| 1. |
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| 2. |
- Arndt, D. S., et al.
(författare)
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STATE OF THE CLIMATE IN 2017
- 2018
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Ingår i: Bulletin of The American Meteorological Society - (BAMS). - : American Meteorological Society. - 0003-0007 .- 1520-0477. ; 99:8, s. S1-S310
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)
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| 3. |
- Arndt, D. S., et al.
(författare)
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State of the Climate in 2016
- 2017
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Ingår i: Bulletin of The American Meteorological Society - (BAMS). - 0003-0007 .- 1520-0477. ; 98:8, s. S1-S280
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In 2016, the dominant greenhouse gases released into Earth's atmosphere-carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide-continued to increase and reach new record highs. The 3.5 +/- 0.1 ppm rise in global annual mean carbon dioxide from 2015 to 2016 was the largest annual increase observed in the 58-year measurement record. The annual global average carbon dioxide concentration at Earth's surface surpassed 400 ppm (402.9 +/- 0.1 ppm) for the first time in the modern atmospheric measurement record and in ice core records dating back as far as 800000 years. One of the strongest El Nino events since at least 1950 dissipated in spring, and a weak La Nina evolved later in the year. Owing at least in part to the combination of El Nino conditions early in the year and a long-term upward trend, Earth's surface observed record warmth for a third consecutive year, albeit by a much slimmer margin than by which that record was set in 2015. Above Earth's surface, the annual lower troposphere temperature was record high according to all datasets analyzed, while the lower stratospheric temperature was record low according to most of the in situ and satellite datasets. Several countries, including Mexico and India, reported record high annual temperatures while many others observed near-record highs. A week-long heat wave at the end of April over the northern and eastern Indian peninsula, with temperatures surpassing 44 degrees C, contributed to a water crisis for 330 million people and to 300 fatalities. In the Arctic the 2016 land surface temperature was 2.0 degrees C above the 1981-2010 average, breaking the previous record of 2007, 2011, and 2015 by 0.8 degrees C, representing a 3.5 degrees C increase since the record began in 1900. The increasing temperatures have led to decreasing Arctic sea ice extent and thickness. On 24 March, the sea ice extent at the end of the growth season saw its lowest maximum in the 37-year satellite record, tying with 2015 at 7.2% below the 1981-2010 average. The September 2016 Arctic sea ice minimum extent tied with 2007 for the second lowest value on record, 33% lower than the 1981-2010 average. Arctic sea ice cover remains relatively young and thin, making it vulnerable to continued extensive melt. The mass of the Greenland Ice Sheet, which has the capacity to contribute similar to 7 m to sea level rise, reached a record low value. The onset of its surface melt was the second earliest, after 2012, in the 37-year satellite record. Sea surface temperature was record high at the global scale, surpassing the previous record of 2015 by about 0.01 degrees C. The global sea surface temperature trend for the 21st century-to-date of +0.162 degrees C decade(-1) is much higher than the longer term 1950-2016 trend of +0.100 degrees C decade(-1). Global annual mean sea level also reached a new record high, marking the sixth consecutive year of increase. Global annual ocean heat content saw a slight drop compared to the record high in 2015. Alpine glacier retreat continued around the globe, and preliminary data indicate that 2016 is the 37th consecutive year of negative annual mass balance. Across the Northern Hemisphere, snow cover for each month from February to June was among its four least extensive in the 47-year satellite record. Continuing a pattern below the surface, record high temperatures at 20-m depth were measured at all permafrost observatories on the North Slope of Alaska and at the Canadian observatory on northernmost Ellesmere Island. In the Antarctic, record low monthly surface pressures were broken at many stations, with the southern annular mode setting record high index values in March and June. Monthly high surface pressure records for August