A real-time Global Warming Index Haustein, K; Allen, M R; Forster, P M ...
Scientific reports,
11/2017, Volume:
7, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
We propose a simple real-time index of global human-induced warming and assess its robustness to uncertainties in climate forcing and short-term climate fluctuations. This index provides improved ...scientific context for temperature stabilisation targets and has the potential to decrease the volatility of climate policy. We quantify uncertainties arising from temperature observations, climate radiative forcings, internal variability and the model response. Our index and the associated rate of human-induced warming is compatible with a range of other more sophisticated methods to estimate the human contribution to observed global temperature change.
We describe and evaluate the NMMB/BSC-Dust, a new dust aerosol cycle model embedded online within the NCEP Non-hydrostatic Multiscale Model (NMMB). NMMB is a further evolution of the operational ...Non-hydrostatic Mesoscale Model (WRF-NMM), which together with other upgrades has been extended from meso to global scales. Its unified non-hydrostatic dynamical core is prepared for regional and global simulation domains. The new NMMB/BSC-Dust is intended to provide short to medium-range weather and dust forecasts from regional to global scales and represents a first step towards the development of a unified chemical-weather model. This paper describes the parameterizations used in the model to simulate the dust cycle including sources, transport, deposition and interaction with radiation. We evaluate monthly and annual means of the global configuration of the model against the AEROCOM dust benchmark dataset for year 2000 including surface concentration, deposition and aerosol optical depth (AOD), and we evaluate the daily AOD variability in a regional domain at high resolution covering Northern Africa, Middle East and Europe against AERONET AOD for year 2006. The NMMB/BSC-Dust provides a good description of the horizontal distribution and temporal variability of the dust. Daily AOD correlations at the regional scale are around 0.6–0.7 on average without dust data assimilation. At the global scale the model lies within the top range of AEROCOM dust models in terms of performance statistics for surface concentration, deposition and AOD. This paper discusses the current strengths and limitations of the modeling system and points towards future improvements.
The year 2014 broke the record for the warmest yearly average temperature in Europe. Attributing how much this was due to anthropogenic climate change and how much it was due to natural variability ...is a challenging question but one that is important to address. In this study, we compare four event attribution methods. We look at the risk ratio (RR) associated with anthropogenic climate change for this event, over the whole European region, as well as its spatial distribution. Each method shows a very strong anthropogenic influence on the event over Europe. However, the magnitude of the RR strongly depends on the definition of the event and the method used. Across Europe, attribution over larger regions tended to give greater RR values. This highlights a major source of sensitivity in attribution statements and the need to define the event to analyze on a case‐by‐case basis.
Key Points
Human influences played a strong role in the record 2014 temperatures in Europe
An attribution result is very sensitive to the spatiotemporal definition of the event
The increase in risk due to climate change declines on average moving to smaller spatial scales
More than 2300 observed cloud layers were analyzed to investigate the impact of aged Saharan dust on heterogeneous ice formation. The observations were performed with a polarization/Raman lidar at ...the European Aerosol Research Lidar Network site of Leipzig, Germany (51.3°N, 12.4°E) from February 1997 to June 2008. The statistical analysis is based on lidar‐derived information on cloud phase (liquid water, mixed phase, ice cloud) and cloud top height, cloud top temperature, and vertical profiles of dust mass concentration calculated with the Dust Regional Atmospheric Modeling system. Compared to dust‐free air masses, a significantly higher amount of ice‐containing clouds (25%–30% more) was observed for cloud top temperatures from −10°C to −20°C in air masses that contained mineral dust. The midlatitude lidar study is compared with our SAMUM lidar study of tropical stratiform clouds at Cape Verde in the winter of 2008. The comparison reveals that heterogeneous ice formation is much stronger over central Europe and starts at higher temperatures than over the tropical station. Possible reasons for the large difference are discussed.
