Search

Coal fly ash (CFA) as a potential resource for rare earth elements and yttrium (REY) has attracted extensive attention over the past few years. This paper focuses on studying microwave systems for the leaching of REY from CFA. Leaching parameters including hydrochloric acid (HCl) concentration, microwave heating time, microwave heating rate, and temperature were assessed. The optimal recovery of 74.91% REY, 86.77% light rare earth elements (LREY), and 34.79% heavy rare earth elements (HREY) are obtained at the conditions of 3 M HCl, T = 220°C, heating rate 39°C/min, and leaching time 30 min. The closed microwave system produces hydrogen chloride fluid or hydrogen chloride gas that is easier to react with CFA than hydrogen ions. It was revealed by the analysis of XRD, particle size, porosity, and SEM that fracture development benefits the entrance of leaching reagents into the inner layer of CFA. A positive linear correlation was found between leaching efficiency and REY3+ ionic radius. The stability of the REY-O bond also remains consistent with the ionic radius, leading to behavior differences during the leaching. This work was targeted to provide a theoretical and technological foundation for microwave-assisted HCl leaching for the extraction of REY in CFA.

The vertical structure of Arctic warming is of great importance and attracts increasing attention. This study defines two types of Arctic warming events (viz., deep versus shallow) according to their temperature profiles averaged over the Barents-Kara Seas (BKS), and thereupon compares their characteristics and examines their difference in generation through thermodynamic diagnoses. The deep Arctic warming event—characterized by significant bottom-heavy warming extending from the surface into the middle-to-upper troposphere—emanates from the east of Greenland and then moves downstream towards the BKS primarily through zonal temperature advection. The peak day of deep warming event lags that of the precipitation and resultant diabatic heating over Southeast Greenland by about four days, suggesting that the middle-to-high tropospheric BKS warming is likely triggered by the enhanced upstream convection at the North Atlantic high latitudes. In contrast, the shallow warming event—manifested by warming confined within the lower troposphere—is preceded by the meridional advection of warm air from inland Eurasia. These anomalous southerlies over Eurasian lands during shallow warming events are related to the eastward extension of deepened Icelandic Low. Whereas during deep warming events, the in-situ reinforcement of Icelandic Low favors abundant moisture transport interplaying with the Southeast Greenland terrain, leading to intense precipitation and latent heat release there. Both deep and shallow warming events are accompanied by Eurasian cooling, but the corresponding cooling of deep warming event is profoundly stronger. Further, intraseasonal deep Arctic warming events could explain nearly half of the winter-mean change in warm Arctic-cold Eurasia anomaly.

A record-breaking Meiyu-Baiu rainfall hit East Asia in June–July 2020. The warm Indian Ocean (IO) has been identified as a primary cause, but it cannot explain the heavy rainfall in July, a striking characteristic of the 2020 Meiyu-Baiu rainfall. A remarkable retreat of Arctic sea ice in the late spring and early summer of 2020 also promoted Meiyu-Baiu rainfall by favoring North Asian blockings and cold air outbreaks. However, its importance compared with IO warming is unclear. Our result shows that the abundant moisture supply to the 2020 Meiyu-Baiu rainfall mainly stems from anomalous meridional wind convergence, while the excessive ascending motions are due to warm advection tied to enhanced mid-troposphere westerlies. AGCM experiments are used to examine the relative importance of IO warming and Arctic sea ice anomalies. In June, IO warming is responsible for the atmospheric circulation anomalies around the Meiyu-Baiu region and accounts for ~ 75% of the Meiyu-Baiu rainfall anomalies, despite the Arctic sea-ice loss explaining most circulation anomalies over Eurasian high latitudes. In July, both IO warming and Arctic sea-ice loss are necessary for meridional convergence, enhanced westerlies, and thus the heavy rainfall over the Meiyu-Baiu region. Their effects are interdependent rather than additive. Strong IO warming is rarely observed alongside severe Arctic sea-ice loss before 2020 because of their discordant interannual variations. In the future, the combined effects of IO warming and Arctic sea-ice loss on the Meiyu-Baiu rainfall may become more pronounced as their long-term trends continue.

