scholarly journals A multi-site techniques intercomparison of integrated water vapour observations for climate change analysis

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 1075-1151 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Van Malderen ◽  
H. Brenot ◽  
E. Pottiaux ◽  
S. Beirle ◽  
C. Hermans ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Water Vapour ◽  
Dominant Role ◽  
Satellite System ◽  
International Gnss Service ◽  
Change Analysis ◽  
Integrated Water Vapour ◽  
Sun Photometer ◽  
The Impact

Abstract. Water vapour plays a dominant role in the climate change debate. However, observing water vapour over a climatological time period in a consistent and homogeneous manner is challenging. At one hand, networks of ground-based instruments allowing to retrieve homogeneous Integrated Water Vapour (IWV) datasets are being set up. Typical examples are Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) observation networks such as the International GNSS Service (IGS), with continuous GPS (Global Positioning System) observations spanning over the last 15+ yr, and the AErosol RObotic NETwork (AERONET), providing long-term observations performed with standardized and well-calibrated sun photometers. On the other hand, satellite-based measurements of IWV already have a time span of over 10 yr (e.g. AIRS) or are being merged in order to create long-term time series (e.g. GOME, SCIAMACHY, and GOME-2). The present study aims at setting up a techniques intercomparison of IWV measurements from satellite devices (in the visible, GOME/SCIAMACHY/GOME-2, and in the thermal infrared, AIRS), in-situ measurements (radiosondes) and ground-based instruments (GPS, sun photometer), to assess the applicability of either dataset for water vapour trends analysis. To this end, we selected 28 sites worldwide at which GPS observations can directly be compared with coincident satellite IWV observations, together with sun photometer and/or radiosonde measurements. We found that the mean biases of the different techniques w.r.t. the GPS estimates vary only between −0.3 to 0.5 mm of IWV, but the small bias is accompanied by large Root Mean Square (RMS) values, especially for the satellite instruments. In particular, we analysed the impact of the presence of clouds on the techniques IWV agreement. Also, the influence of specific issues for each instrument on the intercomparison is investigated, e.g. the distance between the satellite ground pixel centre and the co-located ground-based station, the satellite scan angle, daytime/nighttime differences, etc. Furthermore, we checked if the properties of the IWV scatter plots between these different instruments are dependent on the geography and/or altitude of the station. We could only detect a clear dependency of the RMS, for all considered instruments, on latitude or mean IWV: the RMS of the IWV observations w.r.t. the GPS IWV retrievals decreases with increasing latitude and decreasing mean IWV.

scholarly journals A multi-site intercomparison of integrated water vapour observations for climate change analysis

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (8) ◽  
pp. 2487-2512 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Van Malderen ◽  
H. Brenot ◽  
E. Pottiaux ◽  
S. Beirle ◽  
C. Hermans ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Water Vapour ◽  
Dominant Role ◽  
Satellite System ◽  
International Gnss Service ◽  
Change Analysis ◽  
Integrated Water Vapour ◽  
Sun Photometer ◽  
The Impact