The new NMMB/BSC-Dust model is intended to provide short to medium-range weather and dust forecasts from regional to global scales. It is an online model in which the dust aerosol dynamics and ...physics are solved at each model time step. The companion paper (Pérez et al., 2011) develops the dust model parameterizations and provides daily to annual evaluations of the model for its global and regional configurations. Modeled aerosol optical depth (AOD) was evaluated against AERONET Sun photometers over Northern Africa, Middle East and Europe with correlations around 0.6-0.7 on average without dust data assimilation. In this paper we analyze in detail the behavior of the model using data from the Saharan Mineral dUst experiment (SAMUM-1) in 2006 and the Bodélé Dust Experiment (BoDEx) in 2005. AOD from satellites and Sun photometers, vertically resolved extinction coefficients from lidars and particle size distributions at the ground and in the troposphere are used, complemented by wind profile data and surface meteorological measurements. All simulations were performed at the regional scale for the Northern African domain at the expected operational horizontal resolution of 25 km. Model results for SAMUM-1 generally show good agreement with satellite data over the most active Saharan dust sources. The model reproduces the AOD from Sun photometers close to sources and after long-range transport, and the dust size spectra at different height levels. At this resolution, the model is not able to reproduce a large haboob that occurred during the campaign. Some deficiencies are found concerning the vertical dust distribution related to the representation of the mixing height in the atmospheric part of the model. For the BoDEx episode, we found the diurnal temperature cycle to be strongly dependant on the soil moisture, which is underestimated in the NCEP analysis used for model initialization. The low level jet (LLJ) and the dust AOD over the Bodélé are well reproduced. The remaining negative AOD bias (due to underestimated surface wind speeds) can be substantially reduced by decreasing the threshold friction velocity in the model.
Within the last decade, extreme weather event attribution has emerged as a new field of science and garnered increasing attention from the wider scientific community and the public. Numerous methods ...have been put forward to determine the contribution of anthropogenic climate change to individual extreme weather events. So far nearly all such analyses were done months after an event has happened. Here we present a new method which can assess the fraction of attributable risk of a severe weather event due to an external driver in real-time. The method builds on a large ensemble of atmosphere-only general circulation model simulations forced by seasonal forecast sea surface temperatures (SSTs). Taking the England 2013/14 winter floods as an example, we demonstrate that the change in risk for heavy rainfall during the England floods due to anthropogenic climate change, is of similar magnitude using either observed or seasonal forecast SSTs. Testing the dynamic response of the model to the anomalous ocean state for January 2014, we find that observed SSTs are required to establish a discernible link between a particular SST pattern and an atmospheric response such as a shift in the jetstream in the model. For extreme events occurring under strongly anomalous SST patterns associated with known low-frequency climate modes, however, forecast SSTs can provide sufficient guidance to determine the dynamic contribution to the event.
. Haustein K‐O, Krause J, Haustein H, Rasmussen T, Cort N (Institute of Nicotine Research and Smoking Cessation, Erfurt, Germany; and Pharmacia Consumer Healthcare, Helsingborg, Sweden). Effects of ...cigarette smoking or nicotine replacement on cardiovascular risk factors and parameters of haemorheology. J Intern Med 2002; 252: 130–139.
Objectives. Cigarette smoking causes cardiovascular (CV) disease, but the relative roles of nicotine and other components of tobacco smoke remain unclear. We investigated the effect of stopping smoking, by using nicotine replacement therapy (NRT), on haemorheology parameters.
Design. Open, parallel‐group trial (intervention group and control smokers).
Setting. Clinic within university department of pharmacology.
Subjects. One hundred and ninety‐seven males, aged 25–45 years, smoking >20 cigarettes per day.
Interventions. One hundred and sixty‐four subjects were instructed to stop smoking and received NRT for 12 weeks and 33 acted as controls. After 12 weeks, NRT was discontinued, and all subjects were followed‐up at 26 weeks. At the end of the study, the NRT group was divided into abstainers (self‐reported, verified by exhaled carbon monoxide <10 ppm) and relapsers, who were unable to remain abstinent.
Main outcome measures. Plasma viscosity, fibrinogen, erythrocyte deformability, reactive capillary blood flow, transcutaneous partial oxygen tension (tcpO2) and haematocrit, assessed at 4, 8, 12, and 26 weeks.
Results. After 6 months, plasma fibrinogen (9.95 vs. 8.24 μmol L–1 at baseline; P < 0.003), reactive capillary flow (t–pmax: 9.3 vs. 11.2 s at baseline; P < 0.005), and tcpO2 (50.4 vs. 34.9 mmHg at baseline; P < 0.0001) were significantly improved in abstainers, but changes in plasma viscosity and erythrocyte deformability were inconclusive. Other CV risk factors, such as haematocrit and white blood cell count, decreased to a greater extent in abstainers than in relapsers. Expired carbon monoxide concentrations reflected the changes in smoking and decreased in abstainers from 30.4 ppm at baseline to 4.2 ppm; P < 0.0001).