and November were set at several stations. During this period, record low daily and monthly sea ice extents were observed, with the November mean sea ice extent more than 5 standard deviations below the 1981-2010 average. These record low sea ice values contrast sharply with the record high values observed during 2012-14. Over the region, springtime Antarctic stratospheric ozone depletion was less severe relative to the 1991-2006 average, but ozone levels were still low compared to pre-1990 levels. Closer to the equator, 93 named tropical storms were observed during 2016, above the 1981-2010 average of 82, but fewer than the 101 storms recorded in 2015. Three basins-the North Atlantic, and eastern and western North Pacific-experienced above-normal activity in 2016. The Australian basin recorded its least active season since the beginning of the satellite era in 1970. Overall, four tropical cyclones reached the Saffir-Simpson category 5 intensity level. The strong El Nino at the beginning of the year that transitioned to a weak La Nina contributed to enhanced precipitation variability around the world. Wet conditions were observed throughout the year across southern South America, causing repeated heavy flooding in Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay. Wetter-than-usual conditions were also observed for eastern Europe and central Asia, alleviating the drought conditions of 2014 and 2015 in southern Russia. In the United States, California had its first wetter-than-average year since 2012, after being plagued by drought for several years. Even so, the area covered by drought in 2016 at the global scale was among the largest in the post-1950 record. For each month, at least 12% of land surfaces experienced severe drought conditions or worse, the longest such stretch in the record. In northeastern Brazil, drought conditions were observed for the fifth consecutive year, making this the longest drought on record in the region. Dry conditions were also observed in western Bolivia and Peru; it was Bolivia's worst drought in the past 25 years. In May, with abnormally warm and dry conditions already prevailing over western Canada for about a year, the human-induced Fort McMurray wildfire burned nearly 590000 hectares and became the costliest disaster in Canadian history, with $3 billion (U.S. dollars) in insured losses.
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| 4. |
- Aghanim, N., et al.
(författare)
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Planck intermediate results XLVI. Reduction of large-scale systematic effects in HFI polarization maps and estimation of the reionization optical depth
- 2016
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Ingår i: Astronomy and Astrophysics. - : EDP Sciences. - 0004-6361 .- 1432-0746. ; 596
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper describes the identification, modelling, and removal of previously unexplained systematic effects in the polarization data of the Planck High Frequency Instrument (HFI) on large angular scales, including new mapmaking and calibration procedures, new and more complete end-to-end simulations, and a set of robust internal consistency checks on the resulting maps. These maps, at 100, 143, 217, and 353 GHz, are early versions of those that will be released in final form later in 2016. The improvements allow us to determine the cosmic reionization optical depth tau using, for the first time, the low-multipole EE data from HFI, reducing significantly the central value and uncertainty, and hence the upper limit. Two different likelihood procedures are used to constrain tau from two estimators of the CMB E- and B-mode angular power spectra at 100 and 143 GHz, after debiasing the spectra from a small remaining systematic contamination. These all give fully consistent results. A further consistency test is performed using cross-correlations derived from the Low Frequency Instrument maps of the Planck 2015 data release and the new HFI data. For this purpose, end-to-end analyses of systematic effects from the two instruments are used to demonstrate the near independence of their dominant systematic error residuals. The tightest result comes from the HFI-based tau posterior distribution using the maximum likelihood power spectrum estimator from EE data only, giving a value 0.055 +/- 0.009. In a companion paper these results are discussed in the context of the best-fit Planck Lambda CDM cosmological model and recent models of reionization.
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| 5. |
- Adam, R., et al.