Abstract. Water vapour plays a dominant role in the climate change debate. However, observing water vapour over a climatological time period in a consistent and homogeneous manner is challenging. On one hand, networks of ground-based instruments able to retrieve homogeneous integrated water vapour (IWV) data sets are being set up. Typical examples are Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) observation networks such as the International GNSS Service (IGS), with continuous GPS (Global Positioning System) observations spanning over the last 15+ years, and the AErosol RObotic NETwork (AERONET), providing long-term observations performed with standardized and well-calibrated sun photometers. On the other hand, satellite-based measurements of IWV already have a time span of over 10 years (e.g. AIRS) or are being merged to create long-term time series (e.g. GOME, SCIAMACHY, and GOME-2). This study performs an intercomparison of IWV measurements from satellite devices (in the visible, GOME/SCIAMACHY/GOME-2, and in the thermal infrared, AIRS), in situ measurements (radiosondes) and ground-based instruments (GPS, sun photometer), to assess their use in water vapour trends analysis. To this end, we selected 28 sites world-wide for which GPS observations can directly be compared with coincident satellite IWV observations, together with sun photometer and/or radiosonde measurements. The mean biases of the different techniques compared to the GPS estimates vary only between −0.3 to 0.5 mm of IWV. Nevertheless these small biases are accompanied by large standard deviations (SD), especially for the satellite instruments. In particular, we analysed the impact of clouds on the IWV agreement. The influence of specific issues for each instrument on the intercomparison is also investigated (e.g. the distance between the satellite ground pixel centre and the co-located ground-based station, the satellite scan angle, daytime/nighttime differences). Furthermore, we checked if the properties of the IWV scatter plots between these different instruments are dependent on the geography and/or altitude of the station. For all considered instruments, the only dependency clearly detected is with latitude: the SD of the IWV observations with respect to the GPS IWV retrievals decreases with increasing latitude and decreasing mean IWV.

scholarly journals The uncertainty of the atmospheric integrated water vapour estimated from GNSS observations

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Ning ◽  
J. Wang ◽  
G. Elgered ◽  
G. Dick ◽  
J. Wickert ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Water Vapour ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Measurement Techniques ◽  
Weather Forecast ◽  
Weather Conditions ◽  
Satellite System ◽  
Total Delay ◽  
Integrated Water Vapour ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Gnss Observations

Abstract. Within the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) Reference Upper-Air Network (GRUAN) there is a need for an assessment of the uncertainty in the integrated water vapour (IWV) in the atmosphere estimated from ground-based global navigation satellite system (GNSS) observations. All relevant error sources in GNSS-derived IWV are therefore essential to be investigated. We present two approaches, a statistical and a theoretical analysis, for the assessment of the uncertainty of the IWV. The method is valuable for all applications of GNSS IWV data in atmospheric research and weather forecast. It will be implemented to the GNSS IWV data stream for GRUAN in order to assign a specific uncertainty to each data point. In addition, specific recommendations are made to GRUAN on hardware, software, and data processing practices to minimise the IWV uncertainty. By combining the uncertainties associated with the input variables in the estimations of the IWV, we calculated the IWV uncertainties for several GRUAN sites with different weather conditions. The results show a similar relative importance of all uncertainty contributions where the uncertainties in the zenith total delay (ZTD) dominate the error budget of the IWV, contributing over 75 % of the total IWV uncertainty. The impact of the uncertainty associated with the conversion factor between the IWV and the zenith wet delay (ZWD) is proportional to the amount of water vapour and increases slightly for moist weather conditions. The GRUAN GNSS IWV uncertainty data will provide a quantified confidence to be used for the validation of other measurement techniques.

scholarly journals Natural and Managed Grasslands Productivity during Multiyear in Ex-Arable Lands (in the Context of Climate Change)

Agriculture ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 215
Author(s):  
Liudmila Tripolskaja ◽  
Asta Kazlauskaite-Jadzevice ◽  
Virgilijus Baliuckas ◽  
Almantas Razukas
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Soil Properties ◽  
Dry Matter ◽  
Arable Land ◽  
Rainfall Amount ◽  
Rainfall Variation ◽  
Global Issue ◽  
Term Change ◽  
The Impact

Ex-arable land-use change is a global issue with significant implications for climate change and impact for phytocenosis productivity and soil quality. In temperate humid grassland, we examined the impact of climate variability and changes of soil properties on 23 years of grass productivity after conversion of ex-arable soil to abandoned land (AL), unfertilized, and fertilized managed grassland (MGunfert and MGfert, respectively). This study aimed to investigate the changes between phytocenosis dry matter (DM) yield and rainfall amount in May–June and changes of organic carbon (Corg) stocks in soil. It was found that from 1995 to 2019, rainfall in May–June tended to decrease. The more resistant to rainfall variation were plants recovered in AL. The average DM yield of MGfert was 3.0 times higher compared to that in the AL. The DM yields of AL and MG were also influenced by the long-term change of soil properties. Our results showed that Corg sequestration in AL was faster (0.455 Mg ha−1 year−1) than that in MGfert (0.321 Mg ha−1 year−1). These studies will be important in Arenosol for selecting the method for transforming low-productivity arable land into MG.

