New research, March 19-25, 2018

Posted on 30 March 2018 by Ari Jokimäki

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

The figure is from paper #80.

Climate change mitigation

1. Unlikely pioneers: creative climate change policymaking in smaller U.S. cities

"I find that local leaders reframe climate change action as a way to save money and attract economic development. Personal environmental ethics drive small town leaders to reduce greenhouse gase emissions. Citizen committees can provide technical resources and political support. Otherwise, and more subtly, citizens can create a political environment that reduces resistance to climate change policymaking."

Emission reductions

2. Healthy, affordable and climate-friendly diets in India

"We show that more than two-thirds of Indians consume insufficient micronutrients, particularly iron and Vitamin A, and to a lesser extent zinc. A greater proportion of urban households than rural households are deficient at all income levels and for all nutrients, with few exceptions. Deficiencies reduce with increasing income. Using constrained optimization, we find that households could overcome these nutrient deficiencies within their food budgets by diversifying their diets, particularly towards coarse cereals, pulses, and leafy vegetables, and away from rice. These dietary changes could reduce India’s agricultural greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by up to 25%."

3. Life cycle assessment research and application in Indonesia

"The research and application of LCA in Indonesia are still in its infancy, as partly proved by a relatively small number of publications as compared to some other Southeast Asian countries. However, there was a notable increase in publication over the last 5 years, indicating a growing interest in LCA, mainly from academics and to less extent from private sectors."

4. The Convergence of China’s Marginal Abatement Cost of CO2: An Emission-Weighted Continuous State Space Approach

5. Managing cropland and rangeland for climate mitigation: an expert elicitation on soil carbon in California (open access)

6. Greenhouse gas emissions and energy use associated with production of individual self-selected US diets (open access)

7. Analyzing the greenhouse gas impact potential of smallholder development actions across a global food security program (open access)

8. Economic and environmental performance of dryland wheat-based farming systems in a 1.5 °C world

9. Subsidence and carbon dioxide emissions in a smallholder peatland mosaic in Sumatra, Indonesia (open access)

10. Forest loss and Borneo's climate

"We conclude that loss of forest in Borneo has increased local daily temperatures and temperature extremes, and reduced daily precipitation."

Energy production

11. Why is China’s wind power generation not living up to its potential? (open access)

12. Estimating future wood outtakes in the Norwegian forestry sector under the shared socioeconomic pathways

13. An environmental assessment of small hydropower in India: the real costs of dams’ construction under a life cycle perspective

14. Sale of profitable but unaffordable PV plants in Spain: Analysis of a real case

15. How renewable production depresses electricity prices: Evidence from the German market

16. Solar energy's potential to mitigate political risks: The case of an optimised Africa-wide network (open access)

17. A framework for evaluating the current level of success of micro-hydropower schemes in remote communities of developing countries

18. Russian industry responses to climate change: the case of the metals and mining sector



"The Russian government has no plans to phase out coal and is instead actively seeking to expand the coal industry. This highlights the obstacles to Russia’s commitment to climate policy at both the domestic and international levels."

19. Measurement of methane emissions from abandoned oil and gas wells in Hillman State Park, Pennsylvania

20. Benefits and challenges of expanding grid electricity in Africa: A review of rigorous evidence on household impacts in developing countries

21. Views from above: policy entrepreneurship and climate policy change on electricity in the Canadian Arctic

Climate change communication

22. Emotions predict policy support: Why it matters how people feel about climate change

"In two studies, we find that climate scientists (N = 44) experience greater emotional intensity about climate change than do students (N = 94) and the general population (N = 205), and that patterns of emotional responses explain differences in support for climate change policy. Scientists tied their emotional responses to concern about consequences of climate change to future generations and the planet, as well as personal identities associated with responsibility to act. Our findings suggest that “objects of care” that link people to climate change may be crucial to understanding why some people feel more strongly about the issue than others, and how emotions can prompt action."

23. What makes for compelling science? Evidential diversity in the evaluation of scientific arguments

"In both studies, diverse evidence on the geographical and socio-cultural dimension increased perceived support for scientific claims, but the relative impact of these dimensions differed between domains; geographical diversity had a larger effect on claims about climate change; socio-cultural diversity had a larger effect on claims about health. On the temporal dimension, recent non-diverse evidence (i.e. from the same recent period) increased perceived support for scientific claims more than diverse evidence."

