Earth Climate Change Research Articles

Shallow cumulus cloud feedback in large eddy simulations – bridging the gap to storm-resolving models

Abstract. The response of shallow trade cumulus clouds to global warming is a leading source of uncertainty in projections of the Earth's changing climate. A setup based on the Rain In Cumulus over the Ocean field campaign is used to simulate a shallow trade wind cumulus field with the Icosahedral Nonhydrostatic Large Eddy Model in a control and a perturbed 4 K warmer climate, while degrading horizontal resolution from 100 m to 5 km. As the resolution is coarsened, the base-state cloud fraction increases substantially, especially near cloud base, lateral mixing is weaker, and cloud tops reach higher. Nevertheless, the overall vertical structure of the cloud layer is surprisingly robust across resolutions. In a warmer climate, cloud cover reduces, alone constituting a positive shortwave cloud feedback: the strength correlates with the amount of base-state cloud fraction and thus is stronger at coarser resolutions. Cloud thickening, resulting from more water vapour availability for condensation in a warmer climate, acts as a compensating feedback, but unlike the cloud cover reduction it is largely resolution independent. Therefore, refining the resolution leads to convergence to a near-zero shallow cumulus feedback. This dependence holds in experiments with enhanced realism including precipitation processes or warming along a moist adiabat instead of uniform warming. Insofar as these findings carry over to other models, they suggest that storm-resolving models may exaggerate the trade wind cumulus cloud feedback.

Methods of Freeze Protection for Fruit Trees by Means of Renewable Energy Sources

As the Earth climate changes, the current horticulture gives rise to an acute issue - protecting fruit trees from spring frosts and their root system from freezing in severe winters with little snow. The authors substantiated the methods of how to protect fruit trees from frost and their root system from freezing, as well as a method of how to control their phenological phases based on the study of the heatmass- exchange intensification in a certain soil area occupied by the root system of a tree with various engineering aids to be designed. The aforesaid method is based on the operation of a heat and cold separator, which makes it possible to intensify heat transfer and expand the area of specific heat loads removed using a coolant - potassium salt brine (aqueous 30% KCL solution). The test results have shown that the coolant heated by the heat of the soil to a temperature of 12°С, gradually moving up at a depth of 0.9 m, heats the soil to 7°С at a depth of 0.5 m and up to 1°С on the surface of the earth at an ambient temperature of up to - 10°С. The heat of the lower soil layers comes up to the surface; in the soil area occupied by the root system, the temperature is redistributed, stabilized in a state that excludes freezing of the root system of the fruit tree. A rational value of the effective head has been determined to be equal to 2200 Н/m2 at the depth of the heated soil surface up to 1 m, with a specific heat flow of about 4•105 W/m2. In addition, a rational flow rate of the coolant is set equal to (1.5 ... 2.5) Gmin to produce more optimal heat transfer and additional body force of the heat and cold separator. The method of controlling the phenological phases of fruit trees by heating or cooling a certain soil area occupied by the root system is possible using an installation that generates power from the renewable resources (solar energy, wind or biogas plant), depending on climatic conditions and terrain.

ANALYSIS OF THE EFFICIENCY OF THE ADAPTIVE CANNY METHOD FOR THE DETECTION OF ICEBERGS AT OPEN SEA

Abstract. The detection of icebergs in the open sea, as well as its evolution in displacement and shrinking, is vital for navigation, the study of the evolution of Polar regions, and the Earth climate change, among others. In order to carry out these studies, it is necessary to delimit accurately the icebergs in satellite images, mainly of the Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) type. The Adaptive Canny method has shown to be efficient for the detection of edges of objects in SAR images, according to recent publications and conferences. These studies were only carried out for images that had approximately half of each backscatter, without considering that the dimension of the objects can affect the edge detection process. Here, we present the results of the efficiency of the Adaptive Canny method as the size of the object, from which it is intended to extract the contour, decreases. A systematic analysis of the behavior of the method has been performed with objects of variated dimensions, through a Monte Carlo type experiment with synthetic images, where the contours of the figures were extracted with the Adaptive Canny method and compared with the Ground Truth (GT). Then, the method was tested on real images of the Antarctic Ocean, with blocks of ice of different sizes to contrast the results with those obtained with synthetic images.

