Fire in the Earth System Bowman, David M.J.S; Balch, Jennifer K; Artaxo, Paulo ...
Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science),
04/2009, Letnik:
324, Številka:
5926
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Fire is a worldwide phenomenon that appears in the geological record soon after the appearance of terrestrial plants. Fire influences global ecosystem patterns and processes, including vegetation ...distribution and structure, the carbon cycle, and climate. Although humans and fire have always coexisted, our capacity to manage fire remains imperfect and may become more difficult in the future as climate change alters fire regimes. This risk is difficult to assess, however, because fires are still poorly represented in global models. Here, we discuss some of the most important issues involved in developing a better understanding of the role of fire in the Earth system.
Abstract
Low-order equal-time statistics of a barotropic flow on a rotating sphere are investigated. The flow is driven by linear relaxation toward an unstable zonal jet. For relatively short ...relaxation times, the flow is dominated by critical-layer waves. For sufficiently long relaxation times, the flow is turbulent. Statistics obtained from a second-order cumulant expansion are compared to those accumulated in direct numerical simulations, revealing the strengths and limitations of the expansion for different relaxation times.
We discuss the applicability of quasilinear-type approximations for a turbulent system with a large range of spatial and temporal scales. We consider a paradigm fluid system of rotating convection ...with a vertical and horizontal temperature gradients. In particular, the interaction of rotating with the horizontal temperature gradient drives a ``thermal wind'' shear flow whose strength is controlled by a horizontal temperature gradient. Varying the parameters systematically alters the ordering of the shearing timescale, the convective timescale, and the correlation timescale. We demonstrate that quasilinear-type approximations work well when the shearing timescale or the correlation timescale is sufficiently short. In all cases, the Generalised Quasilinear approximation (GQL) systematically outperforms the Quasilinear approximation (QL). We discuss the consequences for statistical theories of turbulence interacting with mean gradients. We conclude with comments about the general applicability of these ideas across a wide variety of non-linear physical systems.
PDF
