Children of the revolution: fathers and sons in antifascist DEFA films

The article looks at three antifascist films from the 1980s by the East German film company DEFA: Jürgen Brauer's Pugowitza (1981), Egon Schlegel's Die Schüsse der Arche Noah (1983), and Helmut Dziuba's Jan auf der Zille (1986), which during this final decade of the East German state re-examine an ideologically seminal constellation of the GDR's official antifascism – the relationship between antifascist father and son. Linking generational and political succession, the father-son relationship helped to legitimise the GDR as a state in which the young continued the antifascist fight of the old communists against the Nazi dictatorship. From the 1950s on, DEFA films contributed to the visualisation of this relationship, codifying it not only as heroic but also as ‘natural’: the assumed innocence of the communist son was meant to naturalise the father's antifascist/communist cause. The 1980s saw this naturalised political succession questioned. By re-telling the canonised father-son story, the three films visualise the generational antifascist contract as flawed. Re-deploying the son's assumed innocence in a critique of the father, they explore new endings to the antifascist story and revive the discussion of categories like ‘victim’ and ‘perpetrator’.// Der Aufsatz untersucht drei antifaschistische Filme der ostdeutschen Filmgesellschaft DEFA aus den 1980er Jahren: Jürgen Brauers Pugowitza (1981), Egon Schlegels Die Schüsse der Arche Noah (1983) und Helmut Dziubas Jan auf der Zille (1986). Alle drei Filme wurden im letzten Jahrzehnt der DDR gedreht und greifen eine ideologisch tragende Konstellation des offiziellen DDR-Antifaschismus auf – die Beziehung zwischen antifaschistischem Vater und Sohn. In der Vater-Sohn-Beziehung verband sich Generationenabfolge mit politischer Nachkommenschaft, eine Verbindung, die half, die DDR als einen Staat zu legitimieren, in dem die Jungen den antifaschistischen Kampf der alten Kommunisten gegen die Nazi-Diktatur weiterführten. Seit den 1950er Jahren beteiligte sich die DEFA an der Visuali-sierung dieser Beziehung und kodifizierte sie nicht nur als heldenhaft, sondern auch als ‘natürlich’: die behauptete Unschuld der kommunistschen Söhne diente dazu, den antifaschistisch-kommunistischen Kampf der Väter zu naturalisieren. Die solcher Art politisch interpretierte Generationenabfolge verlor ihre Natürlichkeit, als sie in den 1980er Jahren kritisch befragt wurde. Im nochmaligen Erzählen der kanonisierten Vater-Sohn-Geschichte wird die Brüchigkeit des antifaschistischen Gesellschaftsvertrags in allen drei Filmen sichtbar. Die vermeintliche Unschuld der Söhne wird nun zu einer Kritik der Väter genutzt, wobei die Filme ein neues Ende für die antifaschistische Geschichte erkunden und die Debatte über Kategorien wie ‘Opfer’ und ‘Täter’ wieder aufnehmen.

Civilian casualties – do we really care? The failure of the revolution in military affairs of non-lethal weapons in the U.S., Russia and Israel

Causing civilian casualties during military operations has become a much politicised topic in international relations since the Second World War. Since the last decade of the 20th century, different scholars and political analysts have claimed that human life is valued more and more among the general international community. This argument has led many researchers to assume that democratic culture and traditions, modern ethical and moral issues have created a desire for a world without war or, at least, a demand that contemporary armed conflicts, if unavoidable, at least have to be far less lethal forcing the military to seek new technologies that can minimise civilian casualties and collateral damage. Non-Lethal Weapons (NLW) – weapons that are intended to minimise civilian casualties and collateral damage – are based on the technology that, during the 1990s, was expected to revolutionise the conduct of warfare making it significantly less deadly. The rapid rise of interest in NLW, ignited by the American military twenty five years ago, sparked off an entirely new military, as well as an academic, discourse concerning their potential contribution to military success on the 21st century battlefields. It seems, however, that except for this debate, very little has been done within the military forces themselves. This research suggests that the roots of this situation are much deeper than the simple professional misconduct of the military establishment, or the poor political behaviour of political leaders, who had sent them to fight. Following the story of NLW in the U.S., Russia and Israel this research focuses on the political and cultural aspects that have been supposed to force the military organisations of these countries to adopt new technologies and operational and organisational concepts regarding NLW in an attempt to minimise enemy civilian casualties during their military operations. This research finds that while American, Russian and Israeli national characters are, undoubtedly, products of the unique historical experience of each one of these nations, all of three pay very little regard to foreigners’ lives. Moreover, while it is generally argued that the international political pressure is a crucial factor that leads to the significant reduction of harmed civilians and destroyed civilian infrastructure, the findings of this research suggest that the American, Russian and Israeli governments are well prepared and politically equipped to fend off international criticism. As the analyses of the American, Russian and Israeli cases reveal, the political-military leaderships of these countries have very little external or domestic reasons to minimise enemy civilian casualties through fundamental-revolutionary change in their conduct of war. In other words, this research finds that employment of NLW have failed because the political leadership asks the militaries to reduce the enemy civilian casualties to a politically acceptable level, rather than to the technologically possible minimum; as in the socio-cultural-political context of each country, support for the former appears to be significantly higher than for the latter.

