Uncertainty analysis of statistically downscaled temperature and precipitation regimes in Northern Canada

2007 ◽  
Vol 91 (1-4) ◽  
pp. 149-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Y. B. Dibike ◽  
P. Gachon ◽  
A. St-Hilaire ◽  
T. B. M. J. Ouarda ◽  
Van T.-V. Nguyen
1990 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 333-333
Author(s):  
David N. Collins

Parameterisation of relationships between climate and glacier mass balance is of considerable importance in understanding and modelling how temporal variability in climate affects the quantity of perennial snow and ice stored in glaciers, and the runoff from glacierised areas. Influences of year-to-year variations in air temperatures are pertinent in the absence of long records of measured energy balance and in view of predictions of future climate scenarios in terms of temperature. Measurements of temperature and precipitation from several stations in Alpine valleys in the Rhone basin, Wallis, Switzerland have been analysed to indicate trends in climate from 1930 to 1988. Actual measurements of mass balance of Griesgletscher, ablation calculated from runoff and net accumulation estimated from totalising rain gauges for Findelengletscher and Gornergletscher beginning in the late 1960s, and runoff from Aletschgletscher since 1930, were taken as annual glaciological responses to climatic variation. Variables to represent climatic elements and interactions between precipitation and temperature were selected according to degree of correlation with glacier response variables, and climate-glacier response relationships were assessed by multiple regression. Subsets of the data representing the coolest (1972–81) and warmest (1943–52) decades were also analysed to indicate whether relationships amongst climatic variables and between climate and mass balance remain the same under contrasting climatic conditions.Overall, mean summer air temperature variables for the months May through September and June through August provide the highest levels of explanation of variance of ablation and mass balance respectively (75–82%). Addition of a precipitation variable (winter, spring or summer) in multiple regression increases explanation to a maximum of 91%. Spring and summer precipitation variables are negatively correlated with ablation. Positive degree days and temperature-summer snow functions provide alternatives to temperature. Event-based analysis of the coolest and warmest years selected by rank order invokes high precipitation in May and low May-June temperatures and summer snowfall events as significant variables.Relationships between climatic variables indicate that warmer-than-average winters have higher precipitation, but at summer and annual time scales precipitation is slightly negatively associated with temperature. At the decadal level, warmer periods appear to be influenced by increased frequency of continental anticyclonic conditions, in an area subject to both maritime and continental influences. These analyses of climatic variables indicate that summer energy inputs dominate glacier mass balance. Relationships between precipitation and temperature are complex and were changeable during a fluctuation of about 1° over 40 years. Effects of a potentially warmer future on the form of precipitation in spring, summer and autumn are not clear, so estimates of changes of mass balance have been calculated for contrasting precipitation regimes.


Planta Medica ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 86 (01) ◽  
pp. 10-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wendy L. Applequist ◽  
Josef A. Brinckmann ◽  
Anthony B. Cunningham ◽  
Robbie E. Hart ◽  
Michael Heinrich ◽  
...  

AbstractThe recent publication of a World Scientistsʼ Warning to Humanity highlighted the fact that climate change, absent strenuous mitigation or adaptation efforts, will have profound negative effects for humanity and other species, affecting numerous aspects of life. In this paper, we call attention to one of these aspects, the effects of climate change on medicinal plants. These plants provide many benefits for human health, particularly in communities where Western medicine is unavailable. As for other species, their populations may be threatened by changing temperature and precipitation regimes, disruption of commensal relationships, and increases in pests and pathogens, combined with anthropogenic habitat fragmentation that impedes migration. Additionally, medicinal species are often harvested unsustainably, and this combination of pressures may push many populations to extinction. A second issue is that some species may respond to increased environmental stresses not only with declines in biomass production but with changes in chemical content, potentially affecting quality or even safety of medicinal products. We therefore recommend actions including conservation and local cultivation of valued plants, sustainability training for harvesters and certification of commercial material, preservation of traditional knowledge, and programs to monitor raw material quality in addition to, of course, efforts to mitigate climate change.


PeerJ ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. e6967 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria T. González ◽  
Mikel Moriana-Armendariz ◽  
Snorre B. Hagen ◽  
Bente Lindgård ◽  
Rigmor Reiersen ◽  
...  

Climate change is modifying temperature and precipitation regimes across all seasons in northern ecosystems. Summer temperatures are higher, growing seasons extend into spring and fall and snow cover conditions are more variable during winter. The resistance of dominant tundra species to these season-specific changes, with each season potentially having contrasting effects on their growth and survival, can determine the future of tundra plant communities under climate change. In our study, we evaluated the effects of several spring/summer and winter climatic variables (i.e., summer temperature, growing season length, growing degree days, and number of winter freezing days) on the resistance of the dwarf shrub Empetrum nigrum. We measured over six years the ability of E. nigrum to keep a stable shoot growth, berry production, and vegetative cover in five E. nigrum dominated tundra heathlands, in a total of 144 plots covering a 200-km gradient from oceanic to continental climate. Overall, E. nigrum displayed high resistance to climatic variation along the gradient, with positive growth and reproductive output during all years and sites. Climatic conditions varied sharply among sites, especially during the winter months, finding that exposure to freezing temperatures during winter was correlated with reduced shoot length and berry production. These negative effects however, could be compensated if the following growing season was warm and long. Our study demonstrates that E. nigrum is a species resistant to fluctuating climatic conditions during the growing season and winter months in both oceanic and continental areas. Overall, E. nigrum appeared frost hardy and its resistance was determined by interactions among different season-specific climatic conditions with contrasting effects.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
John W Whale ◽  
Collin W Ahrens ◽  
David T Tissue ◽  
Paul D Rymer

With global climate change shifting and altering temperature and precipitation regimes, the ability of natural forest stands to persist in their local environments are being challenged. For many taxa, particularly among long lived tree species, the potential to respond is underpinned by genetic and trait diversity and may be limited. We sampled 326 and 366 individuals of two widely distributed and closely-related red gum Eucalyptus species (E. blakelyi and E. tereticornis) from across their entire Australian range. We identified putatively adaptive variants associated within genes of key biological processes for both species. We mapped the change of allele frequencies of two hierarchical gene ontology groups shared by both species across geography and climate and predict genomically vulnerable regions under a projected 2070 climate scenario. Regions of potential vulnerability to decline under future climate differed between species and may be applied to guide conservation and restoration strategies. Our study indicated that some populations may contain the adaptive genomic variation necessary for these species to persist through climate change, while others may benefit from the adaptive variation of those populations to enhance resilience.