Projected climate change threatens significant range contraction of Cochemiea halei (Cactaceae), an island endemic, serpentine-adapted plant species at risk of extinction.

AimThreats faced by narrowly distributed endemic plant species in the face of the Earth's sixth mass extinction and climate change exposure are especially severe for taxa on islands. We investigated the current and projected distribution and range changes of Cochemiea halei, an endemic island cactus. This taxon is of conservation concern, currently listed as vulnerable on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature Red List and as a species of special concern under Mexican federal law. The goals of this study are to (a) identify the correlations between climate variables and current suitable habitat for C. halei; (b) determine whether the species is a serpentine endemic or has a facultative relationship with ultramafic soils; and (c) predict range changes of the species based on climate change scenarios.LocationThe island archipelago in Bahía Magdalena on the Pacific coast, Baja California Sur, Mexico.MethodsWe used temperature and precipitation variables at 30‐arc second resolution and soil type, employing multiple species distribution modeling methods, to identify important climate and soil conditions driving current habitat suitability. The best model of current suitability is used to predict possible effects of four climate change scenarios based on best‐case to worst‐case representative concentration pathways, with projected climate data from two general circulation models, over two time periods.Main conclusionsThe occurrence of the species is found to be strongly correlated with ultramafic soils. The most important climate predictor for habitat suitability is annual temperature range. The species is predicted to undergo range contractions from 21% to 53%, depending on the severity and duration of exposure to climate change. The broader implications for a wide range of narrowly adapted, threatened, and endemic plant species indicate an urgent need for threat assessment based on habitat suitability and climate change modeling.

Molecular Specificity and Proton Transfer Mechanisms in Aerosol Prenucleation Clusters Relevant to New Particle Formation.

Atmospheric aerosol particles influence the Earth's radiative energy balance and cloud properties, thus impacting the air quality, human health, and Earth's climate change. Because of the important scientific and overarching practical implications of aerosols, the past two decades have seen extensive research efforts, with emphasis on the chemical compositions and underlying mechanisms of aerosol formation. It has been recognized that new particle formation (NPF) contributes up to 50% of atmospheric aerosols. Nowadays, the general consensus is that NPF proceeds via two distinct stages: the nucleation from gaseous precursors to form critical nuclei of sub-1-2 nm size, and the subsequent growth into large particles. However, a fundamental understanding of both the NPF process and molecular-level characterization of the critical size aerosol clusters is still largely missing, hampering the efforts in developing reliable and predictive aerosol nucleation and climate models.Both field measurements and laboratory experiments have gathered convincing evidence about the importance of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in enhancing the nucleation and growth of aerosol particles. Numerous and abundant small clusters composed of sulfuric acid or bisulfate ion and organic molecules have been shown to exist in ∼2 nm sized aerosol particles. In particular, kinetic studies indicated the formation of clusters with one H2SO4 and one or two organics being the rate-limiting step.This Account discusses our effort in developing an integrated approach, which involves the laboratory cluster synthesis via electrospray ionization, size and composition analysis via mass spectrometry, photoelectron spectroscopic characterization, and quantum mechanics based theoretical modeling, to investigate the structures, energetics, and thermodynamics of the aerosol prenucleation clusters relevant to NPF. We have been focusing on the clusters formed between H2SO4 or HSO4- and the organics from oxidation of both biogenic and anthropogenic emissions. We illustrated the significant thermodynamic advantage by involving organic acids in the formation and growth of aerosol clusters. We revealed that the functional groups in the organics play critical roles in promoting NPF process. The enhanced roles were quantified explicitly for specific functional groups, establishing a Molecular Scale that ranks highly hierarchic intermolecular interactions critical to aerosol formation. The different cluster formation pathways, probably mimicking the various polluted industrial environments, that involve cis-pinonic and cis-pinic acids were unveiled as well. Furthermore, one intriguing fundamental phenomenon on the unusual protonation pattern, which violates the gas-phase acidity (proton affinity) prediction, was discovered to be common in sulfuric acid-organic clusters. The mechanism underlying the phenomenon has been rationalized by employing the temperature-dependent experiments of sulfuric acid-formate/halide model clusters, which could explain the high stability of the sulfuric acid containing aerosol clusters. Our work provides critical molecular-level information to shed light on the initial steps of nucleation of common atmospheric precursors and benchmarks critical data for large-scale theoretical modeling to further address problems of environmental interest.