scholarly journals Epidemic malaria and warmer temperatures in recent decades in an East African highland

2010 ◽  
Vol 278 (1712) ◽  
pp. 1661-1669 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Alonso ◽  
Menno J. Bouma ◽  
Mercedes Pascual
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
East Africa ◽  
Nonlinear Response ◽  
Climate Change Impacts ◽  
Human Model ◽  
Recent Past ◽  
East African ◽  
Highly Nonlinear ◽  
The Impact

Climate change impacts on malaria are typically assessed with scenarios for the long-term future. Here we focus instead on the recent past (1970–2003) to address whether warmer temperatures have already increased the incidence of malaria in a highland region of East Africa. Our analyses rely on a new coupled mosquito–human model of malaria, which we use to compare projected disease levels with and without the observed temperature trend. Predicted malaria cases exhibit a highly nonlinear response to warming, with a significant increase from the 1970s to the 1990s, although typical epidemic sizes are below those observed. These findings suggest that climate change has already played an important role in the exacerbation of malaria in this region. As the observed changes in malaria are even larger than those predicted by our model, other factors previously suggested to explain all of the increase in malaria may be enhancing the impact of climate change.

IAGOS Research Infrastructure for Global-Scale Atmosphere Monitoring by Instrumented Passenger Aircraft

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Petzold ◽  
Valerie Thouret ◽  
Christoph Gerbig ◽  
Andreas Zahn ◽  
Martin Gallagher ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Air Quality ◽  
Relative Humidity ◽  
Water Vapour ◽  
Research Infrastructure ◽  
Good Resolution ◽  
European Research ◽  
Commercial Aircraft ◽  
High Quality

<p>IAGOS (www.iagos.org) is a European Research Infrastructure using commercial aircraft (Airbus A340, A330, and soon A350) for automatic and routine measurements of atmospheric composition including reactive gases (ozone, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds), greenhouse gases (water vapour, carbon dioxide, methane), aerosols and cloud particles along with essential thermodynamic parameters. The main objective of IAGOS is to provide the most complete set of high-quality essential climate variables (ECV) covering several decades for the long-term monitoring of climate and air quality. The observations are stored in the IAGOS data centre along with added-value products to facilitate the scientific interpretation of the data. IAGOS began as two European projects, MOZAIC and CARIBIC, in the early 1990s. These projects demonstrated that commercial aircraft are ideal platforms for routine atmospheric measurements. IAGOS then evolved as a European Research Infrastructure offering a mature and sustainable organization for the benefits of the scientific community and for the operational services in charge of air quality and climate change issues such as the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Services (CAMS) and the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). IAGOS is also a contributing network of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).</p> <p>IAGOS provides measurements of numerous chemical compounds which are recorded simultaneously in the critical region of the upper troposphere – lower stratosphere (UTLS) and geographical regions such as Africa and the mid-Pacific which are poorly sampled by other means. The data are used by hundreds of groups worldwide performing data analysis for climatology and trend studies, model evaluation, satellite validation and the study of detailed chemical and physical processes around the tropopause. IAGOS data also play an important role in the re-assessment of the climate impact of aviation.</p> <p>Most important in the context of weather-related research, IAGOS and its predecessor programmes provide long-term observations of water vapour and relative humidity with respect to ice in the UTLS as well as throughout the tropospheric column during climb-out and descending phases around airports, now for more than 25 years. The high quality and very good resolution of IAGOS observations of relative humidity over ice are used to better understand the role of water vapour and of ice-supersaturated air masses in the tropopause region and to improve their representation in numerical weather and climate forecasting models. Furthermore, CAMS is using the water vapour vertical profiles in near real time for the continuous validation of the CAMS atmospheric models. </p>

scholarly journals WATER VAPOUR WEIGHTED MEAN TEMPERATURE MODEL FOR GPS-DERIVED INTEGRATED WATER VAPOUR IN PENINSULAR MALAYSIA

