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This page features highlight articles from EGU's open access journals Climate of the Past, Earth System Dynamics, Geoscientific Model Development and Weather and Climate Dynamics. These articles of particular interest are selected by journal editors.

263 items found

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Using neural network ensembles to separate ocean biogeochemical and physical drivers of phytoplankton biogeography in Earth system models

It can be challenging to understand why Earth system models (ESMs) produce specific results because one can arrive at the same result simply by changing the values of the parameters. In our paper, we demonstrate that it is possible to use machine learning to figure out how and why particular components of an ESM (such as biology or ocean circulations) affect the output. This work could be applied to observations to improve the accuracy of the formulations used in ESMs.

Spatiotemporal patterns and drivers of terrestrial dissolved organic carbon (DOC) leaching into the European river network

Dissolved organic carbon (DOC) leaching from soils into river networks is an important component of the land carbon © budget, but its spatiotemporal variation is not yet fully constrained. We use a land surface model to simulate the present-day land C budget at the European scale, including leaching of DOC from the soil. We found average leaching of 14.3 Tg C yr-1 (0.6% of terrestrial net primary production) with seasonal variations. We determine runoff and temperature to be the main drivers.

Abrupt climate changes and the astronomical theory: are they related?

The study of abrupt climate changes is a relatively new field of research that addresses paleoclimate variations that occur in intervals of tens to hundreds of years. Such timescales are much shorter than the tens to hundreds of thousands of years that the astronomical theory of climate addresses. We revisit several high-resolution proxy records of the past 3.2 Myr and show that the abrupt climate changes are nevertheless affected by the orbitally induced insolation changes.

Vegetation change across the Drake Passage region linked to late Eocene cooling and glacial disturbance after the Eocene–Oligocene transition

New pollen and spore data from the Antarctic Peninsula region reveal temperate rainforests that changed and adapted in response to Eocene climatic cooling, roughly 35.5 Myr ago, and glacially related disturbance in the early Oligocene, approximately 33.5 Myr ago. The timing of these events indicates that the opening of ocean gateways alone did not trigger Antarctic glaciation, although ocean gateways may have played a role in climate cooling.

The Whole Antarctic Ocean Model (WAOM v1.0): development and evaluation

Here we present an improved model of the Antarctic continental shelf ocean and demonstrate that it is capable of reproducing present-day conditions. The improvements are fundamental and regard the inclusion of tides and ocean eddies. We conclude that the model is well suited to gain new insights into processes that are important for Antarctic ice sheet retreat and global ocean changes. The model will ultimately help to improve projections of sea level rise and climate change.

Impact of increased resolution on long-standing biases in HighResMIP-PRIMAVERA climate models

Climate models do not fully reproduce observations: they show differences (biases) in regional temperature, precipitation, or cloud cover. Reducing model biases is important to increase our confidence in their ability to reproduce present and future climate changes. Model realism is set by its resolution: the finer it is, the more physical processes and interactions it can resolve. We here show that increasing resolution of up to ~ 25 km can help reduce model biases but not remove them entirely.

Balanced estimate and uncertainty assessment of European climate change using the large EURO-CORDEX regional climate model ensemble

This research paper proposes an assessment of mean climate change responses and related uncertainties over Europe for mean seasonal temperature and total seasonal precipitation. An advanced statistical approach is applied to a large ensemble of 87 high-resolution EURO-CORDEX projections. For the first time, we provide a comprehensive estimation of the relative contribution of GCMs and RCMs, RCP scenarios, and internal variability to the total variance of a very large ensemble.

The blue suns of 1831: was the eruption of Ferdinandea, near Sicily, one of the largest volcanic climate forcing events of the nineteenth century?

An unidentified eruption in 1831 was one of the largest volcanic climate forcing events of the nineteenth century. We use reported observations of a blue sun to reconstruct the transport of an aerosol plume from that eruption and, hence, identify it as the 1831 eruption of Ferdinandea, near Sicily. We propose that, although it was only a modest eruption, its volcanic plume was enriched with sulphur from sedimentary deposits and that meteorological conditions helped it reach the stratosphere.

Ubiquity of human-induced changes in climate variability

A large ensemble of simulations with 100 members has been conducted with the state-of-the-art CESM2 Earth system model, using historical and SSP3-7.0 forcing. Our main finding is that there are significant changes in the variance of the Earth system in response to anthropogenic forcing, with these changes spanning a broad range of variables important to impacts for human populations and ecosystems.

SELF v1.0: a minimal physical model for predicting time of freeze-up in lakes

The time when lakes freeze varies considerably from year to year. A common way to predict it is to use negative degree days, i.e., the sum of air temperatures below 0°C, a proxy for the heat lost to the atmosphere. Here, we show that this is insufficient as the mixing of the surface layer induced by wind tends to delay the formation of ice. To do so, we developed a minimal model based on a simplified energy balance, which can be used both for large-scale analyses and short-term predictions.

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