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This systematic meta-narrative literature review aims to explore the narratives of trust evident in literature on public (mis)trust relating to climate science published up until May 2021, and to present the main findings from these papers. We identified six narratives of trust: attitudinal trust, cognitive trust, affective trust, contingencies of trust, contextual trust and communicated trust. The papers' main findings spanned theoretical conclusions on the importance of positionality to trust and morality to trustworthiness, to qualitative findings that the scientific community was mainly trusted, to quantitative findings that explored how trust functioned as an independent, dependent or mediating variable. This literature review sheds important light on the interrelationship between climate science and publics, highlights areas for further research, and in its characterisation of trust narratives provides a language for conceptualising trust that can further interdisciplinary engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The action required to stem the environmental and social implications of climate change depends crucially on how humankind shapes technology, economy, lifestyle and policy. With transport CO2 emissions accounting for about a quarter of the total, we examine the contribution of CO2 output by scientific travel. Thankfully for the reputation of the scientific community, CO2 emissions associated with the trips required to present a paper at a scientific conference account for just 0.003% of the yearly total. However, with CO2 emissions for a single conference trip amounting to 7% of an average individual’s total CO2 emissions, scientists should lead by example by demonstrating leadership in addressing the issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Information about airborne pollen concentrations is required by a range of end users, particularly from the health sector who use both observations and forecasts to diagnose and treat allergic patients. Manual methods are the standard for such measurements but, despite the range of pollen taxa that can be identified, these techniques suffer from a range of drawbacks. This includes being available at low temporal resolution (usually daily averages) and with a delay (usually 3–9 days from the measurement). Recent technological developments have made possible automatic pollen measurements, which are available at high temporal resolution and in real time, although currently only scattered in a few locations across Europe. Materials & Methods: To promote the development of an extensive network across Europe and to ensure that this network will respond to end user needs, a stakeholder workshop was organised under the auspices of the EUMETNET AutoPollen Programme. Participants discussed requirements for the groups they represented, ranging from the need for information at various spatial scales, at high temporal resolution, and for targeted services to be developed. Results: The provision of real‐time information is likely to lead to a notable decrease in the direct and indirect health costs associated with allergy in Europe, currently estimated between €50–150 billion/year.1 Discussion & Conclusion: A European measurement network to meet end user requirements would thus more than pay for itself in terms of potential annual savings and provide significant impetus to research across a range of disciplines from climate science and public health to agriculture and environmental management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In France and Germany, significant networks of local initiatives have developed around energy issues. This article brings practitioners' viewpoints into discussion. It presents the way in which two of these networks – the CLER-network for the energy transition (France) and the 100% – Regions network (Germany) – each identifies itself, describes its action and build-up process in relation to government action, and conceives of justice issues in the field of climate energy policy. The analysis shows that these two networks share a lot, including political ends (localisation of energy production, empowerment of rural territories), but practice quite differently as intermediaries for local initiatives. This suggests overcoming the transition management vs grassroots divide present in the literature and paying more attention to hybrids. It also brings emphasis on a type of intermediary's work, which has not been covered by the academic literature, namely that of tinkering with multiple supports and embedding action in local-national-supranational networking in order to maintain continuity. In discussing justice dimensions, we emphasize that motives or ends of action are only reflectively related to ideas of justice: justice issues seem bound up with a politics of assembling, either as a marker of federative action (all fighting for justice) or as a potentially divisive issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Moisture diffuses through the pore space and the fiber matrix in paper materials. The diffusivity through paper increases strongly with moisture content. We measured the moisture diffusivity of handsheets made of refined bleached kraft pulp at various relative humidity conditions. I Steady state moisture fluxes were measured and diffusivities in the lateral (x-y) and in the transverse (z} directions were calculated. The lateral diffusivity was found to be higher than the transverse diffusivity for all the samples and the effective moisture diffusivities depended strongly on the moisture content. Application: The information in this report may help mills predict the rate of moisture transport into rolls and sheets under varying