24. Community climate change beliefs, awareness, and actions in the wake of the September 2013 flooding in Boulder County, Colorado

25. Multi-hazard weather risk perception and preparedness in eight countries

26. Tipping Points and Climate Change: Metaphor Between Science and the Media (open access)

27. Believing in climate change, but not behaving sustainably: Evidence from a one-year longitudinal study

"Cluster membership predicted different outcomes: the “Highly Concerned” were most supportive of government climate policies, but least likely to report individual-level actions, whereas the “Skeptical” opposed policy solutions but were most likely to report engaging in individual-level pro-environmental behaviors."

28. Information and coercive regulation: The impact of fuel mix information disclosure on states’ adoption of renewable energy policy

29. Attributes of weathercasters who engage in climate change education outreach

30. The influence of political leaders on climate change attitudes

"Our experiments reveal that survey respondents take different positions on climate change policy when they learn what positions leaders hold. When respondents learn that leaders take divergent positions on addressing climate change, they become more polarized along party lines. But when leaders converge on a policy proposal, they also bring those who follow them into closer agreement, providing evidence that partisan polarization at the mass level can be overcome when leaders come together on environmental policies."

Climate change

Temperature, precipitation, and wind

31. Diurnal Cycle of Rainfall and Winds near the South Coast of China

32. Impacts of climate change on the trends of extreme rainfall indices and values of maximum precipitation at Olimpiyat Station, Istanbul, Turkey

33. Variability of thermal and precipitation conditions in the growing season in Poland in the years 1966–2015 (open access)

34. How well can we correct systematic errors in historical XBT data?

Extreme events

35. Impact of aerosols on tropical cyclone-induced precipitation over the mainland of China

36. Sustainable livelihoods and effectiveness of disaster responses: a case study of tropical cyclone Pam in Vanuatu

"While aid agencies actively responded during and after Pam, local people too responded to the event with strategies based on livelihoods diversification, food security techniques, traditional knowledge and cooperation intra- and inter-communities. The study emphasizes the need for an integrative approach where disaster responses from the top-down integrate that from the bottom-up."

37. Northern Hemisphere extratropical winter cyclones variability over the 20th century derived from ERA-20C reanalysis

38. Increased wind risk from sting-jet windstorms with climate change (open access)

39. Tornado seasonality in the southeastern United States

40. The 2010 Pakistan floods in a future climate

"In the model context, these precipitation increases are substantial with 50–100% increases in rainfall rates. This implies that the future equivalent of the 2010 Pakistan floodings may have even stronger socio-economic impacts."

41. Thunderstorm climatology in the Mediterranean using cloud-to-ground lightning observations

42. Increase in extreme precipitation events under anthropogenic warming in India (open access)

Forcings and feedbacks

43. The influence of non-CO 2 forcings on cumulative carbon emissions budgets

44. Homogenization and trend analysis of the 1958-2016 in-situ surface solar radiation records in China

"The homogenized data show that the national average SSR has been declining significantly over the period 1958-1990; this dimming trend mostly diminished over the period 1991-2005 and was replaced by a brightening trend in the recent decade."

45. Aerosol optical depth in the European Brewer Network (open access)

46. Primary and secondary organic aerosols in summer 2016 in Beijing (open access)



47. Religious burning as a potential major source of atmospheric fine aerosols in summertime Lhasa on the Tibetan Plateau (open access)

48. Marine aerosol distribution and variability over the pristine Southern Indian Ocean

49. The observed relationship of cloud to surface longwave radiation and air temperature at Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard (open access)

50. Tibetan Plateau impacts global dust transport in the upper troposphere

Cryosphere

51. Changes in Andes snow cover from MODIS data, 2000–2016 (open access)

52. Snow cover and snow albedo changes in the central Andes of Chile and Argentina from daily MODIS observations (2000–2016)

53. The snow load in Europe and the climate change (open access)

54. Characteristics of Eurasian snowmelt and its impacts on the land surface and surface climate

55. Meltwater storage in low-density near-surface bare ice in the Greenland ice sheet ablation zone (open access)

"We present measurements of ice density that show the melting bare-ice surface of the Greenland ice sheet study site is porous and saturated with meltwater. The data suggest up to 18 cm of meltwater is temporarily stored within porous, low-density ice. The findings imply meltwater drainage off the ice sheet surface is delayed and that the surface mass balance of the ice sheet during summer cannot be estimated solely from ice surface elevation change measurements."

