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We describe a method for quantifying the contribution of climate change to local monthly, seasonal, and annual mean temperatures for locations where long observational temperature records are available. The method is based on estimating the change in the monthly mean temperature distribution due to climate change using CMIP6 (Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6) model data. As a case study, we apply the method to the record‐warm September 2023 in Helsinki, and then briefly examine all record‐warm months of the 21st century. Our results suggest that climate change made the record‐warm September in Helsinki 9.4 times more likely and 1.4°C warmer. Thus, the new monthly mean record in September 2023 would probably not have been set without the observed global warming. The presented and provided tool allows operational meteorologists and climatologists to monitor and report the impact of climate change on local temperatures in near real time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Science can offer solutions to a wide range of societal problems. Key to capitalizing on such solutions is the public's trust and willingness to grant influence to scientists in shaping policy. However, previous research on determinants of trust is limited and does not factor in the diversity of scientific occupations. The present study (N = 2,780; U.S. participants) investigated how four well-established dimensions of social evaluations (competence, assertiveness, morality, warmth) shape trust in 45 types of scientists (from agronomists to zoologists). Trust in most scientists was relatively high but varied considerably across occupations. Perceptions of morality and competence emerged as the most important antecedents of trust, in turn predicting the willingness to grant scientists influence in managing societal problems. Importantly, the contribution of morality (but not competence) varied across occupations: Morality was most strongly associated with trust in scientists who work on contentious and polarized issues (e.g., climatologists). Therefore, the diversity of scientific occupations must be taken into account to more precisely map trust, which is important for understanding when scientific solutions find their way to policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gamified-integrated STEM is a technique that combines integrated STEM stages with gamification elements and can engage individuals in climate change communication. This paper presents a gamified-integrated STEM activity focused on global climate change. The activity includes gamified-integrated STEM instructional stages implemented in 6 lesson hours. The game elements used in the activity were time, rewards, points, badges, leaderboards, materials, stories, goals, and rules. Badges included: Decoders, Explorer, Meteorologist, Climatologist, Benevolent Koala, Scientist, and Engineer. The activity was designed for middle school students and aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards. Educators are encouraged to incorporate this pedagogical activity within their instructions to elucidate fundamental concepts related to the consequences of climate change. In doing so, teachers can promote student engagement, improve awareness, and refine problem-solving competencies pertinent to climate-centric challenges. The activity has been evaluated and recommendations for enhancement have been made to ensure optimal efficacy in cultivating gamification and a nuanced understanding of climate-related topics among learners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ClimeApp is a newly developed web-based processing tool for the state-of-the-art ModE-RA paleo-climate reanalysis. It presents temperature, precipitation and pressure reconstructions with global coverage and monthly resolution for the period 1422 to 2008 C.E. These can be visualized as maps or timeseries and compared with historical or other climate-related information through composite, correlation and regression functions. Alongside ModE-RA, ClimeApp allows access to the ModE-Sim climate simulation, which is the basis of ModE-RA before assimilating early instrumental, documentary and proxy data. Together with the sensitivity experiment ModE-RAclim, these three data sets allow researchers to separate the effects of external forcing from internal climate variability. The app is designed to allow quick data processing for climatologists and easy use for non-climatologists. Specifically, it aims to help bring climate into the humanities, where climatological data still has huge potential to advance research. This paper outlines the development, processing and applications of ClimeApp, and presents an updated analysis of the calamitous Tambora volcanic eruption and the 1816 'year without a summer' in Europe, using the new ModE datasets. ClimeApp is available at https://mode-ra.unibe.ch/climeapp/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The book "Our Fragile Moment: How the Lessons from Earth's Past Can Help Us Survive the Climate Crisis" by climatologist Michael Mann analyzes climate changes on Earth over millions of years, including events such as the Permian-Triassic mass extinction and the impact of the Chicxulub asteroid. The author seeks to find analogies in Earth's past that can help us confront the current climate change. According to the data presented, the possibility of a future sea-level rise is raised, but it is mentioned that sedimentary evidence does not consider geological effects and that the actual increase could be around ten meters instead of thirty. Additionally, the importance of reducing carbon emissions to preserve our climate is discussed. [Extracted from the article]