humidities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The climate change policy debate and ensuing discussions about industrial energy use and carbon emissions have highlighted the need to: (a) aggregate engineering information to a level relevant for economic policy analysis while maintaining sufficient detail so that results are meaningful for industry decision makers, (b) properly represent an industry’s capital vintage structure to better understand inertia associated with changes in aggregate industrial emissions profiles, and (c) identify policy instruments that leverage an industry’s potential for technological change such that carbon emissions can be noticeably reduced. This paper presents an econometric analysis of energy use and emissions profiles of the US Pulp and Paper Industry and uses the resulting set of equations to specify a dynamic model for the analysis of select climate change policies. Scenarios of cost of carbon, energy tax, and investment-led policies indicate that a combination of cost of carbon and investment-led policies can achieve the desired result of rapidly improving overall efficiency of the industry and promoting changes in fuel mix, which together can result in drastic reductions of carbon emissions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Understanding carbon sources and sinks across the Earth's surface is fundamental in climate science and policy; thus, these topics have been extensively studied but have yet to be fully resolved and are associated with massive debate regarding the sign and magnitude of the carbon budget from global to regional scales. Developing new models and estimates based on state-of-the-art algorithms and data constraints can provide valuable knowledge and contribute to a final ensemble model in which various optimal carbon budget estimates are integrated, such as the annual global carbon budget paper. Here, we develop a new atmospheric inversion system based on the 4D local ensemble transform Kalman filter (4D-LETKF) coupled with the GEOS-Chem global transport model to infer surface-to-atmosphere net carbon fluxes from Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) V10r XCO 2 retrievals. The 4D-LETKF algorithm is adapted to an OCO-2-based global carbon inversion system for the first time in this work. On average, the mean annual terrestrial and oceanic fluxes between 2015 and 2020 are estimated as - 2.02 and - 2.34 GtC yr -1 , respectively, compensating for 21 % and 24 %, respectively, of global fossil carbon dioxide (CO 2) emissions (9.80 GtC yr -1). Our inversion results agree with the CO 2 atmospheric growth rates reported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and reduce the modeled CO 2 concentration biases relative to the prior fluxes against surface and aircraft measurements. Our inversion-based carbon fluxes are broadly consistent with those provided by other global atmospheric inversion models, although discrepancies still occur in the land–ocean flux partitioning schemes and seasonal flux amplitudes over boreal and tropical regions, possibly due to the sparse observational constraints of the OCO-2 satellite and the divergent prior fluxes used in different inversion models. Four sensitivity experiments are performed herein to vary the prior fluxes and uncertainties in our inversion system, suggesting that regions that lack OCO-2 coverage are sensitive to the priors, especially over the tropics and high latitudes. In the further development of our inversion system, we will optimize the data-assimilation configuration to fully utilize current observations and increase the spatial and seasonal representativeness of the prior fluxes over regions that lack observations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Results of 3-year full-scale field climatic tests on application of five types of inhibiting papers for anticorrosion protection of ferrous and nonferrous metals during storage in a humid tropical climate have been carried out by the Joint Russian and Vietnamese Tropical Research and Technology Center and presented here. It has been shown that the inhibiting paper IPCAS-118 can be recommended for anticorrosion protection of equipment made of steel, copper, and aluminum during 3-year storage in sheds in humid tropical climate conditions [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The STatistical Analogue Resampling Scheme (STARS) statistical approach was recently used to project changes of climate variables in Germany corresponding to a supposed degree of warming. We show by theoretical and empirical analysis that STARS simply transforms interannual gradients between warmer and cooler seasons into climate trends. According to STARS projections, summers in Germany will inevitably become dryer and winters wetter under global warming. Due to the dominance of negative interannual correlations between precipitation and temperature during the year, STARS has a tendency to generate a net annual decrease in precipitation under mean German conditions. Furthermore, according to STARS, the annual level of global radiation would increase in Germany. STARS can be still used, e.g., for generating scenarios in vulnerability and uncertainty studies. However, it is not suitable as a climate downscaling tool to access risks following from changing climate for a finer than general circulation model (GCM) spatial scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A comparison of retrieved total column ozone amounts TCO between the Pandora #34 spectrometer system and the Dobson #061 spectrophotometer from direct-sun observations was performed on the roof of the Boulder, Colorado NOAA building. This paper, part of an ongoing study, covers a one-year period starting on 17 December 2013. Both the standard Dobson and Pandora total column ozone