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Author

Peili Wu

Bio: Peili Wu is an academic researcher from Met Office. The author has contributed to research in topics: Climate model & Precipitation. The author has an hindex of 23, co-authored 65 publications receiving 2314 citations. Previous affiliations of Peili Wu include University of Edinburgh & Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research.


Papers
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors analyzed the variability of the thermohaline circulation (THC) in a long control simulation by the Met Office's Third Hadley Centre Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere General Circulation Model (HadCM3) and showed that internal THC variability in the coupled climate system is concentrated at interannual and centennial time scales, with the centennial mode being dominant.
Abstract: Variability of the thermohaline circulation (THC) has been analyzed in a long control simulation by the Met Office's Third Hadley Centre Coupled Ocean–Atmosphere General Circulation Model (HadCM3). It is shown that internal THC variability in the coupled climate system is concentrated at interannual and centennial time scales, with the centennial mode being dominant. Centennial oscillations of the THC can impact surface climate via an interhemispheric SST contrast of 0.1°C in the Tropics and more than 0.5°C in mid- and high latitudes. A mechanism is proposed based on detailed process analysis involving large-scale air–sea interaction on multidecadal time scales. Anomalous northward ocean heat transport associated with a strong phase of the Atlantic THC generates a cross-equatorial SST gradient. This causes the ITCZ to move to a more northerly position with increased strength. The extra rainfall resulting from the anomalous ITCZ imposes a freshwater flux and produces a salinity anomaly in the trop...

259 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors show that enhancement of poleward atmospheric moisture transport (AMT) decisively contributes to increased Eurasian Arctic river discharges, and that the trend of 2.6% net AMT increase per decade accounts well for the 1.8% per decade increase in gauged discharges and also suggests an increase in underlying soil moisture.
Abstract: Observations and climate change projections forced by greenhouse gas emissions have indicated a wetting trend in northern high latitudes, evidenced by increasing Eurasian Arctic river discharges1, 2, 3. The increase in river discharge has accelerated in the latest decade and an unprecedented, record high discharge occurred in 2007 along with an extreme loss of Arctic summer sea-ice cover4, 5, 6. Studies have ascribed this increasing discharge to various factors attributable to local global warming effects, including intensifying precipitation minus evaporation, thawing permafrost, increasing greenness and reduced plant transpiration7, 8, 9, 10, 11. However, no agreement has been reached and causal physical processes remain unclear. Here we show that enhancement of poleward atmospheric moisture transport (AMT) decisively contributes to increased Eurasian Arctic river discharges. Net AMT into the Eurasian Arctic river basins captures 98% of the gauged climatological river discharges. The trend of 2.6% net AMT increase per decade accounts well for the 1.8% per decade increase in gauged discharges and also suggests an increase in underlying soil moisture. A radical shift of the atmospheric circulation pattern induced an unusually large AMT and warm surface in 2006–2007 over Eurasia, resulting in the record high discharge.

252 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the impact of climate change on the global hydrological cycle is investigated, with land precipitation and river discharges not increasing as expected, and tropospheric aerosols are found to have weakened the hydrologogical cycle between the 1950s and 1980s.
Abstract: The impact of climate change on the global hydrological cycle is unclear, with land precipitation and river discharges not increasing as expected. This discrepancy is investigated and tropospheric aerosols are found to have weakened the hydrological cycle between the 1950s and 1980s. The increase in greenhouse gases since the 1980s strengthened the cycle, indicating a further increase in precipitation if the current trend continues. The global hydrological cycle is a key component of Earth’s climate system. A significant amount of the energy the Earth receives from the Sun is redistributed around the world by the hydrological cycle in the form of latent heat flux1. Changes in the hydrological cycle have a direct impact on droughts, floods, water resources and ecosystem services. Observed land precipitation2,3,4 and global river discharges5 do not show an increasing trend as might be expected in a warming world6,7,8,9,10,11. Here we show that this apparent discrepancy can be resolved when the effects of tropospheric aerosols are considered. Analysing state-of-the-art climate model simulations, we find for the first time that there was a detectable weakening of the hydrological cycle between the 1950s and the 1980s, attributable to increased anthropogenic aerosols, after which the hydrological cycle recovered as a result of increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. The net result of these two counter-acting effects is an insignificant trend in the global hydrological cycle, but the individual influence of each is substantial. Reductions in air pollution have already shown an intensification in the past two decades12,13,14 and a further rapid increase in precipitation could be expected if the current trend continues.

241 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The results suggest that the traditional drought-prone regions would expand given the human-induced intensification of flash drought risk, and the exposure risk over China will increase by about 23% during the middle of this century under a socioeconomic scenario with medium challenge.
Abstract: Flash droughts refer to a type of droughts that have rapid intensification without sufficient early warning. To date, how will the flash drought risk change in a warming future climate remains unknown due to a diversity of flash drought definition, unclear role of anthropogenic fingerprints, and uncertain socioeconomic development. Here we propose a new method for explicitly characterizing flash drought events, and find that the exposure risk over China will increase by about 23% ± 11% during the middle of this century under a socioeconomic scenario with medium challenge. Optimal fingerprinting shows that anthropogenic climate change induced by the increased greenhouse gas concentrations accounts for 77% ± 26% of the upward trend of flash drought frequency, and population increase is also an important factor for enhancing the exposure risk of flash drought over southernmost humid regions. Our results suggest that the traditional drought-prone regions would expand given the human-induced intensification of flash drought risk. Flash droughts are widely discussed in the scientific community since the rapid onset of the 2012 drought in the USA. Here, the authors model the temporal frequency of potential flash drought events and the exposure risk over China for the next 80 years.

207 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Results indicate that the decreasing temperature was compensated by the accelerated drying trends of soil moisture and enhanced ET, leading to an acceleration of flash droughts during the warming hiatus, and the anthropogenic warming in the next few decades may exacerbate future flash drought conditions in China.
Abstract: The recent global warming slowdown or hiatus after the big El Nino event in 1997/98 raises the questions of whether terrestrial hydrological cycle is being decelerated and how do the hydrological extremes respond to the hiatus. However, the rapidly developing drought events that are termed as “flash droughts” accompanied by extreme heat, low soil moisture and high evapotranspiration (ET), occurred frequently around the world, and caused devastating impacts on crop yields and water supply. Here, we investigate the long-term trend and variability of flash droughts over China. Flash droughts are most likely to occur over humid and semi-humid regions, such as southern and northeastern China. Flash drought averaged over China increased by 109% from 1979 to 2010, and the increase was mainly due to a long term warming of temperature (50%), followed by the contributions from decreasing soil moisture and increasing ET. There was a slight drop in temperature after 1997, but the increasing trend of flash droughts was tripled. Further results indicate that the decreasing temperature was compensated by the accelerated drying trends of soil moisture and enhanced ET, leading to an acceleration of flash droughts during the warming hiatus. The anthropogenic warming in the next few decades may exacerbate future flash drought conditions in China.

190 citations


Cited by
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01 Jan 2007
TL;DR: Drafting Authors: Neil Adger, Pramod Aggarwal, Shardul Agrawala, Joseph Alcamo, Abdelkader Allali, Oleg Anisimov, Nigel Arnell, Michel Boko, Osvaldo Canziani, Timothy Carter, Gino Casassa, Ulisses Confalonieri, Rex Victor Cruz, Edmundo de Alba Alcaraz, William Easterling, Christopher Field, Andreas Fischlin, Blair Fitzharris.
Abstract: Drafting Authors: Neil Adger, Pramod Aggarwal, Shardul Agrawala, Joseph Alcamo, Abdelkader Allali, Oleg Anisimov, Nigel Arnell, Michel Boko, Osvaldo Canziani, Timothy Carter, Gino Casassa, Ulisses Confalonieri, Rex Victor Cruz, Edmundo de Alba Alcaraz, William Easterling, Christopher Field, Andreas Fischlin, Blair Fitzharris, Carlos Gay García, Clair Hanson, Hideo Harasawa, Kevin Hennessy, Saleemul Huq, Roger Jones, Lucka Kajfež Bogataj, David Karoly, Richard Klein, Zbigniew Kundzewicz, Murari Lal, Rodel Lasco, Geoff Love, Xianfu Lu, Graciela Magrín, Luis José Mata, Roger McLean, Bettina Menne, Guy Midgley, Nobuo Mimura, Monirul Qader Mirza, José Moreno, Linda Mortsch, Isabelle Niang-Diop, Robert Nicholls, Béla Nováky, Leonard Nurse, Anthony Nyong, Michael Oppenheimer, Jean Palutikof, Martin Parry, Anand Patwardhan, Patricia Romero Lankao, Cynthia Rosenzweig, Stephen Schneider, Serguei Semenov, Joel Smith, John Stone, Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, David Vaughan, Coleen Vogel, Thomas Wilbanks, Poh Poh Wong, Shaohong Wu, Gary Yohe

7,720 citations

Journal Article
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a document, redatto, voted and pubblicato by the Ipcc -Comitato intergovernativo sui cambiamenti climatici - illustra la sintesi delle ricerche svolte su questo tema rilevante.
Abstract: Cause, conseguenze e strategie di mitigazione Proponiamo il primo di una serie di articoli in cui affronteremo l’attuale problema dei mutamenti climatici. Presentiamo il documento redatto, votato e pubblicato dall’Ipcc - Comitato intergovernativo sui cambiamenti climatici - che illustra la sintesi delle ricerche svolte su questo tema rilevante.

4,187 citations

Book Chapter
01 Jan 2013
TL;DR: The authors assesses long-term projections of climate change for the end of the 21st century and beyond, where the forced signal depends on the scenario and is typically larger than the internal variability of the climate system.
Abstract: This chapter assesses long-term projections of climate change for the end of the 21st century and beyond, where the forced signal depends on the scenario and is typically larger than the internal variability of the climate system. Changes are expressed with respect to a baseline period of 1986-2005, unless otherwise stated.

2,253 citations

Book ChapterDOI
01 Jan 2014
TL;DR: For base year 2010, anthropogenic activities created ~210 (190 to 230) TgN of reactive nitrogen Nr from N2 as discussed by the authors, which is at least 2 times larger than the rate of natural terrestrial creation of ~58 Tg N (50 to 100 Tg nr yr−1) (Table 6.9, Section 1a).
Abstract: For base year 2010, anthropogenic activities created ~210 (190 to 230) TgN of reactive nitrogen Nr from N2. This human-caused creation of reactive nitrogen in 2010 is at least 2 times larger than the rate of natural terrestrial creation of ~58 TgN (50 to 100 TgN yr−1) (Table 6.9, Section 1a). Note that the estimate of natural terrestrial biological fixation (58 TgN yr−1) is lower than former estimates (100 TgN yr−1, Galloway et al., 2004), but the ranges overlap, 50 to 100 TgN yr−1 vs. 90 to 120 TgN yr−1, respectively). Of this created reactive nitrogen, NOx and NH3 emissions from anthropogenic sources are about fourfold greater than natural emissions (Table 6.9, Section 1b). A greater portion of the NH3 emissions is deposited to the continents rather than to the oceans, relative to the deposition of NOy, due to the longer atmospheric residence time of the latter. These deposition estimates are lower limits, as they do not include organic nitrogen species. New model and measurement information (Kanakidou et al., 2012) suggests that incomplete inclusion of emissions and atmospheric chemistry of reduced and oxidized organic nitrogen components in current models may lead to systematic underestimates of total global reactive nitrogen deposition by up to 35% (Table 6.9, Section 1c). Discharge of reactive nitrogen to the coastal oceans is ~45 TgN yr−1 (Table 6.9, Section 1d). Denitrification converts Nr back to atmospheric N2. The current estimate for the production of atmospheric N2 is 110 TgN yr−1 (Bouwman et al., 2013).

1,967 citations

01 Dec 2013
TL;DR: This paper found that the most intensive glacier shrinkage is in the Himalayan region, whereas glacial retreat in the Pamir Plateau region is less apparent, due to changes in atmospheric circulations and precipitation patterns.
Abstract: Glacial melting in the Tibetan Plateau affects the water resources of millions of people. This study finds that—partly owing to changes in atmospheric circulations and precipitation patterns—the most intensive glacier shrinkage is in the Himalayan region, whereas glacial retreat in the Pamir Plateau region is less apparent.

1,599 citations