A number of indices exist to help climatologists understand and communicate varying aspects of local to global scale conditions. The h‐index can be applied to weather data to summarize the magnitude and frequency of heat events on an annual or seasonal basis. Using both station and reanalysis model output data for the Arabian Peninsula, this research documents the value of the h‐index approach. The method is applied to daily high temperature, daily high apparent temperature, warm overnight low temperature and warm overnight apparent temperature for the period 1991–2022. Application of the h‐index approach to data from the Arabian Peninsula provides findings that strengthen and add to existing knowledge for the region. Findings from analysis of the ERA5‐Land dataset reinforce the findings from station data and provide results for wall‐to‐wall coverage of the study area, with lower h‐index values at higher elevations. Trend analysis results corroborate ideas related to greater warming of overnight lows. The findings document that the h‐index can be used in a subtropical desert climate region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self‐organizing maps (SOMs) represent a popular tool for classifying atmospheric circulation patterns. One of their traditional applications has been to link typical synoptic‐scale patterns to large‐scale teleconnections, or modes of low‐frequency circulation variability. However, recently there have been attempts to interpret an array of SOM nodes directly as a continuum of teleconnections, grounded in SOMs' ability to combine two otherwise distinct approaches to data analysis, that is, exploratory projection (or, dimensionality reduction) and classification. This conceptual shift calls for methodological studies that would improve our understanding of how orthogonal modes of variability, typically used to describe teleconnections, relate to SOM outputs. Here, we define three idealized modes of variability and use their various combinations to generate synthetic data sets. Many variants of SOMs are generated for SOMs of various shapes and sizes. The results show that projection of modes on a SOM array is sensitive not only to data structure, but also to various SOM parameters. The leading mode of variability projects rather strongly on SOMs if its explained variance is markedly higher than that of the second‐order mode; the remaining modes project considerably more weakly, and all modes tend to blend when their explained variance is similar, which leads to underrepresentation of some phases of modes and/or combinations of modes among the SOM patterns. Furthermore, we show that some features of SOM topology that were previously considered a proof of data nonlinearity appear even if the underlying modes of variability are strictly linear. Plain Language Summary: One of the tasks of a climatologist is to group together days with similar weather over a region, and to find out how such types of regional weather are influenced by distant locations. These distant influences, also known as teleconnections, are intricate and studying how the methods we use to study them deal with these intricacies is one of the keys that helps us understand the climate. One way to start this task is to apply simple and well‐understood data sets to methods and examine how they interpret the data. In the paper, we studied the popular method of self‐organizing maps in such a way. We found that the method usually identifies the strongest teleconnection, but the images of weaker teleconnections tend to be unclear or even blend together. We use our results to revisit findings of some previous studies and to discuss how self‐organizing maps could be improved in the future to give us more accurate information on the atmosphere. Key Points: Synthetic fields are generated as linear combinations of three idealized functions of spatial co‐variability, or circulation modesSelf‐organizing maps have limited ability to represent the second and third modes, and modes tend to blend when their variance is similarPrincipal component analysis may detect data structures conducive to high sensitivity of self‐organizing maps to the choice of parameters [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study evaluates the performance of high‐resolution global climate models derived from Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6 HighResMIP), in simulating rainfall characteristics over Madagascar on an annual and seasonal scales for the period 1981–2014. The models and their ensemble mean are assessed based on two observational datasets sourced from Climate Hazards Group Infrared Precipitation with Station data version 2 (CHIRPS v2.0) data and the European Centre for Medium‐Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) reanalysis fifth generation‐Land dataset (ERA5) as the references throughout the diverse analyses. A Taylor diagram, accompanied by the Taylor skill score (TSS), is used for the annual and seasonal model‐rankings and the overall performance of the models. The best‐performing models are EC‐Earth3P‐HR, ECMWF‐IFS‐HR, ECMWF‐IFS‐LR and HadGEM3‐GC31‐MM. The least‐recommended models with remarkable biases are BCC‐CSM2‐HR, CAMS‐CSM1‐0, FGOALS‐f3‐H, MPI‐ESM1‐2‐HR and MPI‐ESM1‐2‐XR. It is worth mentioning that FGOALS‐f3‐H tends to overestimate rainfall in most analyses, while MPI‐ESM1‐2‐HR and MPI‐ESM1‐2‐XR underestimate it. The findings of this study are of great importance to climatologists and present an opportunity for further investigation of underlying processes responsible for the observed wet/dry biases in order to improve the forecast skills in the models over the study area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Chicago area there are in the south-eastern of Lake Michigan in the north of Illinois State with climatic influences from Lake Michigan. The data obtained refer to the stations Chicago, Freeport, Rockford, Kenosha, Aurora, Gary, Joliet, Ottawa, Dixon, Clinton, Dekalb, Kankakee, Pontiac, Peoria, Bloomington. The climate of the Chicago Area is with cold winters and scattered snowfall in the winter months. The study shows some estimates of snowfall trends over a multi-year period. Data refers to reports from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration National Weather Service, Chicago, IL, 333 West University Drive, Romeoville, IL. The analysis of snow precipitation amount data is based on the application of the mathematical method Excel. The results show that precipitation values are different over the years. Trends are given by regression equations. For January 1985-2021: y = 4.4576x + 1937.5, R² = 0.0378. The tendency of the value of snowfall for the months of January is with a constant 4.4576. In the period Seasonal Snowfall Totals for Chicago from 1884 to 2021: y = 2.3353x + 1890.2, R² = 0.0868. The tendency of the value of snowfall for each year period is with a constant 2.3353. The smallest amount of snow precipitation is estimated for the years 1920-1921 with 9.8 inches. The highest amount of snow precipitation is estimated for the years 1978-1979 with 89.7 inch. All result are based on statistical method. Our statewide snowfall records in Illinois start in 1902. There is no long-term trend in snowfall since 1902. However, some decades were snowier than others, such as the 1910s, 1960s, and 1970s. In fact, the 1970s were the snowiest decade on record with an average snowfall of 27.2 inches. Snowfall amounts dropped steeply with less year to year variability for much of the 1980s and into the early 2000s. However, snowfall amounts in the last 6 winters have been more variable with the winter of 2014 being about as snowy as the late 1970s. The snowiest winter on record was 1979 with 44.5 inches. Here are the 5 snowiest winters on record: 1979 with 44.5 inches; 1978 with 44.4 inches; 1912 with 39.5 inches; 2014 with 39.4 inches; 1960 with 38.6 inches; Snowfall is accumulated from July 1 of the first year to June 30 of the second year. The second year is used in the plot and table (for example, 2006 refers to the 2005-2006 season, source: state climatologist Illinois). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is a complex phenomenon that affects all socio-environmental systems, manifesting itself uniquely in different regions. To comprehensively understand and project the extent of its impact, it is crucial to engage in a collaborative effort involving specialists from various disciplines. The international scientific community has made significant progress in developing diverse datasets for studying climate variability and change, along with the formulation of suitable methodologies for their analysis. However, there is a tendency within certain disciplines to rely solely on a single source of climate data, either for the sake of simplicity or due to its compatibility with desired resolution or availability requirements. In this context, climatologists express their apprehension regarding the uncritical utilization of climate databases. It is from this concern that the present article aims to provide a comprehensive description of the scope and limitations associated with the available databases. Furthermore, the article addresses the issue of uncertainty in climate projections and offers guidance on how to effectively employ climate data in conducting experiments pertaining to species distribution, while considering the inherent uncertainty associated with such data. Emphasis is placed on the significance of conducting multiple experiments utilizing independent climate projections, as well as utilizing statistical tools to draw conclusions based on a range of potential solutions. By adopting this approach, researchers can more effectively assess the impact of climate change and its implications for species distribution patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban climatologist particularly those interested in Urban Heat Island (UHI), require some form of explanations to UHI variations at both spatial and temporal scales in cities. Temperature cooling and warming rate can be use as a form of explanations for spatial and temporal variations for UHI intensity characteristics of an area. This study therefore, assessed variations in temperature warming and cooling rates in Jalingo. The study used temperature data collected at six locations representing six different thermal climate zones in the study area. Temperature data were collected for the period of 90 days thirty days in each of rainy season, dry season, and hamattan period. Simple statistical analysis was performed to determine the warming and cooling rates. The results indicate that temperature warm and cool differently in the study area. The results also revealed that general warming in the area within the study period begins at 8:00 h local time (GMT +1) with warming rate ranging from 0.94℃ to 1.75℃ across locations with a mean of 1.30℃. Cooling starts at 15:00 h ranging from -0.88℃ to -1.84℃ with an average of -1.48℃. It is recommended that environmental planners particularly the urban planners and Architectures should take into considerations the warming and cooling rates in their building design and also embrace appropriate landscaping to improve thermal comfort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Documentary climate data describe evidence of past climate arising from predominantly written historical documents such as diaries, chronicles, newspapers, or logbooks. Over the past decades, historians and climatologists have generated numerous document-based time series of local and regional climates. However, a global dataset of documentary climate time series has never been compiled, and documentary data are rarely used in large-scale climate reconstructions. Here, we present the first global multi-variable collection of documentary climate records. The dataset DOCU-CLIM comprises 621 time series (both published and hitherto unpublished) providing information on historical variations in temperature, precipitation, and wind regime. The series are evaluated by formulating proxy forward models (i.e., predicting the documentary observations from climate fields) in an overlapping period. Results show strong correlations, particularly for the temperature-sensitive series. Correlations are somewhat lower for precipitation-sensitive series. Overall, we ascribe considerable potential to documentary records as climate data, especially in regions and seasons not well represented by early instrumental data and palaeoclimate proxies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this research, patterning of rainstorm (more than 10 mm) was conducted by instability indices in Ahvaz. At first, rainfall data from 2000 to 2015 was extracted and statistically examined. Instability indices for rainy days were calculated by the Skew-T diagram. Then, patterning was done by using hierarchical clustering, Ward method, and Euclidean distance. As the sample, one day was selected from each cluster and was synoptically analyzed. The results revealed 60 rainstorms for the respective period. More rainstorms occurred in January and December. Autumn and winter had the most frequent days of rainstorm, while it did not occur in the summer. The results of classification divided rainstorms into 4 patterns and more days were in the fourth class, while the least was in the second class. In the second and fourth classes, instability indices were severe and could predict possible rainstorms, but the first and third classes couldn't predict because synoptic systems caused the occurrence of the rainstorm. In the second and fourth classes, rainstorms were convectional. The synoptic analysis showed that every time rainstorm occurred in Ahvaz, a deep trough at 500 hPa was formed in the East Mediterranean and the area was in front of it. Also, at sea level pressure, a low-pressure system formed in Iraq and winds got humid by passing through the Persian Gulf and entered into the atmosphere of Ahvaz. Due to the unstable atmosphere, the air would rise to heights causing rainstorm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For more than two decades, the Global Positioning System (GPS) under a method called GPS meteorology, has been providing valuable products and parameters for meteorologists and climatologists in addition to its main purpose, which is positioning. GPS meteorology can be used in both space-based and ground-based modes. The space-based approach, called GPS Radio Occultation (RO), is used to provide the profiles of refractivity, temperature, pressure, and water