TCO retrievals required a correction TCOcorr=TCO (1+C(T )) using the effective climatology derived ozone temperature T to remove a seasonal difference caused by using a fixed temperature in each retrieval algorithm. The respective corrections C(T ) are CPandora = 0.00333(T-225) and CDobson = -0.0013(T-226.7) per K. After the applied corrections removed the seasonal retrieval dependence on ozone temperature, TCO agreement between the instruments was within 1% for clear-sky conditions. For clear-sky observations, both co-located instruments tracked the day-to-day variation in total column ozone amounts with a correlation of r² = 0.97 and an average offset of 1.1±5.8 DU. In addition, the Pandora data showed 0.3% annual average agreement with satellite overpass data from AURA/OMI (Ozone Monitoring Instrument) and 1% annual average offset with Suomi-NPP/OMPS (Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership, the nadir viewing portion of the Ozone Mapper Profiler Suite). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Application for Research Ethics Committee (REC) approval and the conduct of medical research is paper intensive. This retrospective study examined all applications to a single REC in the south of England over one year. It estimated the mass of paper used, comparing the proportional paper consumption of different trial types and during different stages of the research process, quantifying the consumption in terms of carbon dioxide emissions. In 2009, 68 trials were submitted to the REC. Total paper consumption for the REC process and study conduct was 176,150 sheets of A4 paper (879 kg), equivalent to an estimated 11.5 million sheets (88 tonnes, 2,100 trees) a year for the UK; the REC process accounted for 26.4%. REC applications and the conduct of approved trials generate considerable environmental impact through paper consumption contributing to the NHS's carbon footprint. Paper use might be reduced through the implementation of digital technologies and revised research methods, namely changing attitudes in both researchers and ethics committees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lorenz (1963) provided the foundation of chaos theory and inspired a fundamental reappraisal of systems’ nonlinearity in many disciplines, including physical geography. I will provide a brief overview of chaos in nonlinear systems as documented in Lorenz (1963), including the major tenants of chaos theory, followed by a discussion of the effects of chaos theory within meteorology and climate sciences, geomorphology, and ecology and biogeography. In general, Lorenz (1963) provided the intellectual framework for reconsidering the predictability of many physical systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Archaeological sites are essentially submitted to decay phenomena inherent on their history as well as the environment to which they are exposed after excavation. The history of such archaeological sites is particularly related to their long-term underground conservation conditions during which they were subject to salt migration into the architectural remains. It is well known that soluble salts present in building materials can cause damage, mainly by producing stresses in the substrate. A lot of research has been done in the past concerning the behaviour of salts in built constructions. However, most studies include single salts, of which the deliquescence points are well documented, while in situ one mostly finds complex salt mixtures, which makes the conservation strategy much more intricate. The environmental conditions to minimize damage of salt-laden porous building materials can be modelled using a computer program ECOS capable of predicting the crystallization behaviour of salt mixtures. To use the model data of quantitative salt analyses are required as input. The program is then able to predict from a thermodynamic point of view which minerals will exist in the solid state under specified climatic conditions. This paper deals with the results of a systematic investigation of the salt contamination of the building materials of the Coudenberg site and a prediction of the behaviour of the salt mixture related to the actual climate, as part of the environmental assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the present paper is to examine a selection of macro- and micro-linguistic features (at text and sentence/word level respectively) of the South-African Green Paper 'National Climate Change Response' from 2010. Our overarching assumption is that the Green Paper needs to handle competing interests, beliefs and voices in a narrative structure favouring specific courses of action. How does the government portray the complex natural and societal phenomenon of climate change, and how does it take into account the many and often competing national and international views and interests which come into play? Our hypothesis is that the Green Paper constructs a narrative and that it relates to a number of voices other than that of the authors, through linguistic markers of polyphony, such as negation, sentence connectives, adverbs and reported speech. Thus we propose a narrative and polyphonic analysis of the Green Paper, at the level of the text as a whole (macro-level) but also with attention to linguistic constructions of polyphony or 'multi-voicedness' (micro-level). We find that the narrative-polyphonic properties of the Green Paper contribute to a strategy for building consensus on climate change policy. The South African government assumes the role of main hero in its own climate change 'story', and there are subtle forms of interaction with different and typically non-identified voices, such as concessive constructions and presuppositions. These results support our overarching