scholarly journals South Carolina's Climate Report Card: Understanding South Carolina's Climate Trends and Variability

2014 ◽  
pp. 4-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hope Mizzell ◽  
Mark Malsick ◽  
Ivetta Abramyan
Keyword(s):  
South Carolina ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Climate Trends ◽  
Climate Signal ◽  
Climatic Trends ◽  
Temperature And Precipitation ◽  
Scale Temperature ◽  
Climate Patterns ◽  
Climatic Elements ◽  
Precipitation Trends

This study provides an overview of South Carolina’s climatic trends and variability over the last century. Most studies nationally have focused on large-scale temperature and precipitation trends, but examination of regional and local trends are needed to monitor the significance of the state’s climate signal and advance our understanding of the complex physical controls on the region’s climate. The behavior of several climatic elements since the 1900s were evaluated for 66 sites in South Carolina and bordering states to determine the variability of the system on annual, seasonal and decadal scales, including the use of threshold approaches to assess climate patterns. Results from the bordering states were not directly discussed, but were included in the study for continuity.

scholarly journals Contrasting northern and southern European winter climate trends during the Last Interglacial

Geology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Sakari Salonen ◽  
Maria Fernanda Sánchez-Goñi ◽  
Hans Renssen ◽  
Anna Plikk
Keyword(s):  
Climate Model ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Test Bed ◽  
Climate Trends ◽  
Last Interglacial ◽  
Winter Climate ◽  
Atlantic Seaboard ◽  
Temperature And Precipitation ◽  
Climate Patterns

The Last Interglacial (LIG; 130–115 ka) is an important test bed for climate science as an instance of significantly warmer than preindustrial global temperatures. However, LIG climate patterns remain poorly resolved, especially for winter, affected by a suite of strong feedbacks such as changes in sea-ice cover in the high latitudes. We present a synthesis of winter temperature and precipitation proxy data from the Atlantic seaboard of Europe, spanning from southern Iberia to the Arctic. Our data reveal distinct, opposite latitudinal climate trends, including warming winters seen in the European Arctic while cooling and drying occurred in southwest Europe over the LIG. Climate model simulations for 130 and 120 ka suggest these contrasting climate patterns were affected by a shift toward an atmospheric circulation regime with an enhanced meridional pressure gradient and strengthened midlatitude westerlies, leading to a strong reduction in precipitation across southern Europe.

Projecting North American Climate over the Next 50 Years: Uncertainty due to Internal Variability*

2014 ◽  
Vol 27 (6) ◽  
pp. 2271-2296 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clara Deser ◽  
Adam S. Phillips ◽  
Michael A. Alexander ◽  
Brian V. Smoliak
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Air Temperature ◽  
Radiative Forcing ◽  
Surface Air Temperature ◽  
Internal Variability ◽  
Climate Trends ◽  
Climate Change Projections ◽  
Temperature And Precipitation ◽  
Model Ensembles ◽  
Precipitation Trends

Abstract This study highlights the relative importance of internally generated versus externally forced climate trends over the next 50 yr (2010–60) at local and regional scales over North America in two global coupled model ensembles. Both ensembles contain large numbers of integrations (17 and 40): each of which is subject to identical anthropogenic radiative forcing (e.g., greenhouse gas increase) but begins from a slightly different initial atmospheric state. Thus, the diversity of projected climate trends within each model ensemble is due solely to intrinsic, unpredictable variability of the climate system. Both model ensembles show that natural climate variability superimposed upon forced climate change will result in a range of possible future trends for surface air temperature and precipitation over the next 50 yr. Precipitation trends are particularly subject to uncertainty as a result of internal variability, with signal-to-noise ratios less than 2. Intrinsic atmospheric circulation variability is mainly responsible for the spread in future climate trends, imparting regional coherence to the internally driven air temperature and precipitation trends. The results underscore the importance of conducting a large number of climate change projections with a given model, as each realization will contain a different superposition of unforced and forced trends. Such initial-condition ensembles are also needed to determine the anthropogenic climate response at local and regional scales and provide a new perspective on how to usefully compare climate change projections across models.

scholarly journals Spatial-Scale Dependence of Climate Model Performance in the CMIP3 Ensemble

