The influence that meteorological, climatological and environmental factors had on historical disease outbreaks is often speculated upon, but little investigated. Here, we explore potential associations between pandemic disease and climate over the last 2,500 years in Mediterranean history, focusing on ancient disease outbreaks and the Justinianic plague in particular. We underscore variation in the quality, quantity and interpretation of written evidence and proxy information from natural archives, the comlexity of identifying and disentangling past climatological and environmental drivers, and the need to integrate diverse methodologies to discern past climate-disease linkages and leverage historical experiences to prepare for the rapid expansion of novel pathogenic diseases. Although the difficulties entailed in establishing historical climate-pandemic linkages persist to the present, this is a research area as urgent as it is complex and historical perspectives are desperately needed.

The question of how sensitive the regional and local climates are to different land cover maps and fractions is important, as land cover affects the atmospheric circulation via its influence on heat, moisture, and momentum transfer, as well as the chemical composition of the atmosphere. In this study, we used three independent land cover data sets, GlobCover 2009, GLC2000 and ESACCI-LC, as the lower boundary of the regional climate model COSMO-CLM (Consortium for Small Scale Modeling in Climate Mode, v5.0-clm15) to perform convection-permitting regional climate simulations over the large part of Europe covering the years 1999 and 2000 at a 0.0275° horizontal resolution. We studied how the sensitivity of the impacts on regional and local climates is represented by different land cover maps and fractions, especially between warm (summer) and cold (winter) seasons. We show that the simulated regional climate is sensitive to different land cover maps and fractions. The simulated temperature and observational data are generally in good agreement, though with differences between the seasons. In comparison to winter, the summer simulations are more heterogeneous across the study region. The largest deviation is found for the alpine area (−3 to +3 °C), which might be among different reasons due to different classification systems in land cover maps and orographical aspects in the COSMO-CLM model. The leaf area index and plant cover also showed different responses based on various land cover types, especially over the area with high vegetation coverage. While relating the differences of land cover fractions and the COSMO-CLM simulation results (the leaf area index, and plant coverage) respectively, the differences in land cover fractions did not necessarily lead to corresponding bias in the simulation results. We finally provide a comparative analysis of how sensitive the simulation outputs (temperature, leaf area index, plant cover) are related to different land cover maps and fractions. The different regional representations of COSMO-CLM indicate that the soil moisture, atmospheric circulation, evaporative demand, elevation, and snow cover schemes need to be considered in the regional climate simulation with a high horizontal resolution.

Feedbacks of plant phenology to the regional climate system affect fluxes of energy, water, CO2, biogenic volatile organic compounds as well as canopy conductance, surface roughness length, and are influencing the seasonality of albedo. We performed simulations with the regional climate model COSMO-CLM (CCLM) at three locations in Germany covering the period 1999 to 2015 in order to study the sensitivity of grass phenology to different environmental conditions by implementing a new phenology module. We provide new evidence that the annually-recurring standard phenology of CCLM is improved by the new calculation of leaf area index (LAI) dependent upon surface temperature, day length, and water availability. Results with the new phenology implemented in the model show a significantly higher correlation with observations than simulations with the standard phenology. The interannual variability of LAI improves the representation of vegetation in years with extremely warm winter/spring (e.g., 2007) or extremely dry summer (e.g., 2003) and shows a more realistic growth period. The effect of the newly implemented phenology on atmospheric variables is small but tends to be positive. It should be used in future applications with an extension on more plant functional types.

Corrosion behavior of Hastelloy C-22, Ti-0.2Pd and Ti-32Mo alloys in the aqueous solution of hydrochloric acid and sodium chlorate was investigated. The C-22 alloy was pitted because the intergranular carbides rich in Cr and Mo would lead to the lack of corrosion-resistant elements in the adjacent area. The Ti-0.2Pd alloy was pitted because the passivation trend decreased in reducing solution and Cl⁻ broke through the passivation film. The weigh loss rate and corrosion depth of Ti-0.2Pd alloy increased sharply after pitting corrosion, which was due to the rapid corrosion of the materials exposed inside by the corrosion medium. The Ti-32Mo alloy was pitted due to the transpassivation of Mo caused by NaClO₃. In the process of corrosion, the products of reaction between Mo and Cl⁻ formed an insoluble and dense protective film, which slowed down the corrosion rate of Ti-32Mo, that is why the weigh loss rate and corrosion depth increased slowly even if pitting corrosion happened.