(författare)
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Planck intermediate results XLVII. Planck constraints on reionization history
- 2016
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Ingår i: Astronomy and Astrophysics. - : EDP Sciences. - 0004-6361 .- 1432-0746. ; 596
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We investigate constraints on cosmic reionization extracted from the Planck cosmic microwave background (CMB) data. We combine the Planck CMB anisotropy data in temperature with the low-multipole polarization data to fit Lambda CDM models with various parameterizations of the reionization history. We obtain a Thomson optical depth tau = 0.058 +/- 0.012 for the commonly adopted instantaneous reionization model. This confirms, with data solely from CMB anisotropies, the low value suggested by combining Planck 2015 results with other data sets, and also reduces the uncertainties. We reconstruct the history of the ionization fraction using either a symmetric or an asymmetric model for the transition between the neutral and ionized phases. To determine better constraints on the duration of the reionization process, we also make use of measurements of the amplitude of the kinetic Sunyaev-Zeldovich (kSZ) effect using additional information from the high-resolution Atacama Cosmology Telescope and South Pole Telescope experiments. The average redshift at which reionization occurs is found to lie between z = 7.8 and 8.8, depending on the model of reionization adopted. Using kSZ constraints and a redshift-symmetric reionization model, we find an upper limit to the width of the reionization period of Delta z < 2.8. In all cases, we find that the Universe is ionized at less than the 10% level at redshifts above z similar or equal to 10. This suggests that an early onset of reionization is strongly disfavoured by the Planck data. We show that this result also reduces the tension between CMB-based analyses and constraints from other astrophysical sources.
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| 6. |
- Aghanim, N., et al.
(författare)
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Planck intermediate results LI. Features in the cosmic microwave background temperature power spectrum and shifts in cosmological parameters
- 2017
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Ingår i: Astronomy and Astrophysics. - : EDP Sciences. - 0004-6361 .- 1432-0746. ; 607
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The six parameters of the standard Lambda CDM model have best-fit values derived from the Planck temperature power spectrum that are shifted somewhat from the best-fit values derived from WMAP data. These shifts are driven by features in the Planck temperature power spectrum at angular scales that had never before been measured to cosmic-variance level precision. We have investigated these shifts to determine whether they are within the range of expectation and to understand their origin in the data. Taking our parameter set to be the optical depth of the reionized intergalactic medium tau, the baryon density omega(b), the matter density omega(m), the angular size of the sound horizon theta(*), the spectral index of the primordial power spectrum, n(s), and A(s)e(-2 pi) (where As is the amplitude of the primordial power spectrum), we have examined the change in best-fit values between a WMAP-like large angular-scale data set (with multipole moment l < 800 in the Planck temperature power spectrum) and an all angular-scale data set (l < 2500 Planck temperature power spectrum), each with a prior on tau of 0.07 +/- 0.02. We find that the shifts, in units of the 1 sigma expected dispersion for each parameter, are {Delta tau, Delta A(s)e(-2 tau), Delta n(s), Delta omega(m), Delta omega(b), Delta theta(*)} = {-1.7, -2.2, 1.2, 2.0, 1.1, 0.9}, with a chi(2) value of 8.0. We find that this chi(2) value is exceeded in 15% of our simulated data sets, and that a parameter deviates by more than 2.2 sigma in 9% of simulated data sets, meaning that the shifts are not unusually large. Comparing l < 800 instead to l > 800, or splitting at a different multipole, yields similar results. We examined the l < 800 model residuals in the l > 800 power spectrum data and find that the features there that drive these shifts are a set of oscillations across a broad range of angular scales. Although they partly appear similar to the effects of enhanced gravitational lensing, the shifts in Lambda CDM parameters that arise in response to these features correspond to model spectrum changes that are predominantly due to non-lensing effects; the only exception is tau, which, at fixed A(s)e(-2 tau), affects the l > 800 temperature power spectrum solely through the associated change in As and the impact of that on the lensing potential power spectrum. We also ask, what is it about the power spectrum at l < 800 that leads to somewhat different best-fit parameters than come from the full l range? We find that if we discard the data at l < 30, where there is a roughly 2 sigma downward fluctuation in power relative to the model that best fits the full l range, the l < 800 best-fit parameters shift significantly towards the l < 2500 best-fit parameters. In contrast, including l < 30, this previously noted low-l deficit drives ns up and impacts parameters correlated with ns, such as omega(m) and H-0. As expected, the l < 30 data have a much greater impact on the l < 800 best fit than on the l < 2500 best fit. So although the shifts are not very significant, we find that they can be understood through the combined effects of an oscillatory-like set of high-l residuals and the deficit in low-l power, excursions consistent with sample variance that happen to map onto changes in cosmological parameters. Finally, we examine agreement between Planck TT data and two other CMB data sets, namely the Planck lensing reconstruction and the TT power spectrum measured by the South Pole Telescope, again finding a lack of convincing evidence of any significant deviations in parameters, suggesting that current CMB data sets give an internally consistent picture of the Lambda CDM model.