interpretation of the whole document as striving to impose a South African consensus on the issue of climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focal point of this review is to provide a comparative display of qualitative and quantitative methodologies employed for the appraisal of interacting energy and climate policies, underlying their key features while presenting the most critical issues and limitations not addressed so far. Qualitative approaches provide a descriptive explanatory analysis of often non-quantifiable process in policy interactions, whereas modeling approaches provide numerical data estimating the extent of policy interaction impacts. Quantitative methods work best for narrowly specified policy combinations, while contextual implications and cause-impact effects are explained further via qualitative ones. In addition most evaluations so far adopt a rational view of policies and policy interactions leaving out a systemic evaluation of the institutionalism of interacting policies. Research analysis of energy and climate policy interactions is still young in comparison to the broad field of policy evaluation and impact assessment. However infants inherently tend to grow. Endeavors for a methodological framework that would allow for a systematic exchange of data between qualitative and quantitative approaches and would also include the relevance of the context as well as key casual relationships behind policy combinations, would provide the basis for further growth of knowledge in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sixty-two paintings, most of which were on paper, by Balinese artists, were sent on loan to Museum Puri Lukisan in Ubud, Bali, which had been set up in 1956 with help from the collector of the works, the Dutch artist Rudolf Bonnet. The exhibition travelled from Bali to Jakarta. The museum building on Bali had no climate control; so the paintings were sealed in simple, unmodified frames in an unobtrusive manner. Conditions inside and outside the sealed packages were recorded throughout the loan using tiny electronic dataloggers developed for testing within food and drugs packaging. The project demonstrated that relatively simple and inexpensive techniques proved highly effective in protecting the works from warm and humid tropical conditions. Resume «Retour a Bali: l'efficacite de l'utilisation de micro-climats au cours d'un pret d'œuvres sur papier entre les Pays-Bas et l'Indonesie» Soixante deux peintures, dont la plupart realisees sur papier par des artistes de Bali, furent envoyees en pret au musee Puri Lukisan in Ubud de Bali, qui avait ete cree en 1956 avec l'aide d'un collectionneur d'œuvres, l'artiste hollandais Rudolf Bonnet. L'exposition a voyage de Bali a Jakarta. Le batiment du musee de Bali n'avait pas de systeme de controle du climat; les peintures ont donc ete scellees d'une facon discrete dans de simples cadres sans qu'on ait eu a les modifier. Les conditions a l'interieur et a l'exterieur des paquets scelles ont ete enregistrees tout au long du pret en utilisant de petits capteurs electroniques mis au point pour evaluer les emballages de denrees alimentaires et de medicaments. Le projet a demontre que des techniques relativement simples et peu couteuses s'averent tres efficaces dans la protection des œuvres dans un climat tropical chaud et humide. Zusammenfassung „Zuruck nach Bali: Die Effektivitat von Mikroklimaten wahrend einer Leihgabe von Kunst auf Papier aus den Niederlanden nach Indonesien” 62 Gemalde von balinesischer Kunstler, die meisten auf einem Papiertrager, wurden an das Museum Puri Lukisan in Ubud, Bali, verliehen. Diese Museum war 1956 mit Hilfe des Sammlers der Gemalde, dem niederlandischen Kunstler Rudolf Bonnet, aufgebaut worden. Die Ausstellung reiste von Bali nach Jakarta. Das Museumsgebaude auf Bali hatte keine Moglichkeit der Klimakontrolle und so wurden die Gemalde in einfachen, unmodifizierten Rahmen gerahmt. Die Bedingungen innerhalb und ausserhalb der versiegelten Pakete wurden wahrend des gesamten Verleihs mit winzigen elektronischen Dataloggern gespeichert, die fur Test von Nahrungsmitteln und medizinischen Verpackungen entwickelt wurden. Das Projekt zeigte, wie relativ einfache und billige Methoden sich als sehr effektiv erwiesen, um die Werke von den feuchtwarmen tropischen Bedingungen zu schutzen. Resumen “Regreso a Bali: la efectividad en el uso de microclimas durante el prestamo de obras de arte sobre papel entre Holanda e Indonesia” Sesenta y dos pinturas, la mayoria de ellas sobre papel, de artistas balineses, fueron enviadas bajo prestamo al museo Puri Lukisan en Ubud, Bali, que en 1956 habian sido instaladas con la ayuda del coleccionista de los trabajos, el artista holandes Rudolf Bonnet. La exposicion viajo desde Bali a Yacarta. El edificio del museo en Bali no tenia control climatico; por tanto las pinturas fueron selladas en marcos sencillos de la manera menos intrusiva. Se registraron durante todo el proceso las condiciones dentro y fuera del embalaje usando unos minusculos medidores electronicos desarrollados para testar comida o droga empaquetada. El proyecto demostro que unas tecnicas relativamente simples y baratas eran muy efectivas en la proteccion de las obras de las condiciones de calor y humedad tropical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the highlights of the Conference on Intelligent Data Understanding held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California on October 5-6, 2010. Topics included the implementation of the methods attained in data mining and machine learning on issues dealing with earth sciences, space sciences and systems health management. Problems dealing with changes in the climate and environment, astronomical data flux and safety in aviation were also tackled.

