A Machine Learning-Based Observational Constraint Correction Method for Seasonal Precipitation Prediction

Seasonal precipitation has always been a key focus of climate prediction.As a dynamic-statistical combined method,the existing observational constraint correction establishes a regression relationship between the numerical model outputs and historical observations,which can partly predict seasonal precipitation.However,solving a nonlinear problem through linear regression is significantly biased.This study implements a nonlinear optimization of an existing observational constrained correction model using a Light Gradient Boosting Machine(LightGBM)machine learning algorithm based on output from the Beijing National Climate Center Climate System Model(BCC-CSM)and station observations to improve the prediction of summer precipitation in China.The model was trained using a rolling approach,and LightGBM outperformed Linear Regression(LR),Extreme Gradient Boosting(XGBoost),and Categorical Boosting(CatBoost).Using parameter tuning to optimize the machine learning model and predict future summer precipitation using eight different predictors in BCC-CSM,the mean Anomaly Correlation Coefficient(ACC)score in the 2019–22 summer precipitation predictions was 0.17,and the mean Prediction Score(PS)reached 74.The PS score was improved by 7.87%and 6.63%compared with the BCC-CSM and the linear observational constraint approach,respectively.The observational constraint correction prediction strategy with LightGBM significantly and stably improved the prediction of summer precipitation in China compared to the previous linear observational constraint solution,providing a reference for flood control and drought relief during the flood season(summer)in China.

Predictability Study of Weather and Climate Events Related to Artificial Intelligence Models

Conducting predictability studies is essential for tracing the source of forecast errors,which not only leads to the improvement of observation and forecasting systems,but also enhances the understanding of weather and climate phenomena.In the past few decades,dynamical numerical models have been the primary tools for predictability studies,achieving significant progress.Nowadays,with the advances in artificial intelligence(AI)techniques and accumulations of vast meteorological data,modeling weather and climate events using modern data-driven approaches is becoming trendy,where FourCastNet,Pangu-Weather,and GraphCast are successful pioneers.In this perspective article,we suggest AI models should not be limited to forecasting but be expanded to predictability studies,leveraging AI's advantages of high efficiency and self-contained optimization modules.To this end,we first remark that AI models should possess high simulation capability with fine spatiotemporal resolution for two kinds of predictability studies.AI models with high simulation capabilities comparable to numerical models can be considered to provide solutions to partial differential equations in a data-driven way.Then,we highlight several specific predictability issues with well-determined nonlinear optimization formulizations,which can be well-studied using AI models,holding significant scientific value.In addition,we advocate for the incorporation of AI models into the synergistic cycle of the cognition–observation–model paradigm.Comprehensive predictability studies have the potential to transform“big data”to“big and better data”and shift the focus from“AI for forecasts”to“AI for science”,ultimately advancing the development of the atmospheric and oceanic sciences.

Short-Term Rolling Prediction of Tropical Cyclone Intensity Based on Multi-Task Learning with Fusion of Deviation-Angle Variance and Satellite Imagery

Tropical cyclones(TCs)are one of the most serious types of natural disasters,and accurate TC activity predictions are key to disaster prevention and mitigation.Recently,TC track predictions have made significant progress,but the ability to predict their intensity is obviously lagging behind.At present,research on TC intensity prediction takes atmospheric reanalysis data as the research object and mines the relationship between TC-related environmental factors and intensity through deep learning.However,reanalysis data are non-real-time in nature,which does not meet the requirements for operational forecasting applications.Therefore,a TC intensity prediction model named TC-Rolling is proposed,which can simultaneously extract the degree of symmetry for strong TC convective cloud and convection intensity,and fuse the deviation-angle variance with satellite images to construct the correlation between TC convection structure and intensity.For TCs'complex dynamic processes,a convolutional neural network(CNN)is used to learn their temporal and spatial features.For real-time intensity estimation,multi-task learning acts as an implicit time-series enhancement.The model is designed with a rolling strategy that aims to moderate the long-term dependent decay problem and improve accuracy for short-term intensity predictions.Since multiple tasks are correlated,the loss function of 12 h and 24 h are corrected.After testing on a sample of TCs in the Northwest Pacific,with a 4.48 kt root-mean-square error(RMSE)of 6 h intensity prediction,5.78 kt for 12 h,and 13.94 kt for 24 h,TC records from official agencies are used to assess the validity of TC-Rolling.

