Variability modes of precipitation along a Central Mediterranean area and their relations with ENSO, NAO, and other climatic patterns

Kalimeris, A.; Ranieri, Ezio; Founda, Dimitra; Norrant, Caroline

doi:10.1016/j.atmosres.2017.07.031

Cited by 42 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 119 publications

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“…The winter bloom may also have been the result of particular climatic/environmental conditions that occurred during the study period. In fact, even though the impact of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) on the Mediterranean climate is still a source of discussion [67], 2015 was a strong El Niño year with an ENSO Oceanic Niño Index (ONI) value of approximately 2, making it less important than that in 1997–1998 but more than that in 1991–1992 [68], which could potentially explain the exceptional 2015–2016 winter climatic conditions.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Water temperature drives phytoplankton blooms in coastal waters

et al. 2019

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Phytoplankton blooms are an important, widespread phenomenon in open oceans, coastal waters and freshwaters, supporting food webs and essential ecosystem services. Blooms are even more important in exploited coastal waters for maintaining high resource production. However, the environmental factors driving blooms in shallow productive coastal waters are still unclear, making it difficult to assess how environmental fluctuations influence bloom phenology and productivity. To gain insights into bloom phenology, Chl a fluorescence and meteorological and hydrological parameters were monitored at high-frequency (15 min) and nutrient concentrations and phytoplankton abundance and diversity, were monitored weekly in a typical Mediterranean shallow coastal system (Thau Lagoon). This study was carried out from winter to late spring in two successive years with different climatic conditions: 2014/2015 was typical, but the winter of 2015/2016 was the warmest on record. Rising water temperature was the main driver of phytoplankton blooms. However, blooms were sometimes correlated with winds and sometimes correlated with salinity, suggesting nutrients were supplied by water transport via winds, saltier seawater intake, rain and water flow events. This finding indicates the joint role of these factors in determining the success of phytoplankton blooms. Furthermore, interannual variability showed that winter water temperature was higher in 2016 than in 2015, resulting in lower phytoplankton biomass accumulation in the following spring. Moreover, the phytoplankton abundances and diversity also changed: cyanobacteria (< 1 μm), picoeukaryotes (< 1 μm) and nanoeukaryotes (3–6 μm) increased to the detriment of larger phytoplankton such as diatoms. Water temperature is a key factor affecting phytoplankton bloom dynamics in shallow productive coastal waters and could become crucial with future global warming by modifying bloom phenology and changing phytoplankton community structure, in turn affecting the entire food web and ecosystem services.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Water temperature drives phytoplankton blooms in coastal waters

et al. 2019

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Precipitation projections suffer from large uncertainties partly due to the poor representation of dynamical mechanisms and the difficulties to correctly parametrize the internal variability of the climate system in GCMs(van Haren, Oldenborgh, Lenderink, Collins, & Hazeleger, 2013a;van Haren, Oldenborgh, Lenderink, & Hazeleger, 2013b). Furthermore, variations in patterns such as NAO, poorly represented in the simulated climate data as shown inFigure 6f,j, are linked to other Earth subsystems such as the North Atlantic Jet (NAJ;Trouet, Babst, & Meko, 2018); the Sahara/Sahel and West African Monsoon (WAM;Bader & Latif, 2003); and the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO;Kalimeris, Ranieri, Founda, & Norrant, 2017).Those systems may shift with increased anthropogenic forcing(Barnes & Polvani, 2013) and pass critical states in intensity and location, leading to large-scale impacts on human and ecological systems (socalled tipping elements;Lenton et al, 2008; see Schwalm et al, 2017 for a worldwide study). Thus, changes in NAJ, WAN and ENSO may promote profound changes in the state of the NAO and, hence, in the precipitation over the Mediterranean region.Although the poor representation of dynamical mechanisms inGCMs is still a relevant issue, recent studies relying on more accurate representations of fine-scale circulation patterns have shown improved predictive skills(van Haren, Haarsma, Oldenborgh, & Hazeleger, 2015;Ozturk et al, 2015).…”

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confidence: 99%

Geographical adaptation prevails over species‐specific determinism in trees’ vulnerability to climate change at Mediterranean rear‐edge forests

