Aerosols implicated as a prime driver of twentieth-century North Atlantic climate variability

Systematic climate shifts have been linked to multidecadal variability in observed sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic Ocean. These links are extensive, influencing a range of climate processes such as hurricane activity and African Sahel and Amazonian droughts. The variability is distinct from historical global-mean temperature changes and is commonly attributed to natural ocean oscillations. A number of studies have provided evidence that aerosols can influence long-term changes in sea surface temperatures, but climate models have so far failed to reproduce these interactions and the role of aerosols in decadal variability remains unclear. Here we use a state-of-the-art Earth system climate model to show that aerosol emissions and periods of volcanic activity explain 76 per cent of the simulated multidecadal variance in detrended 1860-2005 North Atlantic sea surface temperatures. After 1950, simulated variability is within observational estimates; our estimates for 1910-1940 capture twice the warming of previous generation models but do not explain the entire observed trend. Other processes, such as ocean circulation, may also have contributed to variability in the early twentieth century. Mechanistically, we find that inclusion of aerosol-cloud microphysical effects, which were included in few previous multimodel ensembles, dominates the magnitude (80 per cent) and the spatial pattern of the total surface aerosol forcing in the North Atlantic. Our findings suggest that anthropogenic aerosol emissions influenced a range of societally important historical climate events such as peaks in hurricane activity and Sahel drought. Decadal-scale model predictions of regional Atlantic climate will probably be improved by incorporating aerosol-cloud microphysical interactions and estimates of future concentrations of aerosols, emissions of which are directly addressable by policy actions.     

Reducing the climate shift in a new coupled model

Climate drift refers to spurious long-term changes that may be inherent in coupled models when external forcing factors are fixed. Understanding the sources of this drift and tuning the drift are crucial for obtaining reasonable simulations from coupled models. To prepare for the upcoming Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6, a new coupled model has been constructed based on the Community Earth System Model and the Grid-point Atmospheric Model of IAP LASG version 2. However, the surface temperature predicted by the new model is too underestimated, and this underestimation is caused by a type of climate drift, i.e., ‘‘initial shock.’’ This study analyzes the source of the cold surface temperature from the perspective of energy balance and attempts to reduce the surface temperature drift by tuning the relative humidity threshold for low cloud.     

Young organic matter as a source of carbon dioxide outgassing from Amazonian rivers

Rivers are generally supersaturated with respect to carbon dioxide, resulting in large gas evasion fluxes that can be a significant component of regional net carbon budgets. Amazonian rivers were recently shown to outgas more than ten times the amount of carbon exported to the ocean in the form of total organic carbon or dissolved inorganic carbon. High carbon dioxide concentrations in rivers originate largely from in situ respiration of organic carbon, but little agreement exists about the sources or turnover times of this carbon. Here we present results of an extensive survey of the carbon isotope composition (13C and 14C) of dissolved inorganic carbon and three size-fractions of organic carbon across the Amazonian river system. We find that respiration of contemporary organic matter (less than five years old) originating on land and near rivers is the dominant source of excess carbon dioxide that drives outgassing in medium to large rivers, although we find that bulk organic carbon fractions transported by these rivers range from tens to thousands of years in age. We therefore suggest that a small, rapidly cycling pool of organic carbon is responsible for the large carbon fluxes from land to water to atmosphere in the humid tropics.     

Fire as the dominant driver of central Canadian boreal forest carbon balance

Changes in climate, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and fire regimes have been occurring for decades in the global boreal forest, with future climate change likely to increase fire frequency--the primary disturbance agent in most boreal forests. Previous attempts to assess quantitatively the effect of changing environmental conditions on the net boreal forest carbon balance have not taken into account the competition between different vegetation types on a large scale. Here we use a process model with three competing vascular and non-vascular vegetation types to examine the effects of climate, carbon dioxide concentrations and fire disturbance on net biome production, net primary production and vegetation dominance in 100 Mha of Canadian boreal forest. We find that the carbon balance of this region was driven by changes in fire disturbance from 1948 to 2005. Climate changes affected the variability, but not the mean, of the landscape carbon balance, with precipitation exerting a more significant effect than temperature. We show that more frequent and larger fires in the late twentieth century resulted in deciduous trees and mosses increasing production at the expense of coniferous trees. Our model did not however exhibit the increases in total forest net primary production that have been inferred from satellite data. We find that poor soil drainage decreased the variability of the landscape carbon balance, which suggests that increased climate and hydrological changes have the potential to affect disproportionately the carbon dynamics of these areas. Overall, we conclude that direct ecophysiological changes resulting from global climate change have not yet been felt in this large boreal region. Variations in the landscape carbon balance and vegetation dominance have so far been driven largely by increases in fire frequency.     

