The WFDEI meteorological forcing data set has been generated using the same methodology as the widely used WATCH Forcing Data (WFD) by making use of the ERA‐Interim reanalysis data. We discuss the ...specifics of how changes in the reanalysis and processing have led to improvement over the WFD. We attribute improvements in precipitation and wind speed to the latest reanalysis basis data and improved downward shortwave fluxes to the changes in the aerosol corrections. Covering 1979–2012, the WFDEI will allow more thorough comparisons of hydrological and Earth System model outputs with hydrologically and phenologically relevant satellite products than using the WFD.
Key Points
Global three hourly meteorological forcing data at half‐degree spatial resolution
Covers 1979–2012
Improvements compared to the WATCH forcing data
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
Given a simple undirected graph G and a positive integer k, the k-forcing number of G, denoted Fk(G), is the minimum number of vertices that need to be initially colored so that all vertices ...eventually become colored during the discrete dynamical process described by the following rule. Starting from an initial set of colored vertices and stopping when all vertices are colored: if a colored vertex has at most k non-colored neighbors, then each of its non-colored neighbors becomes colored. When k=1, this is equivalent to the zero forcing number, usually denoted with Z(G), a recently introduced invariant that gives an upper bound on the maximum nullity of a graph. In this paper, we give several upper bounds on the k-forcing number. Notable among these, we show that if G is a graph with order n≥2 and maximum degree Δ≥k, then Fk(G)≤(Δ−k+1)nΔ−k+1+min{δ,k}. This simplifies to, for the zero forcing number case of k=1, Z(G)=F1(G)≤ΔnΔ+1. Moreover, when Δ≥2 and the graph is k-connected, we prove that Fk(G)≤(Δ−2)n+2Δ+k−2, which is an improvement when k≤2, and specializes to, for the zero forcing number case, Z(G)=F1(G)≤(Δ−2)n+2Δ−1. These results resolve a problem posed by Meyer about regular bipartite circulant graphs. Finally, we present a relationship between the k-forcing number and the connected k-domination number. As a corollary, we find that the sum of the zero forcing number and connected domination number is at most the order for connected graphs.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
Holocene glacier fluctuations Solomina, Olga N.; Bradley, Raymond S.; Hodgson, Dominic A. ...
Quaternary science reviews,
03/2015, Volume:
111
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
A global overview of glacier advances and retreats (grouped by regions and by millennia) for the Holocene is compiled from previous studies. The reconstructions of glacier fluctuations are based on ...1) mapping and dating moraines defined by 14C, TCN, OSL, lichenometry and tree rings (discontinuous records/time series), and 2) sediments from proglacial lakes and speleothems (continuous records/time series). Using 189 continuous and discontinuous time series, the long-term trends and centennial fluctuations of glaciers were compared to trends in the recession of Northern and mountain tree lines, and with orbital, solar and volcanic studies to examine the likely forcing factors that drove the changes recorded. A general trend of increasing glacier size from the early–mid Holocene, to the late Holocene in the extra-tropical areas of the Northern Hemisphere (NH) is related to overall summer temperature, forced by orbitally-controlled insolation. The glaciers in New Zealand and in the tropical Andes also appear to follow the orbital trend, i.e., they were decreasing from the early Holocene to the present. In contrast, glacier fluctuations in some monsoonal areas of Asia and southern South America generally did not follow the orbital trends, but fluctuated at a higher frequency possibly triggered by distinct teleconnections patterns. During the Neoglacial, advances clustered at 4.4–4.2ka, 3.8–3.4ka, 3.3–2.8ka, 2.6ka, 2.3–2.1ka, 1.5–1.4ka, 1.2–1.0ka, 0.7–0.5ka, corresponding to general cooling periods in the North Atlantic. Some of these episodes coincide with multidecadal periods of low solar activity, but it is unclear what mechanism might link small changes in irradiance to widespread glacier fluctuations. Explosive volcanism may have played a role in some periods of glacier advances, such as around 1.7–1.6ka (coinciding with the Taupo volcanic eruption at 232 ± 5 CE) but the record of explosive volcanism is poorly known through the Holocene. The compilation of ages suggests that there is no single mechanism driving glacier fluctuations on a global scale. Multidecadal variations of solar and volcanic activity supported by positive feedbacks in the climate system may have played a critical role in Holocene glaciation, but further research on such linkages is needed. The rate and the global character of glacier retreat in the 20th through early 21st centuries appears unusual in the context of Holocene glaciation, though the retreating glaciers in most parts of the Northern Hemisphere are still larger today than they were in the early and/or mid-Holocene. The current retreat, however, is occurring during an interval of orbital forcing that is favorable for glacier growth and is therefore caused by a combination of factors other than orbital forcing, primarily strong anthropogenic effects. Glacier retreat will continue into future decades due to the delayed response of glaciers to climate change.
