Highlight articles

On the role of soil water retention characteristic on aerobic microbial respiration

Soil water is a medium from which microbes acquire resources and within which they are able to move. Occupancy and availability of water and oxygen gas in soils are mutually exclusive. In addition, as soil dries the remaining water is held with an increasing degree of adhesive energy, which restricts microbes’ ability to extract resources from water. We introduce a mathematical model that describes these interacting effects and organic matter decomposition.

Geostatistical interpolation by quantile kriging

Many variables, e.g., in hydrology, geology, and social sciences, are only observed at a few distinct measurement locations, and their actual distribution in the entire space remains unknown. We introduce the new geostatistical interpolation method ofquantile kriging, providing an improved estimator and associated uncertainty. It can also host variables, which would not fulfill the implicit presumptions of the traditional geostatistical interpolation methods.

Exposure-based risk assessment and emergency management associated with the fallout of large clasts at Mount Etna

Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences
DOI 10.5194/nhess-19-589-2019
20 March 2019

The fallout of large clasts (> 5 cm) from the margins of eruptive plumes can damage local infrastructure and severely injure people close to the volcano. Even though this potential hazard has been observed at many volcanoes, it has often been overlooked. We present the first hazard and risk assessment of large-clast fallout from eruptive plumes and use Mt Etna (Italy) as a case study. The use of dedicated shelters in the case of an explosive event that occurs with no warning is also evaluated.

Evaluation of CloudSat snowfall rate profiles by a comparison with in situ micro-rain radar observations in East Antarctica

Evaluation of the vertical precipitation rate profiles of CloudSat radar by comparison with two surface-based micro-rain radars (MRR) located at two antarctic stations gives a near-perfect correlation between both datasets, even though climatic and geographic conditions are different for the stations. A better understanding and reassessment of CloudSat uncertainties ranging from −13 % up to +22 % confirms the robustness of the CloudSat retrievals of snowfall over Antarctica.

Pleistocene glacial history of the New Zealand subantarctic islands

The New Zealand subantarctic islands, in the Pacific sector of the Southern Ocean, provide valuable records of past environmental change. We find that the Auckland Islands hosted a small ice cap around 384 000 years ago, but that there was little glaciation during the Last Glacial Maximum, around 21 000 years ago, in contrast to mainland New Zealand. This shows that the climate here is susceptible to changes in regional factors such as sea-ice expanse and the position of ocean fronts.

Trends in global tropospheric ozone inferred from a composite record of TOMS/OMI/MLS/OMPS satellite measurements and the MERRA-2 GMI simulation

Both a 38-year merged satellite record of tropospheric ozone from TOMS/OMI/MLS/OMPS and a MERRA-2 GMI model simulation show large increases of 6–7 Dobson units from the Near East to India–East Asia and eastward over the Pacific. These increases in tropospheric ozone are attributed to increases in pollution over the region over the last several decades. Secondary 38-year increases of 4–5 Dobson units with both GMI model and satellite measurements occur over central African–tropical Atlantic.

Attributing the 2017 Bangladesh floods from meteorological and hydrological perspectives

In August 2017 Bangladesh faced one of its worst river flooding events in recent history. For the large Brahmaputra basin, using precipitation alone as a proxy for flooding might not be appropriate. In this paper we explicitly test this assumption by performing an attribution of both precipitation and discharge as a flooding-related measure to climate change. We find the change in risk to be of similar order of magnitude (between 1 and 2) for both the meteorological and hydrological approach.

Effects of univariate and multivariate bias correction on hydrological impact projections in alpine catchments

Several multivariate bias correction methods have been developed recently, but only a few studies have tested the effect of multivariate bias correction on hydrological impact projections. This study shows that incorporating or ignoring inter-variable relations between air temperature and precipitation can have a notable effect on the projected snowfall fraction. The effect translated to considerable consequences for the glacio-hydrological responses and streamflow components of the catchments.

Late Miocene–Pliocene climate evolution recorded by the red clay cover on the Xiaoshuizi planation surface, NE Tibetan Plateau

Multiple proxies for the XSZ planation surface reveal that the climate was dry and stable during the late Miocene but became intermittently humid with more seasonality at 4.7–3.9 Ma. Regional climatic differences between the central and western CLP reveal that expansion of the paleo-EASM occurred during the early Pliocene. The warming of the high northern latitudes in response to the closure of the Panama Seaway may have been responsible for the thermodynamical enhancement of the paleo–EASM.

The Open Global Glacier Model (OGGM) v1.1

Mountain glaciers are one of the few remaining subsystems of the global climate system for which no globally applicable community-driven model exists. Here we present the Open Global Glacier Model (OGGM; www.oggm.org), developed to provide a modular and open-source numerical model framework for simulating past and future change of any glacier in the world.

Publications Highlight articles

Highlight articles

Information for

External links