Influence of two management practices in the Canadian Prairies on radiative forcing

Surface albedo and soil carbon sequestration are influenced by agricultural management practices which impact the Earth's radiation budget and climate change. In this study we investigate the impact of reduced summer fallowing and reduced tillage in the Canadian Prairies on climate change by estimating the change in radiative forcing due to albedo and soil carbon sequestration. Seasonal variations of albedo, which are dependent on agricultural management practices and soil colour in three soil zones, were derived from 10-day composite 250-m Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data. Using this information, we found an overall increase of surface albedo due to the conversion from summer fallowing to continuous cropping and from conventional tillage (CT) to either no-tillage (NT) or reduced tillage (RT). The increase was dependent on soil brightness, type of vegetation and snow cover. Using data from the Census of Agriculture and taking into consideration both albedo and soil carbon changes, we estimated that from 1981 to 2016, the total radiative forcing for the cropland area in the Canadian Prairies was −405 μW m−2 due to the conversion of CT to either NT or RT and about 70% was due to the change in albedo. During the same period, the total radiative forcing was −410 μW m−2 due to a reduction in the area under summer fallow and about 62% was due to the change in albedo. The equivalent atmospheric CO2 drawdown from these two management changes from albedo change was about 7.8 and 8.7 Tg CO2 yr−1, respectively. These results demonstrate that it is important to consider both the changes of soil carbon and surface albedo in evaluating climate change impacts due to agricultural management practices.

Evidence for Solar Modulation on the Millennial-Scale Climate Change of Earth

In this study, we use available reconstructed data to investigate periodicities of solar activity (i.e., sunspot number) and the Earth’s climate change (temperatures of Lake Qinghai in China and Vostok in Antarctica, the GISP δ18O climate record of Greenland, and the stalagmite δ18O monsoon records of Dongge Cave in China) as well as their cross-wavelet coherences on millennial scale. We find that the variations of the Earth’s climate indices exhibited the 1000-year cyclicity, which was recently discovered in solar activity (called Eddy cycle). The cross-wavelet correlations between the millennium-cycle components of sunspot number and the Earth’s climate change remains both strong and stable during the past 8640 years (BC 6755–AD 1885). The millennial variation of sunspot number keeps in-phase with variations of Lake Qinghai temperature, Greenland temperature, and East Asian Monsoon, but anti-phase with the variation of Antarctica temperature. The strong and stable resonant relationships between sunspot numbers and these climate indices indicate that solar variability may have played a role in modulation on this millennial seesaw pattern of the Earth’s climate change before the modern industrial era.

Cyclostratigraphy and astrochronology: Case studies from China

A high-precision geologic time scale is the essential key for understanding the Earth’s evolutionary history and geologic processes. Astronomical tuning of orbitally forced stratigraphic records to construct high-resolution Astronomical Time Scales (ATS) has led to a progressive refinement of the geologic time scale over the past two decades. In turn, these studies provide new insights regarding the durations and rates of major Earth events, evolutionary processes, and climate changes, all of which provide a scientific basis for contextualizing and predicting future global change trends. South China hosts some of the best-exposed and well-dated Neoproterozoic through Mesozoic stratigraphic sections in the world; many of which are suitable for cyclostratigraphy and calibrating the geologic time scale. In North China, several Cenozoic oil-bearing basins have deep boreholes with continuous sampling and/or well logging that enable derivation of astronomically tuned time scales for an improved understanding of basin evolution and hydrocarbon generation. This Special Issue focuses on case studies of astrochronology and applied cyclostratigraphy research using reference sections within China. In this introductory overview, we: (1) summarize all existing astrochronology studies of the Neoproterozoic through Cenozoic sections within China that have been used to enhance the international geologic time scale, (2) examine briefly the astronomically forced paleoclimate information recorded in various depositional systems and the modern techniques employed to analyze the periodicity of these signals encoded within the sedimentary record, and (3) summarize the 20 contributions to this Special Issue of Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology on 'Cyclostratigraphy and Astrochronology: Case studies from China’.

