Search results for "Tropical"
showing 10 items of 652 documents
Spatio-temporal patterns of thermal anomalies and drought over tropical forests driven by recent extreme climatic anomalies
2018
The recent 2015–2016 El Niño (EN) event was considered as strong as the EN in 1997–1998. Given such magnitude, it was expected to result in extreme warming and moisture anomalies in tropical areas. Here we characterize the spatial patterns of temperature anomalies and drought over tropical forests, including tropical South America (Amazonia), Africa and Asia/Indonesia during the 2015–2016 EN event. These spatial patterns of warming and drought are compared with those observed in previous strong EN events (1982–1983 and 1997–1998) and other moderate to strong EN events (e.g. 2004–2005 and 2009–2010). The link between the spatial patterns of drought and sea surface temperature anomalies in th…
Vegetation vulnerability to drought in Spain
2014
[EN] Frequency of climatic extremes like long duration droughts has increased in Spain over the last century.The use of remote sensing observations for monitoring and detecting drought is justified on the basis that vegetation vigor is closely related to moisture condition. We derive satellite estimates of bio-physical variables such as fractional vegetation cover (FVC) from MODIS/EOS and SEVIRI/MSG time series. The study evaluates the strength of temporal relationships between precipitation and vegetation condition at time-lag and cumulative rainfall intervals. From this analysis, it was observed that the climatic disturbances affected both the growing season and the total amount of vegeta…
Projecting Exposure to Extreme Climate Impact Events Across Six Event Categories and Three Spatial Scales
2020
Summarization: The extent and impact of climate‐related extreme events depend on the underlying meteorological, hydrological, or climatological drivers as well as on human factors such as land use or population density. Here we quantify the pure effect of historical and future climate change on the exposure of land and population to extreme climate impact events using an unprecedentedly large ensemble of harmonized climate impact simulations from the Inter‐Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project phase 2b. Our results indicate that global warming has already more than doubled both the global land area and the global population annually exposed to all six categories of extreme events co…
The nature of ice-nucleating particles affects the radiative properties of tropical convective cloud systems
2020
Abstract. Convective cloud systems in the maritime tropics play a critical role in global climate, but accurately representing aerosol interactions within these clouds persists as a major challenge for weather and climate modelling. We quantify the effect of ice-nucleating particles (INP) on the radiative properties of a complex Tropical Atlantic deep convective cloud field using a regional model with an advanced double-moment microphysics scheme. Our results show that the domain-mean daylight outgoing radiation varies by up to 18 W m−2 depending on the bio- and physico-chemical properties of INP. The key distinction between different INPs is the temperature dependence of ice formation, whi…
On the occurrence of strong vertical wind shear in the tropopause region: a 10-year ERA5 northern hemispheric study
2021
A climatology of the occurrence of strong wind shear in the upper troposphere–lower stratosphere (UTLS) is presented, which gives rise to defining a tropopause shear layer (TSL). Strong wind shear in the tropopause region is of interest because it can generate turbulence, which can lead to cross-tropopause mixing. The analysis is based on 10 years of daily northern hemispheric ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis data. The vertical extent of the region analyzed is limited to the altitudes from 1.5 km above the surface up to 25 km, to exclude the planetary boundary layer as well as strong wind shear in higher atmospheric layers like the mesosphere–lower thermosphere. A threshold value of St2=4×10-4s-2 of t…
Late Quaternary Variations in the South American Monsoon System as Inferred by Speleothems—New Perspectives using the SISAL Database
2019
Here we present an overview of speleothem δ18O records from South America, most of which are available in the Speleothem Isotopes Synthesis and Analysis (SISAL_v1) database. South American tropical and subtropical speleothem δ18O time series are primarily interpreted to reflect changes in precipitation amount, the amount effect, and consequently history of convection intensity variability of convergence zones such as the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) and the South America Monsoon System (SAMS). We investigate past hydroclimate scenarios in South America related to the South American Monsoon System in three different time periods: Late Pleistocene, Holocene, and the last tw…
Identification of processes that control the stable isotope composition of rainwater in the humid tropical West-Central Africa.
2020
12 pages; International audience; This study interprets 11 years (2006 to 2016) and 6 months (March to August in 2017) of respectively monthly and daily isotopic (δD and δ18O) monitoring of rain at Douala (Cameroon), a humid tropical station in Western Africa. The main scope is to analyze the climate controls on precipitation isotopes at different timescales. Firstly, we examine the annual cycles of δ18O. Over the 11 years of survey, the annual cycle exhibits a W shape that is quite reproducible from year to year, with two minima in spring and autumn periods. Based on back trajectory calculations and remote sensing observations of water vapor isotopic composition, we show that the observed …
A sea surface temperature reconstruction for the southern Indian Ocean trade wind belt from corals in Rodrigues Island (19°S, 63°E)
2016
Abstract. The western Indian Ocean has been warming rapidly over recent decades, causing a greater number of extreme climatic events. It is therefore of paramount importance to improve our understanding of links between Indian Ocean sea surface temperature (SST) variability, climate change and sustainability of tropical coral reef ecosystems. Here we present monthly resolved coral Sr ∕ Ca records from two different locations from Rodrigues Island (63° E, 19° S) in the south-central Indian Ocean trade wind belt. We reconstruct SST based on a linear relationship with the Sr ∕ Ca proxy with records starting from 1781 and 1945, respectively. We assess relationships between the observed long-ter…
Large-scale, millennial-length temperature reconstructions from tree-rings
2018
Supported by the German Science Foundation, grants # Inst 247/665-1 FUGG and ES 161/9-1. SSG acknowledges support by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, KJA by US National Science Foundation grants AGS-1501856 and NSF AGS-1501834, and JL and LS by the Belmont Forum and JPI-Climate, Collaborative Research Action INTEGRATE. Over the past two decades, the dendroclimate community has produced various annually resolved, warm season temperature reconstructions for the extratropical Northern Hemisphere. Here we compare these tree-ring based reconstructions back to 831 CE and present a set of basic metrics to provide guidance for non-specialists on their interpretation and use. We specifically d…
Pseudoskirroceras, a remarkable but poorly known Early Pliensbachian Tethyan ammonite genus: New data from the High Atlas (Morocco).
2007
13 pages; International audience; The discovery of new Early Pliensbachian ammonite faunas in Central High Atlas (Morocco) allows the re-examination of the taxonomic, stratigraphical and palaeogeographical framework of the genus Pseudoskirroceras, an intriguing but until now poorly known Tethyan taxon. For the first time, several specimens of Pseudoskirroceras mastodon (Fucini, 1935) the type species of the genus, have been collected in a well-known stratigraphical context. This material allows the evaluation of intra-specific variability and consequently the assessment of the taxonomical relevance of various geometrical and ornamental features. The best diagnostic features are the clearly …