Abstract
This study summarizes the revision performed on the surface layer formulation of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. A first set of modifications are introduced to provide more ...suitable similarity functions to simulate the surface layer evolution under strong stable/unstable conditions. A second set of changes are incorporated to reduce or suppress the limits that are imposed on certain variables in order to avoid undesired effects (e.g., a lower limit in u*). The changes introduced lead to a more consistent surface layer formulation that covers the full range of atmospheric stabilities. The turbulent fluxes are more (less) efficient during the day (night) in the revised scheme and produce a sharper afternoon transition that shows the largest impacts in the planetary boundary layer meteorological variables. The most important impacts in the near-surface diagnostic variables are analyzed and compared with observations from a mesoscale network.
The cultivation of edible fungal species represents a profitable agricultural sector and an interesting climatic‐impact oriented topic. This article focuses on Boletus edulis that develops in Pinus ...sylvestris forests in Soria (Castile and León in the Iberian Peninsula). This work aims at evaluating the extent to which the climate variability modulates the fungi production, both at local and regional/synoptic scales. With this purpose, the relationship between B. edulis production and various climatic variables such as precipitation, temperature, soil moisture and soil temperature has been explored based on observations during 1995–2014 over the study area as well as reanalysis data. The study evidences the relative importance of humidity in the B. edulis production both at the surface and the subsurface. In general, it can be said that wet conditions early in the production season together with cooler summers and mild autumns enhance the B. edulis growth. Evidences of the particular relevance of soil conditions at the beginning of the production season on the total annual production have been provided. In addition, the age of the trees that host the fungi species seems to play as well a pivotal role in the amounts of production obtained. Such a detailed analysis, including local relevant climatic information along with the investigation of the large‐scale features that impact the production of edible fungi species has not yet been developed over this region.
Harvesting of fungal species has been a profitable agricultural activity in the Iberian Peninsula since decades. However, observed trends of the climate system response to continuous anthropogenic emissions poses a threaten to the emergence and growth of these non‐woody forest products that are considered a delicacy worldwide. This article focuses on evaluating how climate variability modulates the production of Boletus edulis that develops in Pinus sylvestris L. forests in Soria (Castile and León), both at local and regional/synoptic scales.
This is the first of two papers that document the creation of the New European Wind Atlas (NEWA). It describes the sensitivity analysis and evaluation procedures that formed the basis for choosing ...the final setup of the mesoscale model simulations of the wind atlas. The suitable combination of model setup and parameterizations, bound by practical constraints, was found for simulating the climatology of the wind field at turbine-relevant heights with the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. Initial WRF model sensitivity experiments compared the wind climate generated by using two commonly used planetary boundary layer schemes and were carried out over several regions in Europe. They confirmed that the most significant differences in annual mean wind speed at 100 m a.g.l. (above ground level) mostly coincide with areas of high surface roughness length and not with the location of the domains or maximum wind speed. Then an ensemble of more than 50 simulations with different setups for a single year was carried out for one domain covering northern Europe for which tall mast observations were available. We varied many different parameters across the simulations, e.g. model version, forcing data, various physical parameterizations, and the size of the model domain. These simulations showed that although virtually every parameter change affects the results in some way, significant changes in the wind climate in the boundary layer are mostly due to using different physical parameterizations, especially the planetary boundary layer scheme, the representation of the land surface, and the prescribed surface roughness length. Also, the setup of the simulations, such as the integration length and the domain size, can considerably influence the results. We assessed the degree of similarity between winds simulated by the WRF ensemble members and the observations using a suite of metrics, including the Earth Mover's Distance (EMD), a statistic that measures the distance between two probability distributions. The EMD was used to diagnose the performance of each ensemble member using the full wind speed and direction distribution, which is essential for wind resource assessment. We identified the most realistic ensemble members to determine the most suitable configuration to be used in the final production run, which is fully described and evaluated in the second part of this study (Dörenkämper et al., 2020).
Research into global change ecology is motivated by the need to understand the role of humans in changing biotic systems. Mechanistic understanding of ecological responses requires the separation of ...different climatic parameters and processes that often operate on diverse spatiotemporal scales. Yet most environmental studies do not distinguish the effects of internal climate variability from those caused by external, natural (e.g. volcanic, solar, orbital) or anthropogenic (e.g. greenhouse gases, ozone, aerosols, land‐use) forcing factors.
We suggest extending the climatological concept of ‘Detection and Attribution’ (DA) to unravel abiotic drivers of ecological dynamics in the Anthropocene. We therefore apply DA to quantify the relative roles of natural versus industrial temperature change on elevational shifts in the outbreak epicentres of the larch budmoth (LBM; Zeiraphera diniana or griseana Gn.); the classic example of a cyclic forest defoliating insect.
Our case study shows that anthropogenic warming shifts the epicentre of travelling LBM waves upward, which disrupts the intensity of population outbreaks that occurred regularly over the past millennium in the European Alps. Our findings demonstrate the ability of DA to detect ecological responses beyond internal system variability, to attribute them to specific external climate forcing factors and to identify climate‐induced ecological tipping points.
