ALBERT

Description: © The Author(s), 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Cronin, M. F., Gentemann, C. L., Edson, J., Ueki, I., Bourassa, M., Brown, S., Clayson, C. A., Fairall, C. W., Farrar, J. T., Gille, S. T., Gulev, S., Josey, S. A., Kato, S., Katsumata, M., Kent, E., Krug, M., Minnett, P. J., Parfitt, R., Pinker, R. T., Stackhouse, P. W., Jr., Swart, S., Tomita, H., Vandemark, D., Weller, R. A., Yoneyama, K., Yu, L., & Zhang, D. Air-sea fluxes with a focus on heat and momentum. Frontiers in Marine Science, 6, (2019): 430, doi:10.3389/fmars.2019.00430.

Description: Turbulent and radiative exchanges of heat between the ocean and atmosphere (hereafter heat fluxes), ocean surface wind stress, and state variables used to estimate them, are Essential Ocean Variables (EOVs) and Essential Climate Variables (ECVs) influencing weather and climate. This paper describes an observational strategy for producing 3-hourly, 25-km (and an aspirational goal of hourly at 10-km) heat flux and wind stress fields over the global, ice-free ocean with breakthrough 1-day random uncertainty of 15 W m–2 and a bias of less than 5 W m–2. At present this accuracy target is met only for OceanSITES reference station moorings and research vessels (RVs) that follow best practices. To meet these targets globally, in the next decade, satellite-based observations must be optimized for boundary layer measurements of air temperature, humidity, sea surface temperature, and ocean wind stress. In order to tune and validate these satellite measurements, a complementary global in situ flux array, built around an expanded OceanSITES network of time series reference station moorings, is also needed. The array would include 500–1000 measurement platforms, including autonomous surface vehicles, moored and drifting buoys, RVs, the existing OceanSITES network of 22 flux sites, and new OceanSITES expanded in 19 key regions. This array would be globally distributed, with 1–3 measurement platforms in each nominal 10° by 10° box. These improved moisture and temperature profiles and surface data, if assimilated into Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) models, would lead to better representation of cloud formation processes, improving state variables and surface radiative and turbulent fluxes from these models. The in situ flux array provides globally distributed measurements and metrics for satellite algorithm development, product validation, and for improving satellite-based, NWP and blended flux products. In addition, some of these flux platforms will also measure direct turbulent fluxes, which can be used to improve algorithms for computation of air-sea exchange of heat and momentum in flux products and models. With these improved air-sea fluxes, the ocean’s influence on the atmosphere will be better quantified and lead to improved long-term weather forecasts, seasonal-interannual-decadal climate predictions, and regional climate projections.

Description: EK was funded by the NERC CLASS Program (NE/R015953/1). CLG was funded by NASA grant 80NSSC18K0837. SG was funded by MEGAGRANT P220 program (#14.W03.31.0006).

Description: © The Author(s), 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in [citation], doi:[doi]. Swart, S., Gille, S. T., Delille, B., Josey, S., Mazloff, M., Newman, L., Thompson, A. F., Thomson, J., Ward, B., du Plessis, M. D., Kent, E. C., Girton, J., Gregor, L., Heil, P., Hyder, P., Pezzi, L. P., de Souza, R. B., Tamsitt, V., Weller, R. A., & Zappa, C. J. Constraining Southern Ocean air-sea-ice fluxes through enhanced observations. Frontiers in Marine Science, 6, (2019): 421, doi:10.3389/fmars.2019.00421.

Description: Air-sea and air-sea-ice fluxes in the Southern Ocean play a critical role in global climate through their impact on the overturning circulation and oceanic heat and carbon uptake. The challenging conditions in the Southern Ocean have led to sparse spatial and temporal coverage of observations. This has led to a “knowledge gap” that increases uncertainty in atmosphere and ocean dynamics and boundary-layer thermodynamic processes, impeding improvements in weather and climate models. Improvements will require both process-based research to understand the mechanisms governing air-sea exchange and a significant expansion of the observing system. This will improve flux parameterizations and reduce uncertainty associated with bulk formulae and satellite observations. Improved estimates spanning the full Southern Ocean will need to take advantage of ships, surface moorings, and the growing capabilities of autonomous platforms with robust and miniaturized sensors. A key challenge is to identify observing system sampling requirements. This requires models, Observing System Simulation Experiments (OSSEs), and assessments of the specific spatial-temporal accuracy and resolution required for priority science and assessment of observational uncertainties of the mean state and direct flux measurements. Year-round, high-quality, quasi-continuous in situ flux measurements and observations of extreme events are needed to validate, improve and characterize uncertainties in blended reanalysis products and satellite data as well as to improve parameterizations. Building a robust observing system will require community consensus on observational methodologies, observational priorities, and effective strategies for data management and discovery.

Description: SS was funded by a Wallenberg Academy Fellowship (WAF 2015.0186). EK was funded by the NERC ORCHESTRA Project (NE/N018095/1). LP was funded by the Advanced Studies in Oceanography of Medium and High Latitudes (CAPES 23038.004304/2014-28) and the Research Productivity Program (CNPq 304009/2016-4). BdS was a research associate at the F.R.S-FNRS. PeH was supported by the Australian Antarctic Science Projects 4301 and 4390, and the Australian Government’s Cooperative Research Centres Programme through the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre and the International Space Science Institute Project 406. SG and MM were funded by National Science Foundation awards OCE-1658001 and PLR-1425989. AT was supported by NASA (NNX15AG42G) and NSF (OCE-1756956).

Description: 〈jats:title〉Abstract〈/jats:title〉 〈jats:p〉—J. BLUNDEN, T. BOYER, AND E. BARTOW-GILLIES〈/jats:p〉 〈jats:p〉Earth’s global climate system is vast, complex, and intricately interrelated. Many areas are influenced by global-scale phenomena, including the “triple dip” La Niña conditions that prevailed in the eastern Pacific Ocean nearly continuously from mid-2020 through all of 2022; by regional phenomena such as the positive winter and summer North Atlantic Oscillation that impacted weather in parts the Northern Hemisphere and the negative Indian Ocean dipole that impacted weather in parts of the Southern Hemisphere; and by more localized systems such as high-pressure heat domes that caused extreme heat in different areas of the world. Underlying all these natural short-term variabilities are long-term climate trends due to continuous increases since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the atmospheric concentrations of Earth’s major greenhouse gases.〈/jats:p〉 〈jats:p〉In 2022, the annual global average carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere rose to 417.1±0.1 ppm, which is 50% greater than the pre-industrial level. Global mean tropospheric methane abundance was 165% higher than its pre-industrial level, and nitrous oxide was 24% higher. All three gases set new record-high atmospheric concentration levels in 2022.〈/jats:p〉 〈jats:p〉Sea-surface temperature patterns in the tropical Pacific characteristic of La Niña and attendant atmospheric patterns tend to mitigate atmospheric heat gain at the global scale, but the annual global surface temperature across land and oceans was still among the six highest in records dating as far back as the mid-1800s. It was the warmest La Niña year on record. Many areas observed record or near-record heat. Europe as a whole observed its second-warmest year on record, with sixteen individual countries observing record warmth at the national scale. Records were shattered across the continent during the summer months as heatwaves plagued the region. On 18 July, 104 stations in France broke their all-time records. One day later, England recorded a temperature of 40°C for the first time ever. China experienced its second-warmest year and warmest summer on record. In the Southern Hemisphere, the average temperature across New Zealand reached a record high for the second year in a row. While Australia’s annual temperature was slightly below the 1991–2020 average, Onslow Airport in Western Australia reached 50.7°C on 13 January, equaling Australia's highest temperature on record.〈/jats:p〉 〈jats:p〉While fewer in number and locations than record-high temperatures, record cold was also observed during the year. Southern Africa had its coldest August on record, with minimum temperatures as much as 5°C below normal over Angola, western Zambia, and northern Namibia. Cold outbreaks in the first half of December led to many record-low daily minimum temperature records in eastern Australia.〈/jats:p〉 〈jats:p〉The effects of rising temperatures and extreme heat were apparent across the Northern Hemisphere, where snow-cover extent by June 2022 was the third smallest in the 56-year record, and the seasonal duration of lake ice cover was the fourth shortest since 1980. More frequent and intense heatwaves contributed to the second-greatest average mass balance loss for Alpine glaciers around the world since the start of the record in 1970. Glaciers in the Swiss Alps lost a record 6% of their volume. In South America, the combination of drought and heat left many central Andean glaciers snow free by mid-summer in early 2022; glacial ice has a much lower albedo than snow, leading to accelerated heating of the glacier. Across the global cryosphere, permafrost temperatures continued to reach record highs at many high-latitude and mountain locations.〈/jats:p〉 〈jats:p〉In the high northern latitudes, the annual surface-air temperature across the Arctic was the fifth highest in the 123-year record. The seasonal Arctic minimum sea-ice extent, typically reached in September, was the 11th-smallest in the 43-year record; however, the amount of multiyear ice—ice that survives at least one summer melt season—remaining in the Arctic continued to decline. Since 2012, the Arctic has been nearly devoid of ice more than four years old.〈/jats:p〉 〈jats:p〉In Antarctica, an unusually large amount of snow and ice fell over the continent in 2022 due to several landfalling atmospheric rivers, which contributed to the highest annual surface mass balance, 15% to 16% above the 1991–2020 normal, since the start of two reanalyses records dating to 1980. It was the second-warmest year on record for all five of the long-term staffed weather stations on the Antarctic Peninsula. In East Antarctica, a heatwave event led to a new all-time record-high temperature of −9.4°C—44°C above the March average—on 18 March at Dome C. This was followed by the collapse of the critically unstable Conger Ice Shelf. More than 100 daily low sea-ice extent and sea-ice area records were set in 2022, including two new all-time annual record lows in net sea-ice extent and area in February.〈/jats:p〉 〈jats:p〉Across the world’s oceans, global mean sea level was record high for the 11th consecutive year, reaching 101.2 mm above the 1993 average when satellite altimetry measurements began, an increase of 3.3±0.7 over 2021. Globally-averaged ocean heat content was also record high in 2022, while the global sea-surface temperature was the sixth highest on record, equal with 2018. Approximately 58% of the ocean surface experienced at least one marine heatwave in 2022. In the Bay of Plenty, New Zealand’s longest continuous marine heatwave was recorded.〈/jats:p〉 〈jats:p〉A total of 85 named tropical storms were observed during the Northern and Southern Hemisphere storm seasons, close to the 1991–2020 average of 87. There were three Category 5 tropical cyclones across the globe—two in the western North Pacific and one in the North Atlantic. This was the fewest Category 5 storms globally since 2017. Globally, the accumulated cyclone energy was the lowest since reliable records began in 1981. Regardless, some storms caused massive damage. In the North Atlantic, Hurricane Fiona became the most intense and most destructive tropical or post-tropical cyclone in Atlantic Canada’s history, while major Hurricane Ian killed more than 100 people and became the third costliest disaster in the United States, causing damage estimated at $113 billion U.S. dollars. In the South Indian Ocean, Tropical Cyclone Batsirai dropped 2044 mm of rain at Commerson Crater in Réunion. The storm also impacted Madagascar, where 121 fatalities were reported.〈/jats:p〉 〈jats:p〉As is typical, some areas around the world were notably dry in 2022 and some were notably wet. In August, record high areas of land across the globe (6.2%) were experiencing extreme drought. Overall, 29% of land experienced moderate or worse categories of drought during the year. The largest drought footprint in the contiguous United States since 2012 (63%) was observed in late October. The record-breaking megadrought of central Chile continued in its 13th consecutive year, and 80-year record-low river levels in northern Argentina and Paraguay disrupted fluvial transport. In China, the Yangtze River reached record-low values. Much of equatorial eastern Africa had five consecutive below-normal rainy seasons by the end of 2022, with some areas receiving record-low precipitation totals for the year. This ongoing 2.5-year drought is the most extensive and persistent drought event in decades, and led to crop failure, millions of livestock deaths, water scarcity, and inflated prices for staple food items.〈/jats:p〉 〈jats:p〉In South Asia, Pakistan received around three times its normal volume of monsoon precipitation in August, with some regions receiving up to eight times their expected monthly totals. Resulting floods affected over 30 million people, caused over 1700 fatalities, led to major crop and property losses, and was recorded as one of the world’s costliest natural disasters of all time. Near Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Petrópolis received 530 mm in 24 hours on 15 February, about 2.5 times the monthly February average, leading to the worst disaster in the city since 1931 with over 230 fatalities.〈/jats:p〉 〈jats:p〉On 14–15 January, the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai submarine volcano in the South Pacific erupted multiple times. The injection of water into the atmosphere was unprecedented in both magnitude—far exceeding any previous values in the 17-year satellite record—and altitude as it penetrated into the mesosphere. The amount of water injected into the stratosphere is estimated to be 146±5 Terragrams, or ∼10% of the total amount in the stratosphere. It may take several years for the water plume to dissipate, and it is currently unknown whether this eruption will have any long-term climate effect.〈/jats:p〉

Description: Background: Persistent nipple pain is one of the most common reasons given by mothers for ceasing exclusive breastfeeding. We aimed to determine the frequency of nipple pain as a reason for consultation, the most common attributed aetiologies, and the effectiveness of the advice and treatment given. Methods: All consultations at the Breast Feeding Centre of Western Australia (WA) were audited over two six-month periods in 2011 (n = 469) and 2014 (n = 708). Attributed cause(s) of nipple pain, microbiology results, treatment(s) advised, and resolution of pain were recorded. Results: Nipple pain was one of the reasons for consultation in 36% of cases. The most common attributed cause of nipple pain was incorrect positioning and attachment, followed by tongue tie, infection, palatal anomaly, flat or inverted nipples, mastitis, and vasospasm. Advice included correction of positioning and attachment, use of a nipple shield, resting the nipples and expressing breastmilk, frenotomy, oral antibiotics, topical treatments, and cold or warm compresses. Pain was resolving or resolved in 57% of cases after 18 days (range 2–110). Conclusion: The multiple attributed causes of nipple pain, possibly as a result of a cascade of events, suggests that effective early lactation management for prevention of nipple pain and early diagnosis and effective treatment are crucial to avoid early weaning.

Description: Background: Geographical isolation has generated a distinct difference between Atlantic salmon of European and North American Atlantic origin. The European Atlantic salmon generally has 29 pairs of chromosomes and 74 chromosome arms whereas it has been reported that the North American Atlantic salmon has 27 chromosome pairs and an NF of 72. In order to predict the major chromosomal rearrangements causing these differences, we constructed a dense linkage map for Atlantic salmon of North American origin and compared it with the well-developed map for European Atlantic salmon. Results: The presented male and female genetic maps for the North American subspecies of Atlantic salmon, contains 3,662 SNPs located on 27 linkage groups. The total lengths of the female and male linkage maps were 2,153 cM and 968 cM respectively, with males characteristically showing recombination only at the telomeres. We compared these maps with recently published SNP maps from European Atlantic salmon, and predicted three chromosomal reorganization events that we then tested using fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) analysis. The proposed rearrangements, which define the differences in the karyotypes of the North American Atlantic salmon relative to the European Atlantic salmon, include the translocation of the p arm of ssa01 to ssa23 and polymorphic fusions: ssa26 with ssa28, and ssa08 with ssa29. Conclusions: This study identified major chromosomal differences between European and North American Atlantic salmon. However, while gross structural differences were significant, the order of genetic markers at the fine-resolution scale was remarkably conserved. This is a good indication that information from the International Cooperation to Sequence the Atlantic salmon Genome, which is sequencing a European Atlantic salmon, can be transferred to Atlantic salmon from North America.

Description: Global surface temperature changes are a fundamental expression of climate change. Recent, much-debated variations in the observed rate of surface temperature change have highlighted the importance of uncertainty in adjustments applied to sea surface temperature (SST) measurements. These adjustments are applied to compensate for systematic biases and changes in observing protocol. Better quantification of the adjustments and their uncertainties would increase confidence in estimated surface temperature change and provide higher-quality gridded SST fields for use in many applications. Bias adjustments have been based on either physical models of the observing processes or the assumption of an unchanging relationship between SST and a reference dataset, such as night marine air temperature. These approaches produce similar estimates of SST bias on the largest space and time scales, but regional differences can exceed the estimated uncertainty. We describe challenges to improving our understanding of SST biases. Overcoming these will require clarification of past observational methods, improved modeling of biases associated with each observing method, and the development of statistical bias estimates that are less sensitive to the absence of metadata regarding the observing method. New approaches are required that embed bias models, specific to each type of observation, within a robust statistical framework. Mobile platforms and rapid changes in observation type require biases to be assessed for individual historic and present-day platforms (i.e., ships or buoys) or groups of platforms. Lack of observational metadata and high-quality observations for validation and bias model development are likely to remain major challenges.

Description: The Bay of Bengal (BoB) plays a fundamental role in controlling the weather systems that make up the South Asian summer monsoon system. In particular, the southern BoB has cooler sea surface temperatures (SST) that influence ocean–atmosphere interaction and impact the monsoon. Compared to the southeastern BoB, the southwestern BoB is cooler, more saline, receives much less rain, and is influenced by the summer monsoon current (SMC). To examine the impact of these features on the monsoon, the BoB Boundary Layer Experiment (BoBBLE) was jointly undertaken by India and the United Kingdom during June–July 2016. Physical and biogeochemical observations were made using a conductivity–temperature–depth (CTD) profiler, five ocean gliders, an Oceanscience Underway CTD (uCTD), a vertical microstructure profiler (VMP), two acoustic Doppler current profilers (ADCPs), Argo floats, drifting buoys, meteorological sensors, and upper-air radiosonde balloons. The observations were made along a zonal section at 8°N between 85.3° and 89°E with a 10-day time series at 8°N, 89°E. This paper presents the new observed features of the southern BoB from the BoBBLE field program, supported by satellite data. Key results from the BoBBLE field campaign show the Sri Lanka dome and the SMC in different stages of their seasonal evolution and two freshening events during which salinity decreased in the upper layer, leading to the formation of thick barrier layers. BoBBLE observations were taken during a suppressed phase of the intraseasonal oscillation; they captured in detail the warming of the ocean mixed layer and the preconditioning of the atmosphere to convection.

Description: A new analysis of sea surface temperature (SST) observations indicates notable uncertainty in observed decadal climate variability in the second half of the twentieth century, particularly during the decades following World War II. The uncertainties are revealed by exploring SST data binned separately for the two predominant measurement types: “engine-room intake” (ERI) and “bucket” measurements. ERI measurements indicate large decreases in global-mean SSTs from 1950 to 1975, whereas bucket measurements indicate increases in SST over this period before bias adjustments are applied but decreases after they are applied. The trends in the bias adjustments applied to the bucket data are larger than the global-mean trends during the period 1950–75, and thus the global-mean trends during this period derive largely from the adjustments themselves. This is critical, since the adjustments are based on incomplete information about the underlying measurement methods and are thus subject to considerable uncertainty. The uncertainty in decadal-scale variability is particularly pronounced over the North Pacific, where the sign of low-frequency variability through the 1950s to 1970s is different for each measurement type. The uncertainty highlighted here has important—but in our view widely overlooked—implications for the interpretation of observed decadal climate variability over both the Pacific and Atlantic basins during the mid-to-late twentieth century.