Two Decades of Global Dryland Vegetation Change

Published January 22, 2014

In spite of the postulated growing negative impacts of man and climate alike, the greening of the earth continues – and in places where it’s toughest of all to be green (arid lands) – with the proposed impetus for the phenomenon being the likely-enabling role of anthropogenic-induced atmospheric CO2 enrichment… Read More

The Top Ten Problems of the New-and-Improved ECHAM6 Model (21 Jan 2014)
Once again, it appears that state-of-the-art climate models still have a long way to go in simulating many important aspects of Earth’s climate… Read More

Modelling Thermal Characteristics of the Cold Point-Tropopause (21 Jan 2014)
How well do CMIP5 models do in this regard? According to the authors of this study, “the fine-scale processes that govern stratospheric water vapor and the Cold Point-Tropopause temperature are unlikely to be well represented,” and “the coarse vertical resolution of the models and their non-negligible biases in the climatology, seasonal cycle and variability of the tropical tropopause layer limit their accuracy in the assessment of past, present and future climates”… Read More

Coralline Algae in a High-CO2 World: How Do They Cope? (22 Jan 2014)
The results of this study “indicate that seawater chemistry can drive phenotypic plasticity in coralline algae,” and that “the ability to change the energy allocation between cell growth and structural support is a clear adaptive response of the organism,” which they say “is likely to increase its ability to survive in a high CO2 world”… Read More

The Biodiversity Insurance Hypothesis in a Time of Climate Change (22 Jan 2014)
It’s just what the world needs, and has, in the case of the phenology of many interacting species… Read More

Simulating the Tibetan Plateau Summer Monsoon (22 Jan 2014)
“Extensive integrations under phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) historical scenarios from 15 CGCMs and Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project (AMIP) runs from eight atmospheric general circulation models (AGCMs)” were used to evaluate the models’ performance, which performance has left much to be desired… Read More

The “Best Available Tools” for Predicting Climate Change (22 Jan 2014)
As with many other regions, they don’t perform very well for the Congo and Upper Blue Nile basins of Africa… Read More