| 1. |
|
|
| 2. |
- Wendisch, M., et al.
(author)
-
Atmospheric and Surface Processes, and Feedback Mechanisms Determining Arctic Amplification: A Review of First Results and Prospects of the (AC)(3) Project
- 2023
-
In: Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. - : American Meteorological Society. - 0003-0007 .- 1520-0477. ; 104:1
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Mechanisms behind the phenomenon of Arctic amplification are widely discussed. To contribute to this debate, the (AC)(3) project was established in 2016 (www.ac3-tr.de/). It comprises modeling and data analysis efforts as well as observational elements. The project has assembled a wealth of ground-based, airborne, shipborne, and satellite data of physical, chemical, and meteorological properties of the Arctic atmosphere, cryosphere, and upper ocean that are available for the Arctic climate research community. Short-term changes and indications of long-term trends in Arctic climate parameters have been detected using existing and new data. For example, a distinct atmospheric moistening, an increase of regional storm activities, an amplified winter warming in the Svalbard and North Pole regions, and a decrease of sea ice thickness in the Fram Strait and of snow depth on sea ice have been identified. A positive trend of tropospheric bromine monoxide (BrO) column densities during polar spring was verified. Local marine/biogenic sources for cloud condensation nuclei and ice nucleating particles were found. Atmospheric-ocean and radiative transfer models were advanced by applying new parameterizations of surface albedo, cloud droplet activation, convective plumes and related processes over leads, and turbulent transfer coefficients for stable surface layers. Four modes of the surface radiative energy budget were explored and reproduced by simulations. To advance the future synthesis of the results, cross-cutting activities are being developed aiming to answer key questions in four focus areas: lapse rate feedback, surface processes, Arctic mixed-phase clouds, and airmass transport and transformation.
|
|
| 3. |
- Bellouin, N., et al.
(author)
-
Bounding Global Aerosol Radiative Forcing of Climate Change
- 2020
-
In: Reviews of geophysics. - 8755-1209 .- 1944-9208. ; 58:1
-
Research review (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Aerosols interact with radiation and clouds. Substantial progress made over the past 40 years in observing, understanding, and modeling these processes helped quantify the imbalance in the Earth's radiation budget caused by anthropogenic aerosols, called aerosol radiative forcing, but uncertainties remain large. This review provides a new range of aerosol radiative forcing over the industrial era based on multiple, traceable, and arguable lines of evidence, including modeling approaches, theoretical considerations, and observations. Improved understanding of aerosol absorption and the causes of trends in surface radiative fluxes constrain the forcing from aerosol-radiation interactions. A robust theoretical foundation and convincing evidence constrain the forcing caused by aerosol-driven increases in liquid cloud droplet number concentration. However, the influence of anthropogenic aerosols on cloud liquid water content and cloud fraction is less clear, and the influence on mixed-phase and ice clouds remains poorly constrained. Observed changes in surface temperature and radiative fluxes provide additional constraints. These multiple lines of evidence lead to a 68% confidence interval for the total aerosol effective radiative forcing of -1.6 to -0.6Wm(-2), or -2.0 to -0.4Wm(-2) with a 90% likelihood. Those intervals are of similar width to the last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment but shifted toward more negative values. The uncertainty will narrow in the future by continuing to critically combine multiple lines of evidence, especially those addressing industrial-era changes in aerosol sources and aerosol effects on liquid cloud amount and on ice clouds. Plain Language Summary Human activities emit into the atmosphere small liquid and solid particles called aerosols. Those aerosols change the energy budget of the Earth and trigger climate changes, by scattering and absorbing solar and terrestrial radiation and playing important roles in the formation of cloud droplets and ice crystals. But because aerosols are much more varied in their chemical composition and much more heterogeneous in their spatial and temporal distributions than greenhouse gases, their perturbation to the energy budget, called radiative forcing, is much more uncertain. This review uses traceable and arguable lines of evidence, supported by aerosol studies published over the past 40 years, to quantify that uncertainty. It finds that there are two chances out of three that aerosols from human activities have increased scattering and absorption of solar radiation by 14% to 29% and cloud droplet number concentration by 5 to 17% in the period 2005-2015 compared to the year 1850. Those increases exert a radiative forcing that offsets between a fifth and a half of the radiative forcing by greenhouse gases. The degree to which human activities affect natural aerosol levels, and the response of clouds, and especially ice clouds, to aerosol perturbations remain particularly uncertain.
|
|
| 4. |
- Blenckner, Thorsten, et al.
(author)
-
The Baltic Health Index (BHI): Assessing the social-ecological status of the Baltic Sea
- 2021
-
In: People and Nature. - : Wiley. - 2575-8314. ; 3:2, s. 359-375
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Improving the health of coastal and open sea marine ecosystems represents a substantial challenge for sustainable marine resource management, since it requires balancing human benefits and impacts on the ocean. This challenge is often exacerbated by incomplete knowledge and lack of tools that measure ocean and coastal ecosystem health in a way that allows consistent monitoring of progress towards predefined management targets. The lack of such tools often limits capabilities to enact and enforce effective governance. We introduce the Baltic Health Index (BHI) as a transparent, collaborative and repeatable assessment tool. The Index complements existing, more ecological-oriented, approaches by including a human dimension on the status of the Baltic Sea, an ecosystem impacted by multiple anthropogenic pressures and governed by a multitude of comprehensive national and international policies. Using a large amount of social-ecological data available, we assessed the health of the Baltic Sea for nine goals that represent the status towards set targets, for example, clean waters, biodiversity, food provision, natural products extraction and tourism. Our results indicate that the overall health of the Baltic Sea is suboptimal (a score of 76 out of 100), and a substantial effort is required to reach the management objectives and associated targets. Subregionally, the lowest BHI scores were measured for carbon storage, contaminants and lasting special places (i.e. marine protected areas), albeit with large spatial variation. Overall, the likely future status of all goals in the BHI averaged for the entire Baltic Sea is better than the present status, indicating a positive trend towards a healthier Baltic Sea. However, in some Baltic Sea basins, the trend for specific goals was decreasing, highlighting locations and issues that should be the focus of management priorities. The BHI outcomes can be used to identify both pan-Baltic and subregional scale management priorities and to illustrate the interconnectedness between goals linked by cumulative pressures. Hence, the information provided by the BHI tool and its further development will contribute towards the fulfilment of the UN Agenda 2030 and its Sustainability Development Goals. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.
|
|
| 5. |
- Lade, Steven J., et al.
(author)
-
An empirical model of the Baltic Sea reveals the importance of social dynamics for ecological regime shifts
- 2015
-
In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. - : Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. - 0027-8424 .- 1091-6490. ; 112:35, s. 11120-11125
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Regime shifts triggered by human activities and environmental changes have led to significant ecological and socioeconomic consequences in marine and terrestrial ecosystems worldwide. Ecological processes and feedbacks associated with regime shifts have received considerable attention, but human individual and collective behavior is rarely treated as an integrated component of such shifts. Here, we used generalized modeling to develop a coupled social-ecological model that integrated rich social and ecological data to investigate the role of social dynamics in the 1980s Baltic Sea cod boom and collapse. We showed that psychological, economic, and regulatory aspects of fisher decision making, in addition to ecological interactions, contributed both to the temporary persistence of the cod boom and to its subsequent collapse. These features of the social-ecological system also would have limited the effectiveness of stronger fishery regulations. Our results provide quantitative, empirical evidence that incorporating social dynamics into models of natural resources is critical for understanding how resources can be managed sustainably. We also show that generalized modeling, which is well-suited to collaborative model development and does not require detailed specification of causal relationships between system variables, can help tackle the complexities involved in creating and analyzing social-ecological models.
|
|
| 6. |
- Islar, Mine, et al.
(author)
-
Diverse values of nature for sustainability
- 2022
-
In: Nature. - 0028-0836 .- 1476-4687. ; 620, s. 813-823
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Twenty-five years since foundational publications on valuing ecosystem services for human well-being1,2, addressing the global biodiversity crisis3 still implies confronting barriers to incorporating nature’s diverse values into decision-making. These barriers include powerful interests supported by current norms and legal rules such as property rights, which determine whose values and which values of nature are acted on. A better understanding of how and why nature is (under)valued is more urgent than ever4. Notwithstanding agreements to incorporate nature’s values into actions, including the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF)5 and the UN Sustainable Development Goals6, predominant environmental and development policies still prioritize a subset of values, particularly those linked to markets, and ignore other ways people relate to and benefit from nature7. Arguably, a ‘values crisis’ underpins the intertwined crises of biodiversity loss and climate change8, pandemic emergence9 and socio-environmental injustices10. On the basis of more than 50,000 scientific publications, policy documents and Indigenous and local knowledge sources, the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) assessed knowledge on nature’s diverse values and valuation methods to gain insights into their role in policymaking and fuller integration into decisions7,11. Applying this evidence, combinations of values-centred approaches are proposed to improve valuation and address barriers to uptake, ultimately leveraging transformative changes towards more just (that is, fair treatment of people and nature, including inter- and intragenerational equity) and sustainable futures.
|
|
| 7. |
- Lohmann, U., et al.
(author)
-
Total aerosol effect : radiative forcing or radiative flux perturbation?
- 2010
-
In: Atmospheric Chemistry And Physics. - : Copernicus GmbH. - 1680-7316 .- 1680-7324. ; 10:7, s. 3235-3246
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Uncertainties in aerosol radiative forcings, especially those associated with clouds, contribute to a large extent to uncertainties in the total anthropogenic forcing. The interaction of aerosols with clouds and radiation introduces feedbacks which can affect the rate of precipitation formation. In former assessments of aerosol radiative forcings, these effects have not been quantified. Also, with global aerosol-climate models simulating interactively aerosols and cloud microphysical properties, a quantification of the aerosol forcings in the traditional way is difficult to define properly. Here we argue that fast feedbacks should be included because they act quickly compared with the time scale of global warming. We show that for different forcing agents (aerosols and greenhouse gases) the radiative forcings as traditionally defined agree rather well with estimates from a method, here referred to as radiative flux perturbations (RFP), that takes these fast feedbacks and interactions into account. Based on our results, we recommend RFP as a valid option to compare different forcing agents, and to compare the effects of particular forcing agents in different models.
|
|
| 8. |
- Nielsen, Rasmus J., et al.
(author)
-
Integrated ecological–economic fisheries models—Evaluation, review and challenges for implementation
- 2018
-
In: Fish and Fisheries. - : Wiley. - 1467-2960 .- 1467-2979. ; 19:1, s. 1-29
-
Research review (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Marine ecosystems evolve under many interconnected and area-specific pressures. To fulfil society's intensifying and diversifying needs while ensuring ecologically sustainable development, more effective marine spatial planning and broader-scope management of marine resources is necessary. Integrated ecological–economic fisheries models (IEEFMs) of marine systems are needed to evaluate impacts and sustainability of potential management actions and understand, and anticipate ecological, economic and social dynamics at a range of scales from local to national and regional. To make these models most effective, it is important to determine how model characteristics and methods of communicating results influence the model implementation, the nature of the advice that can be provided and the impact on decisions taken by managers. This article presents a global review and comparative evaluation of 35 IEEFMs applied to marine fisheries and marine ecosystem resources to identify the characteristics that determine their usefulness, effectiveness and implementation. The focus is on fully integrated models that allow for feedbacks between ecological and human processes although not all the models reviewed achieve that. Modellers must invest more time to make models user friendly and to participate in management fora where models and model results can be explained and discussed. Such involvement is beneficial to all parties, leading to improvement of models and more effective implementation of advice, but demands substantial resources which must be built into the governance process. It takes time to develop effective processes for using IEEFMs requiring a long-term commitment to integrating multidisciplinary modelling advice into management decision-making.
|
|
| 9. |
- Nilsson, K., et al.
(author)
-
Oncological outcomes of standard versus prolonged time to surgery after neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy for oesophageal cancer in the multicentre, randomised, controlled NeoRes II trial
- 2023
-
In: Annals of Oncology. - : Elsevier. - 0923-7534 .- 1569-8041. ; 34:11, s. 1015-1024
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Background: The optimal time to surgery (TTS) after neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy (nCRT) for oesophageal cancer is unknown and has traditionally been 4-6 weeks in clinical practice. Observational studies have suggested better outcomes, especially in terms of histological response, after prolonged delay of up to 3 months after nCRT. The NeoRes II trial is the first randomised trial to compare standard to prolonged TTS after nCRT for oesophageal cancer.Patients and methods: Patients with resectable, locally advanced oesophageal cancer were randomly assigned to standard delay of surgery of 4-6 weeks or prolonged delay of 10-12 weeks after nCRT. The primary endpoint was complete histological response of the primary tumour in patients with adenocarcinoma (AC). Secondary endpoints included histological tumour response, resection margins, overall and progression-free survival in all patients and stratified by histologic type.Results: Between February 2015 and March 2019, 249 patients from 10 participating centres in Sweden, Norway and Germany were randomised: 125 to standard and 124 to prolonged TTS. There was no significant difference in complete histological response between AC patients allocated to standard (21%) compared to prolonged (26%) TTS (P = 0.429). Tumour regression, resection margins and number of resected lymph nodes, total and metastatic, did not differ between the allocated interventions. The first quartile overall survival in patients allocated to standard TTS was 26.5 months compared to 14.2 months after prolonged TTS (P = 0.003) and the overall risk of death during follow-up was 35% higher after prolonged delay (hazard ratio 1.35, 95% confidence interval 0.94-1.95, P = 0.107).Conclusion: Prolonged TTS did not improve histological complete response or other pathological endpoints, while there was a strong trend towards worse survival, suggesting caution in routinely delaying surgery for >6 weeks after nCRT.
|
|
| 10. |
- Pascual, Unai, et al.
(author)
-
Valuing nature's contributions to people : the IPBES approach
- 2017
-
In: Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability. - : Elsevier BV. - 1877-3435. ; 26-27, s. 7-16
-
Research review (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Nature is perceived and valued in starkly different and often conflicting ways. This paper presents the rationale for the inclusive valuation of nature's contributions to people (NCP) in decision making, as well as broad methodological steps for doing so. While developed within the context of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), this approach is more widely applicable to initiatives at the knowledge–policy interface, which require a pluralistic approach to recognizing the diversity of values. We argue that transformative practices aiming at sustainable futures would benefit from embracing such diversity, which require recognizing and addressing power relationships across stakeholder groups that hold different values on human nature-relations and NCP.
|
|