2011 ◽  
Vol 24 (11) ◽  
pp. 2680-2692 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Masson ◽  
Reto Knutti
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Climate Model ◽  
Spatial Scales ◽  
Global Climate Models ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Climate Projections ◽  
Model Errors ◽  
Climate Signal ◽  
Temperature And Precipitation

Abstract About 20 global climate models have been run for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) to predict climate change due to anthropogenic activities. Evaluating these models is an important step to establish confidence in climate projections. Model evaluation, however, is often performed on a gridpoint basis despite the fact that models are known to often be unreliable at such small spatial scales. In this study, the annual mean values of surface air temperature and precipitation are analyzed. Using a spatial smoothing technique with a variable-scale parameter it is shown that the intermodel spread, as well as model errors from observations, is reduced as the characteristic smoothing scale increases. At the same time, the ability to reproduce small-scale features is reduced and the simulated patterns become fuzzy. Depending on the variable of interest, the location, and the way that data are aggregated, different optimal smoothing scales from the gridpoint size to about 2000 km are found to give good agreement with present-day observation yet retain most regional features of the climate signal. Higher model resolution surprisingly does not imply much better agreement with temperature observations, in particular with stronger smoothing, and resolving smaller scales therefore does not necessarily seem to improve the simulation of large-scale climate features. Similarities in mean temperature and precipitation fields for a pair of models in the ensemble persist locally for about a century into the future, providing some justification for subtracting control errors in the models. Large-scale to global errors, however, are not well preserved over time, consistent with a poor constraint of the present-day climate on the simulated global temperature and precipitation response.

scholarly journals Documentary data and the study of past droughts: a global state of the art

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (12) ◽  
pp. 1915-1960 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rudolf Brázdil ◽  
Andrea Kiss ◽  
Jürg Luterbacher ◽  
David J. Nash ◽  
Ladislava Řezníčková
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Drought Indices ◽  
Documentary Evidence ◽  
Climatic Trends ◽  
Instrumental Observations ◽  
Spatio Temporal ◽  
Epigraphic Evidence ◽  
Administrative Evidence

Abstract. The use of documentary evidence to investigate past climatic trends and events has become a recognised approach in recent decades. This contribution presents the state of the art in its application to droughts. The range of documentary evidence is very wide, including general annals, chronicles, memoirs and diaries kept by missionaries, travellers and those specifically interested in the weather; records kept by administrators tasked with keeping accounts and other financial and economic records; legal-administrative evidence; religious sources; letters; songs; newspapers and journals; pictographic evidence; chronograms; epigraphic evidence; early instrumental observations; society commentaries; and compilations and books. These are available from many parts of the world. This variety of documentary information is evaluated with respect to the reconstruction of hydroclimatic conditions (precipitation, drought frequency and drought indices). Documentary-based drought reconstructions are then addressed in terms of long-term spatio-temporal fluctuations, major drought events, relationships with external forcing and large-scale climate drivers, socio-economic impacts and human responses. Documentary-based drought series are also considered from the viewpoint of spatio-temporal variability for certain continents, and their employment together with hydroclimate reconstructions from other proxies (in particular tree rings) is discussed. Finally, conclusions are drawn, and challenges for the future use of documentary evidence in the study of droughts are presented.

scholarly journals Radial Growth Response of European Larch Provenances to Interannual Climate Variation in Poland

Forests ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 334
Author(s):  
Norbert Szymański ◽  
Sławomir Wilczyński
Keyword(s):  
Radial Growth ◽  
Climatic Factors ◽  
Principal Component ◽  
Climatic Conditions ◽  
Growth Responses ◽  
European Larch ◽  
Temperature And Precipitation ◽  
Provenance Trials ◽  
High Precipitation ◽  
Climatic Elements