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| 7. |
- Aghanim, N., et al.
(författare)
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Planck intermediate results L. Evidence of spatial variation of the polarized thermal dust spectral energy distribution and implications for CMB B-mode analysis
- 2017
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Ingår i: Astronomy and Astrophysics. - : EDP Sciences. - 0004-6361 .- 1432-0746. ; 599
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The characterization of the Galactic foregrounds has been shown to be the main obstacle in the challenging quest to detect primordial B-modes in the polarized microwave sky. We make use of the Planck-HFI 2015 data release at high frequencies to place new constraints on the properties of the polarized thermal dust emission at high Galactic latitudes. Here, we specifically study the spatial variability of the dust polarized spectral energy distribution (SED), and its potential impact on the determination of the tensor-to-scalar ratio, r. We use the correlation ratio of the CBB `angular power spectra between the 217 and 353 GHz channels as a tracer of these potential variations, computed on different high Galactic latitude regions, ranging from 80% to 20% of the sky. The new insight from Planck data is a departure of the correlation ratio from unity that cannot be attributed to a spurious decorrelation due to the cosmic microwave background, instrumental noise, or instrumental systematics. The effect is marginally detected on each region, but the statistical combination of all the regions gives more than 99% confidence for this variation in polarized dust properties. In addition, we show that the decorrelation increases when there is a decrease in the mean column density of the region of the sky being considered, and we propose a simple power-law empirical model for this dependence, which matches what is seen in the Planck data. We explore the effect that this measured decorrelation has on simulations of the BICEP2-Keck Array/Planck analysis and show that the 2015 constraints from these data still allow a decorrelation between the dust at 150 and 353 GHz that is compatible with our measured value. Finally, using simplified models, we show that either spatial variation of the dust SED or of the dust polarization angle are able to produce decorrelations between 217 and 353 GHz data similar to the values we observe in the data.
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| 8. |
- Aghanim, N., et al.
(författare)
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Planck intermediate results XLVIII. Disentangling Galactic dust emission and cosmic infrared background anisotropies
- 2016
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Ingår i: Astronomy and Astrophysics. - : EDP Sciences. - 0004-6361 .- 1432-0746. ; 596
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Using the Planck 2015 data release (PR2) temperature maps, we separate Galactic thermal dust emission from cosmic infrared background (CIB) anisotropies. For this purpose, we implement a specifically tailored component-separation method, the so-called generalized needlet internal linear combination (GNILC) method, which uses spatial information (the angular power spectra) to disentangle the Galactic dust emission and CIB anisotropies. We produce significantly improved all-sky maps of Planck thermal dust emission, with reduced CIB contamination, at 353, 545, and 857 GHz. By reducing the CIB contamination of the thermal dust maps, we provide more accurate estimates of the local dust temperature and dust spectral index over the sky with reduced dispersion, especially at high Galactic latitudes above b = +/- 20 degrees. We find that the dust temperature is T = (19.4 +/- 1.3) K and the dust spectral index is beta = 1.6 +/- 0.1 averaged over the whole sky, while T = (19.4 +/- 1.5) K and beta = 1.6 +/- 0.2 on 21% of the sky at high latitudes. Moreover, subtracting the new CIB-removed thermal dust maps from the CMB-removed Planck maps gives access to the CIB anisotropies over 60% of the sky at Galactic latitudes vertical bar b vertical bar > 20 degrees. Because they are a significant improvement over previous Planck products, the GNILC maps are recommended for thermal dust science. The new CIB maps can be regarded as indirect tracers of the dark matter and they are recommended for exploring cross-correlations with lensing and large-scale structure optical surveys. The reconstructed GNILC thermal dust and CIB maps are delivered as Planck products.