Differences in snow-induced radiative forcing estimated from satellite and reanalysis surface albedo datasets over the Northern Hemisphere landmass for the overlapping period of 1982–2012

The snow-induced radiative forcing (SnRF) measures the instantaneous perturbation to Earth’s shortwave radiation at the top of the atmosphere (TOA) caused by the presence of snow cover. Land surface albedo (a s) is a key parameter in estimation of SnRF. Previous studies have focused on using satellite or reanalysis a s data in SnRF quantifications. However, their spatial and temporal differences remain unclear. In this study, SnRF over the Northern Hemisphere (NH) estimates from two satellite and four reanalysis a s datasets were compared for the overlapping period of 1982–2012. The 31-year annual-mean SnRF was estimated at −1.81 to −1.59 W m−2 from satellite a s datasets, with a peak of −4.01 W m−2 and Standard Deviation (SD) of 1.54 W m−2 in April. The comparable SnRF from reanalysis a s was −1.48 to −2.30 W m−2, with a peak of −4.77 W m−2 and SD of 0.81 W m−2 in the same month. In the seasonal cycle, SnRF from satellite a s displayed lower values from October to January, but higher values from February to July, compared with SnRF using reanalysis a s. Moreover, the annual-mean SnRF declined by 0.39–1.25 W m−2 during 1982–2012 from satellite a s datasets, which is much smaller than the results using reanalysis a s datasets. Furthermore, changes in monthly-mean SnRF from satellite a s displayed an enhance trend in snow accumulation seasons, which are largely different with the comparable changes from reanalysis-based SnRF, indicating that there are large interannual and intra-annual biases between SnRF estimates from satellite and reanalysis a s datasets. Based on above results, we conclude that the large discrepancies between SnRF estimations from satellite and reanalysis a s should be considered in evaluating the response and feedback of snow cover to Earth climate change in future studies, especially in radiation budget anomalies.

Climate change, air pollution, and allergic respiratory diseases: a call to action for health professionals

Rising emissions of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have warmed the planet substantially and are also accompanied by poor air quality. The increased prevalence of allergic airway disease worldwide can be partially attributed to those global environmental changes. Climate change and air pollution pose adverse impacts on respiratory allergies, and that the mechanisms are complex and interactive. Adverse weather conditions, such as extreme temperatures, can act directly on the respiratory tract to induce allergic respiratory illnesses. Thunderstorms and floods can alter the production and distribution of aeroallergens while wildfires and dust storms increase air pollution, and therefore indirectly enhance health risks. Concentrations of particulate matter and ozone in the air have been projected to increase with climate warming and air stagnation, and the rising temperatures and CO2 increase pollen, molds, and spores, which escalate the risk of allergic respiratory diseases. The synergistic effects of extreme heat and aeroallergens intensify the toxic effect of air pollutants, which in turn augment the allergenicity of aeroallergens. With the Earth's climate change, migration of humans and plants shift the living environments and allergens of susceptible people. Urban residents are exposed to multiple factors while children are sensitive to environmental exposure. Since climate change may pose many unexpected and persistent effects on allergic respiratory diseases, health professionals should advocate for effective mitigation and adaptation strategies to minimize its respiratory health effects.