vapor pressure in a neutral atmosphere and electron density in the ionosphere. However, ground-based GPS meteorology is utilized to estimate the tropospheric delay of the GPS signals and Precipitable Water Vapor (PWV) value. To date, GPS RO profiles have been used in several researches to study ionosphere and troposphere layers in Iran. However, no studies have yet used these data to estimate and evaluate PWV. In this study, GPS RO profiles were used to calculate and evaluate PWV over the study area. For statistical comparison, ground-based PWV (GB PWV) estimates in 41 stations in the study region have been considered reliable values. After selecting the pair of PWV values obtained from the space-based and ground-based GPS meteorology in the region, statistical parameters were extracted. In general, the results showed that the GPSRO PWV values have 80% correlation with the corresponding values obtained from the ground-based method. The average and RMSE of the GB-GPSRO PWV differences in the region were estimated at 3 mm and 5.2 mm, respectively. Also, the effective parameters on the accuracy of GPSRO PWV values such as seasonal changes, the position of stations, the difference in height of the lowest point of the GPS RO profile from the ground (dh), and the horizontal distance between the profile and the ground station were examined. The correlation of GPSRO PWV and GB PWV for winter, spring, summer, and autumn seasons were estimated at 0.75, 0.72, 0.73, and 0.85, respectively. The reason for the greater correlation between these two methods in the cold seasons of the year can be attributed to the lower variation of PWV values in these seasons. After sensitivity analysis of the factors considered in relation to the quality of GPSRO PWV values, statistical comparison between GB and GPS RO methods was performed using new conditions. The results showed that with dh <500m condition, the MBE and RMSE of GPSRO PWV compare to ground-based method decreased by about 50% and 25%, respectively, and the correlation between these two methods improved by 5%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The winter 1788/89 was one of the coldest winters Europe had witnessed in the past 300 years. Fortunately, for historical climatologists, this extreme event occurred at a time when many stations across Europe, both private and as part of coordinated networks, were making quantitative observations of the weather. This means that several dozen early instrumental series are available to carry out an in-depth study of this severe cold spell. While there have been attempts to present daily spatial information for this winter, there is more to be done to understand the weather variability and day-to-day processes that characterised this weather extreme. In this study, we seek to reconstruct daily spatial high-resolution temperature and sea level pressure fields of the winter 1788/89 in Europe from November through February. The reconstruction is performed with an analogue resampling method (ARM) that uses both historical instrumental data and a weather type classification. Analogue reconstructions are then post-processed through an ensemble Kalman fitting (EnKF) technique. Validation experiments show good skill for both reconstructed variables, which manage to capture the dynamics of the extreme in relation to the large-scale circulation. These results are promising for more such studies to be undertaken, focusing on different extreme events and other regions in Europe and perhaps even further back in time. The dataset presented in this study may be of sufficient quality to allow historians to better assess the environmental and social impacts of the harsh weather. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, the tropical Pacific frequently experiences a new type of El Niño with warming center in the central tropical Pacific (i.e., the CP-El Niño) with distinct global climate effect to the traditional El Niño (i.e., EP-El Niño). Predicting the El Niño diversity is still a huge challenge for climatologists partly due to the precursory signals of El Niño events with different type is unclear. In the present study, a novel precursory signal of the CP-El Niño event that presents a negative sea surface temperature anomaly in the eastern tropical Pacific (i.e., EP-cooling mode) is revealed. The transition from the EP-cooling mode to CP-El Niño is explained by the basin-scale air–sea coupling in the tropical Pacific and teleconnections between the tropical and North Pacific. With the EP-cooling mode as a predictor, the forecast skill for the CP-El Niño in hindcast experiments is obviously improved by using regression models. The results in the present study are therefore instructive for promoting a better understanding of El Niño diversity and predictability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unprecedented climate extremes will likely become a new 'normal'. Urban political ecology is thus confronted with the challenge of exploring and theorising emerging geographies of unprecedented climate change. This raises questions on the extent and ways in which past socionatures can be mobilised for this task. It also urges a critical reflection on what forms of knowledge are needed to meet political ecology's normative aspirations of transforming emerging and future socionatures of climate change. I argue that a critique of past and present socionatures alone is not enough to meet these theoretical and normative goals. The main objective of this paper, therefore, is to lay the foundations of a future-oriented urban political ecology that approaches geographies of climate change more experimentally and speculatively. To this aim, I examine the explanatory potential of two (of many possible) experiments, collaboratively developed by a team of hydrologists, climatologists, and political ecologists. Both experiments depart from past and present logics of colonial violence, racial capitalism, and climate change, but explore competing notions of unprecedented futures. The first experiment consists of a critical-realist scenario approach that examines how power and variability in the exercise of agency might shape outcomes of future unprecedented climate extremes. The second involves a model that speculatively brings about a better world in response to climate extremes and lays the foundation of a political ecology of possibility. The paper thereby serves as a demonstration of how critique can be mobilised to explore and reimagine urban futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The generation of index-based series of meteorological phenomena, derived from narrative descriptions of weather and climate in historical documentary sources, is a common method to reconstruct past climatic variability and