The present study identified the similarities and differences in the radial growth responses of 20 provenances of 51-year-old European larch (Larix decidua Mill.) trees from Poland to the climatic conditions at three provenance trials situated in the Polish lowlands (Siemianice), uplands (Bliżyn) and mountains (Krynica). A chronology of radial growth indices was developed for each of 60 European larch populations, which highlighted the interannual variations in the climate-mediated radial growth of their trees. With the aid of principal component, correlation and multiple regression analysis, supra-regional climatic elements were identified to which all the larch provenances reacted similarly at all three provenance trials. They increased the radial growth in years with a short, warm and precipitation-rich winter; a cool and humid summer and when high precipitation in late autumn of the previous year was noted. Moreover, other climatic elements were identified to which two groups of the larch provenances reacted differently at each provenance trial. In the lowland climate, the provenances reacted differently to temperature in November to December of the previous year and July and to precipitation in September. In the upland climate, the provenances differed in growth sensitivity to precipitation in October of the previous year and June–September. In the mountain climate, the provenances responded differently to temperature and precipitation in September of the previous year and to precipitation in February, June and September of the year of tree ring formation. The results imply that both climatic factors and origin (genotype), i.e., the genetic factor, mediate the climate–growth relationships of larch provenances.

scholarly journals Changes in Temperature and Precipitation Extremes in Superparameterized CAM in Response to Warmer SSTs

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (24) ◽  
pp. 9827-9845 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xin Zhou ◽  
Marat F. Khairoutdinov
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Rain Rate ◽  
Precipitable Water ◽  
Heavy Precipitation ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Precipitation Extremes ◽  
Temperature And Precipitation ◽  
Hourly Data ◽  
Cloud Resolving Model ◽  
Cold Extremes

Subdaily temperature and precipitation extremes in response to warmer SSTs are investigated on a global scale using the superparameterized (SP) Community Atmosphere Model (CAM), in which a cloud-resolving model is embedded in each CAM grid column to simulate convection explicitly. Two 10-yr simulations have been performed using present climatological sea surface temperature (SST) and perturbed SST climatology derived from the representative concentration pathway 8.5 (RCP8.5) scenario. Compared with the conventional CAM, SP-CAM simulates colder temperatures and more realistic intensity distribution of precipitation, especially for heavy precipitation. The temperature and precipitation extremes have been defined by the 99th percentile of the 3-hourly data. For temperature, the changes in the warm and cold extremes are generally consistent between CAM and SP-CAM, with larger changes in warm extremes at low latitudes and larger changes in cold extremes at mid-to-high latitudes. For precipitation, CAM predicts a uniform increase of frequency of precipitation extremes regardless of the rain rate, while SP-CAM predicts a monotonic increase of frequency with increasing rain rate and larger change of intensity for heavier precipitation. The changes in 3-hourly and daily temperature extremes are found to be similar; however, the 3-hourly precipitation extremes have a significantly larger change than daily extremes. The Clausius–Clapeyron scaling is found to be a relatively good predictor of zonally averaged changes in precipitation extremes over midlatitudes but not as good over the tropics and subtropics. The changes in precipitable water and large-scale vertical velocity are equally important to explain the changes in precipitation extremes.

The Life Cycle and Variability of Antarctic Weak Polar Vortex Events

2022 ◽  
pp. 1-63
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Polar Vortex ◽  
Southern Annular Mode ◽  
Austral Spring ◽  
Stratospheric Polar Vortex ◽  
Temperature And Precipitation ◽  
Scale Temperature ◽  
Precipitation Anomalies ◽  
Polar Stratosphere ◽  
The Antarctic

Abstract Motivated by the strong Antarctic sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) in 2019, a survey on the similar Antarctic weak polar events (WPV) is presented, including their life cycle, dynamics, seasonality, and climatic impacts. The Antarctic WPVs have a frequency of about four events per decade, with the 2002 event being the only major SSW. They show a similar life cycle to the SSWs in the Northern Hemisphere but have a longer duration. They are primarily driven by enhanced upward-propagating wavenumber 1 in the presence of a preconditioned polar stratosphere, i.e., a weaker and more contracted Antarctic stratospheric polar vortex. Antarctic WPVs occur mainly in the austral spring. Their early occurrence is preceded by an easterly anomaly in the middle and upper equatorial stratosphere besides the preconditioned polar stratosphere. The Antarctic WPVs increase the ozone concentration in the polar region and are associated with an advanced seasonal transition of the stratospheric polar vortex by about one week. Their frequency doubles after 2000 and is closely related to the advanced Antarctic stratospheric final warming in recent decades. The WPV-resultant negative phase of the southern annular mode descends to the troposphere and persists for about three months, leading to persistent hemispheric scale temperature and precipitation anomalies.

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