2017 ◽  
Vol XLII-4/W5 ◽  
pp. 127-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. A. Musa ◽  
M. H. Mazlan ◽  
Y. D. Opaluwa ◽  
I. A. Musliman ◽  
Z. M. Radzi
Keyword(s):  
Water Vapour ◽  
Diurnal Cycle ◽  
Specific Model ◽  
Regional Model ◽  
Peninsular Malaysia ◽  
Site Specific ◽  
Weighted Mean Temperature ◽  
Integrated Water Vapour ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Impact

This paper presents the development of T<sub>M</sub> model by using the radiosonde stations from Peninsular Malaysia. Two types of T<sub>M</sub> model were developed; site-specific and regional models. The result revealed that the estimation from site-specific model has small improvement compared to the regional model, indicating that the regional model is adequately to use in estimation of GPS-derived IWV over Peninsular Malaysia. Meanwhile, this study found that the diurnal cycle of T<sub>S</sub> has influenced the T<sub>M</sub>&amp;ndash;T<sub>S</sub> relationship. The separation between daytime and nighttime observation can improve the relationship of T<sub>M</sub>&amp;ndash;T<sub>S</sub>. However, the impact of diurnal cycle to IWV estimation is less than 1&amp;thinsp;%. The T<sub>M</sub> model from Global and Tropic also been evaluated. The Tropic T<sub>M</sub> model is superior to be utilized as compared to the Global T<sub>M</sub> model.

scholarly journals Climate Change Controls Phosphorus Transport from the Watershed into Lake Kinneret (Israel)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moshe Gophen
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Regional Climate ◽  
Regional Climate Change ◽  
Lake Kinneret ◽  
Phosphorus Transport ◽  
Efficient Management ◽  
Hula Valley ◽  
Reclamation Project ◽  
The Impact

AbstractPart of the Kinneret watershed, the Hula Valley, was modified from wetlands – shallow lake for agricultural cultivation. Enhancement of nutrient fluxes into Lake Kinneret was predicted. Therefore, a reclamation project was implemented and eco-tourism partly replaced agriculture. Since the mid-1980s, regional climate change has been documented. Statistical evaluation of long-term records of TP (Total Phosphorus) concentrations in headwaters and potential resources in the Hula Valley was carried out to identify efficient management design targets. Significant correlation between major headwater river discharge and TP concentration was indicated, whilst the impact of external fertilizer loads and 50,000 winter migratory cranes was probably negligible. Nevertheless, confirmed severe bdamage to agricultural crops carried out by cranes led to their maximal deportation and optimization of their feeding policy. Consequently, the continuation of the present management is recommended.

scholarly journals Sooty tern (Onychoprion fuscatus) survival, oil spills, shrimp fisheries, and hurricanes

PeerJ ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. e3287 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan M. Huang ◽  
Oron L. Bass Jr ◽  
Stuart L. Pimm
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Oil Spills ◽  
Shrimp Fishery ◽  
Technological Advances ◽  
Face Threats ◽  
Shrimp Fisheries ◽  
Onychoprion Fuscatus ◽  
Sooty Tern ◽  
The Impact