Weather radars have been widely used to detect and quantify precipitation and nowcast severe weather for more than 50 years. Operational weather radars generate huge three-dimensional datasets that can accumulate to terabytes per day. So it is essential to review what can be done with existing vast amounts of data, and how we should manage the present datasets for the future climatologists. All weather radars provide the reflectivity factor, and this is the main parameter to be archived. Saving reflectivity as volumetric data in the original spherical coordinates allows for studies of the three-dimensional structure of precipitation, which can be applied to understand a number of processes, for example, analyzing hail or thunderstorm modes. Doppler velocity and polarimetric moments also have numerous applications for climate studies, for example, quality improvement of reflectivity and rain rate retrievals, and for interrogating microphysical and dynamical processes. However, observational data alone are not useful if they are not accompanied by sufficient metadata. Since the lifetime of a radar ranges between 10 and 20 years, instruments are typically replaced or upgraded during climatologically relevant time periods. As a result, present metadata often do not apply to past data. This paper outlines the work of the Radar Task Team set by the Atmospheric Observation Panel for Climate (AOPC) and summarizes results from a recent survey on the existence and availability of long time series. We also provide recommendations for archiving current and future data and examples of climatological studies in which radar data have already been used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The excavation and valorization of subterranean archaeological remains, and eventually opening a site to the public, required a proper management and conservation strategy. This strategy was based on the evaluation of the delicate balance between the requirements for public health and safety, and the protection of the archaeological remains from future degradation. Controlling the climate can be essential for a preventive conservation strategy, which can be defined as an indirect action to increase the life expectancy of the archaeological remains, and by doing so keeping them in a preferred state of conservation to mitigate damage and/or deterioration. Potential risks and possible interventions are outlined to avoid climatic conditions which are in conflict with the requirements for the visitors' comfort while preventing damage phenomena to the materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This bibliometric study of a large publication set dealing with research on climate change aims at mapping the relevant literature from a bibliometric perspective and presents a multitude of quantitative data: (1) The growth of the overall publication output as well as (2) of some major subfields, (3) the contributing journals and countries as well as their citation impact, and (4) a title word analysis aiming to illustrate the time evolution and relative importance of specific research topics. The study is based on 222,060 papers (articles and reviews only) published between 1980 and 2014. The total number of papers shows a strong increase with a doubling every 5–6 years. Continental biomass related research is the major subfield, closely followed by climate modeling. Research dealing with adaptation, mitigation, risks, and vulnerability of global warming is comparatively small, but their share of papers increased exponentially since 2005. Research on vulnerability and on adaptation published the largest proportion of very important papers (in terms of citation impact). Climate change research has become an issue also for disciplines beyond the natural sciences. The categories Engineering and Social Sciences show the strongest field-specific relative increase. The Journal of Geophysical Research, the Journal of Climate, the Geophysical Research Letters, and Climatic Change appear at the top positions in terms of the total number of papers published. Research on climate change is quantitatively dominated by the USA, followed by the UK, Germany, and Canada. The citation-based indicators exhibit consistently that the UK has produced the largest proportion of high impact papers compared to the other countries (having published more than 10,000 papers). Also, Switzerland, Denmark and also The Netherlands (with a publication output between around 3,000 and 6,000 papers) perform top—the impact of their contributions is on a high level. The title word analysis shows that the term climate change comes forward with time. Furthermore, the term impact arises and points to research dealing with the various effects of climate change. The discussion of the question of human induced climate change towards a clear fact (for the majority of the scientific community) stimulated research on future pathways for adaptation and mitigation. Finally, the term model and related terms prominently appear independent of time, indicating the high relevance of climate modeling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents updates related to climatology and weather studies in the U.S. Research reveals the significance of using the cloud-resolving model simulations in forecasting the dangers of lightning. Meanwhile, several climate scientists are searching for the best method in estimating the peak surface winds of a hurricane. Moreover, it also looks on the effectiveness of the latest multiple-Doppler tornado detection in determining the upcoming tornadoes.

The article offers world news briefs related to meteorology. The subrotors and the internal structure of the parent rotor lifts off the surface and breakdown along the edge of the lee wave through Kelvin-Helmholtz like instability. Greenland extends one quarter of the distance between the North Pole and Equator averaging 1.5 kilometer (km) in height and reaching skyward more than 3.5 km. The Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP) offers the opportunity to analyze climate variation.

The article offers news briefs related to climatology. A cold tongue which is a narrow band of cool sea surface temperature (SST) is one of the salient features in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. Two of the factors that contributed to the weather-forecasting errors increase in time are the amplification uncertainties of nonlinearities in the initial state of the atmosphere and the model deficiencies leading the model to predict the wrong rate of change for even the most certain initial conditions. INSETS: DUDE, WE'RE, LIKE, PROTESTING;PLEASED TO ZAP YOU.