Interdecadal variations of the relationship between El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Indo-China Peninsula (ICP) surface air temperature (SAT) in winter are investigated in the study. Generally, there exists a positive correlation between them during 1958–2015 because the ENSO-induced anomalous western North Pacific anticyclone (WNPAC) is conducive to pronounced temperature advection anomalies over the ICP. However, such correlation is unstable in time, having experienced a high-to-low transition around the mid-1970s and a recovery since the early 1990s. This oscillating relationship is owing to the anomalous WNPAC intensity in different decades. During the epoch of high correlation, the anomalous WNPAC and associated southwesterly winds over the ICP are stronger, which brings amounts of warm temperature advection and markedly heats the ICP. In contrast, a weaker WNPAC anomaly and insignificant ICP SAT anomalies are the circumstances for the epoch of low correlation. It is also found that substantial southwesterly wind anomalies over the ICP related to the anomalous WNPAC occur only when large sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies over the northwest Indian Ocean (NWIO) coincide with ENSO (viz., when the ENSO–NWIO SST connection is strong). The NWIO SST anomalies are capable of driving favorable atmospheric circulation that effectively alters ICP SAT and efficiently modulates the ENSO–ICP SAT correlation, which is further supported by numerical simulations utilizing the Community Atmospheric Model, version 4 (CAM4). This paper emphasizes the non-stationarity of the ENSO–ICP SAT relationship and also uncovers the underlying modulation factors, which has important implications for the seasonal prediction of the ICP temperature.

Tropical sea surface temperature (SST) and associated precipitation, acting as diabatic heat forcing, has far- reaching climatic impacts across the globe through exciting poleward-propagating Rossby waves. It is found that the leading mode of tropical Pacific forcing in austral autumn experiences a significant interdecadal shift from an eastern Pacific (EP) to a central Pacific (CP) type around the late 1990s. More specifically, the EP-type precipitation anomaly mode before 1998 drives a quadrupole-like teleconnection pathway emanating from the tropical Pacific to the Ross Sea and Amundsen–Bellingshausen Seas (ABS) region, whereas the CP-type mode after 1999 excites a Pacific–South American (PSA)-like teleconnection orienting along a great circle. Divergent flows induced by different precipitation anomaly modes primarily determine the generation of Rossby waves by means of the vortex stretching and vorticity advection processes. Furthermore, the synoptic high-frequency transient eddy activity along with its dynamic forcing effect differs greatly before and after 1998/99, contributing to different locations of the teleconnection lobes at mid- to high latitudes. In contrast, the subseasonal low-frequency transient eddy activity exerts a limited influence. Our findings also indicate that the EP-type (CP-type) tropical forcing mode could significantly modulate the zonal displacement (strength) of the Amundsen Sea low, which could lead to distinct climate responses of West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula in austral autumn., The 28th IUGG General Assembly (IUGG2023) (Berlin 2023)

The Mascarene High (MH), is a key component of the Asian-Africa-Australia monsoon system in austral winter (JJA). Its three-dimensional structures and maintenance mechanisms are examined in this study. It is a low-level subtropical high dominating the southern Africa and South Indian Ocean, characterized by a northwestward tilt with height, which is attributed to its spatially inhomogeneous thermal structure. Large-scale subsidence characterizes the main body of the MH, with the stronger subsidence to the east than to the west. Diagnosis using the complete form of the vertical vorticity tendency equation shows that the anticyclonic structure of the MH, which can be described by the distribution of meridional wind, is maintained mainly by the vertical gradient of diabatic heating, change in static stability, and friction dissipation. In particular, a combination of sensible heating and longwave radiative cooling results in a vertical decreasing gradient of diabatic heating in the lower troposphere. It generates the stronger southerlies over the subtropical South Indian Ocean than over the southern Africa. Meanwhile, over the South Indian Ocean, the increasing static stability as a result of the downward transport of a more stable atmosphere partly offsets the effect of the vertical gradient of diabatic heating, and southerlies still prevail there. Over the southern Africa, topographic friction dissipation induces northerlies, balancing the effect of the vertical gradient of diabatic heating with a stronger magnitude, and northerlies prevail.

In present study, three distinctive MJO types in boreal winter are documented and their controlling mechanisms and teleconnections are investigated with a synergetic glocal approach. For the first time, it is revealed that the diverse nature of the MJO primarily results from different Tropical-Extratropical Interactions and associated internal atmospheric processes. Both the type-I and type-II are initiated over the western Indian Ocean (IO) by a dry zone around the eastern IO, while only the type-I can move out the IO and circulate around the globe. The type-III initiates over the western Pacific (WP) and can circulate the globe and trigger another successive event. The strong upper-level equatorial westerly over the IO-WP, resulting from upstream and extratropical influences, suffocates the type-II MJO within the IO. On the other hand, the robust upper-level equatorial easterly over the IO-WP, also resulting from upstream and extratropical influences, along with regional convective instability over the WP and the arrival of east-Asian cold-surge foster the development and eastward propagation of the type-III MJO. The downstream and extratropical teleconnections are primarily controlled by the associated convection over the tropical IO-WP sector for the type-I, but also strongly influenced by the conditions over the extratropical WP for the type-II and type-III. Given that the MJO has been traditionally viewed as a tropical mode owing its existence to the coupling between organized convection and large-scale circulations, present findings advocate the MJO as a global mode and call for more research on the involved Tropical-Extratropical Interactions in order to better understand and simulate the diverse nature of the MJO.