Simulation of the diurnal cycle in a climate model and its evaluation using data from Meteosat 7

The representation of the diurnal cycle in the Hadley Centre climate model is evaluated using simulations of the infrared radiances observed by Meteosat 7. In both the window and water vapour channels, the standard version of the model with 19 levels produces a good simulation of the geographical distributions of the mean radiances and of the amplitude of the diurnal cycle. Increasing the vertical resolution to 30 levels leads to further improvements in the mean fields. The timing of the maximum and minimum radiances reveals significant model errors, however, which are sensitive to the frequency with which the radiation scheme is called. In most regions, these errors are consistent with well documented errors in the timing of convective precipitation, which peaks before noon in the model, in contrast to the observed peak in the late afternoon or evening. When the radiation scheme is called every model time step (half an hour), as opposed to every three hours in the standard version, the timing of the minimum radiance is improved for convective regions over central Africa, due to the creation of upper-level layer-cloud by detrainment from the convection scheme, which persists well after the convection itself has dissipated. However, this produces a decoupling between the timing of the diurnal cycles of precipitation and window channel radiance. The possibility is raised that a similar decoupling may occur in reality and the implications of this for the retrieval of the diurnal cycle of precipitation from infrared radiances are discussed.

Evaluation of the use of radiosonde humidity data to predict the occurrence of persistent contrails

Regular visual observations of persistent contrails over Reading, UK, have been used to evaluate radiosonde measurements of temperature and humidity defining cold ice-supersaturated atmospheric regions which are assumed to be a necessary condition for persistent condensation trails (contrails) to form. Results show a good correlation between observations and predictions using data from Larkhill, 63 km from Reading. A statistical analysis of this result and the forecasts using data from four additional UK radiosonde stations are presented. The horizontal extent of supersaturated layers could be inferred from this to be several hundred kilometres. The necessity of bias corrections to radiosonde humidity measurements is discussed and an analysis of measured ice-supersaturated atmospheric layers in the troposphere is presented. It is found that ice supersaturation is more likely to occur in winter than in summer, with frequencies of 17.3% and 9.4%, respectively, which is mostly due to the layers being thicker in winter than in summer. The most probable height for them to occur is about 10 km.

Evaluation of the Met Office global forecast model using Geostationary Earth Radiation Budget (GERB) data

Simulations of the top-of-atmosphere radiative-energy budget from the Met Office global numerical weather-prediction model are evaluated using new data from the Geostationary Earth Radiation Budget (GERB) instrument on board the Meteosat-8 satellite. Systematic discrepancies between the model simulations and GERB measurements greater than 20 Wm-2 in outgoing long-wave radiation (OLR) and greater than 60 Wm-2 in reflected short-wave radiation (RSR) are identified over the period April-September 2006 using 12 UTC data. Convective cloud over equatorial Africa is spatially less organized and less reflective than in the GERB data. This bias depends strongly on convective-cloud cover, which is highly sensitive to changes in the model convective parametrization. Underestimates in model OLR over the Gulf of Guinea coincide with unrealistic southerly cloud outflow from convective centres to the north. Large overestimates in model RSR over the subtropical ocean, greater than 50 Wm-2 at 12 UTC, are explained by unrealistic radiative properties of low-level cloud relating to overestimation of cloud liquid water compared with independent satellite measurements. The results of this analysis contribute to the development and improvement of parametrizations in the global forecast model.

The role of the basic state in the ENSO-monsoon relationship and implications for predictability

The impact of systematic model errors on a coupled simulation of the Asian Summer monsoon and its interannual variability is studied. Although the mean monsoon climate is reasonably well captured, systematic errors in the equatorial Pacific mean that the monsoon-ENSO teleconnection is rather poorly represented in the GCM. A system of ocean-surface heat flux adjustments is implemented in the tropical Pacific and Indian Oceans in order to reduce the systematic biases. In this version of the GCM, the monsoon-ENSO teleconnection is better simulated, particularly the lag-lead relationships in which weak monsoons precede the peak of El Nino. In part this is related to changes in the characteristics of El Nino, which has a more realistic evolution in its developing phase. A stronger ENSO amplitude in the new model version also feeds back to further strengthen the teleconnection. These results have important implications for the use of coupled models for seasonal prediction of systems such as the monsoon, and suggest that some form of flux correction may have significant benefits where model systematic error compromises important teleconnections and modes of interannual variability.

Can knowledge of the state of the stratosphere be used to improve statistical forecasts of the troposphere?