Migratory seabirds face threats from climate change and a variety of anthropogenic disturbances. Although most seabird research has focused on the ecology of individuals at the colony, technological advances now allow researchers to track seabird movements at sea and during migration. We combined telemetry data on Onychoprion fuscatus (sooty terns) with a long-term capture-mark-recapture dataset from the Dry Tortugas National Park to map the movements at sea for this species, calculate estimates of mortality, and investigate the impact of hurricanes on a migratory seabird. Included in the latter analysis is information on the locations of recovered bands from deceased individuals wrecked by tropical storms. We present the first known map of sooty tern migration in the Atlantic Ocean. Our results indicate that the birds had minor overlaps with areas affected by the major 2010 oil spill and a major shrimp fishery. Indices of hurricane strength and occurrence are positively correlated with annual mortality and indices of numbers of wrecked birds. As climate change may lead to an increase in severity and frequency of major hurricanes, this may pose a long-term problem for this colony.

scholarly journals Climate change and drought effects on rural income distribution in the Mediterranean: a case study for Spain

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (7) ◽  
pp. 4353-4389
Author(s):  
S. Quiroga ◽  
C. Suárez
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Income Distribution ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Crop Production ◽  
Crop Productivity ◽  
Social Aspect ◽  
Adaptation Measures ◽  
Effects Of Drought ◽  
The Impact

Abstract. This paper examines the effects of climate change and drought on agricultural outputs in Spanish rural areas. By now the effects of drought as a response to climate change or policy restrictions have been analyzed through response functions considering direct effects on crop productivity and incomes. These changes also affect incomes distribution in the region and therefore modify the social structure. Here we consider this complementary indirect effect on social distribution of incomes which is essential in the long term. We estimate crop production functions for a range of Mediterranean crops in Spain and we use a decomposition of inequalities measure to estimate the impact of climate change and drought on yield disparities. This social aspect is important for climate change policies since it can be determinant for the public acceptance of certain adaptation measures in a context of drought. We provide the empirical estimations for the marginal effects of the two considered impacts: farms' income average and social income distribution. In our estimates we consider crop productivity response to both bio-physical and socio-economic aspects to analyze long term implications on both competitiveness and social disparities. We find disparities in the adaptation priorities depending on the crop and the region analyzed.

scholarly journals The Impact of Possible Decadal-Scale Cold Waves on Viticulture over Europe in a Context of Global Warming

Agronomy ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (7) ◽  
pp. 397 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giovanni Sgubin ◽  
Didier Swingedouw ◽  
Iñaki García de Cortázar-Atauri ◽  
Nathalie Ollat ◽  
Cornelis van Leeuwen
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Developmental Stages ◽  
Future Climate ◽  
Future Climate Change ◽  
Cold Waves ◽  
Decadal Scale ◽  
Ensemble Mean ◽  
The Impact

A comprehensive analysis of all the possible impacts of future climate change is crucial for strategic plans of adaptation for viticulture. Assessments of future climate are generally based on the ensemble mean of state-of-the-art climate model projections, which prefigures a gradual warming over Europe for the 21st century. However, a few models project single or multiple O(10) year temperature drops over the North Atlantic due to a collapsing subpolar gyre (SPG) oceanic convection. The occurrence of these decadal-scale “cold waves” may have strong repercussions over the continent, yet their actual impact is ruled out in a multi-model ensemble mean analysis. Here, we investigate these potential implications for viticulture over Europe by coupling dynamical downscaled EUR-CORDEX temperature projections for the representative concentration pathways (RCP)4.5 scenario from seven different climate models—including CSIRO-Mk3-6-0 exhibiting a SPG convection collapse—with three different phenological models simulating the main developmental stages of the grapevine. The 21st century temperature increase projected by all the models leads to an anticipation of all the developmental stages of the grapevine, shifting the optimal region for a given grapevine variety northward, and making climatic conditions suitable for high-quality wine production in some European regions that are currently not. However, in the CSIRO-Mk3-6-0 model, this long-term warming trend is suddenly interrupted by decadal-scale cold waves, abruptly pushing the suitability pattern back to conditions that are very similar to the present. These findings are crucial for winemakers in the evaluation of proper strategies to face climate change, and, overall, provide additional information for long-term plans of adaptation, which, so far, are mainly oriented towards the possibility of continuous warming conditions.

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