Richard DavyNansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center | NERSC · Climate processes group
Richard Davy
PhD Planetary science
About
85
Publications
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2,180
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Introduction
Additional affiliations
June 2011 - present
June 2011 - June 2017
September 2009 - January 2010
Education
September 2006 - September 2009
September 2001 - May 2005
Publications
Publications (85)
In this study, we address a persistent positive bias in Arctic sea ice (concentration and thickness) in the global climate model EC-Earth3 (ECE3) by including a modulating factor to the surface sensible heat flux over regions with sea ice concentrations above 70 %, so-called ECE3L. We performed two pairs of 50-year simulations with repeated seasona...
The North Atlantic Oscillation explains a large fraction of the climate variability across the North Atlantic from the eastern seaboard of North America across the whole of Europe. Many studies have linked the North Atlantic Oscillation to climate extremes in this region, especially in winter, which has motivated considerable study of this pattern...
The Beaufort Sea has experienced a significant decline in sea ice, with thinner first‐year ice replacing thicker multi‐year ice. This transition makes the ice cover weaker and more mobile, making it more vulnerable to breakup during winter. Using a coupled ocean‐sea‐ice model, we investigated the impact of these changes on sea‐ice breakup events an...
The North Atlantic Oscillation explains a large fraction of the climate variability across the North Atlantic from the eastern seaboard of North America across the whole of Europe. Many studies have linked the North Atlantic Oscillation to climate extremes in this region, especially in winter, which has motivated considerable study of this pattern...
The Beaufort Sea has experienced a significant decline in sea ice, with thinner first-year ice replacing thicker multi-year ice. This transition makes the ice cover weaker and more mobile, making it more vulnerable to breakup during winter. Using a coupled ocean-sea-ice model, we investigated the impact of these changes on sea-ice breakup events an...
It has been demonstrated that the Arctic has warmed at almost four times the global average rate since 1979, a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification. However, this rapid Arctic warming is tightly linked to the retreat and thinning of summer sea ice, and so may be expected to weaken as the Arctic transitions to seasonal ice cover. Here we show ev...
It is now well established that the Arctic is warming at a faster rate than the global average. This warming, which has been accompanied by a dramatic decline in sea ice, has been linked to cooling over the Eurasian subcontinent over recent decades, most dramatically during the period 1998–2012. This is a counter-intuitive impact under global warmi...
Sea‐level change in the Arctic Ocean (AO) is a key indicator of the rapidly changing Arctic climate. Changes in steric mass as well as atmospheric and oceanic circulation patterns contribute significantly to AO sea‐level variability. Monitoring of AO sea level is not as simple as in the other global oceans due to several factors such as ice cover,...
The rapid evolution of science compels renewal of a knowledge-based policy, particularly in cold regions. In the Arctic and Himalayas, which have undergone a significant climate change, there is a disconnect between scientific knowledge and the practices of policy. The rising air temperatures, decreasing ice and snow, increasing precipitation and
p...
Plain Language Summary
The loss of thick multiyear sea ice in the Arctic leads to weaker sea ice that is more easily broken up by strong winds. As a consequence, extreme sea ice breakup events may become more frequent, even during the middle of winter when the sea ice cover is frozen solid. This can lead to an earlier onset of the melt season and p...
Poster from the ESA Living Planet Symposium in Bonn 23-27 May 2022.
The poster presents a case study of an extreme sea-ice breakup event in the Beaufort Sea during winter 2013 and how we simulate this event with the neXtSIM sea-ice model.
We focus here on the impacts of the simulated breakup on local air-sea fluxes, sea ice growth as well as th...
It is now well established that the Arctic is warming at a faster rate than the global average. This warming, which has been accompanied by a dramatic decline in sea ice, has been linked to cooling over the Eurasian subcontinent over recent decades, most dramatically during the period 1998–2012. This is a counterintuitive impact under global warmin...
Record highs of meltwater production at the surface of the Greenland ice sheet have been recorded with a high recurrence over the last decades. Those melt seasons with longer durations, larger intensities, or with both increased length and melt intensity have a direct impact on the surface mass balance of the ice sheet and on its contribution to se...
Vegetation memory describes the effect of antecedent environmental and ecological conditions on the present ecosystem state and has been proposed as an important proxy for vegetation resilience. In particular, strong vegetation memory has been identified in dryland regions, but the factors underlying the spatial patterns of vegetation memory remain...
High-latitude atmospheric meridional energy transport plays a fundamental role in the Arctic climate system. However, despite numerous studies, there are no established clear regional features of the atmospheric energy transport components from a large-scale perspective. This study aims at investigating the internal energy and its instantaneous sen...
Records of meltwater production at the surface of the Greenland ice sheet have been recorded with a surprisingly high recurrence over the last decades. Those longer and/or more intense melt seasons have a direct impact on the surface mass balance of the ice sheet and on its contribution to sea level rise. Moreover, the surface melt also affects the...
Advances in climate science have rendered obsolete the gridded observation data widely used in downstream applications. Novel climate reanalysis products outperform legacy data products in accuracy, temporal resolution, and provision of uncertainty metrics. Consequently, there is an urgent need to develop a workflow through which to integrate these...
There is an increasing need for high spatial and temporal resolution climate data for the wide community of researchers interested in climate change and its consequences. Currently, there is a large mismatch between the spatial resolutions of global climate model and reanalysis datasets (at best around 0.25 o and 0.1 o respectively) and the resolut...
The thick multi-year sea ice that once covered large parts of the Arctic Ocean is being replaced by thinner and weaker first-year ice, making it increasingly vulnerable to breakup by storms. Here we use a sea ice model to investigate the driving mechanisms behind a large sea-ice breakup event in the Beaufort Sea in response to a series of storms du...
A bstract
Vegetation memory describes the effect of antecedent environmental and ecological conditions on the present ecosystem state and has been proposed as an important proxy for vegetation resilience. In particular, strong vegetation-memory effects have been identified in dryland regions, but the factors underlying the spatial patterns of veget...
There is an increasing need for high spatial and temporal resolution climate data for the wide community of researchers interested in climate change and its consequences. Currently, there is a large mismatch between the spatial resolutions of global climate model and reanalysis datasets (at best around 0.25o and 0.1o respectively) and the resolutio...
High-latitude atmospheric meridional energy transport plays a fundamental role in the Arctic climate system. However, despite numerous studies, there are no established clear regional features of the atmospheric energy transport components from a large-scale perspective. This study aims at investigating the internal energy and its instantaneous sen...
Emiliania huxleyi (Lohmann) evolved from the genus Gephyrocapsa Kamptner (Prymneosiophyceae) of the coccolithophore family Naёlaerhadaceae. Over the past 100 thousand years E. huxleyi has acquired the status of the most ecologically predominant coccolithophore due to its remarkable adaptability to a variety of environmental conditions and interspec...
We present KrigR, an R package for acquiring and statistically downscaling state-of-the-art climate data using kriging. KrigR allows R-users to (1) download ERA5 and ERA5-Land climate reanalysis data for a user-specified region, and time-length, (2) aggregate these climate products to desired temporal resolutions and metrics, (3) acquire topographi...
The Arctic climate system is very sensitive to external perturbations, which results in more rapid surface air temperature (SAT) changes in the Arctic compared to lower latitudes. This study aims at assessing the performance of global climate models from the phases 5 and 6 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5 and CMIP6) in reproducin...
Here we evaluate the sea ice, surface air temperature, and sea-level pressure from 31 of the models used in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) for their biases, trends, and variability, and compare them to the CMIP5 ensemble and the ERA5 reanalysis for the period 1979 to 2004. The principal purpose of this assessment is to pr...
The observed warming in the Arctic is more than double the global average, and this enhanced Arctic warming is projected to continue throughout the 21st century. This rapid warming has a wide range of impacts on polar and sub-polar marine ecosystems. One of the examples of such an impact on ecosystems is that of coccolithophores, particularly Emili...
Here we evaluate the sea ice, surface air temperature, and sea-level-pressure from 31 of the models used in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) for their biases, trends, and variability, and compare them to the CMIP5 ensemble and the ERA5 reanalysis for the period 1979 to 2004. The principal purpose of this assessment is to pr...
The Arctic has warmed dramatically compared to the global average over the last few decades. During this same period, there have been strong cooling trends observed in the wintertime, near-surface air temperature over central Eurasia, a phenomenon known as Eurasian cooling. Many studies have suggested that the loss of sea ice, especially in the Bar...
The coccolithophore E.huxleyi plays an essential role in the global carbon cycle. Therefore, considering the ongoing global warming, the assessment of future changes in coccolithophore blooms is very important. Our paper aims to provide a framework for selecting the optimum combination of global climate models to conduct such an assessment. To do t...
