Nonlinear Processes in Geosciences

NPG Paper Highlight: “Baroclinic and barotropic instabilities in planetary atmospheres: energetics, equilibration and adjustment”

Peter Read July 9, 2020

License: Read, P., Kennedy, D., Lewis, N., Scolan, H., Tabataba-Vakili, F., Wang, Y., Wright, S., and Young, R.: Baroclinic and barotropic instabilities in planetary atmospheres: energetics, equilibration and adjustment, Nonlin. Processes Geophys., 27, 147–173, https://npg.copernicus.org/articles/27/147/2020/npg-27-147-2020.html, 2020.

Today’s our blog hosts a review article by the 2016 EGU Richardson medallist Peter Read, together with Daniel Kennedy, Neil Lewis, Hélène Scolan, Fachreddin Tabataba-Vakili, YixiongWang, Susie Wright, and Roland Young for the special issue of NPG celebrating 100 years of IUGG (https://npg.copernicus.org/articles/27/147/2020/npg-27-147-2020.html). One of the great achievements of the past 100 ...[Read More]

NPG Paper of the Month: “Detecting dynamical anomalies in time series from different palaeoclimate proxy archives using windowed recurrence network analysis”

Tommaso Alberti June 30, 2020

Recurrence network transitivity (colour-coded) for a Lorenz-63 system with linear parameter drift as input signal, and the output of four different proxy system models with an areawise significance test (contours). The vertical lines denote the approximate positions of transient bifurcations between different types of dynamics at b = 161.0 and b = 166.5 as described in Donges et al., Nonlin. Processes Geophys., 2011. Credits: Detecting dynamical anomalies in time series from different palaeoclimate proxy archives using windowed recurrence network analysis (https://npg.copernicus.org/articles/27/261/2020/).

This month the NPG Paper of the Month award is achieved by Jaqueline Lekscha and Reik Donner for their paper “Detecting dynamical anomalies in time series from different palaeoclimate proxy archives using windowed recurrence network analysis” (https://npg.copernicus.org/articles/27/261/2020/). Jaqueline Lekscha did her PhD in physics at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Humbold ...[Read More]

Is planting trees a feasible large-scale solution to mitigate climate change?

Davide Faranda June 8, 2020

In the last few years it has become a common practice to compensate carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by planting trees. This idea is simple and rooted on a very basic principle: trees get the energy of sunlight, and by photosynthesis they take water from the ground and CO2 from the air, releasing oxygen in the atmosphere. The CO2 is then stored in trees and surrounding soil. Tree planting efforts ar ...[Read More]

COVID-19-related drop in anthropogenic aerosol emissions in China and corresponding cloud and climate effects

Anna von der Heydt May 29, 2020

Observed reduced NO2 concentration above China in February 2020. Shown is the difference between February 2020 and the average of February 2018 and 2019. Figure from https://doi.org/10.31223/osf.io/z5dm8.

While a previous blog entry dealt with the question whether we can use lessons from the nonlinear nature of climate for projections of the Covid-19 pandemic, there is now a first example of how the pandemic can teach us something on climate. The several weeks long lockdown of China made February 2020 an exceptional month in terms of air quality; aerosol emissions were tremendously reduced leading ...[Read More]