Could our present day “warm” climate turn into a frozen fully glaciated one, as if the whole Earth is a huge “snowball”? That was a question put forward independently by Mikhail Budyko and William Sellers in the late 60s [1,2] who made a first estimate of the necessary changes of incoming solar radiation, such that either the Arctic ice sheet completely melts, or the planet gets fully frozen. Base ...[Read More]
NPG Paper of the Month: “Empirical evidence of a fluctuation theorem for the wind mechanical power input into the ocean”
The pdf p(z,τ) (left) and the symmetry function normalised by the averaging time S(z,τ)/τ (right) as a function of the power input z for different averaging times τ (see caption). The variable τ gives the length of the averaging interval in terms of observations done every 6 hours. Data are for the recirculation area of the Atlantic subtropical gyre at a resolution of 0.5o in space and 6 hours in time for the period of 1993–2016. Note that the pdfs differ from Gaussian. The symmetry function converges to a straight line for increasing averaging periods, showing evidence of a FT.
License: “Empirical evidence of a fluctuation theorem for the wind mechanical power input into the ocean".
This month the NPG Paper of the Month award is achieved by Achim Wirth for his paper “Empirical evidence of a fluctuation theorem for the wind mechanical power input into the ocean“. Achim obtained his PhD at the University of Nice (Franc), doing research on turbulence theory. He then moved to oceanography working at UCLA (USA) and Geomar (Germany). Since 2005 he holds a permanent position a ...[Read More]
Three reasons why Forest-Fires worsen with climate change
The brand-new IPCC AR6 report clearly states that “Unless there are immediate, rapid and massive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, limiting warming to around 1.5°C, or even 2°C, will be out of reach”. Although as human beings we do not perceive changes in global Earth average temperatures as a threat to our lives, the IPCC report also states that extreme weather events will worsen; actually ...[Read More]
NPG Paper of the Month: “Recurrence analysis of extreme event-like data”
Top panels: time series of a periodic (left), stochastic (middle), and chaotic system (right). Bottom panels: the corresponding recurrence plots of respective systems.
The May 2021 NPG Paper of the Month award goes Abhirup Banerjee and his co-authors for their paper “Recurrence analysis of extreme event-like data“. Abhirup is pursuing a doctoral degree in Theoretical Physics at University of Potsdam. He is working at Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research as a guest researcher as part of the DFG funded NatRiskChange project. In this project, he ...[Read More]