Improving the Seasonal Forecast of Summer Precipitation in Southeastern China Using a CycleGAN-based Deep Learning Bias Correction Method

Accurate seasonal precipitation forecasts,especially for extreme events,are crucial to preventing meteorological hazards and their potential impacts on national development,social activity,and security.However,the intensity of summer precipitation is often largely underestimated in many current dynamic models.This study uses a deep learning method called Cycle-Consistent Generative Adversarial Networks(CycleGAN)to improve the seasonal forecasts for June-JulyAugust precipitation in southeastern China by the Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology Climate Forecast System(NUIST-CFS 1.0).The results suggest that the CycleGAN-based model significantly improves the accuracy in predicting the spatiotemporal distribution of summer precipitation compared to the traditional quantile mapping(QM)method.Using the unpaired bias-correction model,we can also obtain advanced forecasts of the frequency,intensity,and duration of extreme precipitation events over the dynamic model predictions.This study expands the potential applications of deep learning models toward improving seasonal precipitation forecasts.

Subsurface Temperature and Salinity Structures Inversion Using a Stacking-Based Fusion Model from Satellite Observations in the South China Sea

Three-dimensional ocean subsurface temperature and salinity structures(OST/OSS)in the South China Sea(SCS)play crucial roles in oceanic climate research and disaster mitigation.Traditionally,real-time OST and OSS are mainly obtained through in-situ ocean observations and simulation by ocean circulation models,which are usually challenging and costly.Recently,dynamical,statistical,or machine learning models have been proposed to invert the OST/OSS from sea surface information;however,these models mainly focused on the inversion of monthly OST and OSS.To address this issue,we apply clustering algorithms and employ a stacking strategy to ensemble three models(XGBoost,Random Forest,and LightGBM)to invert the real-time OST/OSS based on satellite-derived data and the Argo dataset.Subsequently,a fusion of temperature and salinity is employed to reconstruct OST and OSS.In the validation dataset,the depth-averaged Correlation(Corr)of the estimated OST(OSS)is 0.919(0.83),and the average Root-Mean-Square Error(RMSE)is0.639°C(0.087 psu),with a depth-averaged coefficient of determination(R~2)of 0.84(0.68).Notably,at the thermocline where the base models exhibit their maximum error,the stacking-based fusion model exhibited significant performance enhancement,with a maximum enhancement in OST and OSS inversion exceeding 10%.We further found that the estimated OST and OSS exhibit good agreement with the HYbrid Coordinate Ocean Model(HYCOM)data and BOA_Argo dataset during the passage of a mesoscale eddy.This study shows that the proposed model can effectively invert the real-time OST and OSS,potentially enhancing the understanding of multi-scale oceanic processes in the SCS.

Unsupervised Meteorological Downscaling Based on Dual Learning and Subgrid-scale Auxiliary Information

Climate downscaling is used to transform large-scale meteorological data into small-scale data with enhanced detail,which finds wide applications in climate modeling,numerical weather forecasting,and renewable energy.Although deeplearning-based downscaling methods effectively capture the complex nonlinear mapping between meteorological data of varying scales,the supervised deep-learning-based downscaling methods suffer from insufficient high-resolution data in practice,and unsupervised methods struggle with accurately inferring small-scale specifics from limited large-scale inputs due to small-scale uncertainty.This article presents DualDS,a dual-learning framework utilizing a Generative Adversarial Network–based neural network and subgrid-scale auxiliary information for climate downscaling.Such a learning method is unified in a two-stream framework through up-and downsamplers,where the downsampler is used to simulate the information loss process during the upscaling,and the upsampler is used to reconstruct lost details and correct errors incurred during the upscaling.This dual learning strategy can eliminate the dependence on high-resolution ground truth data in the training process and refine the downscaling results by constraining the mapping process.Experimental findings demonstrate that DualDS is comparable to several state-of-the-art deep learning downscaling approaches,both qualitatively and quantitatively.Specifically,for a single surface-temperature data downscaling task,our method is comparable with other unsupervised algorithms with the same dataset,and we can achieve a 0.469 dB higher peak signal-to-noise ratio,0.017 higher structural similarity,0.08 lower RMSE,and the best correlation coefficient.In summary,this paper presents a novel approach to addressing small-scale uncertainty issues in unsupervised downscaling processes.

