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End date: 2024 × Start date: 2020 × DDC: 530 × Subject: Complex Networks × WGL Institute: PIK ×

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Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Spatial organization of connectivity in functional climate networks describing event synchrony of heavy precipitation
    (Berlin ; Heidelberg : Springer, 2021) Wolf, Frederik; Donner, Reik V.
    In the past years, there has been an increasing number of applications of functional climate networks to studying the spatio-temporal organization of heavy rainfall events or similar types of extreme behavior in some climate variable of interest. Nearly all existing studies have employed the concept of event synchronization (ES) to statistically measure similarity in the timing of events at different grid points. Recently, it has been pointed out that this measure can however lead to biases in the presence of events that are heavily clustered in time. Here, we present an analysis of the effects of event declustering on the resulting functional climate network properties describing spatio-temporal patterns of heavy rainfall events during the South American monsoon season based on ES and a conceptually similar method, event coincidence analysis (ECA). As examples for widely employed local (per-node) network characteristics of different type, we study the degree, local clustering coefficient and average link distance patterns, as well as their mutual interdependency, for three different values of the link density. Our results demonstrate that the link density can markedly affect the resulting spatial patterns. Specifically, we find the qualitative inversion of the degree pattern with rising link density in one of the studied settings. To our best knowledge, such crossover behavior has not been described before in event synchrony based networks. In addition, declustering relieves differences between ES and ECA based network properties in some measures while not in others. This underlines the need for a careful choice of the methodological settings in functional climate network studies of extreme events and associated interpretation of the obtained results, especially when higher-order network properties are considered.
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    Evolving climate network perspectives on global surface air temperature effects of ENSO and strong volcanic eruptions
    (Berlin ; Heidelberg : Springer, 2021) Kittel, Tim; Ciemer, Catrin; Lotfi, Nastaran; Peron, Thomas; Rodrigues, Francisco; Kurths, Jürgen; Donner, Reik V.
    Episodically occurring internal (climatic) and external (non-climatic) disruptions of normal climate variability are known to both affect spatio-temporal patterns of global surface air temperatures (SAT) at time-scales between multiple weeks and several years. The magnitude and spatial manifestation of the corresponding effects depend strongly on the specific type of perturbation and may range from weak spatially coherent yet regionally confined trends to a global reorganization of co-variability due to the excitation or inhibition of certain large-scale teleconnectivity patterns. Here, we employ functional climate network analysis to distinguish qualitatively the global climate responses to different phases of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) from those to the three largest volcanic eruptions since the mid-20th century as the two most prominent types of recurrent climate disruptions. Our results confirm that strong ENSO episodes can cause a temporary breakdown of the normal hierarchical organization of the global SAT field, which is characterized by the simultaneous emergence of consistent regional temperature trends and strong teleconnections. By contrast, the most recent strong volcanic eruptions exhibited primarily regional effects rather than triggering additional long-range teleconnections that would not have been present otherwise. By relying on several complementary network characteristics, our results contribute to a better understanding of climate network properties by differentiating between climate variability reorganization mechanisms associated with internal variability versus such triggered by non-climatic abrupt and localized perturbations.
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    Coupled network analysis revealing global monthly scale co-variability patterns between sea-surface temperatures and precipitation in dependence on the ENSO state
    (Berlin ; Heidelberg : Springer, 2021) Ekhtiari, Nikoo; Ciemer, Catrin; Kirsch, Catrin; Donner, Reik V.
    The Earth’s climate is a complex system characterized by multi-scale nonlinear interrelationships between different subsystems like atmosphere and ocean. Among others, the mutual interdependence between sea surface temperatures (SST) and precipitation (PCP) has important implications for ecosystems and societies in vast parts of the globe but is still far from being completely understood. In this context, the globally most relevant coupled ocean–atmosphere phenomenon is the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which strongly affects large-scale SST variability as well as PCP patterns all around the globe. Although significant achievements have been made to foster our understanding of ENSO’s global teleconnections and climate impacts, there are many processes associated with ocean–atmosphere interactions in the tropics and extratropics, as well as remote effects of SST changes on PCP patterns that have not yet been unveiled or fully understood. In this work, we employ coupled climate network analysis for characterizing dominating global co-variability patterns between SST and PCP at monthly timescales. Our analysis uncovers characteristic seasonal patterns associated with both local and remote statistical linkages and demonstrates their dependence on the type of the current ENSO phase (El Niño, La Niña or neutral phase). Thereby, our results allow identifying local interactions as well as teleconnections between SST variations and global precipitation patterns.