Bergmann's rule generally predicts larger animal body sizes with colder climates. We tested whether Bergmann's rule at the interspecific level applies to moths (Lepidoptera: Geometridae) along an extended elevational gradient in the Ecuadorian Andes. Moths were sampled at 22 sites in the province Zamora-Chinchipe in southern Ecuador in forest habitats ranging from 1040 m to 2677 m above sea level. Wingspans of 2282 male geometrid moths representing 953 species were measured and analysed at the level of the family Geometridae, as well as for the subfamily Ennominae with the tribes Boarmiini and Ourapterygini, and the subfamily Larentiinae with the genera Eois, Eupithecia and Psaliodes. Bergmann's rule was not supported since the average wingspan of geometrid moths was negatively correlated with altitude ( r = −0.59, P < 0.005). The relationship between body size and altitude in Geometridae appears to be spurious because species of the subfamily Larentiinae are significantly smaller than species of the subfamily Ennominae and simultaneously increase in their proportion along the gradient. A significant decrease of wingspan was also found in the ennomine tribe Ourapterygini, but no consistent body size patterns were found in the other six taxa studied. In most taxa, body size variation increases with altitude, suggesting that factors acting to constrain body size might be weaker at high elevations. The results are in accordance with previous studies that could not detect consistent body size patterns in insects at the interspecific level along climatic gradients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Broad-scale spatial patterns of species richness are very strongly correlated with climatic variables. If there is a causal link, i.e. if climate directly or indirectly determines patterns of richness, then when the climatic variables change, richness should change in the manner that spatial correlations between richness and climate would predict. The present study tests this prediction using seasonal changes in climatic variables and bird richness. We used a grid of equal area quadrats (37 000 km2) covering North and Central America as far south as Nicaragua. Summer and winter bird distribution data were drawn from monographs and field guides. Climatic data came from published sources. We also used remotely sensed NDVI (normalized difference vegetation index — a measure of greenness). Bird species richness changes temporally (between summer and winter) in a manner that is close to, but statistically distinguishable from, the change one would predict from models relating the spatial variation in richness at a single time to climatic variables. If one further takes into account the seasonal changes in NDVI and within-season variability of temperature and precipitation, then winter and summer richness follow congruent, statistically indistinguishable patterns. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that climatic variables (temperature and precipitation) and vegetation cover directly or indirectly influence patterns of bird species richness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A compilation of several cruises data from 1998 to 2013 was used to derive polynomial fits that estimate total alkalinity (AT) and total inorganic carbon (CT) from measurements of salinity and temperature in the Mediterranean Sea surface waters. The optimal equations were chosen based on the 10-fold cross validation results and revealed that a second and third order polynomials fit the AT and CT data respectively. The AT surface fit showed an improved root mean square error (RMSE) of ±10.6 μmol kg-1. Furthermore we present the first annual mean CT parameterization for the Mediterranean Sea surface waters with a RMSE of ±14.3 μmol kg-1. Excluding the marginal seas of the Adriatic and the Aegean, these equations can be used to estimate AT and CT in case of the lack of measurements. The seven years averages (2005-2012) mapped using the quarter degree climatologies of the World Ocean Atlas 2013 showed that in surface waters AT and CT have similar patterns with an increasing eastward gradient. The surface variability is influenced by the inflow of cold Atlantic waters through the Strait of Gibraltar and by the oligotrophic and thermohaline gradient that characterize the Mediterranean Sea. The summer-winter seasonality was also mapped and showed different patterns for AT and CT. During the winter, the AT and CT concentrations were higher in the western than in the eastern basin, primarily due to the deepening of the mixed layer and upwelling of dense waters. The opposite was observed in the summer where the eastern basin was marked by higher AT and CT concentrations than in winter. The strong evaporation that takes place in this season along with the ultra-oligotrophy of the eastern basin determines the increase of both AT and CT concentrations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aerosol–cloud interactions play a crucial role in shaping Earth's climate and hydrological cycle. Observing these interactions with high precision and accuracy is of the utmost importance for improving climate models and predicting Earth's climate. Over the past few decades, lidar techniques have emerged as powerful tools for investigating aerosol–cloud interactions due to their ability to provide detailed vertical profiles of aerosol particles and clouds with high spatial and temporal resolutions. This review paper provides an overview of recent advancements in the study of ACI using lidar techniques. The paper begins with a description of the different cloud microphysical processes that are affected by the presence of aerosol, and with an outline of lidar remote sensing application in characterizing aerosol particles and clouds. The subsequent sections delve into the key findings and insights gained from lidar-based studies of aerosol–cloud interactions. This includes investigations into the role of aerosol particles in cloud formation, evolution, and microphysical properties. Finally, the review concludes with an outlook on future research. By reporting the latest findings and