How Do Deep Learning Forecasting Models Perform for Surface Variables in the South China Sea Compared to Operational Oceanography Forecasting Systems?

It is fundamental and useful to investigate how deep learning forecasting models(DLMs)perform compared to operational oceanography forecast systems(OFSs).However,few studies have intercompared their performances using an identical reference.In this study,three physically reasonable DLMs are implemented for the forecasting of the sea surface temperature(SST),sea level anomaly(SLA),and sea surface velocity in the South China Sea.The DLMs are validated against both the testing dataset and the“OceanPredict”Class 4 dataset.Results show that the DLMs'RMSEs against the latter increase by 44%,245%,302%,and 109%for SST,SLA,current speed,and direction,respectively,compared to those against the former.Therefore,different references have significant influences on the validation,and it is necessary to use an identical and independent reference to intercompare the DLMs and OFSs.Against the Class 4 dataset,the DLMs present significantly better performance for SLA than the OFSs,and slightly better performances for other variables.The error patterns of the DLMs and OFSs show a high degree of similarity,which is reasonable from the viewpoint of predictability,facilitating further applications of the DLMs.For extreme events,the DLMs and OFSs both present large but similar forecast errors for SLA and current speed,while the DLMs are likely to give larger errors for SST and current direction.This study provides an evaluation of the forecast skills of commonly used DLMs and provides an example to objectively intercompare different DLMs.

Identifying Three Shapes of Potential Vorticity Streamers Using Mask R-CNN

Potential vorticity(PV)streamers are elongated filaments of high PV intrusions that generally exhibit three distinct shapes:ordinarily southwestward,hook,and treble-clef,each with significant influences on weather.These PV streamers are most frequent over arid and semi-arid Central Asia in the mid–high latitudes.This study applied the Mask Region-based Convolutional Neural Network algorithm(Mask R-CNN)to PV streamers on the dynamical tropopause during the warm season(May to September)over the years 2000–04 to train a weighted variational model capable of identifying these different shapes.The trained model demonstrated a strong ability to distinguish between the three shapes.A climatological analysis of PV streamers over Central Asia spanning 2000 to 2021 revealed an increasingly deep and pronounced reversal of circulation from ordinary to treble-clef shapes.The treble-clef shape featured a PV tower and distinct cut-off low in the troposphere,but the associated upward motions and precipitation were confined within approximately 1200 km to the east of the PV tower.Although the hook-shape PV streamers were linked to a weaker cut-off low,the extent of upward motion and precipitation was nearly double that of the treble-clef category.In contrast,the ordinary PV streamer was primarily associated with tropopause Rossby wave breaking and exhibited relatively shallow characteristics,which resulted in moderate upward motion and precipitation to 500 km to its east.