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•Northern Hemisphere mid-low latitude Holocene glaciation driven by orbital forcing.•Neoglacial advances correspond to multidecadal periods of low solar activity.•Current glacier retreat unlikely be explained only by natural forcings.
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Globally, thermodynamics explains an increase in atmospheric water vapor with warming of around 7%/°C near to the surface. In contrast, global precipitation and evaporation are constrained by the ...Earth's energy balance to increase at ∼2–3%/°C. However, this rate of increase is suppressed by rapid atmospheric adjustments in response to greenhouse gases and absorbing aerosols that directly alter the atmospheric energy budget. Rapid adjustments to forcings, cooling effects from scattering aerosol, and observational uncertainty can explain why observed global precipitation responses are currently difficult to detect but are expected to emerge and accelerate as warming increases and aerosol forcing diminishes. Precipitation increases with warming are expected to be smaller over land than ocean due to limitations on moisture convergence, exacerbated by feedbacks and affected by rapid adjustments. Thermodynamic increases in atmospheric moisture fluxes amplify wet and dry events, driving an intensification of precipitation extremes. The rate of intensification can deviate from a simple thermodynamic response due to in‐storm and larger‐scale feedback processes, while changes in large‐scale dynamics and catchment characteristics further modulate the frequency of flooding in response to precipitation increases. Changes in atmospheric circulation in response to radiative forcing and evolving surface temperature patterns are capable of dominating water cycle changes in some regions. Moreover, the direct impact of human activities on the water cycle through water ion, irrigation, and land use change is already a significant component of regional water cycle change and is expected to further increase in importance as water demand grows with global population.
Societies experience impacts through localized changes in water availability that are controlled by large‐scale atmospheric circulation as well as smaller‐scale physical processes. At regional to local scales, water cycle changes therefore result from the interplay between multiple drivers (CO2, aerosols, land use change and human water use). A primary focus here is on reviewing recent advances in understanding how these complex interactions are expected to determine responses in the global water cycle.
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The last 6000
years are of particular interest to the understanding of the Earth System because the boundary conditions of the climate system did not change dramatically (in comparison to larger ...glacial–interglacial changes), and because abundant, detailed regional palaeoclimatic proxy records cover this period. We use selected proxy-based reconstructions of different climate variables, together with state-of-the-art time series of natural forcings (orbital variations, solar activity variations, large tropical volcanic eruptions, land cover and greenhouse gases), underpinned by results from General Circulation Models (GCMs) and Earth System Models of Intermediate Complexity (EMICs), to establish a comprehensive explanatory framework for climate changes from the Mid-Holocene (MH) to pre-industrial time. The redistribution of solar energy, due to orbital forcing on a millennial timescale, was the cause of a progressive southward shift of the Northern Hemisphere (NH) summer position of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). This was accompanied by a pronounced weakening of the monsoon systems in Africa and Asia and increasing dryness and desertification on both continents. The associated summertime cooling of the NH, combined with changing temperature gradients in the world oceans, likely led to an increasing amplitude of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and, possibly, increasingly negative North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) indices up to the beginning of the last millennium. On decadal to multi-century timescales, a worldwide coincidence between solar irradiance minima, tropical volcanic eruptions and decadal to multi-century scale cooling events was not found. However, reconstructions show that widespread decadal to multi-century scale cooling events, accompanied by advances of mountain glaciers, occurred in the NH (e.g., in Scandinavia and the European Alps). This occurred namely during the Little Ice Age (LIA) between AD ∼1350 and 1850, when the lower summer insolation in the NH, due to orbital forcing, coincided with solar activity minima and several strong tropical volcanic eruptions. The role of orbital forcing in the NH cooling, the southward ITCZ shift and the desertification of the Sahara are supported by numerous model simulations. Other simulations have suggested that the fingerprint of solar activity variations should be strongest in the tropics, but there is also evidence that changes in the ocean heat transport took place during the LIA at high northern latitudes, with possible additional implications for climates of the Southern Hemisphere (SH).