The Arctic has rapidly urbanized in recent decades with 2 million people currently living in more than a hundred cities north of 65∘ N. These cities have a harsh but sensitive climate and warming here is the principle driver of destructive thawing, water leakages, air pollution and other detrimental environmental impacts. This study reports on the...
One of the defining features of both recent and historical cases of global climate change is Arctic Amplification (AA). This is the more rapid change in the surface air temperature (SAT) in the Arctic compared to some wider reference region, such as the Northern Hemisphere (NH) mean. Many different metrics have been developed to quantify the degree...
Here, we present the climatology of the planetary boundary layer depth in 18 contemporary general circulation models (GCMs) in simulations of the late-twentieth-century climate that were part of phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). We used a bulk Richardson methodology to establish the boundary layer depth from the 6-hourly...
The Arctic has rapidly urbanized in recent decades with two million people currently living in more than a hundred cities north of 65°N. These cities have a harsh but sensitive climate and warming here is the principle driver of destructive thawing, water leakages, air pollution, and other detrimental environmental impacts. This study reports on th...
Atmospheric studies document both a periodic variability in the winter temperatures in the Kara Sea region related to internal Arctic climate variability and a recent trend of winter warming—one of the strongest warming trends in the whole Arctic. This study aims to analyse side by side with other energy budget terms the contribution of horizontal...
One of the defining features of both recent and historical cases of global climate change is Arctic amplification (AA). This is the more rapid change in the surface air temperature (SAT) in the Arctic compared to some wider reference region, such as the Northern Hemisphere (NH) mean. Many different metrics have been developed to quantify the degree...
After extensive efforts over the course of a decade, convective-scale weather forecasts with horizontal grid spacings of 1–5 km are now operational at national weather services around the world, accompanied by ensemble prediction systems (EPSs). However, though already operational, the capacity of forecasts for this scale is still to be fully explo...
There are numerous networks and initiatives concerned with the non-satellite-observing segment of Earth observation. These are owned and operated by various entities and organisations often with different practices, norms, data policies, etc. The Horizon 2020 project GAIA–CLIM is working to improve our collective ability to use an appropriate subse...
We may anticipate that climate change will bring changes to the intensity and variability of near surface winds, either through local effects or by altering the large-scale flow. The impact of climate change on European wind resources has been assessed using a single-model-ensemble of the latest regional climate model from the Rossby Centre, RCA4....
This volume contains the main results of the EC FP7 “The Ocean of Tomorrow” Project CoCoNet, divided in two
sections: 1) a set of guidelines to design networks of Marine Protected Areas in the Mediterranean and the Black Seas; 2) a smart wind chart that will allow evaluating the possibility of installing Offshore Wind Farms in both seas. The concep...
There are numerous networks and initiatives concerned with the non-satellite observing segment of Earth Observation. These are owned and operated by various entities and organisations often with different practices, norms, data policies etc. The Horizon 2020 project GAIA-CLIM is working to improve our collective ability to use an appropriate subset...
A long-term climatology of cloudiness over the Norwegian, Barents and Kara Seas (NBK) based on visual surface observations is presented. Annual mean total cloud cover (TCC) over the NBK is almost equal over solid-ice (SI) and open-water (OW) parts of NBK (73±3% and 76±2% respectively). In general, TCC has higher intra- and inter-annual variability...
Exploration and exploitation of oil and gas reserves of northern West
Siberia has promoted rapid industrialization and urban development in the
region. This development leaves significant footprints on the sensitive
northern environment, which is already stressed by the global warming. This
study reports the region-wide changes in the vegetation co...
A simple energy-balance model suggested that the climatic heat forcing of SAT should reciprocally scale with the depth of the planetary boundary layer. It intro-duces a strong selective and asymmetric response mech-anism in the climate system, which amplifies the SAT trends in the areas dominated by the shallow SBL. This mechanism is the most prono...
Changes in diurnal temperature range (DTR) over global land areas are compared from a broad range of independent data sets. All data sets agree that global-mean DTR has decreased significantly since 1950, with most of that decrease occurring over 1960–1980. The since-1979 trends are not significant, with inter-data set disagreement even over the si...
The Earth has warmed in the last century and a large component of that warming has been attributed to increased anthropogenic greenhouse gases. There are also numerous processes that introduce strong, regionalized variations to the overall warming trend. However, the ability of a forcing to change the surface air temperature depends on its spatial...