A Generative Adversarial Network with an Attention Spatiotemporal Mechanism for Tropical Cyclone Forecasts

Tropical cyclones(TCs)are complex and powerful weather systems,and accurately forecasting their path,structure,and intensity remains a critical focus and challenge in meteorological research.In this paper,we propose an Attention Spatio-Temporal predictive Generative Adversarial Network(AST-GAN)model for predicting the temporal and spatial distribution of TCs.The model forecasts the spatial distribution of TC wind speeds for the next 15 hours at 3-hour intervals,emphasizing the cyclone's center,high wind-speed areas,and its asymmetric structure.To effectively capture spatiotemporal feature transfer at different time steps,we employ a channel attention mechanism for feature selection,enhancing model performance and reducing parameter redundancy.We utilized High-Resolution Weather Research and Forecasting(HWRF)data to train our model,allowing it to assimilate a wide range of TC motion patterns.The model is versatile and can be applied to various complex scenarios,such as multiple TCs moving simultaneously or TCs approaching landfall.Our proposed model demonstrates superior forecasting performance,achieving a root-mean-square error(RMSE)of 0.71 m s^(-1)for overall wind speed and 2.74 m s^(-1)for maximum wind speed when benchmarked against ground truth data from HWRF.Furthermore,the model underwent optimization and independent testing using ERA5reanalysis data,showcasing its stability and scalability.After fine-tuning on the ERA5 dataset,the model achieved an RMSE of 1.33 m s^(-1)for wind speed and 1.75 m s^(-1)for maximum wind speed.The AST-GAN model outperforms other state-of-the-art models in RMSE on both the HWRF and ERA5 datasets,maintaining its superior performance and demonstrating its effectiveness for spatiotemporal prediction of TCs.

Joint Retrieval of PM_(2.5) Concentration and Aerosol Optical Depth over China Using Multi-Task Learning on FY-4A AGRI

Aerosol optical depth(AOD)and fine particulate matter with a diameter of less than or equal to 2.5μm(PM_(2.5))play crucial roles in air quality,human health,and climate change.However,the complex correlation of AOD–PM_(2.5)and the limitations of existing algorithms pose a significant challenge in realizing the accurate joint retrieval of these two parameters at the same location.On this point,a multi-task learning(MTL)model,which enables the joint retrieval of PM_(2.5)concentration and AOD,is proposed and applied on the top-of-the-atmosphere reflectance data gathered by the Fengyun-4A Advanced Geosynchronous Radiation Imager(FY-4A AGRI),and compared to that of two single-task learning models—namely,Random Forest(RF)and Deep Neural Network(DNN).Specifically,MTL achieves a coefficient of determination(R^(2))of 0.88 and a root-mean-square error(RMSE)of 0.10 in AOD retrieval.In comparison to RF,the R^(2)increases by 0.04,the RMSE decreases by 0.02,and the percentage of retrieval results falling within the expected error range(Within-EE)rises by 5.55%.The R^(2)and RMSE of PM_(2.5)retrieval by MTL are 0.84 and 13.76μg m~(-3)respectively.Compared with RF,the R^(2)increases by 0.06,the RMSE decreases by 4.55μg m~(-3),and the Within-EE increases by 7.28%.Additionally,compared to DNN,MTL shows an increase of 0.01 in R^(2)and a decrease of 0.02 in RMSE in AOD retrieval,with a corresponding increase of 2.89%in Within-EE.For PM_(2.5)retrieval,MTL exhibits an increase of 0.05 in R^(2),a decrease of 1.76μg m~(-3)in RMSE,and an increase of 6.83%in Within-EE.The evaluation suggests that MTL is able to provide simultaneously improved AOD and PM_(2.5)retrievals,demonstrating a significant advantage in efficiently capturing the spatial distribution of PM_(2.5)concentration and AOD.

Convolutional Graph Neural Network with Novel Loss Strategies for Daily Temperature and Precipitation Statistical Downscaling over South China

Traditional meteorological downscaling methods face limitations due to the complex distribution of meteorological variables,which can lead to unstable forecasting results,especially in extreme scenarios.To overcome this issue,we propose a convolutional graph neural network(CGNN)model,which we enhance with multilayer feature fusion and a squeeze-and-excitation block.Additionally,we introduce a spatially balanced mean squared error(SBMSE)loss function to address the imbalanced distribution and spatial variability of meteorological variables.The CGNN is capable of extracting essential spatial features and aggregating them from a global perspective,thereby improving the accuracy of prediction and enhancing the model's generalization ability.Based on the experimental results,CGNN has certain advantages in terms of bias distribution,exhibiting a smaller variance.When it comes to precipitation,both UNet and AE also demonstrate relatively small biases.As for temperature,AE and CNNdense perform outstandingly during the winter.The time correlation coefficients show an improvement of at least 10%at daily and monthly scales for both temperature and precipitation.Furthermore,the SBMSE loss function displays an advantage over existing loss functions in predicting the98th percentile and identifying areas where extreme events occur.However,the SBMSE tends to overestimate the distribution of extreme precipitation,which may be due to the theoretical assumptions about the posterior distribution of data that partially limit the effectiveness of the loss function.In future work,we will further optimize the SBMSE to improve prediction accuracy.

Regional Storm Surge Forecast Method Based on a Neural Network and the Coupled ADCIRC-SWAN Model

Timely and accurate forecasting of storm surges can effectively prevent typhoon storm surges from causing large economic losses and casualties in coastal areas.At present,numerical model forecasting consumes too many resources and takes too long to compute,while neural network forecasting lacks regional data to train regional forecasting models.In this study,we used the DUAL wind model to build typhoon wind fields,and constructed a typhoon database of 75 processes in the northern South China Sea using the coupled Advanced Circulation-Simulating Waves Nearshore(ADCIRC-SWAN)model.Then,a neural network with a Res-U-Net structure was trained using the typhoon database to forecast the typhoon processes in the validation dataset,and an excellent storm surge forecasting effect was achieved in the Pearl River Estuary region.The storm surge forecasting effect of stronger typhoons was improved by adding a branch structure and transfer learning.

AI-based Correction of Wave Forecasts Using the Transformer-enhanced UNet Model

Grid forecasting can be used to effectively enhance the spatial and temporal density of forecast products,thereby improving the capability of short-term marine disaster forecasting and warnings in terms of proximity.The traditional method that relies on forecasters'subjective correction of station observation data for forecasting has been unable to meet the practical needs of refined forecasting.To address this problem,this paper proposes a Transformer-enhanced UNet(TransUNet)model for wave forecast AI correction,which fuses wind and wave information.The Transformer structure is integrated into the encoder of the UNet model,and instead of using the traditional upsampling method,the dual-sampling module is employed in the decoder to enhance the feature extraction capability.This paper compares the TransUNet model with the traditional UNet model using wind speed forecast data,wave height forecast data,and significant wave height reanalysis data provided by ECMWF.The experimental results indicate that the TransUNet model yields smaller root-meansquare errors,mean errors,and standard deviations of the corrected results for the next 24-h forecasts than does the UNet model.Specifically,the root-mean-square error decreased by more than 21.55%compared to its precorrection value.According to the statistical analysis,87.81%of the corrected wave height errors for the next 24-h forecast were within±0.2m,with only 4.56%falling beyond±0.3 m.This model effectively limits the error range and enhances the ability to forecast wave heights.

Vision Transformer for Extracting Tropical Cyclone Intensity from Satellite Images

Tropical cyclone(TC)intensity estimation is a fundamental aspect of TC monitoring and forecasting.Deep learning models have recently been employed to estimate TC intensity from satellite images and yield precise results.This work proposes the ViT-TC model based on the Vision Transformer(ViT)architecture.Satellite images of TCs,including infrared(IR),water vapor(WV),and passive microwave(PMW),are used as inputs for intensity estimation.Experiments indicate that combining IR,WV,and PMW as inputs yields more accurate estimations than other channel combinations.The ensemble mean technique is applied to enhance the model's estimations,reducing the root-mean-square error to 9.32 kt(knots,1 kt≈0.51 m s^(-1))and the mean absolute error to 6.49 kt,which outperforms traditional methods and is comparable to existing deep learning models.The model assigns high attention weights to areas with high PMW,indicating that PMW magnitude is essential information for the model's estimation.The model also allocates significance to the cloud-cover region,suggesting that the model utilizes the whole TC cloud structure and TC eye to determine TC intensity.

Physically Constrained Adaptive Deep Learning for Ocean Vertical-Mixing Parameterization

Existing traditional ocean vertical-mixing schemes are empirically developed without a thorough understanding of the physical processes involved,resulting in a discrepancy between the parameterization and forecast results.The uncertainty in ocean-mixing parameterization is primarily responsible for the bias in ocean models.Benefiting from deep-learning technology,we design the Adaptive Fully Connected Module with an Inception module as the baseline to minimize bias.It adaptively extracts the best features through fully connected layers with different widths,and better learns the nonlinear relationship between input variables and parameterization fields.Moreover,to obtain more accurate results,we impose KPP(K-Profile Parameterization)and PP(Pacanowski–Philander)schemes as physical constraints to make the network parameterization process follow the basic physical laws more closely.Since model data are calculated with human experience,lacking some unknown physical processes,which may differ from the actual data,we use a decade-long time record of hydrological and turbulence observations in the tropical Pacific Ocean as training data.Combining physical constraints and a nonlinear activation function,our method catches its nonlinear change and better adapts to the oceanmixing parameterization process.The use of physical constraints can improve the final results.

TianXing:A Linear Complexity Transformer Model with Explicit Attention Decay for Global Weather Forecasting

In this paper,we introduce TianXing,a transformer-based data-driven model designed with physical augmentation for skillful and efficient global weather forecasting.Previous data-driven transformer models such as Pangu-Weather,FengWu,and FuXi have emerged as promising alternatives for numerical weather prediction in weather forecasting.However,these models have been characterized by their substantial computational resource consumption during training and limited incorporation of explicit physical guidance in their modeling frameworks.In contrast,TianXing applies a linear complexity mechanism that ensures proportional scalability with input data size while significantly diminishing GPU resource demands,with only a marginal compromise in accuracy.Furthermore,TianXing proposes an explicit attention decay mechanism in the linear attention derived from physical insights to enhance its forecasting skill.The mechanism can reweight attention based on Earth's spherical distances and learned sparse multivariate coupling relationships,promptingTianXing to prioritize dynamically relevant neighboring features.Finally,to enhance its performance in mediumrange forecasting,TianXing employs a stacked autoregressive forecast algorithm.Validation of the model's architecture is conducted using ERA5 reanalysis data at a 5.625°latitude-longitude resolution,while a high-resolution dataset at 0.25°is utilized for training the actual forecasting model.Notably,the TianXing exhibits excellent performance,particularly in the Z500(geopotential height)and T850(temperature)fields,surpassing previous data-driven models and operational fullresolution models such as NCEP GFS and ECMWF IFS,as evidenced by latitude-weighted RMSE and ACC metrics.Moreover,the TianXing has demonstrated remarkable capabilities in predicting extreme weather events,such as typhoons.

TGNet:Intelligent Identification of Thunderstorm Wind Gusts Using Multimodal Fusion

Thunderstorm wind gusts are small in scale,typically occurring within a range of a few kilometers.It is extremely challenging to monitor and forecast thunderstorm wind gusts using only automatic weather stations.Therefore,it is necessary to establish thunderstorm wind gust identification techniques based on multisource high-resolution observations.This paper introduces a new algorithm,called thunderstorm wind gust identification network(TGNet).It leverages multimodal feature fusion to fuse the temporal and spatial features of thunderstorm wind gust events.The shapelet transform is first used to extract the temporal features of wind speeds from automatic weather stations,which is aimed at distinguishing thunderstorm wind gusts from those caused by synoptic-scale systems or typhoons.Then,the encoder,structured upon the U-shaped network(U-Net)and incorporating recurrent residual convolutional blocks(R2U-Net),is employed to extract the corresponding spatial convective characteristics of satellite,radar,and lightning observations.Finally,by using the multimodal deep fusion module based on multi-head cross-attention,the temporal features of wind speed at each automatic weather station are incorporated into the spatial features to obtain 10-minutely classification of thunderstorm wind gusts.TGNet products have high accuracy,with a critical success index reaching 0.77.Compared with those of U-Net and R2U-Net,the false alarm rate of TGNet products decreases by 31.28%and 24.15%,respectively.The new algorithm provides grid products of thunderstorm wind gusts with a spatial resolution of 0.01°,updated every 10minutes.The results are finer and more accurate,thereby helping to improve the accuracy of operational warnings for thunderstorm wind gusts.