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
Let G be a connected bipartite graph with a perfect matching and the minimum degree at least two. The concept of an anti-forcing edge in G was introduced by Li in Li (1997). One known generalized ...version for an anti-forcing edge is an anti-forcing set S, which is a set of edges of G such that the spanning subgraph G−S has a unique perfect matching. In this paper, we introduce a new generalization of an anti-forcing edge: an anti-forcing path and an anti-forcing cycle. We show that the existence of an anti-forcing edge in G is equivalent to the existence of an anti-forcing path or an anti-forcing cycle in G. Then we show that G has an edge that is both forcing and anti-forcing if and only if G is an even cycle. In addition, e-anti-forcing paths and e-anti-forcing cycles in hexagonal systems are identified. The parallel concepts of forcing-paths and forcing-cycles of G are also presented.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
In this study, we examined the responses of East Asian summer monsoon (EASM) to natural (solar variability and volcanic aerosols) and anthropogenic (greenhouse gasses and aerosols) forcings simulated ...in the 17 latest Coupled Model Intercomparison Program phase 5 models with 105 realizations. The observed weakening trend of low‐level EASM circulation during 1958–2001 is partly reproduced under all‐forcing runs. A comparison of separate forcing experiments reveals that the aerosol forcing plays a primary role in driving the weakened low‐level monsoon circulation. The preferential cooling over continental East Asia caused by aerosol affects the monsoon circulation through reducing the land‐sea thermal contrast and results in higher sea level pressure over northern China. In the upper level, both natural forcing and aerosol forcing contribute to the observed southward shift of East Asian subtropical jet through changing the meridional temperature gradient.
Key Points
The observed weakening of EASM is reproduced in CMIP5 models
The aerosol weakens the monsoon by reducing the land‐sea thermal contrast
The aerosol plays a primary role in driving models' monsoon weakening
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FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
This article studies the k-forcing number for oriented graphs, generalizing both the zero forcing number for directed graphs and the k-forcing number for simple graphs. In particular, given a simple ...graph G, we introduce the maximum (minimum) oriented k-forcing number, denoted MOFk(G) (mofk(G)), which is the largest (smallest) k-forcing number among all possible orientations of G. These new ideas are compared to known graph invariants and it is shown that, among other things, mof(G) equals the path covering number of G while MOFk(G) is greater than or equal to the independence number of G — with equality holding if G is a tree or if k is at least the maximum degree of G. Along the way, we also show that many recent results about k-forcing number can be modified for oriented graphs.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
The \emph{maximum oriented $k$-forcing number} of a simple graph $G$, written $\MOF_k(G)$, is the maximum \emph{directed $k$-forcing number} among all orientations of $G$. This invariant was recently ...introduced by Caro, Davila and Pepper in~\cite{CaroDavilaPepper}, and in the current paper we study the special case where $G$ is the complete graph with order $n$, denoted $K_n$. While $\MOF_k(G)$ is an invariant for the underlying simple graph $G$, $\MOF_k(K_n)$ can also be interpreted as an interesting property for tournaments. Our main results further focus on the case when $k=1$. These include a lower bound on $\MOF(K_n)$ of roughly $\frac{3}{4}n$, and for $n\ge 2$, a lower bound of $n - \frac{2n}{\log_2(n)}$. We also consider various lower bounds on the maximum oriented $k$-forcing number for the closely related complete $q$-partite graphs.
The Tibetan Plateau (TP) exerts strong thermal forcing on the atmosphere over Asian monsoon region and supplies water resources to adjacent river basins. Recently, the Plateau experienced evident ...climate changes, which have changed atmospheric and hydrological cycles and thus reshaped the local environment. This study reviewed recent research progress in the climate changes and explored their impacts on the Plateau energy and water cycle, based on which a conceptual model to synthesize these changes was proposed and urgent issues to be explored were summarized.
The TP has experienced an overall surface air warming and moistening, solar dimming, and wind stilling since the beginning of the 1980s. The surface warming depends on elevation and its horizontal pattern is consistent with the one of the glacier change. Accompanying the warming was air moistening, and both facilitated the trigger of more deep-clouds, which resulted in solar dimming. Surface wind speed declined from the 1970s, as a result of atmospheric circulation adjustment caused by the differential surface warming between the Asian high-latitude and low-latitude.
The climate changes had weakened the thermal forcing over the TP. The warming and wind stilling lowered the Bowen ratio and led to less surface sensible heating. Atmospheric radiative cooling was enhanced, mainly by outgoing longwave emission from the warming planetary system and slightly by solar radiation reflection. Both processes contributed to the thermal forcing weakening over the Plateau. The water cycle was also altered by the climate changes. The wind stilling may have weakened water vapor exchange between the Asia monsoon region and the Plateau and thus led to less precipitation in the monsoon-impacted southern and eastern Plateau, but the warming enhanced land evaporation. Their overlap resulted in runoff reduction in the southern and eastern Plateau regions. By contrast, more convective precipitation over the central TP was triggered under the warmer and moister condition and yielded more runoff; meanwhile, the solar dimming weakened lake evaporation. The two together with enhanced glacier melts contributed to the lake expansion in the central TP.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK