Vanishing winters in Germany: soil frost dynamics and snow cover trends, and ecological implications
Bibliographic record
Abstract
CR Climate Research Contact the journal Facebook Twitter RSS Mailing List Subscribe to our mailing list via Mailchimp HomeLatest VolumeAbout the JournalEditorsSpecials CR 46:269-276 (2011) - DOI: https://doi.org/10.3354/cr00996 Vanishing winters in Germany: soil frost dynamics and snow cover trends, and ecological implications Juergen Kreyling1,*, Hugh A. L. Henry2 1University of Bayreuth, Biogeography, 95440 Bayreuth, Germany 2University of Western Ontario, Biology, London, Ontario N6A 5B7, Canada *Email: juergen.kreyling@uni-bayreuth.de ABSTRACT: Current climate models are effective at projecting trends in mean winter temperature; however, other ecologically relevant parameters—such as snow cover and soil frost dynamics—are less well investigated. Changes in these parameters are expected to have strong ecological implications, especially in the temperate zone, where it is uncertain whether snow and soil frost will occur with regularity in the future. We explored trends in days with snow on the ground (snowdays), minimum soil temperature (MST), and number of soil freeze/thaw cycles (FTCs, i.e. changes in sign from negative to positive in any pair of consecutive soil temperature records at 5 cm depth) at 177 German weather stations for 1950–2000. Future trends were explored by statistical modelling based on climatic and topographic predictors. Snowdays decreased uniformly at a rate of 0.5 d yr–1 in the recent past. This trend is projected to continue to a point where significant parts of Germany will no longer regularly experience snow cover. MST has increased, and is projected to do so in the future, mainly in southern Germany. FTCs have been decreasing uniformly in the recent past. No evidence for increased FTCs or decreased MST with decreasing insulation due to missing snow cover was found. FTCs are projected to decrease disproportionately in northeastern Germany, where past frequencies were higher. Ecological implications of the significant decrease in the occurrence and magnitude of the climate parameters studied include changes in nutrient cycling, productivity and survival of organisms overwintering at the soil surface. Ecological research is needed, as the effects of diminished winters on ecosystems are not well understood. KEY WORDS: Winter climate change · Winter ecology · Freezing-thawing · Soil freezing · Temperate systems Full text in pdf format PreviousNextCite this article as: Kreyling J, Henry HAL (2011) Vanishing winters in Germany: soil frost dynamics and snow cover trends, and ecological implications. Clim Res 46:269-276. https://doi.org/10.3354/cr00996 Export citation RSS - Facebook - Tweet - linkedIn Cited by Published in CR Vol. 46, No. 3. Online publication date: May 19, 2011 Print ISSN: 0936-577X; Online ISSN: 1616-1572 Copyright © 2011 Inter-Research.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".