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Abstract The effect of vertically tilted structure (VTS) of the MJO on its phase propagation speed was investigated through the diagnosis of ERA-Interim reanalysis data during 1979–2012. A total of 84 eastward propagating MJO events were selected. It was found that all MJO events averaged throughout their life cycles exhibited a clear VTS, and the tilting strength was significantly positively correlated to the phase speed. The physical mechanism through which the VTS influenced the phase speed was investigated. On the one hand, a stronger VTS led to a stronger vertical overturning circulation and a stronger descent in the front, which caused a greater positive moist static energy (MSE) tendency in situ through enhanced vertical MSE advection. The stronger MSE tendency gradient led to a faster eastward phase speed. On the other hand, the enhanced overturning circulation in front of MJO convection led to a stronger easterly/low pressure anomaly at the top of the boundary layer, which induced a stronger boundary layer convergence and stronger ascent in the lower troposphere. This strengthened the boundary layer moisture asymmetry and favored a faster eastward propagation speed. 

Recent decades of warmer climate have brought drying wetlands and falling lake levels to southern Alaska. These recent changes can be placed into a longer-term context of postglacial lake-level fluctuations that include low stands that were as much as 7 m lower than present at eight lakes on the Kenai Lowland. Closed-basin lakes on the Kenai Lowland are typically ringed with old shorelines, usually as wave-cut scarps, cut several meters above modern lake levels; the scarps formed during deglaciation at 25–19 ka in a kettle moraine topography on the western Kenai Lowland. These high-water stands were followed by millennia of low stands, when closed-basin lake levels were drawn down by 5–10 m or more. Peat cores from satellite fens near or adjoining the eight closed-basin lakes show that a regional lake level rise was underway by at least 13.4 ka. At Jigsaw Lake, a detailed study of 23 pairs of overlapping sediment cores, seismic profiling, macrofossil analysis, and 58 AMS radiocarbon dates reveal rapidly rising water levels at 9–8 ka that caused large slabs of peat to slough off and sink to the lake bottom. These slabs preserve an archive of vegetation that had accumulated on a lakeshore apron exposed during the preceding drawdown period. They also preserve evidence of a brief period of lake level rise at 4.7–4.5 ka. We examined plant succession using in situ peat sequences in nine satellite fens around Jigsaw Lake that indicated increased effective moisture between 4.6 and 2.5 ka synchronous with the lake level rise. Mid- to late-Holocene lake high stands in this area are recorded by numerous ice-shoved ramparts (ISRs) along the shores. ISRs at 15 lakes show that individual ramparts typically record several shove events, separated by hundreds or thousands of years. Most ISRs date to within the last 5200 years and it is likely that older ISRs were erased by rising lake levels during the mid- to late Holocene. This study illustrates how data on vegetation changes in hydrologically coupled satellite-fen peat records can be used to constrain the water level histories in larger adjacent lakes. We suggest that this method could be more widely utilized for paleo-lake level reconstruction. 

Abstract Two existing moisture mode theories of the MJO, one emphasizing boundary layer moisture asymmetry (MA) and the other emphasizing column-integrated moist static energy (MSE) tendency asymmetry (TA), were validated with the diagnosis of observational data during 1979–2012. A total of 2343 MJO days are selected. While all these days show a clear phase leading of the boundary layer moisture, 20% of these days do not show a positive column-integrated MSE tendency in front of MJO convection (non-TA). A further MSE budget analysis indicates that the difference between the non-TA composite and the TA composite lies in the zonal extent of anomalously vertical overturning circulation in front of the MJO convection. A background mean precipitation modulation mechanism is proposed to explain the distinctive circulation responses. Dependent on the MJO location, an anomalous Gill response to the heating is greatly modulated by the seasonal mean and ENSO induced precipitation fields. Despite the negative MSE tendency in front of MJO convection in the non-TA group, the system continues moving eastward due to the effect of the boundary layer moistening, which promotes a convectively unstable stratification ahead of MJO convection. The analysis result suggests that the first type of moisture mode theories, the moisture asymmetry mechanism, appears more robust, particularly over the eastern Maritime Continent and western Pacific. 

The expansion of shrubs across the Arctic tundra may fundamentally modify land‐atmosphere interactions. However, it remains unclear how shrub expansion pattern is linked with key environmental drivers, such as climate change and fire disturbance. Here we used 40+ years of high‐resolution (~1.0 m) aerial and satellite imagery to estimate shrub‐cover change in 114 study sites across four burned and unburned upland (ice‐poor) and lowland (ice‐rich) tundra ecosystems in northern Alaska. Validated with data from four additional upland and lowland tundra fires, our results reveal that summer precipitation was the most important climatic driver (r = 0.67, p < 0.001), responsible for 30.8% of shrub expansion in the upland tundra between 1971 and 2016. Shrub expansion in the uplands was largely enhanced by wildfire (p < 0.001) and it exhibited positive correlation with fire severity (r = 0.83, p < 0.001). Three decades after fire disturbance, the upland shrub cover increased by 1077.2 ± 83.6 m2 ha‐1, ~7 times the amount identified in adjacent unburned upland tundra (155.1 ± 55.4 m2 ha‐1). In contrast, shrub cover markedly decreased in lowland tundra after fire disturbance, which triggered thermokarst‐associated water impounding and resulted in 52.4% loss of shrub cover over three decades. No correlation was found between lowland shrub cover with fire severity (r = 0.01). Mean summer air temperature (MSAT) was the principal factor driving lowland shrub‐cover dynamics between 1951 and 2007. Warmer MSAT facilitated shrub expansion in unburned lowlands (r = 0.78, p < 0.001), but accelerated shrub‐cover losses in burned lowlands (r = – 0.82, p < 0.001). These results highlight divergent pathways of shrub‐cover responses to fire disturbance and climate change, depending on near‐surface permafrost and drainage conditions. Our study offers new insights into the land‐atmosphere interactions as climate warming and burning intensify in high latitudes. 

Climate warming is projected to intensify tundra wildfire, with profound implications for permafrost thaw. A major uncertainty is how increased burning will interact with climate change to exacerbate thermokarst (ground-surface collapse resulting from permafrost thaw). Here we used ~70 years of remote sensing observation combined with spatially-explicit modeling to show that thermokarst rates increased by ~60% with warming climate and wildfire from 1950 to 2015 in Arctic Alaska. Wildfire amplified thermokarst over 40+ years, cumulatively creating ~9 times thermokarst formation as that in unburned tundra. However, thermokarst triggered by repeat burns did not differ from that triggered by single burns, irrespective of time between fires. Our simulation identified climate change as a principal driver for all thermokarst formed during 1950-2015 (4,700 square kilometers (km2)) in Arctic Alaska, but wildfire was disproportionately responsible for 10.5% of the thermokarst by burning merely 3.4% of the landscape. These results combined suggest that climate change and wildfire will synergistically accelerate thermokarst as the Arctic transitions in this century.