汽车驾驶人可靠性量化方法

基于可靠性工程理论,提出了一种用“可靠度”表征驾驶人可靠性量化结果的方法．该方法由驾驶人反应时间推算差错率．并从驾驶人行为致因理论出发,为处于不同行车阶段的驾驶人筛选不同的可靠性影响因子．仿真结果表明,该量化方法不仅能统计分析驾驶人可靠度,还能描述可靠度与时间的变化关系．分析各影响因子和可靠度的关系．为安全行车提供可行建议．     

Amorphous silica-like carbon dioxide

Among the group IV elements, only carbon forms stable double bonds with oxygen at ambient conditions. At variance with silica and germania, the non-molecular single-bonded crystalline form of carbon dioxide, phase V, only exists at high pressure. The amorphous forms of silica (a-SiO2) and germania (a-GeO2) are well known at ambient conditions; however, the amorphous, non-molecular form of CO2 has so far been described only as a result of first-principles simulations. Here we report the synthesis of an amorphous, silica-like form of carbon dioxide, a-CO2, which we call 'a-carbonia'. The compression of the molecular phase III of CO2 between 40 and 48 GPa at room temperature initiated the transformation to the non-molecular amorphous phase. Infrared spectra measured at temperatures up to 680 K show the progressive formation of C-O single bonds and the simultaneous disappearance of all molecular signatures. Furthermore, state-of-the-art Raman and synchrotron X-ray diffraction measurements on temperature-quenched samples confirm the amorphous character of the material. Comparison with vibrational and diffraction data for a-SiO2 and a-GeO2, as well as with the structure factor calculated for the a-CO2 sample obtained by first-principles molecular dynamics, shows that a-CO2 is structurally homologous to the other group IV dioxide glasses. We therefore conclude that the class of archetypal network-forming disordered systems, including a-SiO2, a-GeO2 and water, must be extended to include a-CO2.     

Colossal cages in zeolitic imidazolate frameworks as selective carbon dioxide reservoirs

Zeolitic imidazolate frameworks (ZIFs) are porous crystalline materials with tetrahedral networks that resemble those of zeolites: transition metals (Zn, Co) replace tetrahedrally coordinated atoms (for example, Si), and imidazolate links replace oxygen bridges. A striking feature of these materials is that the structure adopted by a given ZIF is determined by link-link interactions, rather than by the structure directing agents used in zeolite synthesis. As a result, systematic variations of linker substituents have yielded many different ZIFs that exhibit known or predicted zeolite topologies. The materials are chemically and thermally stable, yet have the long-sought-after design flexibility offered by functionalized organic links and a high density of transition metal ions. Here we report the synthesis and characterization of two porous ZIFs-ZIF-95 and ZIF-100-with structures of a scale and complexity previously unknown in zeolites. The materials have complex cages that contain up to 264 vertices, and are constructed from as many as 7,524 atoms. As expected from the adsorption selectivity recently documented for other members of this materials family, both ZIFs selectively capture carbon dioxide from several different gas mixtures at room temperature, with ZIF-100 capable of storing 28 litres per litre of material at standard temperature and pressure. These characteristics, combined with their high thermal and chemical stability and ease of fabrication, make ZIFs promising candidate materials for strategies aimed at ameliorating increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.     

活性炭吸附二氧化碳性能的研究

采用常压流动吸附法研究了活性炭吸附剂在二氧化碳/氮气体系中对二氧化碳的动态吸附性能,比较了其吸附量、吸附穿透曲线和吸附性能的差异,研究了活性炭的比表面积、孔径分布及表面官能团对其二氧化碳吸附性能的影响。结果表明,原料煤的性质影响活性炭对二氧化碳的吸附性能;二氧化碳的吸附量与吸附剂的比表面积、孔径分布有关,但孔径分布是主要的因素。吸附剂的孔径分布在0.5～1.7nm范围内时,有利于对二氧化碳的吸附;经多次循环吸脱附后,吸附剂对二氧化碳的吸附量略有减小并达到恒定值,孔容小和孔径分布窄的吸附剂的吸附量衰减较快。     

CO2吸附剂的研究

利用介孔材料MCM-41作为吸附剂实现CO2的吸附,以达到控制CO2排放的目的.将MCM-41作为载体,实现材料表面氨基修饰,从而提高MCM-41材料的吸附性能.为使原料粉末适用于工业应用,利用高温烧结法及低温压片法对粉末进行成型,形成特定的固体颗粒,由实验结果可以看出高温烧结法成型的颗粒坚硬且耐溶剂性能强.采用茚三酮比色法,实现氨基嫁接率的测定.经测定得到吸光度与氨基浓度的回归方程.     

Quantifying the uncertainty in forecasts of anthropogenic climate change

Forecasts of climate change are inevitably uncertain. It is therefore essential to quantify the risk of significant departures from the predicted response to a given emission scenario. Previous analyses of this risk have been based either on expert opinion, perturbation analysis of simplified climate models or the comparison of predictions from general circulation models. Recent observed changes that appear to be attributable to human influence provide a powerful constraint on the uncertainties in multi-decadal forecasts. Here we assess the range of warming rates over the coming 50 years that are consistent with the observed near-surface temperature record as well as with the overall patterns of response predicted by several general circulation models. We expect global mean temperatures in the decade 2036-46 to be 1-2.5 K warmer than in pre-industrial times under a 'business as usual' emission scenario. This range is relatively robust to errors in the models' climate sensitivity, rate of oceanic heat uptake or global response to sulphate aerosols as long as these errors are persistent over time. Substantial changes in the current balance of greenhouse warming and sulphate aerosol cooling would, however, increase the uncertainty. Unlike 50-year warming rates, the final equilibrium warming after the atmospheric composition stabilizes remains very uncertain, despite the evidence provided by the emerging signal.     

C4 grasses prosper as carbon dioxide eliminates desiccation in warmed semi-arid grassland

Global warming is predicted to induce desiccation in many world regions through increases in evaporative demand. Rising CO(2) may counter that trend by improving plant water-use efficiency. However, it is not clear how important this CO(2)-enhanced water use efficiency might be in offsetting warming-induced desiccation because higher CO(2) also leads to higher plant biomass, and therefore greater transpirational surface. Furthermore, although warming is predicted to favour warm-season, C(4) grasses, rising CO(2) should favour C(3), or cool-season plants. Here we show in a semi-arid grassland that elevated CO(2) can completely reverse the desiccating effects of moderate warming. Although enrichment of air to 600?p.p.m.v. CO(2) increased soil water content (SWC), 1.5/3.0?°C day/night warming resulted in desiccation, such that combined CO(2) enrichment and warming had no effect on SWC relative to control plots. As predicted, elevated CO(2) favoured C(3) grasses and enhanced stand productivity, whereas warming favoured C(4) grasses. Combined warming and CO(2) enrichment stimulated above-ground growth of C(4) grasses in 2 of 3?years when soil moisture most limited plant productivity. The results indicate that in a warmer, CO(2)-enriched world, both SWC and productivity in semi-arid grasslands may be higher than previously expected.     

误差与不确定度中几个问题的探讨

论述了误差与不确定度的关系以及不确定度在实验结果中表述的重要性;对一些争论的问题,发表了自己的观点.     

注液态CO_2采油井筒热力分析

目前CO2已经被用作有效的驱油剂,CO2到达井底时的热力状态对驱油效果有较大影响.针对影响井底CO2压力和温度的因素,根据液态CO2在竖直井筒中的热量传递原理和流体流动理论,在Ramey建立的物理模型基础上,建立了液态CO2井筒流动与传热数学模型,通过求解实例,得到井筒内液态CO2温度和压力的分布规律以及各因素对井底CO2参数的影响.结果表明:井筒内CO2的温度和压力随井深的增加而近似成线性增加;当注入速率增大时,气液分界面加深;井底温度随入口流量的增加而降低,而受入口温度的影响较小;井底压力随井口注入压力的增加而成比例增加,随着流量的增加呈先增后减的趋势;环空介质采用清水比空气的导热效果好.     

Debating about the climate warming

Debating about the climate warming is reviewed. Discussions have focused on the validity of the temperature reconstruction for the last millennium made by Mann et al. Arguments against and for the reconstruction are introduced. Temperature reconstructions by other authors are examined, including the one carried out by Wang et al. in 1996. It is concluded that: (1) Ability of reproducing temperature variability of time scale less than 10 a is limited, so no sufficient evidence proves that the 1990s was the warmest decade, and 1998 was the warmest year over the last millennium. (2) All of the temperature reconstructions by different authors demonstrate the occurrence of the MWP (Medieval Warm Period) and LIA (Little Ice Age) in low frequency band of temperature variations, though the peak in the MWP and trough in LIA varies from one reconstruction to the others. Therefore, terms of MWP and LIA can be used in studies of climate change. (3) The warming from 1975 to 2000 was significant, but we do not know if it was the strongest for the last millennium, which needs to be proved by more evidence.