Sentinel-1 Image Classification Using Machine Learning Algorithms Based on the Support Vector Machine and Random Forest

Due to concerns of recent earth climate changes such as an increase of earth surface temperature and monitoring its effect on the earth's surface, environmental monitoring is a necessity. Environmental change monitoring in earth sciences needs land use land cover change (LULCC) modeling to investigate the impact of climate change phenomena such as droughts and floods on earth surface land cover. As land cover has a direct effect on Land Surface Temperature (LST), the Land cover mapping is an essential part of climate change modeling. In this paper, for land use land cover mapping (LULCM), image classification of Sentinel-1A Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Ground Range Detected (GRD) data using two machine learning algorithms including Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Random Forest (RF) are implemented in R programming language and compared in terms of overall accuracy for image classification. With seven different scenarios defined in this research, RF and SVM classification methods show their best performance with overall accuracies of 75.30 and 75.35 percent, respectively.

Differential impact of severe drought on infant mortality in two sympatric neotropical primates.

Extreme climate events can have important consequences for the dynamics of natural populations, and severe droughts are predicted to become more common and intense due to climate change. We analysed infant mortality in relation to drought in two primate species (white-faced capuchins, Cebus capucinus imitator, and Geoffroy's spider monkeys, Ateles geoffroyi) in a tropical dry forest in northwestern Costa Rica. Our survival analyses combine several rare and valuable long-term datasets, including long-term primate life-history, landscape-scale fruit abundance, food-tree mortality, and climate conditions. Infant capuchins showed a threshold mortality response to drought, with exceptionally high mortality during a period of intense drought, but not during periods of moderate water shortage. By contrast, spider monkey females stopped reproducing during severe drought, and the mortality of infant spider monkeys peaked later during a period of low fruit abundance and high food-tree mortality linked to the drought. These divergent patterns implicate differing physiology, behaviour or associated factors in shaping species-specific drought responses. Our findings link predictions about the Earth's changing climate to environmental influences on primate mortality risk and thereby improve our understanding of how the increasing severity and frequency of droughts will affect the dynamics and conservation of wild primates.

Global warming & climate change: integration of socio-scientific issues to enhance scientific literacy

Global warming and climate change are some of the greatest socio-scientific issues in recent decades. Many factors contribute to these issues, the footprint of human activities as well as natural phenomena. Human energy consumption in many sectors i.e food supply, livestock, industry, and transportation significantly increasing earth surface temperature average level and climate change. Various studies were carry out about global warming and climate change interdisciplinary. Integration of these socio-scientific issues into science learning as an effort to educate and enhance student environmental awareness and scientific literacy is necessary to do. Rational of this article is to studies global warming and climate change topics from integrative science context; biology (microbial activities, ruminants, and environmental impacts), chemistry (the various chemical reaction that causes greenhouse gases and global warming), and physics (temperature, heat, and global climate). This study is urgent because microbial activities that contribute into greenhouse gases releasing in ruminant enteric fermentation process haven’t included and connected yet in Indonesia’s science learning. Ruminant should be highlighted in these issues because Indonesia is an agricultural country which has enormous farmhouse area. In addition, students are expected to be able to solve problems and make the right decisions related to these issues. This article will discuss suggestion global warming and climate change topics in terms of microbial activities, ruminant and mitigation strategies to reduce GHG from livestock sector. This suggestion is expected to meet the Sustainable development goals.

Extreme weather events recorded by daily to hourly resolution biogeochemical proxies of marine giant clam shells

Paleoclimate research has built a framework for Earth's climate changes over the past 65 million years or even longer. However, our knowledge of weather-timescale extreme events (WEEs, also named paleoweather), which usually occur over several days or hours, under different climate regimes is almost blank because current paleoclimatic records rarely provide information with temporal resolution shorter than monthly scale. Here we show that giant clam shells (Tridacna spp.) from the tropical western Pacific have clear daily growth bands, and several 2-y-long (from January 29, 2012 to December 9, 2013) daily to hourly resolution biological and geochemical records, including daily growth rate, hourly elements/Ca ratios, and fluorescence intensity, were obtained. We found that the pulsed changes of these ultra-high-resolution proxy records clearly matched with the typical instrumental WEEs, for example, tropical cyclones during the summer-autumn and cold surges during the winter. When a tropical cyclone passes through or approaches the sampling site, the growth rate of Tridacna shell decreases abruptly due to the bad weather. Meanwhile, enhanced vertical mixing brings nutrient-enriched subsurface water to the surface, resulting in a high Fe/Ca ratio and strong fluorescence intensity (induced by phytoplankton bloom) in the shell. Our results demonstrate that Tridacna shell has the potential to be used as an ultra-high-resolution archive for paleoweather reconstructions. The fossil shells living in different geological times can be built as a Geological Weather Station network to lengthen the modern instrumental data and investigate the WEEs under various climate conditions.

Baltic Sea Operational Oceanography—A Stimulant for Regional Earth System Research

Two important communities related to oceanography in the Baltic Sea are those working on operational oceanography and Earth system science, with focusing on the same water body but different temporal scales. They have been coordinated through two organizations/programs: the Baltic Sea Operational Oceanographic System (BOOS) and the Baltic Sea Experiment (BALTEX) and its successor, the Baltic Earth Program (Earth system science for the Baltic Sea region), respectively. Although the two communities have archived significant progresses in their own fields since early 1990s, there were few interactions between the communities. Rapid advancements of operational oceanography on ocean monitoring, data sharing, modelling and historical ocean state reconstruction in the last decade have provided a wide range of data, products and modelling tools which may be used in Earth system and climate change research. This is especially true when operational oceanography in the Baltic Sea is in a transition to a seamless service, i.e., from basin to local scales, from synoptic to climate scales and from physical to biogeochemical and biological systems. On the other hand, the Baltic Sea Earth system research can help to improve operational oceanography by contributing research observations and transferring their research achievements to the operational system. Based on a review of state-of-the-art of BOOS monitoring and modelling capabilities and on-going BOOS research, this paper will highlight topics and areas which are related to the Baltic Earth Grand Challenges, i.e., salinity dynamics, land-sea biogeochemical linkages, natural hazards and extreme events, sea level dynamics, coastal morphology and erosion, regional variability of water and energy exchanges, and multi-drivers of regional Earth system changes. Potential win-win cooperation and interaction between the BOOS and the Baltic Earth communities are also proposed and discussed.

The Past as a Mirror: Deep Time Climate Change Exemplarity in the Anthropocene

During the past decades, notions of Earth dynamics and climate change have changed drastically, as anthropogenic CO2-emissions are linked to measurable Earth system changes. At the same time, Earth scientists have discovered deep time climate changes triggered by large scale and natural release of CO2. As the understanding of past climatic changes improved, they were used to envision what might happen in the near future. This article explores the use of deep time climate examples by analyzing publications on a 56-million-year-old greenhouse gas-driven rapid global warming event, the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). We explore how the PETM is framed and used as an example of “extreme climatic warming” in four cases across different scientific genres. The scientific knowledge about the PETM is considered too uncertain to draw conclusions from, but our analysis shows that, by being presented as an example, the PETM may still contribute to the scientific understanding of ongoing climate change. Although the PETM is regarded as too uncertain to guide present day climate change modeling, it is still considered morally significant, and is allowed to influence public opinion and policy making. We argue that the PETM is used as an example in ways that have formal similarities with the early modern historia magistra vitae topos. The PETM example highlights the ambivalence that characterizes the Anthropocene as a temporal conception. The Anthropocene is “completely different”, but at the same time pointing to the similarity between the present and the deep past, thereby allowing for comparison to past geological events. Thus, the Anthropocene is not so “completely different” after all. Just a little bigger, a lot faster, and a lot scarier to humans.

Toxicological and Medical Aspects of Aspergillus-Derived Mycotoxins Entering the Feed and Food Chain.

Due to Earth’s changing climate, the ongoing and foreseeable spreading of mycotoxigenic Aspergillus species has increased the possibility of mycotoxin contamination in the feed and food production chain. These harmful mycotoxins have aroused serious health and economic problems since their first appearance. The most potent Aspergillus-derived mycotoxins include aflatoxins, ochratoxins, gliotoxin, fumonisins, sterigmatocystin, and patulin. Some of them can be found in dairy products, mainly in milk and cheese, as well as in fresh and especially in dried fruits and vegetables, in nut products, typically in groundnuts, in oil seeds, in coffee beans, in different grain products, like rice, wheat, barley, rye, and frequently in maize and, furthermore, even in the liver of livestock fed by mycotoxin-contaminated forage. Though the mycotoxins present in the feed and food chain are well documented, the human physiological effects of mycotoxin exposure are not yet fully understood. It is known that mycotoxins have nephrotoxic, genotoxic, teratogenic, carcinogenic, and cytotoxic properties and, as a consequence, these toxins may cause liver carcinomas, renal dysfunctions, and also immunosuppressed states. The deleterious physiological effects of mycotoxins on humans are still a first-priority question. In food production and also in the case of acute and chronic poisoning, there are possibilities to set suitable food safety measures into operation to minimize the effects of mycotoxin contaminations. On the other hand, preventive actions are always better, due to the multivariate nature of mycotoxin exposures. In this review, the occurrence and toxicological features of major Aspergillus-derived mycotoxins are summarized and, furthermore, the possibilities of treatments in the medical practice to heal the deleterious consequences of acute and/or chronic exposures are presented.

International Meridian Circle Program

The Earth is buffered from the ferocious onslaught of the solar wind by a thin layer of matter known as the atmosphere and geospace. This layer absorbs energy from irradiance and outburst from the Sun, as well as from disasters, transient phenomena and anthropogenic emissions originated from Earth. Through complicated physics, the absorbed energy changes the atmospheric and geospace state and sometimes gets re-released to power extreme events such as space weather. Taking place globally, these complicated processes cannot be understood unless they are studied globally. The Chinese scientists have proposed the International Meridian Circle Program (IMCP) to meet this demand. By operating nearly 1000 instruments encompassing all latitudes along with the 120°E-60°W longitudes, IMCP aims, for the first time, to construct comprehensive 3D data representation of the atmosphere and geospace on a global scale and empower interdisciplinary research to tackle key questions related to Earth's environment and climate change.

The changing role of Geological Surveys: introduction

Abstract This volume is a collection of papers authored by senior managers and heads of Geological Survey organizations (GSOs) from around the world in an attempt to provide a benchmark on how GSOs are responding to national and international needs in a rapidly changing world. GSOs face an uncertain future and need to understand global trends. Whereas population trends are somewhat predictable, societal responses to change are much less so and technological change is fundamentally disruptive and chaotic. As countries adopt sustainable development principles and the public becomes increasingly (but not necessarily reliably) informed about environmental issues using social media, the integration of resource development and environmental stewardship becomes increasingly important. GSOs will continue to provide key information about Earth systems, natural hazards and climate change in this context. This introduction comprises a short review of the global trends affecting GSOs, a snapshot of the state of GSOs, examples of how GSOs are adapting their activities to the modern world, including the growing use of big data, and an examination of international collaboration between GSOs. The time is perhaps ripe to reinforce international collaborations through a global network of GSOs. To achieve this will require leadership and a focus on the big picture of global sustainability.

About this title - The Changing Role of Geological Surveys

Senior managers and Heads of Geological Survey Organizations (GSOs) from around the world have contributed a collection of papers to provide a benchmark on how GSOs are responding to national and international needs in a rapidly changing world. GSOs continue to provide key scientific information about Earth systems, natural hazards and climate change. As countries adopt sustainable development principles and the public increasingly turns to social media to find information about resource and environmental issues, the generation and communication of Earth science knowledge become increasingly important. This volume provides a snapshot of how GSOs are adapting their activities to this changing world. The different national perspectives presented converge around several common themes related to resources, environment and big data. Climate change and the UN's Sustainable Development Goals provide an increased incentive for GSOs of the world to work in harmony, to generate knowledge of Earth systems and to provide solutions for sustainable management of the planet.