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- Arndt, D. S., et al.
(author)
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State of the Climate in 2016
- 2017
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In: Bulletin of The American Meteorological Society - (BAMS). - 0003-0007 .- 1520-0477. ; 98:8, s. S1-S280
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)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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3. |
- Ademuyiwa, Adesoji O., et al.
(author)
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Determinants of morbidity and mortality following emergency abdominal surgery in children in low-income and middle-income countries
- 2016
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In: BMJ Global Health. - : BMJ Publishing Group Ltd. - 2059-7908. ; 1:4
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Background: Child health is a key priority on the global health agenda, yet the provision of essential and emergency surgery in children is patchy in resource-poor regions. This study was aimed to determine the mortality risk for emergency abdominal paediatric surgery in low-income countries globally.Methods: Multicentre, international, prospective, cohort study. Self-selected surgical units performing emergency abdominal surgery submitted prespecified data for consecutive children aged <16 years during a 2-week period between July and December 2014. The United Nation's Human Development Index (HDI) was used to stratify countries. The main outcome measure was 30-day postoperative mortality, analysed by multilevel logistic regression.Results: This study included 1409 patients from 253 centres in 43 countries; 282 children were under 2 years of age. Among them, 265 (18.8%) were from low-HDI, 450 (31.9%) from middle-HDI and 694 (49.3%) from high-HDI countries. The most common operations performed were appendectomy, small bowel resection, pyloromyotomy and correction of intussusception. After adjustment for patient and hospital risk factors, child mortality at 30 days was significantly higher in low-HDI (adjusted OR 7.14 (95% CI 2.52 to 20.23), p<0.001) and middle-HDI (4.42 (1.44 to 13.56), p=0.009) countries compared with high-HDI countries, translating to 40 excess deaths per 1000 procedures performed.Conclusions: Adjusted mortality in children following emergency abdominal surgery may be as high as 7 times greater in low-HDI and middle-HDI countries compared with high-HDI countries. Effective provision of emergency essential surgery should be a key priority for global child health agendas.
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4. |
- Arndt, D. S., et al.
(author)
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STATE OF THE CLIMATE IN 2017
- 2018
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In: Bulletin of The American Meteorological Society - (BAMS). - : American Meteorological Society. - 0003-0007 .- 1520-0477. ; 99:8, s. S1-S310
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Research review (peer-reviewed)
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5. |
- Ade, Peter, et al.
(author)
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The Simons Observatory : science goals and forecasts
- 2019
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In: Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics. - : IOP Publishing. - 1475-7516. ; :2
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The Simons Observatory (SO) is a new cosmic microwave background experiment being built on Cerro Toco in Chile, due to begin observations in the early 2020s. We describe the scientific goals of the experiment, motivate the design, and forecast its performance. SO will measure the temperature and polarization anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background in six frequency bands centered at: 27, 39, 93, 145, 225 and 280 GHz. The initial con figuration of SO will have three small-aperture 0.5-m telescopes and one large-aperture 6-m telescope, with a total of 60,000 cryogenic bolometers. Our key science goals are to characterize the primordial perturbations, measure the number of relativistic species and the mass of neutrinos, test for deviations from a cosmological constant, improve our understanding of galaxy evolution, and constrain the duration of reionization. The small aperture telescopes will target the largest angular scales observable from Chile, mapping approximate to 10% of the sky to a white noise level of 2 mu K-arcmin in combined 93 and 145 GHz bands, to measure the primordial tensor-to-scalar ratio, r, at a target level of sigma(r) = 0.003. The large aperture telescope will map approximate to 40% of the sky at arcminute angular resolution to an expected white noise level of 6 mu K-arcmin in combined 93 and 145 GHz bands, overlapping with the majority of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope sky region and partially with the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument. With up to an order of magnitude lower polarization noise than maps from the Planck satellite, the high-resolution sky maps will constrain cosmological parameters derived from the damping tail, gravitational lensing of the microwave background, the primordial bispectrum, and the thermal and kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effects, and will aid in delensing the large-angle polarization signal to measure the tensor-to-scalar ratio. The survey will also provide a legacy catalog of 16,000 galaxy clusters and more than 20,000 extragalactic sources.
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- 2019
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)
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7. |
- Brown, Stephen, et al.
(author)
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Marketing (as) Rhetoric : paradigms, provocations, and perspectives
- 2018
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In: Journal of Marketing Management. - : Taylor & Francis. - 0267-257X .- 1472-1376. ; 34:15-16, s. 1336-1378
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Journal article (other academic/artistic)abstract
- In this collection of short, invited essays on the topic of marketing (as) rhetoric we deal with a variety of issues that demonstrate the centrality of rhetoric and rhetorical considerations to the pursuit of marketing scholarship, research and practice. Stephen Brown examines the enduring rhetorical power of the 4Ps; Chris Hackley argues for the critical power of rhetorical orientations in marketing scholarship but cautions us on the need to work harder in conceptually connecting rhetorical theory and modern marketing frameworks; Shelby Hunt explains how rhetorical processes are incorporated in his inductive realist model of theory generation, using one of his most successful publications as an illustration; Charles Marsh demonstrates what Isocrates' broad rhetorical project has to teach us about the importance of reputation cultivation in modern marketing; Nicholas O'Shaughnessy uses an analysis of Trump's discourse to argue that political marketing as it is currently conceived is ill-equipped to engage effectively with the rhetorical force of Trump's 'unmarketing'; Barbara Phillips uses Vygotsky's work on imagination to investigate the important of pleasure and play in advertising rhetoric; and finally, David Tonks, who in many ways started it all, reiterates the need for marketers to recognise the strength of the relationship between marketing and persuasion.