The exploration of the trend in stratospheric sudden warmings (SSWs) is conducive to predict SSWs in the future. Utilizing the National Centre for Environmental Prediction Reanalysis (NCEP) (1948–2020) and Japanese 55-year Reanalysis (JRA55) (1958–2020), we investigated the duration and strength of SSWs in the Northern Hemisphere occurred in the boreal winter (December–February). We found the duration of SSWs tends to increase and the strength of SSWs tends to strengthen from 1948 to 2003. After 2003, these trends did not continue. We utilized the observed cloudiness from the International Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set (ICOADS) to find that the convective activities in the tropical Central Pacific were enhanced during 1948–2003, and the enhancement of the convective activities did not continue after 2003. The circulation anomalies caused by the enhanced convective activities propagate to the high latitudes through wave trains. The anomalies of circulation and the climatological circulation at high latitudes interfere with each other and superimpose, which has a significant impact on planetary wave 1 (PW1). As a result, the PW1 also showed an increasing trend from 1948 to 2003 and a decreasing trend after 2003. After the stratosphere filters out the planetary wave with a large wavenumber, PW1 accounts for more proportion of planetary waves, which causes the trend in SSWs to change.

This study examines the climate response to a sea surface temperature (SST) warming imposed over the southwest Tropical Indian Ocean (TIO) in a coupled ocean-atmosphere model. The results indicate that the southwest TIO SST warming can remotely modulate the atmospheric circulation over the western North Pacific (WNP) via inter-basin air-sea interaction during early boreal summer. The southwest TIO SST warming induces a “C-shaped” wind response with northeasterly and northwesterly anomalies over the north and south TIO, respectively. The northeasterly wind anomalies contribute to the north TIO SST warming via a positive Wind-Evaporation-SST(WES) feedback after the Asian summer monsoon onset. In June, the easterly wind response extends into the WNP, inducing an SST cooling by WES feedback on the background trade winds. Both the north TIO SST warming and the WNP SST cooling contribute to an anomalous anticyclonic circulation (AAC) over the WNP. The north TIO SST warming, WNP SST cooling, and AAC constitute an inter-basin coupled mode called the Indo-western Pacific ocean capacitor (IPOC), and the southwest TIO SST warming could be a trigger for IPOC. While the summertime southwest TIO SST warming is often associated with antecedent El Niño, the warming in 2020 seems to be related to extreme Indian Ocean Dipole in 2019 fall. The strong southwest TIO SST warming seems to partly explain the strong summer AAC of 2020 over the WNP even without a strong antecedent El Niño.

The intraseasonal Pacific–Japan (PJ) pattern, characterized by a pronounced quasi-biweekly oscillation, is triggered by deep convection around the western North Pacific. Three possible dynamical mechanisms on multiple timescales responsible for the growth and decay of the quasi-biweekly PJ pattern are proposed in this study based on daily reanalysis data from the Japanese 55-year Reanalysis for the 1958‒2021 period. First, the eastward-propagating wave energy associated with the quasi-biweekly circumglobal teleconnection in the upstream region enters the mid-latitude North Pacific and induces the wavelike barotropic geopotential height anomalies, amplifying the magnitudes of three mid-latitude centers of the PJ pattern by about 40% through their linear constructive interference. Secondly, the barotropic feedback forcing of both high-frequency and low-frequency transient eddies triggered by the pronounced meridional SST gradient over the mid-latitude Pacific is beneficial to the development and persistence of the PJ-related centers to the east of Japan and around the Bering Strait, whereas it damps the PJ-related center in the Gulf of Alaska, increasing the amplitude difference between the former two centers and the latter center. Such feedback forcing also leads to the asymmetry of the positive and negative PJ events. Thridly, dry energy conversion from the background atmospheric circulation and the moist process due to the convective heating over the western North Pacific are both efficient enough to energize the PJ pattern in the developing and mature stages, indicating that the quasi-biweekly PJ pattern can be viewed as a convectively coupled dynamical mode.