This is a sequel to a study of the empirical estimation of the annual mean temperature and its range, at any location on land, based on the historical surface climate record. Here the spatial patterns of the daily temperature range (DTR) and its seasonal variation are examined. The DTR is highest in the subtropical deserts and is less at high latitudes, as well as within 30–150 km from an ocean...

A method for estimating uncertainty in future climate change is discussed in detail and applied to predictions of global mean temperature change. The method uses optimal fingerprinting to make estimates of uncertainty in model simulations of twentieth-century warming. These estimates are then projected forward in time using a linear, compact relationship between twentieth-century warming and tw...

The subject of climate feedbacks focuses attention on global mean surface air temperature (GMST) as the key metric of climate change. But what does knowledge of past and future GMST tell us about the climate of specific regions? In the context of the ongoing UNFCCC process, this is an important question for policy-makers as well as for scientists. The answer depends on many factors, including t...

We consider a one-dimensional directed polymer in a random potential which is characterized by the Gaussian statistics with the finite size local correlations. It is shown that the well-known Kardar’s solution obtained originally for a directed polymer with δ-correlated random potential can be applied for the description of the present system only in the high-temperature limit. For the low temp...

Carp were transferred from 25 degrees C water to a calorimeter at 15 degrees C or from 15 degrees C water to a calorimeter at 25 degrees C. During cooling, dorsal muscle temperature (Tdm) and mean body temperature (Tb) were continuously monitored. During the first minutes Tb changed rapidly, while Tdm changed only slightly. In a 0.468-dg fish, Tdm decreased to two-thirds of the final value in 8...

We show how a lightly doped Mott insulator has hugely enhanced electronic thermal transport at low temperature. It displays universal behavior independent of the interaction strength when the carriers can be treated as nondegenerate fermions and a nonuniversal “crossover” region where the Lorenz number grows to large values, while still maintaining a large thermoelectric figure-of-merit. The el...

Timing of reproduction in temperate-zone birds is strongly correlated with spring temperature, with an earlier onset of breeding in warmer years. Females adjust their timing of egg laying between years to be synchronized with local food sources and thereby optimize reproductive output. However, climate change currently disrupts the link between predictive environmental cues and spring phenology...