Severe Global Environmental Issues Caused by Canada’s Record-Breaking Wildfires in 2023

Due to the record-breaking wildfires that occurred in Canada in 2023,unprecedented quantities of air pollutants and greenhouse gases were released into the atmosphere.The wildfires had emitted more than 1.3 Pg CO_(2)and 0.14 Pg CO_(2)equivalent of other greenhouse gases(GHG)including CH4 and N_(2)O as of 31 August.The wildfire-related GHG emissions constituted more than doubled Canada’s planned cumulative anthropogenic emissions reductions in 10 years,which represents a significant challenge to climate mitigation efforts.The model simulations showed that the Canadian wildfires impacted not only the local air quality but also that of most areas in the northern hemisphere due to long-range transport,causing severe PM_(2.5)pollution in the northeastern United States and increasing daily mean PM_(2.5)concentration in northwestern China by up to 2μg m-3.The observed maximum daily mean PM_(2.5)concentration in New York City reached 148.3μg m-3,which was their worst air quality in more than 50 years,nearly 10 times that of the air quality guideline(i.e.,15μg m-3)issued by the World Health Organization(WHO).Aside from the direct emissions from forest fires,the peat fires beneath the surface might smolder for several months or even longer and release substantial amounts of CO_(2).The substantial amounts of greenhouse gases from forest and peat fires might contribute to the positive feedback to the climate,potentially accelerating global warming.To better understand the comprehensive environmental effects of wildfires and their interactions with the climate system,more detailed research based on advanced observations and Earth System Models is essential.

The Probability Density Function Related to Shallow Cumulus Entrainment Rate and Its Influencing Factors in a Large-Eddy Simulation

The process of entrainment-mixing between cumulus clouds and the ambient air is important for the development of cumulus clouds.Accurately obtaining the entrainment rate(λ)is particularly important for its parameterization within the overall cumulus parameterization scheme.In this study,an improved bulk-plume method is proposed by solving the equations of two conserved variables simultaneously to calculateλof cumulus clouds in a large-eddy simulation.The results demonstrate that the improved bulk-plume method is more reliable than the traditional bulk-plume method,becauseλ,as calculated from the improved method,falls within the range ofλvalues obtained from the traditional method using different conserved variables.The probability density functions ofλfor all data,different times,and different heights can be well-fitted by a log-normal distribution,which supports the assumed stochastic entrainment process in previous studies.Further analysis demonstrate that the relationship betweenλand the vertical velocity is better than other thermodynamic/dynamical properties;thus,the vertical velocity is recommended as the primary influencing factor for the parameterization ofλin the future.The results of this study enhance the theoretical understanding ofλand its influencing factors and shed new light on the development ofλparameterization.

Record-breaking High-temperature Outlook for 2023: An Assessment Based on the China Global Merged Temperature(CMST) Dataset

According to the latest version(version 2.0) of the China global Merged Surface Temperature(CMST2.0) dataset, the global mean surface temperature(GMST) in the first half of 2023 reached its third warmest value since the period of instrumental observation began, being only slightly lower than the values recorded in 2016 and 2020, and historically record-breaking GMST emerged from May to July 2023. Further analysis also indicates that if the surface temperature in the last five months of 2023 approaches the average level of the past five years, the annual average surface temperature anomaly in 2023 of approximately 1.26°C will break the previous highest surface temperature, which was recorded in 2016of approximately 1.25°C(both values relative to the global pre-industrialization period, i.e., the average value from 1850 to1900). With El Ni?o triggering a record-breaking hottest July, record-breaking average annual temperatures will most likely become a reality in 2023.