methodologies, this review aims to provide valuable insights for researchers engaged in climate science and atmospheric research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A 30-year (1980–2010) climatology of the major variables and terms of the transformed Eulerian-mean (TEM) momentum and thermodynamic equations is constructed by using four global atmospheric reanalyses: the Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications, Version 2 (MERRA-2); the Japanese 55-year Reanalysis (JRA-55); the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) interim reanalysis (ERA-Interim); and the Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR). Both the reanalysis ensemble mean (REM) and the differences in each reanalysis from the REM are investigated in the latitude–pressure domain for December–January–February and for June–July–August. For the REM investigation, two residual vertical velocities (the original one and one evaluated from residual meridional velocity) and two mass streamfunctions (from meridional and vertical velocities) are compared. Longwave (LW) radiative heating and shortwave (SW) radiative heating are also shown and discussed. For the TEM equations, the residual terms are also calculated and investigated for their potential usefulness, as the residual term for the momentum equation should include the effects of parameterized processes such as gravity waves, while that for the thermodynamic equation should indicate the analysis increment. Inter-reanalysis differences are investigated for the mass streamfunction, LW and SW heating, the two major terms of the TEM momentum equation (the Coriolis term and the Eliassen–Palm flux divergence term), and the two major terms of the TEM thermodynamic equation (the vertical temperature advection term and the total diabatic heating term). The spread among reanalysis TEM momentum balance terms is around 10 % in Northern Hemisphere winter and up to 50 % in Southern Hemisphere winter. The largest uncertainties in the thermodynamic equation (about 50 %) are found in the vertical advection, for which the structure is inconsistent with the differences in heating. The results shown in this paper provide basic information on the degree of agreement among recent reanalyses in the stratosphere and upper troposphere in the TEM framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tropical cyclones (TCs) can cause severe wind and rain hazards. Unusual TC tracks and their extreme precipitation forecasts have become two difficult problems faced by conventional models of primitive equations. The case study in this paper finds that the numerical computation of the climatological component in conventional models restricts the prediction of unusual TC tracks. The climatological component should be a forcing quantity, not a predictor in the numerical integration of all models. Anomaly-based variable models can overcome the bottleneck of forecast time length or the one-week forecasting barrier, which is limited to less than one week for conventional models. The challenge in extreme precipitation forecasting is how to physically get the vertical velocity. The anomalous moisture stress modulus (AMSM), as an indicator of heavy rainfall presented in this paper, considers the two conditions associated with vertical velocity and anomalous specific humidity in the lower troposphere. Vertical velocity is produced by the orthogonal collision of horizontal anomalous airflows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A letter to the editor is presented in response to the paper "On the Taboo on Researching in the Field of Global Climate Geoengineering," by A. G. Ryaboshapko, published in a previous issue of "Russian Meteorology & Hydrology" journal.

In recent years, various early warning signals of critical transition have been presented, such as autocorrelation at lag 1 [AR(1)], variance, the propagator based on detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA-propagator), and so on. Many studies have shown that the climate system has the characteristics of long-term memory (LTM). Will the LTM characteristics of the climate system change as it approaches possible critical transition points? In view of this, the present paper first studies whether the LTM of several folding (folded bifurcation) models changes consistently as they approach their critical points slowly by the rescaled range (R/S) analysis. The results of numerical experiments show that when the control parameters of the folding model are close to its critical threshold, the Hurst exponent H exhibits an almost monotonic increase (significance level α = 0.05). We compare the performance of R/S with the existing indicators, including AR(1), variance, and DFA-propagator, and find that R/S is a perfectly valid alternative. When there is no extra false noise, AR(1) and variance have good early warning effects. After the addition of extra Gaussian white noise of different intensities, the values of AR(1) and variance change significantly. As a result, the DFA-propagator based on AR(1) calibration also changed significantly. Compared with the other three indicators, the early warning effect of H has stronger ability to resist the interference of external false signals. To further verify the validity of increasing H, paleoclimate reconstruction of Cariaco Basin sediment core grayscale record with long trends filtered out is studied by R/S analysis. The other three early warning signals are calculated in the same way. The data contain a well-known abrupt climate change: the transition between the Younger Dryas (YD) and the Holocene. We find that approximately 300 years before this abrupt climate change occurred, before 11.7 kyr BP, the LTM exponents for Cariaco Basin deglacial grayscale data present an obvious increasing trend at a significant level of α = 0.05. Meanwhile, the variation trend of H and DFA-propagator is basically similar. This shows that increasing H by R/S analysis is an effective early warning signal, which indicates that a dynamic system is approaching its possible critical transition points; H is a completely valid alternative signal for AR(1) and