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| 9. |
- Aghanim, N., et al.
(författare)
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Planck intermediate results XLIX. Parity-violation constraints from polarization data
- 2016
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Ingår i: Astronomy and Astrophysics. - : EDP Sciences. - 0004-6361 .- 1432-0746. ; 596
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Parity-violating extensions of the standard electromagnetic theory cause in vacuo rotation of the plane of polarization of propagating photons. This effect, also known as cosmic birefringence, has an impact on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy angular power spectra, producing non-vanishing T-B and E-B correlations that are otherwise null when parity is a symmetry. Here we present new constraints on an isotropic rotation, parametrized by the angle alpha, derived from Planck 2015 CMB polarization data. To increase the robustness of our analyses, we employ two complementary approaches, in harmonic space and in map space, the latter based on a peak stacking technique. The two approaches provide estimates for alpha that are in agreement within statistical uncertainties and are very stable against several consistency tests. Considering the T-B and E-B information jointly, we find alpha = 0 degrees: 31 +/- 0 degrees.05 (stat:) +/- 0 degrees:28 (syst:) from the harmonic analysis and alpha = 0 degrees.35 +/- 0 degrees.05 (stat :) 0 degrees.28 (syst :) from the stacking approach. These constraints are compatible with no parity violation and are dominated by the systematic uncertainty in the orientation of Planck's polarization-sensitive bolometers.
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| 10. |
- Aghanim, N., et al.
(författare)
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Planck intermediate results XLIV. Structure of the Galactic magnetic field from dust polarization maps of the southern Galactic cap
- 2016
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Ingår i: Astronomy and Astrophysics. - : EDP Sciences. - 0004-6361 .- 1432-0746. ; 596
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Using data from the Planck satellite, we study the statistical properties of interstellar dust polarization at high Galactic latitudes around the south pole (b < -60 degrees). Our aim is to advance the understanding of the magnetized interstellar medium (ISM), and to provide a modelling framework of the polarized dust foreground for use in cosmic microwave background (CMB) component-separation procedures. We examine the Stokes I, Q, and U maps at 353 GHz, and particularly the statistical distribution of the polarization fraction (p) and angle (Psi), in order to characterize the ordered and turbulent components of the Galactic magnetic field (GMF) in the solar neighbourhood. The Q and U maps show patterns at large angular scales, which we relate to the mean orientation of the GMF towards Galactic coordinates (l(0); b(0)) = (70 degrees +/- 5 degrees, 24 degrees +/- 5 degrees). The histogram of the observed p values shows a wide dispersion up to 25%. The histogram Psi of has a standard deviation of 12 degrees about the regular pattern expected from the ordered GMF. We build a phenomenological model that connects the distributions of p and Psi to a statistical description of the turbulent component of the GMF, assuming a uniform effective polarization fraction (p(0)) of dust emission. To compute the Stokes parameters, we approximate the integration along the line of sight (LOS) as a sum over a set of N independent polarization layers, in each of which the turbulent component of the GMF is obtained from Gaussian realizations of a power-law power spectrum. We are able to reproduce the observed p and distributions using a p0 value of 26%, a ratio of 0.9 between the strengths of the turbulent and mean components of the GMF, and a small value of N. The mean value of p (inferred from the fit of the large-scale patterns in the Stokes maps) is 12 +/- 1%. We relate the polarization layers to the density structure and to the correlation length of the GMF along the LOS. We emphasize the simplicity of our model (involving only a few parameters), which can be easily computed on the celestial sphere to produce simulated maps of dust polarization. Our work is an important step towards a model that can be used to assess the accuracy of component-separation methods in present and future CMB experiments designed to search the B mode CMB polarization from primordial gravity waves.
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