Article
Engineering, Civil
Andrew John, Rory Nathan, Avril Horne, Keirnan Fowler, Michael Stewardson, Murray Peel, J. Angus Webb
Summary: Climate change impacts on river flows are assessed by studying the 'Time of Emergence' (ToE) when the signal of climate change becomes distinguishable from natural variability. In Australia, ToE of streamflow changes across different river basins have been investigated considering different water management objectives and climate model projections. ToE is likely to occur earlier in hydrologic systems with low natural variability and longer periods of vulnerability. Regional differences exist, with changes first emerging in south-west regions followed by the south-east, east, and north. Implications include the prioritization of climate adaptation efforts and the urgency of climate change mitigation.
JOURNAL OF HYDROLOGY
(2023)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Erica R. Siirila-Woodburn, P. James Dennedy-Frank, Alan Rhoades, Pouya Vahmani, Fadji Maina, Benjamin Hatchett, Yang Zhou, Andrew Jones
Summary: In the coastal regions of the western United States, atmospheric rivers (ARs) contribute significantly to precipitation, but their impact on groundwater storage and hydrodynamics is not well understood. To study this, a combination of two water tracking methods was used to track water parcels generated by ARs. Simulations showed that although ARs contribute more precipitation, less of it is stored in aquifers compared to non-AR storms. Rain-on-snow events were found to play an important role in AR-driven discharge. Despite record-breaking annual precipitation, groundwater depletion still occurred due to pumping activities.
WATER RESOURCES RESEARCH
(2023)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Stephen J. Dery, Marco A. Hernandez-Henriquez, Tricia A. Stadnyk, Tara J. Troy
Summary: The study shows that the phenomenon of hydropeaking is declining at 500 sites in the USA and Canada, possibly due to increased precipitation, energy transition, socioeconomic changes, and water resource management policies.
NATURE COMMUNICATIONS
(2021)
Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Jesse Norris, Alex Hall, Chad W. Thackeray, Di Chen, Gavin D. Madakumbura
Summary: This study demonstrates the correlation between the strength of hydrologic sensitivity (HS) under El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and HS in the context of climate change. The findings suggest that central Pacific ENSO events are a better predictor of HS under future warming. GCMs with greater HS exhibit a weakening of the atmospheric circulation and expansion under ENSO.
JOURNAL OF CLIMATE
(2022)
Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Huawu Wu, Cicheng Zhang, Xiao-Yan Li, Congsheng Fu, Haohao Wu, Pei Wang, Jinzhao Liu
Summary: This study presents an evaluation of hydrometeorological processes and climate dynamics in the northeastern Tibetan Plateau based on a 7-year precipitation isotope dataset. Results show significant seasonal isotopic variability related to seasonal changes of moisture sources and hydrometeorological processes. The precipitation isotopic values are primarily determined by the amount of precipitation, relative humidity, and convective activity, and show no correlation with air temperature.
JOURNAL OF CLIMATE
(2022)
Article
Water Resources
Peter M. Wohlgemuth
Summary: The San Dimas Experimental Forest in southern California represents the chaparral shrublands of the Southwest USA. It is a dense, drought-tolerant vegetation assemblage with a closed canopy, prone to wildfires.
HYDROLOGICAL PROCESSES
(2021)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Ali Mobadersani, Ali Hosseinzadeh Dalir, Mehdi Yasi, Hadi Arvanaghi, Mark J. Kennard
Summary: This study introduces a new method to calculate the environmental water requirement of lakes based on real-time data from rivers, effectively protecting the lake ecosystem from drought, climate change, and other impacts.
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
(2022)
Article
Ecology
Jordan R. Stark, Jason D. Fridley
Summary: This study compared the predictions of species distribution models (SDMs) generated using different climate models and found that SDMs based on microclimate models provided more accurate predictions of species persistence and were able to buffer the effects of regional warming. Additionally, the results highlighted the importance of topography and forest cover in explaining the rate of change in understory communities.
GLOBAL ECOLOGY AND BIOGEOGRAPHY
(2022)
Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Kelly Mahoney, James D. Scott, Michael Alexander, Rachel McCrary, Mimi Hughes, Dustin Swales, Melissa Bukovsky
Summary: Future precipitation changes in the western United States, with a focus on California, are projected to experience significant shifts in mean monthly precipitation, extreme daily precipitation, seasonal snowpack, and the duration of wet seasons. While there may be disagreement among models on certain aspects, there is generally consensus on increasing extreme precipitation, decreasing snowpack, and a shorter wet season in the region.
Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Joseph A. Ricciotti, Jason M. Cordeira
Summary: Atmospheric rivers (ARs) play a significant role in producing a large portion of annual precipitation in regions with complex terrain along western coastlines. This study investigates the relationship between landfalling ARs, integrated water vapor transport (IVT), and watershed mean areal precipitation (MAP) in California over a 38-year period. The results show that the direction and altitude of water vapor flux, in addition to IVT magnitude, are important factors in explaining the variance of annual MAP. These findings align with previous studies and highlight the need for forecast tools that incorporate IVT direction and water vapor flux altitude parameters.
JOURNAL OF HYDROMETEOROLOGY
(2022)
Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Shan Lin, Genxu Wang, Zhaoyong Hu, Kewei Huang, Xiangyang Sun, Juying Sun, Meng Luo, Xiao Xiao
Summary: This study evaluates the spatiotemporal changes and driving factors of evapotranspiration over the Tibetan Plateau from 1961 to 2014. It found a significant increasing trend in annual evapotranspiration, with the most notable changes in the southeastern part of the plateau. Different land cover types also showed varying responses to seasonal changes in evapotranspiration.
JOURNAL OF HYDROMETEOROLOGY
(2021)
Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
David Hoffmann, Ailie J. E. Gallant, Mike Hobbins
Summary: This study explores how global coupled climate models simulate flash drought and the role of precipitation deficits and evaporative demand E-0 in causing flash drought. The results show that precipitation deficits are the main contributor to flash droughts in climate models, with E-0 playing a secondary role. The study also highlights significant differences in the representation of flash drought characteristics among different models, primarily due to an overestimation of E-0.
JOURNAL OF HYDROMETEOROLOGY
(2021)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Waqar ul Hassan, Munir Ahmad Nayak, Rosa Vellosa Lyngwa
Summary: The study reveals that in the Himalayas during the period of 2003-2019, there is a large-scale decreasing trend in observed heatwave frequency, with localized warming in urbanized and high elevation regions. Surface temperature declines were steeper in areas with large-scale forest losses, and a regional multiple linear regression model was developed to estimate temperature responses to global climatic changes and forest cover losses. This model demonstrated a significant regional decrease in annual maximum temperature, locally modulated by factors such as urbanization, forest cover, and elevation.
SCIENCE OF THE TOTAL ENVIRONMENT
(2021)
Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Peter E. Goble, Rebecca A. Bolinger, Russ S. Schumacher
Summary: This study focuses on agricultural droughts in the contiguous United States and proposes using crop-specific standardized precipitation-evapotranspiration indices to better assess the impact of meteorological conditions on crop yields. The research finds that CSPEIs are more suitable for predicting yields of corn and winter wheat, complementing the shortcomings of traditional meteorological indicators.
JOURNAL OF HYDROMETEOROLOGY
(2021)
Review
Environmental Sciences
Arturo A. Keller, Kendra Garner, Nalini Rao, Eladio Knipping, Jeffrey Thomas
Summary: Global changes, such as climate and land use changes, have significant impacts on water resources. In order to plan for these changes, it is necessary to make projections and evaluate different hydrologic and water quality models. Among the models evaluated, MIKE-SHE, HEC-HMS, MODHMS, SWAT, and WARMF stand out in terms of functionality, availability, applicability, and support.
SCIENCE OF THE TOTAL ENVIRONMENT
(2023)
Article
Environmental Studies
Eric Mensah Mortey, Thompson Annor, Joel Arnault, Maman Maarouhi Inoussa, Saidou Madougou, Harald Kunstmann, Emmanuel Kwesi Nyantakyi
Summary: This study uses historical land cover data and standardized climatic indices to explore climate-land interactions in West Africa. The results show that abrupt changes in climatic conditions lead to land cover changes, with conversions of cropland, forest, grassland, and shrubland being the main types affecting the climate.
Article
Computer Science, Information Systems
Moumouni Djibo, Wend Yam Serge Boris Ouedraogo, Ali Doumounia, Serge Roland Sanou, Moumouni Sawadogo, Idrissa Guira, Nicolas Kone, Christian Chwala, Harald Kunstmann, Francois Zougmore
Summary: Since the 1990s, mobile telecommunication networks have become denser worldwide, with a significant portion relying on commercial microwave links (CMLs) for backhaul. By exploiting the attenuation of CML signals caused by rainfall, records of this attenuation can be used for inexpensive precipitation monitoring. To implement this technology, a real-time system has been developed to collect and store CML power levels from Telecel Faso, a mobile operator in Burkina Faso. This system, based on the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), has grown from eight to over 1000 radio links, covering major cities and connecting routes in Burkina Faso.