Conclusions. Smoking cessation improved CV parameters, and use of nicotine medications did not negate these improvements.
Within the framework of the Dust Observations for Models (DO4Models) project, the performance of three commonly used dust emission schemes is investigated in this paper using a box model environment. ...We constrain the model with field data (surface and dust particle properties as well as meteorological parameters) obtained from a dry lake bed with a crusted surface in Botswana during a 3 month period in 2011. Our box model results suggest that all schemes fail to reproduce the observed horizontal dust flux. They overestimate the magnitude of the flux by several orders of magnitude. The discrepancy is much smaller for the vertical dust emission flux, albeit still overestimated by up to an order of magnitude. The key parameter for this mismatch is the surface crusting which limits the availability of erosive material, even at higher wind speeds. The second-most important parameter is the soil size distribution. Direct dust entrainment was inferred to be important for several dust events, which explains the smaller gap between modelled and measured vertical dust fluxes. We conclude that both features, crusted surfaces and direct entrainment, need to be incorporated into dust emission schemes in order to represent the entire spectra of source processes. We also conclude that soil moisture exerts a key control on the threshold shear velocity and hence the emission threshold of dust in the model. In the field, the state of the crust is the controlling mechanism for dust emission. Although the crust is related to the soil moisture content to some extent, we are not as yet able to deduce a robust correlation between state of crust and soil moisture.
Traditionally there has been a lack of intensive measurements directly over dust sources for validating the accuracy of dust models. Utilizing the valuable and unprecedented SAMUM 2006 field campaign ...dust dataset in North Africa, we assess the performance and discuss the limitations of a state‐of‐the‐art dust regional model to reproduce the complex dust patterns encountered during the campaign. The DREAM model operational forecast version during SAMUM 2006 (OPER) and an updated model version (RESH) are run and compared. RESH reproduces the general Saharan dust pattern, whereas OPER shows limitations to quantitatively reproduce dust optical properties over sources and after long range transport simultaneously. Dust transport in RESH with enhanced number size bin distribution is proven to be more efficient and adequate. The modeled vertical extinction coefficient captures fairly well lidar observations. While particle number size distribution is consistently reproduced at surface level, we find significant underestimation in the middle troposphere for large particles. Occasionally, synoptic scale meteorology remains unsatisfactorily captured leading to errors in the location and intensity of dust emission and subsequent transport.
Cigarette smoking, nicotine and pregnancy Haustein, K O
International journal of clinical pharmacology and therapeutics,
09/1999, Volume:
37, Issue:
9
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Smoking cigarettes during pregnancy and nursing causes considerable health damage to the fetus and to the infant during the initial growth phase. A smoking mother puts her child at considerable risk, ...not only of higher incidence of spontaneous abortion, premature ablatio placentae and reduced weight at birth, but also of deformities (cheilognathopalatoschisis, deformed extremities, polycystic kidneys, aortopulmonary septum defects, gastroschisis, skull deformation, etc.). Development of the Down syndrome is the subject of some controversy. These types of damage are caused by the hypoxia followed by carboxyhemoglobinemia occurring during smoking and are also observed in CO poisonings that also result in deformities. Numerous infants die during the first months of life of the so-called sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), which can also be caused by maternal smoking and passive smoking. The contribution of nicotine to such health damage is still unclear, especially because only animal trial data are available, the applicability of which to human beings is questionable. It can be said that studies to date have revealed no deformities confirmed as having been caused by nicotine. Cardiopulmonary disturbances resulting from changes in the regulation of dopaminergic receptors are under discussion, but have not yet reached the status of a pathogenic principle. On the whole, all child health complications arising during pregnancy can be attributed almost exclusively to tobacco combustion products including the CO formed. Passage of nicotine into human milk has been confirmed in nursing smokers; passive smoking by mother and child also raises nicotine and cotinine levels in the milk and in the infant. These findings could lead to a reconsideration of smoking withdrawal therapy for pregnant women.
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