Abstracted/indexed

Persistent warm urban temperature anomalies – urban heat islands – significantly enhance already amplified climate warming in the Arctic. This study presents the surface urban heat islands in all circum-Arctic settlements with more than 3000 inhabitants. It reveals strong and persistent urban temperature anomalies during both summer and winter seasons that vary in different cities from 0.5 °C to more than 6.0 °C.

Fall velocities of rain drops are reported for 2–3 mm drop diameters for several different turbulent intensities. The fall velocities are measured by 2D video disdrometers and the turbulence intensities by 100 Hz sonic anemometer. The findings are, (i) the mean fall speed decreases with increasing turbulent intensity, and (ii) the standard deviation increases with increase in the rms of the air velocity fluctuations.

The Norwegian Meteorological Institute initiated the project TV meteorologists as climate communicators in 2019. Our goal was to make it easier for people to understand climate change and how it relates to local weather. The TV meteorologists have received extended training in climate issues, and in the last two years they have had 40 TV-appearances focusing on different local climate issues on the NRK Evening news. The majority of the stories have also been shared through social media.

Agricultural production is largely determined by weather conditions during the crop growing season. Weather events such as frosts, droughts or heat stress during crop growth and development helps explain yield variability of common arable crops. We developed a methodology and visualisation tool for risk assessment, and tested the workflow for drought and frost risk. The methodology can be extended to other extreme weather events and their impacts on crop growth in different regions of the world.

To obtain reliable snowfall estimates in high mountain remains a challenge. This study uses daily snow water equivalent (SWE) estimates by a cosmic ray sensor on two Swiss glaciers to assess three readily-available high-quality precipitation products. We find a large bias between in situ SWE and snowfall, which differs among the precipitation products, the two sites, the winter seasons and in situ meteorological conditions. All products have great potential for various applications in the Alps.

This article has been possible because of the cooperation between Television of Catalonia and the Applied Physics Department of the University of Barcelona, via the work of an intern student who was working from home because of the lockdown during the COVID19 pandemic. The mood of people we have studied in this article was similar to the one experimented by researchers. Weeks and months at home, with the only outside contact through the window, and social media.