DFA-propagator. The main conclusion of this paper is based on numerical experiments. The precise relationship between H and the stability of the underlying state approaching the transition needs to be further studied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regional decadal predictions have emerged in the past few years as a research field with high application potential, especially for extremes like heat and drought periods. However, up to now the prediction skill of decadal hindcasts, as evaluated with standard methods is moderate, and for extreme values even rarely investigated. In this study, we use hindcast data from a regional climate model (CCLM) for 8 regions in Europe to construct time evolving climate networks and use the network correlation threshold (link strength) as a predictor for heat periods. We show that the skill of the network measure to predict the low frequency dynamics of heat periods is similar to the one of the standard approach, with the potential of being even better in some regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Almost all climate time series have some degree of nonstationarity due to external driving forces perturbations of the observed system. Therefore, these external driving forces should be taken into account when reconstructing the climate dynamics. This paper presents a new technique of combining the driving force of a time series obtained using the Slow Feature Analysis (SFA) approach, then introducing the driving force into a predictive model to predict non-stationary time series. In essence, the main idea of the technique is to consider the driving forces as state variables and incorporate them into the prediction model. To test the method, experiments using a modified logistic time series and winter ozone data in Arosa, Switzerland, were conducted. The results showed improved and effective prediction skill. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a new issue that very low relative humidity observations exist in a deeper atmosphere layer in the low- and mid-troposphere is studied on the basis of the global radiosonde observations from December 2008 to November 2009, and the humidity retrieval productions from Formosa Satellite mission-3/Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere, and Climate (FORMOSAT-3/COSMIC, referred to as COSMIC hereafter) in the same period. Results show that these extremely dry relative humidity observations are considerable universal in the worldwide operational radiosonde data. Globally, the annual average occurrence probability of the extremely dry relative humidity is of 4.2 %. These measurements usually occur between 20° and 40° latitudes in both Northern and Southern Hemispheres, and in the height from 700 to 450 hPa in the low- and mid-troposphere. Winter and spring are the favoured seasons for these extremely dry humidity observations, with the maximum ratio of 9.53% in the Northern Hemisphere and 16.82% in the Southern Hemisphere. The phenomenon is mainly related to the performance of the radiosonde humidity sensor and the cloud types traversed by the radiosonde balloon. These extremely low relative humidity observations are erroneous, which cannot represent the real atmospheric status, and are likely caused by the failure of humidity sensor. However, these observations have been archived as the formal data. It will affect the reliability of numerical weather prediction, the analysis of weather and climate, if the quality control procedure is not applied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the current work we present six hindcast Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) simulations for the EURO-CORDEX domain with different configurations in microphysics, convection and radiation for the time period 1990-2008. All regional model simulations are forced by the ERA-Interim reanalysis and have the same spatial resolution (0.44°). These simulations are evaluated for surface temperature, precipitation, short- and longwave downward radiation at the surface and total cloud cover. The analysis of the WRF ensemble indicates systematic biases in both temperature and precipitation linked to different physical mechanisms for the summer and winter season. Overestimation of total cloud cover and underestimation of downward shortwave radiation at the surface, mostly when using Grell-Devenyi convection and the CAM radiation scheme, intensifies the negative summer temperature bias in northern Europe (max -2.5 °C). Conversely, a strong positive downward shortwave summer bias in central (40-60 %) and southern Europe mitigates the systematic cold bias in WRF over these regions, signifying a typical case of error compensation. Maximum winter cold bias is over north-eastern Europe (-2.8 °C); this location is indicative of land-atmosphere rather than cloud-radiation interactions. Precipitation is systematically overestimated in summer by all model configurations, especially the higher quantiles, which are associated with summertime deep cumulus convection. The Kain-Fritsch convection scheme produces the larger summertime precipitation biases over the Mediterranean. Winter precipitation is reproduced with lower biases by all model configurations (15-30 %). The results of this study indicate the importance of evaluating not only the basic climatic parameters of interest for climate change applications (temperature-precipitation), but also other components of the energy and water cycle, in order to identify the sources of systematic biases, possible compensatory or masking mechanisms and suggest methodologies for model improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a response to a comment on an article about a parametrization of solar energy disposition in the climate system. It was pointed out that the description of the treatment of albedo processes in the University of Victoria model is incorrect. It is agreed that the University of Victoria model has a representation of the ice-albedo feedback through the planetary albedo change. The solar energy disposition is poorly simulated and this aspect is usually neglected in model evaluations.