A Lagrangian approach was used to identify the moisture sources for fourteen ice-core sites located worldwide for the present climate. The approach computed budgets of evaporation minus precipitation by calculating changes in the specific humidity along 10-day backward trajectories. The results indicate that the oceanic regions around the subtropical high-pressure centers provide most of moisture, and their contribution varies throughout the year following the annual cycles of the centers.

In Amazonia, carbon fluxes are considerably influenced by annual flooding. We applied the newly developed model RivCM to several climate change scenarios to estimate potential changes in riverine carbon. We find that climate change causes substantial changes in riverine organic and inorganic carbon, as well as changes in carbon exported to the atmosphere and ocean. Such changes could have local and regional impacts on the carbon budget of the whole Amazon basin and parts of the Atlantic Ocean.

This study, supported with detailed reconstructed solar records over last millennia, began to detect objectively patterns and recurrences in Solar activity. It is part of a process, in geosciences that began four centuries ago, when Newton removed the last doubts about the validity of the heliocentric model of the Solar System. It is intended to provide motivations to develop a more robust science of the Earth´s climate, centered not only in the geo or helio-proceses, but also in the cosmic ones

This comment on the paper by Lovejoy and Varotsos demonstrates that their methods for establishing nonlinearity in the global temperature response in climate models are flawed. One of their methods is based on an invalid approximation, which when corrected does not falsify the hypothesis that the response is linear. This conclusion is enforced when internal variability in the models are accounted for. The other results in their paper are also shown to be reproduced by linear-response models.

The present study analyses how cold-region physical soil processes, especially freezing of soil water, impact large-scale hydrology and climate over Northern Hemisphere high-latitude land areas. For this analysis, an atmosphere–land global climate model was used. It is shown that including these processes in the model leads to improved discharge in spring and a positive land–atmosphere feedback to precipitation over the high latitudes that has previously not been noted for the high latitudes.

On Earth, vegetation does not merely adapt to climate but also imposes significant influences on climate with both local and remote effects. In this study we evaluated the role of vegetation in African climate with a regional Earth system model. By the comparison between the experiments with and without dynamic vegetation changes, we found that vegetation can influence climate remotely, resulting in modulating rainfall patterns over Africa.

Traceability analysis was used to diagnose the causes of differences in simulating ecosystem carbon storage capacity between two land models: CLMA-CASA and CABLE. Results showed that the simulated ecosystem carbon storage capacity is largely influenced by the photosynthesis parameterization, residence time and organic matter decomposition.

Understanding interactions between hazards and other processes can help us to better understand the complex environment in which disasters occur. This enhanced understanding may help us to better manage hazards and reduce the risk of disasters occurring. Interactions (e.g. one hazard triggering another hazard) are noted between (i) natural hazards, such as earthquakes; (ii) human activity, such as groundwater abstraction; and (iii) technological hazards/disasters, such as building collapse.

A band of intense rainfall exists near the equator known as the intertropical convergence zone, which can migrate in response to climate forcings. Here, we assess such migration in response to volcanic eruptions of varying spatial structure (Northern Hemisphere, Southern Hemisphere, or an eruption fairly symmetric about the equator). We do this using model simulations of the last millennium and link results to energetic constraints and the imprint eruptions may leave behind in past records.

Carbon dioxide, while warming the Earth's surface, cools the atmosphere beyond about 15 km (the middle atmosphere). This cooling is considered a fingerprint of anthropogenic global warming, yet the physical reason behind it remains prone to misconceptions. Here we use a simple radiation model to illustrate the physical essence of stratospheric cooling, and a complex climate model to quantify how strongly different mechanisms contribute.

Using 3 decades of observational satellite and field data, we find that long-term changes in sea ice and sea level, plant phenology, and surface temperature are coherent with increases in atmospheric CO₂ concentration and other global greenhouse gases. During the same period, natural causes of climate change should only have a net cooling long-term effect, suggesting the observed coherent pattern of changes across Earth's biological and physical systems could only be due to human activities.

Thermal continentality plays an important role not only in the basic characterisation of the climate in particular regions but also in the phytogeographic distribution of plants and ecosystem formation. Due to ongoing climate change, questions surrounding the changes of thermal continentality are very relevant. Our results show that the continentality of Slovakia increased in the period 1961 to 2013; however, this trend is not significant.

We used a vegetation model to study the legacy effects of different land-use histories on ecosystem recovery in a range of environmental conditions. We found that recovery trajectories are crucially influenced by type and duration of former agricultural land use, especially for soil carbon. Spatially, we found the greatest sensitivity to land-use history in boreal forests and subtropical grasslands. These results are relevant for measurements, climate modeling and afforestation projects.

Using correlation analysis, we examine the influence of selected atmospheric variables, e.g. wind speed and moisture transport, on the precipitation variability over the Tibetan Plateau (TP). We find that different factors have different effects in different regions and seasons and that the midlatitude westerlies have an impact on the precipitation distribution on the TP and its surroundings year-round and not only in winter.