Climate ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alla Tashilova ◽  
Boris Ashabokov ◽  
Lara Kesheva ◽  
Nataliya Teunova

The study of climate, in such a diverse climatic region as the Caucasus, is necessary in order to evaluate the influence of local factors on the formation of temperature and precipitation regimes in its various climatic zones. This study is based on the instrumental data (temperatures and precipitation) from 20 weather stations, located on the territory of the Caucasian region during 1961–2011. Mathematical statistics, trend analysis, and rescaled range Methods were used. It was found that the warming trend prevailed in all climatic zones, it intensified since the beginning of global warming (since 1976), while the changes in precipitation were not so unidirectional. The maximum warming was observed in the summer (on average by 0.3 °C/10 years) in all climatic zones. Persistence trends were investigated using the Hurst exponent H (range of variation 0–1), which showed a higher trend persistence of annual mean temperature changes (H = 0.8) compared to annual sum precipitations (H = 0.64). Spatial-correlation analysis performed for precipitations and temperatures showed a rapid decrease in the correlation between precipitations at various weather stations from R = 1 to R = 0.5, on a distance scale from 0 to 200 km. In contrast to precipitation, a high correlation (R = 1.0–0.7) was observed between regional weather stations temperatures at a distance scale from 0 to 1000 km, which indicates synchronous temperature changes in all climatic zones (unlike precipitation).


2019 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 215-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernd Josef Berauer ◽  
Peter A. Wilfahrt ◽  
Mohammed A. S. Arfin-Khan ◽  
Pia Eibes ◽  
Andreas Von Heßberg ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karin Pritsch ◽  
Max Roth ◽  
Fabian Weikl

<p>Altered temperature and precipitation regimes particularly prolonged drought periods when combined with heat strongly affect forests in the last decades. However, neither did all trees die nor even stop growing at all sites. We are interested in the question if below ground interaction with ectomycorrhizal fungi could be partly mediating strong soil drought. For this purpose, we established sampling sites with <em>Fagus sylvatica</em>, <em>Picea abies</em> or <em>Pinus sylvestris</em> along a natural precipitation gradient of 400 km length in Bavaria (Germany). We hypothesized root associated fungal communities to reflect long-term adaptation to local edaphic and climate conditions and that the resulting tree-fungal partnerships have distinct compositional patterns.</p>


2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 1093-1108 ◽  
Author(s):  
I. Mariani ◽  
A. Eichler ◽  
T. M. Jenk ◽  
S. Brönnimann ◽  
R. Auchmann ◽  
...  

Abstract. Water stable isotope ratios and net snow accumulation in ice cores are commonly interpreted as temperature or precipitation proxies. However, only in a few cases has a direct calibration with instrumental data been attempted. In this study we took advantage of the dense network of observations in the European Alpine region to rigorously test the relationship of the annual and seasonal resolved proxy data from two highly resolved ice cores with local temperature and precipitation. We focused on the time period 1961–2001 with the highest amount and quality of meteorological data and the minimal uncertainty in ice core dating (±1 year). The two ice cores were retrieved from the Fiescherhorn glacier (northern Alps, 3900 m a.s.l.), and Grenzgletscher (southern Alps, 4200 m a.s.l.). A parallel core from the Fiescherhorn glacier allowed assessing the reproducibility of the ice core proxy data. Due to the orographic barrier, the two flanks of the Alpine chain are affected by distinct patterns of precipitation. The different location of the two glaciers therefore offers a unique opportunity to test whether such a specific setting is reflected in the proxy data. On a seasonal scale a high fraction of δ18O variability was explained by the seasonal cycle of temperature (~60% for the ice cores, ~70% for the nearby stations of the Global Network of Isotopes in Precipitation – GNIP). When the seasonality is removed, the correlations decrease for all sites, indicating that factors other than temperature such as changing moisture sources and/or precipitation regimes affect the isotopic signal on this timescale. Post-depositional phenomena may additionally modify the ice core data. On an annual scale, the δ18O/temperature relationship was significant at the Fiescherhorn, whereas for Grenzgletscher this was the case only when weighting the temperature with precipitation. In both cases the fraction of interannual temperature variability explained was ~20%, comparable to the values obtained from the GNIP stations data. Consistently with previous studies, we found an altitude effect for the δ18O of −0.17‰/100 m for an extended elevation range combining data of the two ice core sites and four GNIP stations. Significant correlations between net accumulation and precipitation were observed for Grenzgletscher during the entire period of investigation, whereas for Fiescherhorn this was the case only for the less recent period (1961–1977). Local phenomena, probably related to wind, seem to partly disturb the Fiescherhorn accumulation record. Spatial correlation analysis shows the two glaciers to be influenced by different precipitation regimes, with the Grenzgletscher reflecting the characteristic precipitation regime south of the Alps and the Fiescherhorn accumulation showing a pattern more closely linked to northern Alpine stations.


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