The interaction between climate variability, extreme events and societies in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East (EMME) and the Nile river basin is of particular interest in the last 2000 years. Major civilizations and complex pre-modern societies have written the greatest and multifaceted history of the area. However, the influence of climate on the societies is examined only from the proxy records perspective, without the detail of the processes that offer regional climate model simulations. The present and future climate and climate variability of this region are currently studied in the frame of the MENA CORDEX program with different global and regional climate models. For the past climate, exist only global climate or earth system model simulations with a coarse spatial resolution with a minimum of 100 km horizontal resolution. We aim at improving our understanding of past climate in the EMME and the Nile river basin (Nile) at the regional scale and use an adjusted paleoclimate version of the COSMO-CLM. Test simulations have been performed over the study region for the years 2017-2018 to identify the best settings of CCLM with respect to the CORDEX-MENA simulations which are carried out by Bucchignani et al. (2016). Test simulations show the CCLM can correctly simulate large tropical volcanic eruptions, as conditions similar to the Tambora eruption by adapting the stratospheric aerosol optical depth (AOD) mimicking conditions after a Tambora-like volcanic eruption. In agreement with Bucchignani et al. (2016), the albedo and aerosols parameters are found to be most important for the area and may be responsible for larger deviations compared to observational data.  Thus, CCLM climate modelling for the present (1979-2019) and selected paleo-periods (525-575 CE and 1220-1290 CE) with intense volcanic activity will be forced by the MPI-ESM-LR ‘past2k’ simulation with the optimized settings which is identified in the test simulations. Orbital, solar and volcanic forcing, together with vegetation, land-use changes and greenhouse gas changes will be addressed step by step in the CCLM with resolutions of 0.44° and 0.11°.  The present-day simulations show that the temperature and precipitation are well simulated compare to reanalysis and observational data in general. Additional, CCLM correctly captured convection and cloud cover clearly define the model performance in the greater southern areas of the domain that are affected by the tropical convection. Further, the orography and the land-sea interaction seem to significantly influence the local climate and may lead to differences compared to observations, which may also be strongly connected with the specific spatial resolution. For example, the Ethiopian Highlands and the East African Plateau have high elevations and have a large impact on the regional climate. ReferenceBucchignani, E., Cattaneo, L., Panitz, HJ. et al. Sensitivity analysis with the regional climate model COSMO-CLM over the CORDEX-MENA domain. Meteorol Atmos Phys 128, 73–95 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00703-015-0403-3

The interactions and feedbacks between climate stress and social systems are currently the focus of interest for the scientific community and the general public. Understanding how paleo societies responded to extreme climate conditions is important for gaining insight into current and future climate concerns. The East Mediterranean (EM) and the Nile River basin (NR) are ideal areas for scientific and historical studies and modelling experiments due to the abundance of proxy and historical data. The 6th century AD is of particular interest from both a historical and scientific perspective, as it coincides with a period of prosperity for the Eastern Byzantine Empire and political stability, but which also experienced a plague pandemic and significant climate variability in parallel or as a result of a major cluster of volcanic eruptions. To investigate these events and the climate variability in the 6th century in more detail, a transient paleo-simulation is carried out with the appropriately adjusted regional climate model COSMO-CLM (COSMO 5.0 clm16). The regional climate model is driven by the global MPI-ESM-LR at 0.44° for the last 2500 years. The state-of-the-art external forcings of the CMIP6 compliant Earth System Model comprise of volcanic (stratospheric aerosol optical depth), orbital (eccentricity, obliquity, longitude), solar (irradiance), land-use (leaf area index and plant coverage) and greenhouse-gas (CO2 equivalent) changes, implemented in the regional climate model. The simulated temperature and precipitation will be compared with those of other CMIP6 models, and proxy records. This research will provide a comprehensive interpretation of the regional climate and its impacts during the 6th century AD in the Mediterranean. ReferenceJungclaus, J. H., Bard, E., Baroni, M., Braconnot, P., Cao, J., Chini, L. P., Egorova, T., Evans, M., González-Rouco, J. F., Goosse, H., Hurtt, G. C., Joos, F., Kaplan, J. O., Khodri, M., Klein Goldewijk, K., Krivova, N., LeGrande, A. N., Lorenz, S. J., Luterbacher, J., Man, W., Maycock, A. C., Meinshausen, M., Moberg, A., Muscheler, R., Nehrbass-Ahles, C., Otto-Bliesner, B. I., Phipps, S. J., Pongratz, J., Rozanov, E., Schmidt, G. A., Schmidt, H., Schmutz, W., Schurer, A., Shapiro, A. I., Sigl, M., Smerdon, J. E., Solanki, S. K., Timmreck, C., Toohey, M., Usoskin, I. G., Wagner, S., Wu, C.-J., Yeo, K. L., Zanchettin, D., Zhang, Q., and Zorita, E.: The PMIP4 contribution to CMIP6 – Part 3: The last millennium, scientific objective, and experimental design for the PMIP4 past1000 simulations, Geoscientific Model Development, 10, 4005–4033, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-10-4005-2017, 2017.