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8. |
- Daw, Tim M., et al.
(author)
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Elasticity in ecosystem services : exploring the variable relationship between ecosystems and human well-being
- 2016
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In: Ecology and Society. - 1708-3087. ; 21:2
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Although ecosystem services are increasingly recognized as benefits people obtain from nature, we still have a poor understanding of how they actually enhance multidimensional human well-being, and how well-being is affected by ecosystem change. We develop a concept of ecosystem service elasticity (ES elasticity) that describes the sensitivity of human well-being to changes in ecosystems. ES Elasticity is a result of complex social and ecological dynamics and is context dependent, individually variable, and likely to demonstrate nonlinear dynamics such as thresholds and hysteresis. We present a conceptual framework that unpacks the chain of causality from ecosystem stocks through flows, goods, value, and shares to contribute to the well-being of different people. This framework builds on previous conceptualizations, but places multidimensional well-being of different people as the final element. This ultimately disaggregated approach emphasizes how different people access benefits and how benefits match their needs or aspirations. Applying this framework to case studies of individual coastal ecosystem services in East Africa illustrates a wide range of social and ecological factors that can affect ES elasticity. For example, food web and habitat dynamics affect the sensitivity of different fisheries ecosystem services to ecological change. Meanwhile high cultural significance, or lack of alternatives enhance ES elasticity, while social mechanisms that prevent access can reduce elasticity. Mapping out how chains are interlinked illustrates how different types of value and the well-being of different people are linked to each other and to common ecological stocks. We suggest that examining chains for individual ecosystem services can suggest potential interventions aimed at poverty alleviation and sustainable ecosystems while mapping out of interlinkages between chains can help to identify possible ecosystem service trade-offs and winners and losers. We discuss conceptual and practical challenges of applying such a framework and conclude on its utility as a heuristic for structuring interdisciplinary analysis of ecosystem services and human well-being.
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- Green, Jonathan M. H., et al.
(author)
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Research priorities for managing the impacts and dependencies of business upon food, energy, water and the environment
- 2017
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In: Sustainability Science. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1862-4065 .- 1862-4057. ; 12:2, s. 319-331
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Delivering access to sufficient food, energy and water resources to ensure human wellbeing is a major concern for governments worldwide. However, it is crucial to account for the 'nexus' of interactions between these natural resources and the consequent implications for human wellbeing. The private sector has a critical role in driving positive change towards more sustainable nexus management and could reap considerable benefits from collaboration with researchers to devise solutions to some of the foremost sustainability challenges of today. Yet opportunities are missed because the private sector is rarely involved in the formulation of deliverable research priorities. We convened senior research scientists and influential business leaders to collaboratively identify the top forty questions that, if answered, would best help companies understand and manage their food-energy-water-environment nexus dependencies and impacts. Codification of the top order nexus themes highlighted research priorities around development of pragmatic yet credible tools that allow businesses to incorporate nexus interactions into their decision-making; demonstration of the business case for more sustainable nexus management; identification of the most effective levers for behaviour change; and understanding incentives or circumstances that allow individuals and businesses to take a leadership stance. Greater investment in the complex but productive relations between the private sector and research community will create deeper and more meaningful collaboration and cooperation.
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10. |
- Abrahamson, Dor, et al.
(author)
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Moving Forward: In Search of Synergy Across Diverse Views on the Role of Physical Movement in Design for STEM Education
- 2018
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In: Rethinking Learning in the Digital Age: Making the Learning Sciences Count, 13th International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS) 2018, Volume 2. - : International Society of the Learning Sciences.. - 1573-4552. - 9781732467217
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Inspired by the current embodiment turn in the cognitive sciences, researchers of STEM teaching and learning have been evaluating implications of this turn for educational theory and practice. But whereas design researchers have been developing domain-specific theories that implicate the role of physical movement in conceptual learning, the field has yet to agree on a conceptually coherent and empirically validated framework for leveraging and shaping students’ capacity for physical movement as a socio–cognitive educational resource. This symposium thus convenes to ask, “What is movement in relation to concepts such that we can design for learning?” To stimulate discussion, we highlight an emerging tension across a set of innovative technological designs with respect to the framing question of whether students should discover an activity’s targeted movement forms themselves or that these forms should be cued directly. Our content domains span mathematics (proportions, geometry), physics, chemistry, and ecological system dynamics (predator–prey, bees).
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