Recent analysis of the Arctic Oscillation (AO) in the stratosphere and troposphere has suggested that predictability of the state of the tropospheric AO may be obtained from the state of the stratospheric AO. However, much of this research has been of a purely qualitative nature. We present a more thorough statistical analysis of a long AO amplitude dataset which seeks to establish the magnitude of such a link. A relationship between the AO in the lower stratosphere and on the 1000 hPa surface on a 10-45 day time-scale is revealed. The relationship accounts for 5% of the variance of the 1000 hPa time series at its peak value and is significant at the 5% level. Over a similar time-scale the 1000 hPa time series accounts for 1% of itself and is not significant at the 5% level. Further investigation of the relationship reveals that it is only present during the winter season and in particular during February and March. It is also demonstrated that using stratospheric AO amplitude data as a predictor in a simple statistical model results in a gain of skill of 5% over a troposphere-only statistical model. This gain in skill is not repeated if an unrelated time series is included as a predictor in the model. Copyright © 2003 Royal Meteorological Society

Can the dynamical impact of the stratosphere on the troposphere be described by large-scale adjustment to the stratospheric PV distribution?

Recent numerical experiments have demonstrated that the state of the stratosphere has a dynamical impact on the state of the troposphere. To account for such an effect, a number of mechanisms have been proposed in the literature, all of which amount to a large-scale adjustment of the troposphere to potential vorticity (PV) anomalies in the stratosphere. This paper analyses whether a simple PV adjustment suffices to explain the actual dynamical response of the troposphere to the state of the stratosphere, the actual response being determined by ensembles of numerical experiments run with an atmospheric general-circulation model. For this purpose, a new PV inverter is developed. It is shown that the simple PV adjustment hypothesis is inadequate. PV anomalies in the stratosphere induce, by inversion, flow anomalies in the troposphere that do not coincide spatially with the tropospheric changes determined by the numerical experiments. Moreover, the tropospheric anomalies induced by PV inversion are on a larger scale than the changes found in the numerical experiments, which are linked to the Atlantic and Pacific storm-tracks. These findings imply that the impact of the stratospheric state on the troposphere is manifested through the impact on individual synoptic-scale systems and their self-organization in the storm-tracks. Changes in these weather systems in the troposphere are not merely synoptic-scale noise on a larger scale tropospheric response, but an integral part of the mechanism by which the state of the stratosphere impacts that of the troposphere.

Subseasonal extremes of precipitation and active-break cycles of the Indian summer monsoon in a climate-change scenario

Changes to the behaviour of subseasonal precipitation extremes and active-break cycles of the Indian summer monsoon are assessed in this study using pre-industrial and 2 × CO2 integrations of the Hadley Centre coupled model HadCM3, which is able to simulate the monsoon seasonal cycle reasonably. At 2 × CO2, mean summer rainfall increases slightly, especially over central and northern India. The mean intensity of daily precipitation during the monsoon is found to increase, consistent with fewer wet days, and there are increases to heavy rain events beyond changes in the mean alone. The chance of reaching particular thresholds of heavy rainfall is found to approximately double over northern India, increasing the likelihood of damaging floods on a seasonal basis. The local distribution of such projections is uncertain, however, given the large spread in mean monsoon rainfall change and associated extremes amongst even the most recent coupled climate models. The measured increase of the heaviest precipitation events over India is found to be broadly in line with the degree of atmospheric warming and associated increases in specific humidity, lending a degree of predictability to changes in rainfall extremes. Active-break cycles of the Indian summer monsoon, important particularly due to their effect on agricultural output, are shown to be reasonably represented in HadCM3, in particular with some degree of northward propagation. We note an intensification of both active and break events, particularly when measured against the annual cycle, although there is no suggestion of any change to the duration or likelihood of monsoon breaks. Copyright © 2009 Royal Meteorological Society

The impact of the stratosphere on the troposphere during the southern hemisphere stratospheric sudden warming, September 2002

Recent research has established that a small but statistically significant link exists between the stratosphere and the troposphere in the northern hemisphere extratropics. In this paper it is shown that a similar link exists between the stratosphere and troposphere during the unprecedented September 2002 sudden warming in the southern hemisphere. Two ensemble forecasts of the stratospheric sudden warming are run which have different stratospheric initial conditions and identical tropospheric initial conditions. Stratospheric initial conditions have an impact on the tropospheric flow at the peak of the major warming (5 days into the run) and on longer time-scales (18 days into the run). The character of this influence is a localized, equatorward shift of the tropospheric storm track. The averaged impact of the change in the position of the storm-track maps strongly onto the Southern Annular Mode structure, but does not have an annular character.

Mean climate and transience in the tropics of the UGAMP GCM - sensitivity to convective parametrization

The sensitivity of the UK Universities Global Atmospheric Modelling Programme (UGAMP) General Circulation Model (UGCM) to two very different approaches to convective parametrization is described. Comparison is made between a Kuo scheme, which is constrained by large-scale moisture convergence, and a convective-adjustment scheme, which relaxes to observed thermodynamic states. Results from 360-day integrations with perpetual January conditions are used to describe the model's tropical time-mean climate and its variability. Both convection schemes give reasonable simulations of the time-mean climate, but the representation of the main modes of tropical variability is markedly different. The Kuo scheme has much weaker variance, confined to synoptic frequencies near 4 days, and a poor simulation of intraseasonal variability. In contrast, the convective-adjustment scheme has much more transient activity at all time-scales. The various aspects of the two schemes which might explain this difference are discussed. The particular closure on moisture convergence used in this version of the Kuo scheme is identified as being inappropriate.