APPLIED SYSTEM INNOVATION
(2023)
Article
Agronomy
Xuejin Wang, Baoqing Zhang, Zhenyu Zhang, Lei Tian, Harald Kunstmann, Chansheng He
Summary: Understanding the spatiotemporal evolution of droughts is crucial for food security and water allocation. This study proposes an approach to explore the simultaneous spatiotemporal evolution of droughts by constructing the linkage of propagation from meteorological drought to agricultural drought. The results show that 53.75% of meteorological drought events progress further to agricultural droughts, and agricultural droughts have a longer duration than meteorological droughts.
AGRICULTURAL AND FOREST METEOROLOGY
(2023)
Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Xin Li, Guohua Fang, Jianhui Wei, Joeel Arnault, Patrick Laux, Xin Wen, Harald Kunstmann
Summary: Changing climate has increased the risk of natural and social disasters, particularly in coastal areas like the Huaihe river basin (HRB), by altering precipitation and temperature trends. This study evaluates the performance of 30 Global climate models (GCMs) in simulating HRB's precipitation and temperature from 1979 to 2014, using the Empirical Quantile Mapping (EQM) method for bias correction. The results project an increase in precipitation and temperature for the period 2015-2100, with varying rates depending on the scenarios. In the long-term, annual precipitation is projected to increase by 32-35%, while temperature is expected to either remain stable or slightly decrease under certain scenarios and increase by 4-6 degrees C under others.
Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Brian Boeker, Patrick Laux, Patrick Olschewski, Harald Kunstmann
Summary: Reliable prediction of heavy precipitation events causing floods is crucial for adaptation strategies in a changing climate. This study proposes a circulation pattern conditional downscaling approach that considers frequency changes of circulation patterns. Precipitation observations are used to derive conditional cumulative distribution functions and raw precipitation time series are sampled from these functions. Bias correction is applied using quantile mapping and parametric transfer functions. The evaluation shows that the proposed approach yields more reliable and accurate downscaled precipitation time series, particularly for extreme events.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CLIMATOLOGY
(2023)
Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Windmanagda Sawadogo, Jan Bliefernicht, Benjamin Fersch, Seyni Salack, Samuel Guug, Kehinde O. Ogunjobi, Stefanie Meilinger, Harald Kunstmann
Summary: The study evaluates different shortwave radiation schemes from the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model option Solar (WRF-Solar) for solar irradiance forecasting in Ghana and the southern part of Burkina Faso. The results show that the RRTMG_AERO_D01 scheme generally outperforms other schemes in simulating global horizontal irradiance under different weather conditions. It is recommended to use the RRTMG_AERO scheme for solar irradiance forecasts in the study area.
JOURNAL OF APPLIED METEOROLOGY AND CLIMATOLOGY
(2023)
Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Xuejin Wang, Zhenyu Zhang, Baoqing Zhang, Lei Tian, Jie Tian, Joel Arnault, Harald Kunstmann, Chansheng He
Summary: This study investigates the impact of land use and land cover change on regional atmospheric moisture cycling in the agro-pastoral ecotone of northern China. Results show that evapotranspiration contributes to local and regional precipitation, and surface vegetation change affects the thermodynamic processes and atmospheric responses.
JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH-ATMOSPHERES
(2023)
Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Patrick Olschewski, Patrick Laux, Jianhui Wei, Brian Boeker, Zhan Tian, Laixiang Sun, Harald Kunstmann
Summary: The effectiveness of adaptive measures to address the impacts of climate change depends on accurate climate projections, especially in the increasingly prevalent extreme events. Flooding poses a significant threat to vulnerable coastal urban areas, including major cities like Shanghai and Shenzhen in eastern Asia. Despite improvements in general circulation models (GCMs) and regional climate models (RCMs) for projecting atmospheric changes related to these events, biases still exist. This study evaluates the potential of enhancing regional climate projections for eastern Asia by employing bias adjustment methods, GCM-RCM model runs, and future emission scenarios.
WEATHER AND CLIMATE EXTREMES
(2023)
Article
Agronomy
Zhenyu Zhang, Patrick Laux, Jussi Baade, Joel Arnault, Jianhui Wei, Xuejin Wang, Yukun Liu, Christiane Schmullius, Harald Kunstmann
Summary: Numerical weather and climate prediction models rely on accurate soil data to model land surface processes. However, global soil datasets show wide discrepancies due to uncertainties from soil profiles and maps. This study examines the impact of different global soil datasets on land-atmosphere interactions in southern Africa. The results show that soil texture differences have a significant effect on simulated temperature, soil moisture, surface energy fluxes, and local climatic conditions. The study emphasizes the importance of considering modeling uncertainties from soil data in land surface-atmosphere coupled modeling.
AGRICULTURAL AND FOREST METEOROLOGY
(2023)
Article
Astronomy & Astrophysics
Nico Blettner, Martin Fencl, Vojtech Bares, Harald Kunstmann, Christian Chwala
Summary: Unlike actual rainfall, the spatial extent of rainfall maps is often constrained by administrative and political boundaries, limiting transboundary exchange of data. However, this study presents the first transboundary rainfall maps generated using commercial microwave link (CML) data sets from Germany and the Czech Republic. By applying quality control algorithms, anomalies in the results are significantly reduced, enabling seamless visualization of rainfall events across the German-Czech border. This highlights the importance of quality control for large-scale CML-based rainfall estimation.
EARTH AND SPACE SCIENCE
(2023)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Joel Arnault, Anthony Musili Mwanthi, Tanja Portele, Lu Li, Thomas Rummler, Benjamin Fersch, Mohammed Abdullahi Hassan, Titike Kassa Bahaga, Zhenyu Zhang, Eric Mensah Mortey, Ifeany Chukwudi Achugbu, Hassane Moutahir, Souleymane Sy, Jianhui Wei, Patrick Laux, Stefan Sobolowski, Harald Kunstmann
Summary: This study investigates the impact of afforestation on regional climate in a heavily farmed region of tropical Africa. The results show that afforestation can decrease soil evaporation and increase plant transpiration, leading to increased sensible heat flux, precipitation, and runoff, thus affecting regional water resources.
FRONTIERS IN CLIMATE
(2023)
Proceedings Paper
Acoustics
Julius Polz, Luca Glawion, Maximilian Graf, Nico Blettner, Zbieta Lasota, Lennart Schmidt, Harald Kunstmann, Christian Chwala
Summary: Accurate detection of signal anomalies in commercial microwave links (CMLs) attenuation time-series is crucial for high quality rainfall estimates. Examples of anomalies include dew/ice on the antenna and multipath propagation. A study analyzing 20 CMLs in Germany found that removing flagged anomalies improved the correlation between CML and radar rainfall estimates, emphasizing the importance of considering expert uncertainty in quality control of environmental sensor data.
2023 IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ACOUSTICS, SPEECH, AND SIGNAL PROCESSING WORKSHOPS, ICASSPW
(2023)
Article
Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
Efi Rousi, Andreas H. Fink, Lauren S. Andersen, Florian N. Becker, Goratz Beobide-Arsuaga, Marcus Breil, Giacomo Cozzi, Jens Heinke, Lisa Jach, Deborah Niermann, Dragan Petrovic, Andy Richling, Johannes Riebold, Stella Steidl, Laura Suarez-Gutierrez, Jordis S. Tradowsky, Dim Coumou, Andre Dusterhus, Florian Ellsaesser, Georgios Fragkoulidis, Daniel Gliksman, Doerthe Handorf, Karsten Haustein, Kai Kornhuber, Harald Kunstmann, Joaquim G. Pinto, Kirsten Warrach-Sagi, Elena Xoplaki
Summary: The summer of 2018 experienced simultaneous, widespread, and concurrent heat and drought extremes in northern and central Europe, with significant impacts on agriculture, forests, water supply, and the socio-economic sector. The study provides a comprehensive analysis of the extreme summer in terms of heat and drought, particularly focusing on Germany. The research identifies the atmospheric circulation patterns and climate precursors, as well as the probabilistic attribution of the heatwave to anthropogenic global warming. Future projections indicate a higher frequency and intensity of extreme summers under climate change. Such studies are crucial for adaptation and mitigation strategies.
NATURAL HAZARDS AND EARTH SYSTEM SCIENCES
(2023)
Article
Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
Gerhard Smiatek, Harald Kunstmann
Summary: The pan-African Great Green Wall for the Sahara and the Sahel initiative aims to reverse land degradation through reforestation. However, our investigation found no significant evidence that the GGW-induced changes in precipitation characteristics or positive impacts on forestation activities in the Sahel. Our simulations showed regional-scale changes in precipitation, but they were not statistically significant at the 5% level.
EARTH INTERACTIONS
(2023)