effectively extend the instrumental record. This study is the first to explicitly examine the degree of inter-rater variability in producing such series, a potential source of bias in index-based analyses. Two teams of raters were asked to produce a five-category annual rainfall index series for the same dataset, consisting of transcribed narrative descriptions of meteorological variability for 11 "rain years" in nineteenth-century Lesotho, originally collected by Nash and Grab (2010). One group of raters (n = 71) was comprised of students studying for postgraduate qualifications in climatology or a related discipline; the second group (n = 6) consisted of professional meteorologists and historical climatologists working in southern Africa. Inter-rater reliability was high for both groups at r = 0.99 for the student raters and r = 0.94 for the professional raters, although ratings provided by the student group disproportionately averaged to the central value (0: normal/seasonal rains) where variability was high. Back calculation of intraclass correlation using the Spearman–Brown prediction formula showed that a target reliability of 0.9 (considered "excellent" in other published studies) could be obtained with as few as eight student raters and four professional raters. This number reduced to two when examining a subset of the professional group (n = 4) who had previously published historical climatology papers on southern Africa. We therefore conclude that variability between researchers should be considered minimal where index-based climate reconstructions are generated by trained historical climatologists working in groups of two or more. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change has contributed substantially to the weather and land characteristic phenomena. Accurate time series forecasting for climate and land parameters is highly essential in the modern era for climatologists. This paper provides a brief introduction to the algorithm and its implementation in Python. The pattern-sequence-based forecasting (PSF) algorithm aims to forecast future values of a univariate time series. The algorithm is divided into two major processes: the clustering of data and prediction. The clustering part includes the selection of an optimum value for the number of clusters and labeling the time series data. The prediction part consists of the selection of a window size and the prediction of future values with reference to past patterns. The package aims to ease the use and implementation of PSF for python users. It provides results similar to the PSF package available in R. Finally, the results of the proposed Python package are compared with results of the PSF and ARIMA methods in R. One of the issues with PSF is that the performance of forecasting result degrades if the time series has positive or negative trends. To overcome this problem difference pattern-sequence-based forecasting (DPSF) was proposed. The Python package also implements the DPSF method. In this method, the time series data are first differenced. Then, the PSF algorithm is applied to this differenced time series. Finally, the original and predicted values are restored by applying the reverse method of the differencing process. The proposed methodology is tested on several complex climate and land processes and its potential is evidenced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Georgia, located in the Southeastern USA, has been historically dominated by two perennial forage grass production systems. Tall fescue (Lolium arundinaceum [Schreb.] S.J. Darbyshire) is more prevalent in the northern parts of the state, while bermudagrass [Cynodon dactylon (L.) Pers.] is ubiquitous to the southern portion. Climatologists have documented notable changes in temperature and precipitation patterns in the state that have contributed to an invasion of warm‐season species in the northern portion of the state. In the transition zones between warm‐season and‐cool‐season perennial grass‐dominated regions of North America, C4 grasses can maintain productivity at high temperatures while C3 grasses are transitioning to a reproductive stage with minimal vegetative growth during summer. For this reason, warm‐season grasses could replace a portion of the grasslands at latitudes greater than 35°. This manuscript documents the expansion of warm‐season bermudagrass into northern Georgia, explores the climatic factors driving this transition, and highlights previous and on‐going research. We specifically focus on evaluating freeze or cold tolerance of bermudagrass germplasm. The C. dactylon cultivars exhibit more cold tolerance than C. nlemfuënsis (stargrass) since they are more rhizomatous and rely less on above‐ground stolons for regrowth and winter survival. Conversely, these cultivars tend to have poor nutritive value and are highly susceptible to insect damage. On‐going research is identifying germplasm that provides adequate cold tolerance to meet the needs of farmers transitioning to warm‐season production systems in the lower transition zone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this virtual special issue (VSI) is to synthesize knowledge about the evolution and significance of the Tibetan Plateau uplift, together with associated environmental changes, ecology responses, and human development over deep-time to Quaternary timescales. The VSI has been organized by the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences (ITPCAS), which celebrates its 20th anniversary. The VSI comprises 29 publications that can be grouped into four scientific topics: 1) tectonic evolution and uplift of Tibetan Plateau since Cretaceous times; 2) pre-Quaternary climate and environment linked to Tibetan Plateau uplift; 3) climate and environmental changes, and the 4) ecological response to climate changes during the late Quaternary on Tibetan Plateau. Findings will be of interest to a broad range of scientists including geologists, ecologists and climatologists. • Tectonic evolution and uplift of Tibetan Plateau since Cretaceous times • Pre-Quaternary climate and environment linked to Tibetan Plateau uplift. • Late Quaternary climate change on Tibetan Plateau. • Ecological response to climate changes during the late Quaternary on Tibetan Plateau. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reid Allen Bryson (1920–2008) was a forceful orator who consistently fought against institutional pressures to get his messages out to the public. In the 1960s, Bryson was a leader in the wider academic turn toward politically charged interdisciplinarianism. To the dismay of many of his colleagues, he publicly made climatological prognoses in the 1970s, becoming a significant figure in the media landscape. He was not swayed by the arguments for global warming, even as the framing became the recognized face of climate change in the late 1980s. By examining the controversies that Bryson instigated and the currents that he swam against, we can see the wider community crystallizing and promoting positions that may have previously gone unstated. In addition, Bryson's personal contribution to the rise of climate discourse has been underexplored in the historical literature. Bryson was instrumental in bringing climate onto the political radar during the World Food Crisis of 1973, shocking both the US and Canadian political establishments into paying more attention to the issue. Bryson's narrative linking climate change to both food supply and a series of climate anomalies in the 1970s remained predominant in the first World Climate Conference of 1979. Bryson also helped break a seal on climatologists speaking directly to the media, leading to unprecedented climate discourse in the 1970s and giving climate change a springboard to become one of the defining issues of the 21st century. This article is categorized under:Climate, History, Society, Culture > Thought Leaders [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Birch belongs to the most important allergenic taxa in Europe, therefore information on the start dates of the pollen season is very important for allergists and their patients as well as for climatologists. The study examined changes in the start of the birch pollen season as well as determined the trend of these changes. Pollen monitoring was performed in Lublin (eastern Poland) in the period 2001–2019 using the volumetric method. The Makra-test was used to detect periods with significantly higher or lower average of the onset than the average for the whole dataset. Two significant falls in the average of the pollen season start were found in 2007 and 2014. Besides, taking into account the 2-3-year rhythm of high and low concentrations of birch pollen in the atmospheric air, linear trends were fitted for the subsets of high and low abundance seasons. Significant changes in Betula pollen season start dates were only determined for the highly abundance seasons, while the results for seasons with a low concentration did not allow rejecting the hypothesis about the lack of a linear trend in the changes in the studied parameter. Moreover, a significant polynomial relationship was found between the beginning of a pollen season and the average values of monthly temperatures preceded a season. These analyses show that the start dates of the Betula pollen season are getting significantly earlier. The dynamics of changes differ between seasons with high and low concentrations of pollen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this interview, Rutgers University climatologist Alan Robock talks with Elisabeth Eaves from the Bulletin about geoengineering and nuclear winter. He says that geoengineering is not the solution to global warming because of its many risks and unknowns. He notes that some of the technology that would be required to implement geoengineering has not been developed and that many socio-political questions would have to be resolved before it could be put into practice. The world would have to reach agreement on a target temperature and on what entity should do the implementing. Robock’s biggest fear with regard to geoengineering is that disputes over these questions could escalate into nuclear war which in turn could cause nuclear winter, producing global famine among other effects. He goes on to describe his meeting with former Cuban President Fidel Castro and discuss the role of the arts in addressing existential threats. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since taking office in 2006, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has transformed science in Canada, particularly for government scientists. The author describes and assesses these changes, from revised communication policies for government scientists, to the closure of scientific facilities and offices, to the altered landscape for science funding. In these changes, one can see an importation of a corporate model into governance, with government practices streamlined to ensure near-exclusive focus on the particular agenda of the government. But democracies should not be run like corporations; they require greater openness and acceptance of divergent interests within government science. In particular, government research is often crucial to the assessment of government actions and policies, and citizens require access to this information to be able to assess their government at times of election. The author articulates four implementable principles that can help maintain science’s important place in democratic governance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Many nuclear power plants were situated next to the ocean to have ready access to huge volumes of water, and sometimes they were built on land that was not very high above mean sea level. These characteristics may cause problems if ocean levels rise the one or two meters that most climatologists project as a result of climate change. The core of the problem resides in nuclear power’s dependence on two things: water and off-site power. Operating and safely shutting down a nuclear power plant require large supplies of cooling water, as well as the power to operate the control panels and the pumps that circulate the water. The Fukushima Daiichi accident happened after the facility lost its connection to the electrical grid and floodwaters caused the backup diesel generators to fail. While an earthquake caused the tsunami that led to the situation, a severe storm coupled with rising sea levels could have the same end result, especially in low-lying areas suffering from increased erosion caused by climate change. Off-site power losses, or “station blackouts,” have long been a commonly recognized risk at nuclear power plants. Backup systems have worked in the past, but dramatically rising sea levels, more frequent and intense storms, and the associated erosion that goes with them could make backup electrical systems problematic. To complicate the situation, the same storm and flood that affects a given power plant also interferes with the plant’s communication and transportation networks, hampering the ability of personnel to respond to any crisis at the facility. At a minimum, climate change and the resulting rise in sea level will lead to concerns about the safety and cost of nuclear power plant operation and construction. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Narrative evidence contained within historical documents and inscriptions provides an important record of climate variability for periods prior to the onset of systematic meteorological data collection. A common approach used by historical climatologists to convert such qualitative information into continuous quantitative proxy data is through the generation of ordinal-scale climate indices. There is, however, considerable variability in the types of phenomena reconstructed using an index approach and the practice of index development in different parts of the world. This review, written by members of the PAGES (Past Global Changes) CRIAS working group – a collective of climate historians and historical climatologists researching Climate Reconstructions and Impacts from the Archives of Societies – provides the first global synthesis of the use of the index approach in climate reconstruction. We begin by summarising the range of studies that have used indices for climate reconstruction across six continents (Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas, and Australia) as well as the world's oceans. We then outline the different methods by which indices are developed in each of these regions, including a discussion of the processes adopted to verify and calibrate index series, and the measures used to express confidence and uncertainty. We conclude with a series of recommendations to guide the development of future index-based climate reconstructions to maximise their effectiveness for use by climate modellers and in multiproxy climate reconstructions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing from theory on the "co-production" of science and society, this paper provides an account of trajectories in US climatology, roughly from the 1850s to 1920, the period during which climatology emerged as an organized branch of meteorology and government administration. The historical narrative traces the development of climatology both as a professional/institutional project and as a component of a larger governmental logic. Historical analysis of climatologists' scientific texts, maps, and social organization within government provides a sociological explanation for the emergent "stabilization" of climate as a geographic-statistical category. Climatic stability, defined by the view that climate is unchanging, was advanced over this period in a way that linked the interests and practices of climatologists to actors invested in facilitating and administrating commercial agriculture and trade. I position the logic of climatology and the discourse of climatic stability historically, with reference to prior concern with climate change and, in recent decades, efforts to govern global warming through geoengineering climatic stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Editor's Note: A version of this obituary first appeared online in the CMOS Bulletin. Morley Thomas, affectionately known as Canada's Mr. Climatology, died on March 31, 2018 in Watford, Ontario, [...]

The history of climate research in the 20th century has been characterised by a crucial shift from a geography‐oriented, two‐dimensional approach towards a physics‐based, three‐dimensional concept of climate. In the 1930s, the introduction of new technology, such as radiosondes, enabled climatologists to investigate the high atmosphere, which had previously been out of reach. This "conquest of the third dimension" challenged the surface‐oriented, geographical notion of climate patterns and opened up climatology to a three‐dimensional approach, which deeply changed the character of climate research. Two decades later, by drilling deep into polar glaciers and using the downward vertical dimension as an archive of the earth's history, ice core scientists began to reconstruct past climates layer by layer. The data retrieved in deep glacial layers contributed crucially to a temporal expansion of climate history far beyond human timescales. However, the inaccessibility of glaciers and the practical challenges of bringing fragile fragments of ice into transnational networks of scientific exchange meant that this vertical extension of climate knowledge production proceeded through a range of new scientific practices, and was shaped by new forms of international collaboration. Furthermore, this vertical approach to glaciers also asked for a new understanding of glacier volume. Drawing on archival and printed sources, I argue that ice core research represented a second discovery of the third dimension, this time downwards into the depth of the earth's surface, but again with decisive consequences for the research practice, for collaboration politics, and for understandings of climate, spatially as well as temporally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

State climatologists and other expert drought observers have speculated about the value of monitoring Twitter for #drought and related hashtags. This study statistically examines the relationships between the rate of tweeting using #drought and related hashtags, within states, accounting for drought status and news coverage of drought. We collected and geolocated tweets, 2017-18, and used regression analysis and a diversity statistic to explain expected and identify unexpected volumes of tweets. This provides a quantifiable means to detect state-weeks with a volume of tweets that exceeds the upper limit of the prediction interval. To filter out instances where a high volume of tweets is related to the activities of one person or very few people, a diversity statistic was used to eliminate anomalous state-weeks where the diversity statistic did not exceed the 75th percentile of the range for that state's diversity statistic. Anomalous state-weeks in a few cases preceded the onset of drought but more often coincided with or lagged increases in drought. Tweets are both a means of sharing original experience and a means of discussing news and other recent events, and anomalous weeks occurred throughout the course of a drought, not just at the beginning. A sum-to-zero contrast coefficient for each state revealed a difference in the propensity of different states to tweet about drought, apparently reflecting recent and long-term experience in those states, and suggesting locales that would be most predisposed to drought policy innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this interview, outspoken climatologist James E. Hansen reflects on his 30-plus years of studying climate change and warning the public about its dangers. He talks about the most recent developments in climate science and the questions still to be answered. Hansen endorses a gradually rising fee on carbon—with all proceeds refunded to the public—as the most expedient way to stabilize Earth's climate by the end of the century. A carbon fee would, he says, spur innovation in clean energy technologies and energy efficiency. Hansen talks about the continued constraints on scientific communication under the Obama administration and explains why the Keystone XL pipeline remains a focal point for protesters. Although recently retired as NASA's top climate scientist, Hansen intends to continue with both his science and his activism. He explains why efforts at geoengineering may soon become inevitable. He shares his concerns about the irreversible effects of continued climate change and the growing fears among many climate experts that it may already be too late to turn things around. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe is an evangelical Christian and makes no secret of that. In this interview, she describes how both her scientific expertise and her faith inform her efforts to explain climate change to the general public and especially to climate skeptics. She emphasizes the importance of responding to common questions and explicitly addressing misconceptions, and of starting climate conversations with a discussion of shared values—which, for Christians, means talking about the commandment to love one’s neighbors. Hayhoe talks about what it’s like to be a climate scientist whose work is under attack, and how her negative experiences with Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich are symptomatic of a culture in which opinions and gut feelings often take precedence over facts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article proposes a non-recursive detour for the perspectival concept of 'equivocation' by applying it to an ongoing ecopolitical approximation. I will describe how a Brazilian climatologist and a Yanomami shaman translate their concerns about the Amazonian rainforest in order to reach each other's audiences. Drawing on their public appearances and published texts, it will be argued that they mimetically rephrase their environmental thinking according to – what they assume to be – the conceptual imagination and the formats of communication of the Other. The shaman's and the scientist's connective gestures are thus taken as part of an exceptional form of public, ecopolitical dialogue, concerned with the future of the rainforest. Whereas the concept of 'equivocation' has proven useful to disclose the translational–ontological gap between the native's and the ethnographer's conceptual languages, this article aims at looking somewhere else than the recursive, ethnographic Self. In particular, the argument will pay attention to how equivocations and the so-called 'ontological differences' might be embodied by specific actors, in specific situations, inviting us to describe how these differences are de facto navigated and co-implicated by people other than anthropologists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The scientific collaboration between the French and Romanian geographers has had a long and rich history of over 120 years. Over time, it has gone through more or less favorable periods, depending on the political and historical context. This paper focuses on the post-1989 era, and highlights the academic relationships between the Faculty of Geography of the University of Bucharest and universities / research centers in France, with special regard to the fields of climatology, hydrology and geomorphology. Particular attention is paid to the memory of professor Gérard Beltrando, one of the French geographers (climatologist) strongly attached to Romania and to Romanians, and who, for more than 15 years, nurtured fruitful collaborations with geographers from the University of Bucharest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tries to answer the question whether the increase in temperature by 0.6°c recorded over the past hundred years at the level of planet earth represents a climate change and whether this also occurred in the past, based on information coming from the field of historical climatology. The information retrieved from historical documents indicates the fact that for the past 3,000 years the climate of the earth has not changed at all or it has not changed significantly; rainy or dry, cold or warm years, months, seasons, droughts, floods, etc. were frequently recorded in history, their presence indicating variability and not climate change, a fact proven by the studies of historians as well as by those of meteorologists, climatologists, geographers, physicists, etc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An examination of several historical texts in the Maya codices reveals that droughts were a significant concern to the pre-ColumbianMaya that ultimately resulted in the collapse of their civilization. The effects of such droughts mentioned in those texts include damage to crops, famine, and wildfires. The dates assigned to five droughts in the codical texts agree with dates obtained from the analysis of lacustrine cores and stalagmites in caves by climatologists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cooling and heating degree‐days (CDD/HDD) are important metrics used in energy studies as a proxy for determining demand and consumption patterns of residential/commercial buildings and work spaces. Driven by the requirements of energy impact modellers, policymakers and building design experts; a new historical high‐spatial resolution, global gridded dataset of degree‐days constructed using various base (threshold) temperatures (Tb) is presented in this study. Derived using sub‐daily temperature from a quality‐controlled reanalysis data product (Global Land Data Assimilation System—GLDAS), the dataset called 'DegDays_0p25_1970_2018' includes monthly and annual (i) CDD; (ii) HDD; and (iii) CDD computed using wet‐bulb temperature (CDDwb) at 0.25° × 0.25° gridded resolution, covering 49 years over the period 1970–2018. The Tb used for assembling DegDays_0p25_1970_2018 include 18, 18.3, 22, 23, 24, 25°C for CDD and CDDwb; and 10, 15, 15.5, 16, 17 and 18°C for HDD, respectively. The data of individual indices are made publicly available in the commonly used scientific Network Common Data Form 4 (NetCDF4) and Georeferenced Tagged Image File (GeoTIFF) formats. DegDays_0p25_1970_2018 fills gaps in existing energy indicators' datasets by being the only high‐resolution historical global gridded time series based on multiple threshold temperatures, thus offering applications in wide‐ranging climate zones and thermal comfort environments. The richness of DegDays_0p25_1970_2018 lies in its flexibility by allowing users to aggregate the degree‐days not only at varying spatial scales (such as administrative levels, national boundaries, economic organizations e.g. OECD; with or without population weights), but also at varying temporal scales (such as seasons), thereby offering climatologists with a potential to examine global teleconnection patterns more discretely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]