We have quantified the ability of a current regional climate model (SMHI-RCA4) to simulate the wind energy potential in the Black sea region (within EUR-11) using 5 global climate models for the boundary conditions. These data are publicly-available through the CORDEX project archives. The regional climate model results are compared to the ERA-...
We have used the publically available CORDEX datasets to quantify the ability of a current regional climate model (SMHI-RCA4) to simulate the wind energy potential in the Black sea region using 5 different global climate models for the boundary conditions. The regional climate model results are compared to the ERA-Interim reanalyses over a common p...
It has been a decade since changes in diurnal temperature range (DTR) globally have been assessed in a stand-alone data analysis. The present study takes advantage of substantively improved basic data holdings arising from the International Surface Temperature Initiative's databank effort and applies the National Centers for Environmental Informati...
Exploration and exploitation of oil and gas reserves of northern West Siberia has promoted rapid industrialization and urban development in the region. This development leaves significant footprints on the sensitive northern environment, which is already stressed by the global warming. This study reports the region-wide changes in the vegetation co...
The observed warming of the surface air temperature (SAT) over the last 50 years has not been homogenous. There are strong differences in the temperature changes both geographically and on different time frames. Here, we review the observed diurnal asymmetry in the global warming trend: the night-time temperatures have increased more rapidly than d...
We know that the surface temperature response, dT, to a perturbation in the climate forcing is determined by (1) the magnitude of the forcing, (2) any feedback effects and (3) the effective heat capacity of the system. These three components can be related through an energy budget model of the form dT = dQ/C, where dQ is the net heat perturbation f...
The Earth has warmed in the last century with the most rapid warming occurring near the surface in the Arctic. This Arctic amplification occurs partly because the extra heat is trapped in a thin layer of air near the surface due to the persistent stable-stratification found in this region. The amount of warming depends upon the extent of turbulent...
The Earth has warmed in the last century with the most rapid warming
occurring near the surface in the arctic. This enhanced surface warming in the
Arctic is partly because the extra heat is trapped in a thin layer of air near
the surface due to the persistent stable-stratification found in this region.
The warming of the surface air due to the ext...
New results from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5) and multiple
global reanalysis datasets are used to investigate the relationship between the mean and
standard deviation (SD) in the surface air temperature (SAT) at intra- and inter-annual
timescales. A combination of a land–sea mask and orographic filter was used to invest...
A cooling trend in wintertime surface air temperature over continental Eurasia has been identified in reanalysis and the Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5) 'historical' simulations over the period 1989–2009. Here the authors have shown that this cooling trend is related to changes in Arctic sea-ice around the Barents-Kara seas....
The turbulent Ekman boundary layer (EBL) has been studied in a large number of theoretical, laboratory and modeling works since F. Nansen's observations during the Norwegian Polar Expedition 1893–1896. Nevertheless, the proposed analytical models, analysis of the EBL instabili-ties, and turbulence-resolving numerical simulations are not fully consi...
The earth's rotation is an important factor affecting atmospheric and oceanic dynamics.
There are a number of asymmetries in the surface air temperature
response to forcing including polar amplification and changes to the
diurnal and seasonal temperature ranges. We propose that such
spatial-temporal signatures of climate change can, in part, be explained
from differences in effective heat capacity of the atmosphere - defined
by the de...
There are a number of asymmetries in the surface air temperature response to forcing,
including polar amplification and changes to the diurnal and seasonal temperature ranges. We
propose that such spatial–temporal signatures of climate change can, in part, be explained by
differences in the effective heat capacity of the atmosphere. We have demonst...
DOI: 10.1029/2009JE003411
Wind speeds and directions were measured on the Phoenix Lander by a mechanical anemometer, the so-called Telltale wind indicator. Analysis of images of the instrument taken with the onboard imager allowed for evaluation of wind speeds and directions. Daily characteristics of the wind data are highly turbulent behavior duri...
Phoenix LIDAR observations [Whiteway et al. 2009] of clouds and
precipitation in the planetary boundary layer (PBL) on Mars have been
interpreted by a microphysical model for Mars ice clouds in combination
with a coupled PBL-Aeolian dust model [Davy et al. 2009, Daerden et al.
2010]. The model simulates nighttime clouds and fall streaks within the...
Thermocouples at three levels on a 1 m mast on the deck of the Phoenix Lander provided temperature data throughout the 151 sol Phoenix mission. Air temperatures showed a large diurnal cycle which showed little sol to sol variation, especially over the first 90 sols of the mission. Daytime temperatures at the top (2 m) level typically rose to about...