In order to implement the climatological concept of ‘Detection and Attribution’ successfully into modern global change ecology, future studies should combine high‐resolution paleoenvironmental reconstructions and state‐of‐the‐art climate model simulations to inform inference‐based ecosystem models.
A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.
A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.
The variability of the surface wind field over Northeastern North America was analysed through a statistical downscaling (SD) approach, using the relationships among the main large-scale and observed ...wind circulation modes. The large-scale variables were provided by 12 global reanalyses. The observed zonal and meridional wind components come from a database of 525 sites spanning over 1953–2010. A large percentage of the regional variability was explained in terms of three major large- and regional/local-scale coupled circulation patterns, accounting for 55.3% (59.3%) of the large (regional/local) scale variability. The method delivered robust results regardless of the SD model configuration, albeit with sensitivity to the number of retained circulation modes and the large-scale window size, but not to the reanalysis chosen for the large-scale variables. The methodological uncertainty was larger for sites/wind components with larger variability. A parameter configuration chosen for yielding the best possible SD estimations showed high correlation values between these estimations and the observations for the majority of the sites (0.6–0.9, significant at
p
<
0.05
), and a realistic wind variance (standard deviation ratios between 0.6 and 1.0), with similar results regardless of the reanalysis. The reanalysis direct wind outputs showed higher correlations than the SD estimates (0.7–0.97, also significant). The skill in reproducing observational variance differed considerably from model to model (ratios between 0.5 and 3). The regional wind climatology was reconstructed back to 1850 with the help of century long reanalyses and two additional SLP gridded datasets allowing to estimate the variability at decadal and multidecadal timescales. Recent trends in the wind components are not unusual in the context of century-long reconstructed variability. Extreme values in both components tend to appear associated with high values in the first two modes of variability.
The treatment of persistent symptoms attributed to Lyme disease remains controversial. We assessed whether longer-term antibiotic treatment of persistent symptoms attributed to Lyme disease leads to ...better outcomes than does shorter-term treatment.
In a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial conducted in Europe, we assigned patients with persistent symptoms attributed to Lyme disease--either related temporally to proven Lyme disease or accompanied by a positive IgG or IgM immunoblot assay for Borrelia burgdorferi--to receive a 12-week oral course of doxycycline, clarithromycin plus hydroxychloroquine, or placebo. All study groups received open-label intravenous ceftriaxone for 2 weeks before initiating the randomized regimen. The primary outcome measure was health-related quality of life, as assessed by the physical-component summary score of the RAND-36 Health Status Inventory (RAND SF-36) (range, 15 to 61, with higher scores indicating better quality of life), at the end of the treatment period at week 14, after the 2-week course of ceftriaxone and the 12-week course of the randomized study drug or placebo had been completed.
Of the 281 patients who underwent randomization, 280 were included in the modified intention-to-treat analysis (86 patients in the doxycycline group, 96 in the clarithromycin-hydroxychloroquine group, and 98 in the placebo group). The SF-36 physical-component summary score did not differ significantly among the three study groups at the end of the treatment period, with mean scores of 35.0 (95% confidence interval CI, 33.5 to 36.5) in the doxycycline group, 35.6 (95% CI, 34.2 to 37.1) in the clarithromycin-hydroxychloroquine group, and 34.8 (95% CI, 33.4 to 36.2) in the placebo group (P=0.69; a difference of 0.2 95% CI, -2.4 to 2.8 in the doxycycline group vs. the placebo group and a difference of 0.9 95% CI, -1.6 to 3.3 in the clarithromycin-hydroxychloroquine group vs. the placebo group); the score also did not differ significantly among the groups at subsequent study visits (P=0.35). In all study groups, the SF-36 physical-component summary score increased significantly from baseline to the end of the treatment period (P<0.001). The rates of adverse events were similar among the study groups. Four serious adverse events thought to be related to drug use occurred during the 2-week open-label ceftriaxone phase, and no serious drug-related adverse event occurred during the 12-week randomized phase.
In patients with persistent symptoms attributed to Lyme disease, longer-term antibiotic treatment did not have additional beneficial effects on health-related quality of life beyond those with shorter-term treatment. (Funded by the Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development ZonMw; PLEASE ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT01207739.).
After implementing
(free internal trade) in 1778, the Spanish crown endeavored to create multiple new
(chambers of commerce) to facilitate commercial exchange within Spain's Atlantic territories. ...However, while the crown established new metropolitan consulados in the mid-1780s, it approved colonial consulados only in the 1790s, after the death of the minister of the Indies, José de Gálvez, in 1787. Why did the crown initially hesitate to establish colonial consulados? I argue that unlike Gálvez, who was committed to an extractive system of imperialism, the post-1787 ministers were inspired by a distinct kind of soft imperialism, which held that the empire's survival depended on stimulating colonial economic growth while promoting reciprocal bonds among all Spanish subjects. In reconstructing this history, I show how the post-1787 ministers established a new regime of colonial economic improvement to bind the empire during a moment of impending crisis.
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