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Secondary ice production during the break-up of freezing water drops on impact with ice particles

Secondary ice production (SIP) plays an important role in ice formation within mixed-phase clouds. We present a laboratory investigation of a potentially new SIP mechanism involving the collisions of supercooled water drops with ice particles. At impact, the supercooled water drop fragments form smaller secondary drops. Approximately 30 % of the secondary drops formed during the retraction phase of the supercooled water drop impact freeze over a temperature range of -4 °C to -12 °C.

Deep oceanic submarine fieldwork with undergraduate students: an immersive experience with the Minerve software

We use the Minerve virtual reality software to bring undergraduate students to an unusual field trip at 1200 m below sea level in the Lesser Antilles area. This region is located above an active subduction zone responsible for intense volcanic and seismic activity. In particular, we focus on the Roseau submarine fault that ruptured during the Mw 6.3 Les Saintes earthquake and presented a fresh scarp that the students can analyse and map in VR. They compile their results in a GIS project.

Impact of the melt–albedo feedback on the future evolution of the Greenland Ice Sheet with PISM-dEBM-simple

With the increasing melt of the Greenland Ice Sheet, which contributes to sea level rise, the surface of the ice darkens. The dark surfaces absorb more radiation and thus experience increased melt, resulting in the melt–albedo feedback. Using a simple surface melt model, we estimate that this positive feedback contributes to an additional 60 % ice loss in a high-warming scenario and additional 90 % ice loss for moderate warming. Albedo changes are important for Greenland’s future ice loss.

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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.

Brief communication: A roadmap towards credible projections of ice sheet contribution to sea level

Estimating how much ice loss from Greenland and Antarctica will contribute to sea level rise is of critical societal importance. However, our analysis shows that recent efforts are not trustworthy because the models fail at reproducing contemporary ice melt. Here we present a roadmap towards making more credible estimates of ice sheet melt.

Options to correct local turbulent flux measurements for large-scale fluxes using an approach based on large-eddy simulation

Turbulent flux measurements suffer from a general systematic underestimation. One reason for this bias is non-local transport by large-scale circulations. A recently developed model for this additional transport of sensible and latent energy is evaluated for three different test sites. Different options on how to apply this correction are presented, and the results are evaluated against independent measurements.

Dynamics of variable dusk–dawn flow associated with magnetotail current sheet flapping

The sun’s magnetic field is carried across space by the solar wind – a hot plasma “stream” of ions and electrons – forming the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF). The IMF can introduce asymmetries in the Earth’s magnetic field, giving plasma flowing within it a direction dependent on IMF orientation. Electric currents in near-Earth space can also influence these plasma flows. We investigate these two competing mechanisms and find that the currents can prevent the IMF from controlling the flow.

Identifying community values related to heat: recommendations for forecast and health risk communication

This paper presents an analysis of public responses to U.S. National Weather Service heat-related Facebook posts for the Phoenix (Arizona) County Warning Area to identify community norms that may present challenges to the effectiveness of heat risk communication. Findings suggest that local audiences tend to view heat as normal and the ability to withstand heat as a marker of community identity. Recommendations are provided for harnessing those norms to promote positive behavioural change.

Modelling the volcanic ash plume from Eyjafjallajökull eruption (May 2010) over Europe: evaluation of the benefit of source term improvements and of the assimilation of aerosol measurements

Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences
DOI 10.5194/nhess-21-3731-2021
4 March 2022

Volcanic eruptions that spread out ash over large areas, like Eyjafjallajökull in 2010, may have huge economic consequences due to flight cancellations. In this article, we demonstrate the benefits of source term improvement and of data assimilation for quantifying volcanic ash concentrations. The work, which was supported by the EUNADICS-AV project, is the first one, to our knowledge, that demonstrates the benefit of the assimilation of ground-based lidar data over Europe during an eruption.

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.

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