.24, 0.09, and 0.15 m s-1 per decade in the NW, SW, and S coastal regions, respectively. The rate was higher in recent decades (1988–2009), with the wind intensity increasing by 0.4, 0.3, and 0.3 ms-1 per decade in the NW, SW, and S regions, respectively."

33. Intercomparison of Surface Temperatures from AIRS, MERRA, and MERRA-2, with NOAA and GC-Net Weather Stations at Summit, Greenland

34. Precipitation regimes over central Greenland inferred from 5 years of ICECAPS observations (open access)

35. Hierarchical Bayesian space-time estimation of monthly maximum and minimum surface air temperature

36. Impacts of half a degree additional warming on the Asian summer monsoon rainfall characteristics (open access)

Extreme events

37. Climate change and the global pattern of moraine-dammed glacial lake outburst floods (open access)

"We have produced the first global inventory of GLOFs associated with the failure of moraine dams and show, counterintuitively, that these have reduced in frequency over recent decades."

38. Geo-anthropogenic aberrations and Chennai floods: 2015, India

39. Tropical storm Chedza and associated floods over south-eastern Africa

Forcings and feedbacks

40. Constraints on global oceanic emissions of N₂O from observations and models (open access)

41. Continued increase of CFC-113a (CCl3CF3) mixing ratios in the global atmosphere: emissions, occurrence and potential sources (open access)

"The continued presence of northern hemispheric emissions of CFC-113a is confirmed by our measurements of a persistent interhemispheric gradient in its mixing ratios, with higher mixing ratios in the Northern Hemisphere. The sources of CFC-113a are still unclear, but we present evidence that indicates large emissions in East Asia, most likely due to its use as a chemical involved in the production of hydrofluorocarbons."

42. The Network for the Detection of Atmospheric Composition Change (NDACC): history, status and perspectives (open access)

43. Long-term record of top-of-atmosphere albedo over land generated from AVHRR data

44. Concentrations and source regions of light-absorbing particles in snow/ice in northern Pakistan and their impact on snow albedo (open access)

45. Improving the simulation of tropical convective cloud top heights in CAM5 with CloudSat observations

Cryosphere

46. Future projections of Antarctic ice shelf melting based on CMIP5 scenarios

"Every sector of Antarctica shows increased basal melting in every scenario, with the largest increases occurring in the Amundsen Sea. The main mechanism driving this melting is an increase in warm Circumpolar Deep Water on the Antarctic continental shelf."

47. Multi-year analysis of distributed glacier mass balance modelling and equilibrium line altitude on King George Island, Antarctic Peninsula (open access)

48. Changing pattern of ice flow and mass balance for glaciers discharging into the Larsen A and B embayments, Antarctic Peninsula, 2011 to 2016 (open access)

49. Recent dynamic changes on Fleming Glacier after the disintegration of Wordie Ice Shelf, Antarctic Peninsula (open access)

"Fleming Glacier is the biggest tributary glacier of the former Wordie Ice Shelf. Radar satellite data and airborne ice elevation measurements show that the glacier accelerated by ~27 % between 2008–2011 and that ice thinning increased by ~70 %. This was likely a response to a two-phase ungrounding of the glacier tongue between 2008 and 2011, which was mainly triggered by increased basal melt during two strong upwelling events of warm circumpolar deep water."

50. Glacier mass budget and climate reanalysis data indicate a climatic shift around 2000 in Lahaul-Spiti, western Himalaya

51. Thermodynamic and dynamic ice thickness contributions in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago in NEMO-LIM2 numerical simulations (open access)

52. The strengthening relationship between Eurasian snow cover and December haze days in central North China after the mid-1990s (open access)

53. Historical and future changes of snowfall events in China under a warming background

54. Estimating the snow water equivalent on a glacierized high elevation site (Forni Glacier, Italy) (open access)

55. Multi-component ensembles of future meteorological and natural snow conditions for 1500?m altitude in the Chartreuse mountain range, Northern French Alps (open access)

Hydrosphere

56. Trend analysis of hydro-climatic variables in the north of Iran

57. Climate model assessment of changes in winter-spring streamflow timing over North America

Carbon cycle

58. Dependence of the evolution of carbon dynamics in the northern permafrost region on the trajectory of climate change

"Our analysis indicates that the northern permafrost region could act as a net sink for carbon under more aggressive climate change mitigation pathways. Under less aggressive pathways, the region would likely act as a source of soil carbon to the atmosphere, but substantial net losses would not occur until after 2100."

59. High-frequency productivity estimates for a lake from free-water CO2 concentration measurements (open access)

60. Phenological mismatch in coastal western Alaska may increase summer season greenhouse gas uptake (open access)

61. Carbon fluxes and interannual drivers in a temperate forest ecosystem assessed through comparison of top-down and bottom-up approaches

62. Estimates of CO2 fluxes over the city of Cape Town, South Africa, through Bayesian inverse modelling (open access)

Atmospheric and oceanic circulation

63. Evaluation of performance of CMIP5 models in simulating the North Pacific Oscillation and El Niño Modoki

64. Mechanisms and Predictability of Pacific Decadal Variability

Climate change impacts

Mankind

65. Intercropping of coffee with the palm tree, macauba, can mitigate climate change effects

"Compared with the traditional unshaded sole coffee planting, the intercropped cultivation provided more coffee yield on both macauba density planting and distance evaluated. On the other hand, coffee productivity was increased by agroforestry systems just for 4.2?m distance between palm trees and coffee rows. Planting density of macaubas did not affect coffee yield and productivity. Best coffee harvest in agroforestry systems with macauba was related to higher soil moisture at the depth of 20–40?cm, higher photosynthetic active radiation, and maximum air temperatures lower than 30?°C."

66. Climate change adaptation: a study of multiple climate-smart practices in the Nile Basin of Ethiopia

67. Community-based adaptation in low-lying islands in the Philippines: challenges and lessons learned

68. Improving the representation of adaptation in climate change impact models (open access)

69. Collaboration between meso-level institutions and communities to facilitate climate change adaptation in Ghana

70. Effects of drought and flood on crop production in China across 1949–2015: spatial heterogeneity analysis with Bayesian hierarchical modeling

71. Uncertain impacts on economic growth when stabilizing global temperatures at 1.5°C or 2°C warming (open access)

Biosphere

72. Enhanced canopy growth precedes senescence in 2005 and 2010 Amazonian droughts

73. Drought sensitivity and stem growth variation of nine alien and native tree species on a productive forest site in Germany

74. Machine learning modeling of plant phenology based on coupling satellite and gridded meteorological dataset

Other impacts

75. Isoprene emission response to drought and the impact on global atmospheric chemistry