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| Titel |
Investigating Temperature and Rainfall Patterns over the Amazon Region using Complex Networks |
| VerfasserIn |
N. Boers, B. Bookhagen, N. Marwan, J. Kurths |
| Konferenz |
EGU General Assembly 2012
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| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
Englisch
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| Digitales Dokument |
PDF |
| Erschienen |
In: GRA - Volume 14 (2012) |
| Datensatznummer |
250064283
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| Zusammenfassung |
| The Amazon rainforest is of distinct climatological interest due to its carbon storage
capability. It has been suggested that the region may undergo dramatic shifts in
global warming scenarios, thereby possibly loosing its stabilizing effect on the
regional and global climate. In the last decade, several extreme droughts have been
reported, causing the rainforest to release substantially more carbon dioxide than it
could absorb. In combination with ongoing deforestation, this raises concerns that
the Amazon rainforest may indeed experience a tipping point in the near future.
It has been speculated that the rainforest ecosystem might become unstable and
change towards a savanna or desert, with drastic impacts on the global climate
system. The physical mechanisms at work, in particular the interplay of temperature,
precipitation, and vegetation are complex and not well understood. Relying on
both climatological re-analysis and satellite-derived rainfall and temperature data,
we investigate temperature and precipitation patterns in the region using complex
networks. This new approach has proven very useful in the analysis of spatio-temporal
data in general and of global temperature dependencies in particular. We construct
precipitation networks by quantifying the degree of synchronization of rainfall events
and temperature networks by measuring the degree of correlation between time
series at different places. In both network types, we investigate structural differences
corresponding to different ENSO-stages. Furthermore, we search for patterns in both
precipitation and temperature networks which might possibly explain the reported
droughts. |
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