Dorado‐Liñán

Piovesan

Martínez-Sancho

et al. 2019

Global Change Biology

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Climate change may reduce forest growth and increase forest mortality, which is connected to high carbon costs through reductions in gross primary production and net ecosystem exchange. Yet, the spatiotemporal patterns of vulnerability to both short‐term extreme events and gradual environmental changes are quite uncertain across the species’ limits of tolerance to dryness. Such information is fundamental for defining ecologically relevant upper limits of species tolerance to drought and, hence, to predict the risk of increased forest mortality and shifts in species composition. We investigate here to what extent the impact of short‐ and long‐term environmental changes determines vulnerability to climate change of three evergreen conifers (Scots pine, silver fir, Norway spruce) and two deciduous hardwoods (European beech, sessile oak) tree species at their southernmost limits of distribution in the Mediterranean Basin. Finally, we simulated future forest growth under RCP 2.6 and 8.5 emission scenarios using a multispecies generalized linear mixed model. Our analysis provides four key insights into the patterns of species’ vulnerability to climate change. First, site climatic marginality was significantly linked to the growth trends: increasing growth was related to less climatically limited sites. Second, estimated species‐specific vulnerability did not match their a priori rank in drought tolerance: Scots pine and beech seem to be the most vulnerable species among those studied despite their contrasting physiologies. Third, adaptation to site conditions prevails over species‐specific determinism in forest response to climate change. And fourth, regional differences in forests vulnerability to climate change across the Mediterranean Basin are linked to the influence of summer atmospheric circulation patterns, which are not correctly represented in global climate models. Thus, projections of forest performance should reconsider the traditional classification of tree species in functional types and critically evaluate the fine‐scale limitations of the climate data generated by global climate models.

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“…Kalimeris et al . () found that in a central Mediterranean area, significant variations in precipitation were strongly related to the ENSO activity prior to the 1930s and after the early 1970s. In the northwest of China, annual precipitation was found to be most strongly correlated with Indian summer monsoons and ENSO (Zhong et al ., ; ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Variation of reference evapotranspiration and its teleconnection with multiple large‐scale climate oscillations in the Yangtze River Delta, China

2019

Intl Journal of Climatology

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Evapotranspiration is a key factor in regional hydrological processes and water resources management. Long‐term variation of evapotranspiration affects the regional climate wet/dry tendency and agricultural production profoundly. Thus, reference evapotranspiration (ET0) values for 46 meteorological stations in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) were calculated for 1957–2014 using the FAO‐Penman–Monteith (FAO‐PM) method. The variation patterns of ET0 values were determined based on the principal component analysis (PCA) method. In addition, the methods of cross wavelet transform (CWT), Kendall tau‐b correlation coefficient determination and cross‐correlation method were applied in the assessment of the correlation between ET0 values and large‐scale climate oscillations, such as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), the Oceanic Niño3.4 Sea Surface Temperature Index (NINO) and the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD). Annual ET0 patterns for three dominant geographic subregions of the YRD (the southeastern, northwestern and mid‐eastern) were determined. There were only several discontinuous lower timescale bands between the three change patterns of annual ET0 and climate oscillations. In seasonal scale, the temporal patterns of ET0 changed simultaneously with the NAO, NINO and PDO in spring, the PDO in summer and the NAO in winter. The monthly ET0 was mostly influenced by the NAO and IOD in January, the IOD in February, the IOD and NINO in March, the NINO in June, the PDO in July to October, the NINO, IOD and NAO in October and the NINO in December. The lag times for the ET0 changes were about 0–5 months for the NAO and NINO, 1–2 months for the PDO and 4 months for the IOD.

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Variability modes of precipitation along a Central Mediterranean area and their relations with ENSO, NAO, and other climatic patterns

Cited by 42 publications

References 119 publications

Water temperature drives phytoplankton blooms in coastal waters

Water temperature drives phytoplankton blooms in coastal waters

Geographical adaptation prevails over species‐specific determinism in trees’ vulnerability to climate change at Mediterranean rear‐edge forests

Variation of reference evapotranspiration and its teleconnection with multiple large‐scale climate oscillations in the Yangtze River Delta, China

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