56. Modelling seasonal meltwater forcing of the velocity of land-terminating margins of the Greenland Ice Sheet (open access)

57. Glacier mass balance in the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau and its surroundings from the mid-1970s to 2000 based on Hexagon KH-9 and SRTM DEMs

Carbon cycle

58. Arctic Ocean CO2 uptake: an improved multiyear estimate of the air–sea CO2 flux incorporating chlorophyll a concentrations (open access)

"The uncertainty in the CO2 flux estimate was reduced, and a net annual Arctic Ocean CO2 uptake of 180 ± 130 Tg C y−1 was determined to be significant."

59. Uncertainty in the global oceanic CO2 uptake induced by wind forcing: quantification and spatial analysis (open access)

Climate change impacts

Mankind

60. The unprecedented 2014 Legionnaires’ disease outbreak in Portugal: atmospheric driving mechanisms

61. Climate Change Could Increase the Geographic Extent of Hendra Virus Spillover Risk (open access)

"In response to climate change, risk expanded southwards due to an expansion of P. alecto suitable habitat, which increased the number of horses at risk by 175–260% (110,000–165,000). In the northern limits of the current distribution, spillover risk was highly uncertain because of model extrapolation to novel climatic conditions. The extent of areas at risk of spillover from P. conspicillatus was predicted shrink. Due to a likely expansion of P. alecto into these areas, it could replace P. conspicillatus as the main HeV reservoir."

62. Temporal trends in human vulnerability to excessive heat (open access)

63. Scenarios for adaptation and mitigation in urban Africa under 1.5 °C global warming

64. Modeling environmentally mediated rotavirus transmission: The role of temperature and hydrologic factors

65. Evolution of rain and photoperiod limitations on the soybean growing season in Brazil: The rise (and possible fall) of double-cropping systems

66. Harvested area gaps in China between 1981 and 2010: effects of climatic and land management factors (open access)

67. Adaptation as a political arena: Interrogating sedentarization as climate change adaptation in Central Vietnam

68. Humid heat stress affects trained female athletes more than does their menstrual phase



69. Can we use crop modelling for identifying climate change adaptation options?

Biosphere

70. Carbon–climate feedbacks accelerate ocean acidification (open access)

"We show climate–carbon feedbacks accelerate and enhance ocean acidification. Such an acceleration of ocean acidification may further undermine the ability of marine biota to adapt to the changing environment."

71. Spatial heterogeneity of the relationship between vegetation dynamics and climate change and their driving forces at multiple time scales in Southwest China

72. Water availability is more important than temperature in driving the carbon fluxes of an alpine meadow on the Tibetan Plateau

73. Snow cover phenology affects alpine vegetation growth dynamics on the Tibetan Plateau: Satellite observed evidence, impacts of different biomes, and climate drivers

74. Productivity of an Australian mountain grassland is limited by temperature and dryness despite long growing seasons

75. Leaf phenology paradox: Why warming matters most where it is already warm

"We found spring green-up is faster in the mountains, while coastal forests express a larger sensitivity to inter-annual temperature anomalies. Despite our detection of a decreasing trend in sensitivity to warming with temperature in all regions, we identified an ecosystem interaction: Deciduous dominated forests are less sensitive to warming than are those with fewer deciduous trees, likely due to the continuous presence of leaves in evergreen species throughout the season. Mountainous forest green-up is more susceptible to intensifying drought and moisture deficit, while coastal areas are relatively resilient. We found that with increasing canopy thermal stress, defined as canopy-air temperature difference, leaf development slows following dry years, and accelerates following wet years."

76. Post-1980 shifts in the sensitivity of boreal tree growth to North Atlantic Ocean dynamics and seasonal climate: Tree growth responses to North Atlantic Ocean dynamics

77. Higher absorbed solar radiation partly offset the negative effects of water stress on the photosynthesis of Amazon forests during the 2015 drought (open access)

78. Unravelling the adaptation strategies employed by Glaciozyma antarctica PI12 on Antarctic sea ice

Other papers

General climate science

79. A Paper on the Tropical Intraseasonal Oscillation Published in 1963 in a Chinese Journal (open access)

80. NASA's Black Marble nighttime lights product suite (open access)

Palaeoclimatology

81. A chironomid-based record of temperature variability during the past 4000 years in northern China and its possible societal implications (open access)

82. Two-step human–environmental impact history for northern New Zealand linked to late-Holocene climate change

83. Multi-proxy evidence for an arid shift in the climate and vegetation of the Banni grasslands of western India during the mid- to late-Holocene

Environmental issues

84. Development of Landsat-based annual US forest disturbance history maps (1986–2010) in support of the North American Carbon Program (NACP)

85. Observational analyses of dramatic developments of a severe air pollution event in the Beijing area (open access)