Sedimentology of a debris‐rich,perhumid valley glacier margin in the Rakaia Valley,South Island,New Zealand

The sedimentology and stratigraphy of a multi‐phase glaciation sequence dating to Marine Isotope Stage 6 in the Rakaia Valley, South Island, New Zealand, is presented. This outcrop presents an example of the depositional signature of an end member of temperate valley glaciation, where voluminous sediment supply in a tectonically active setting combines with high annual temperatures and low seasonality to generate significant year‐round glacifluvial activity. Such glacial systems produce geological–climatic units that are dominated by thick sequences of aggradational gravels and proglacial lake sediments trapped behind outwash heads during deglaciation. At Bayfields Cliff, outwash sequences record an oscillating glacier margin marked by a sequence of glacier‐fed, Gilbert‐type deltas. The deltas are cut by numerous small‐scale, syndepositional, normal faults indicating both loss of glacier support and melt‐out of buried ice. A larger‐scale thrust fault system reflects late‐stage ice overrun. Braid plain gravels and chaotic disturbed glacial lake sediments are also recorded. A notable feature of these systems is the virtual absence of till in an environment with much other evidence for proximal ice. Cumulatively we regard these sediment–landform associations as diagnostic of debris‐laden, perhumid, temperate valley glacier systems. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The 1974 spill of the Bouchard 65 oil barge: petroleum hydrocarbons persist in Winsor Cove salt marsh sediments

Petroleum hydrocarbons persist in salt marsh sediments in Winsor Cove (Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts) impacted from the 1974 spill of No. 2 fuel oil by the barge Bouchard 65. Intertidal sediment cores were collected from 2001 to 2005 and analyzed for total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPHs). TPHs content was greatest (as high as 8.7 mg g(-1) dry weight) in the surface sediments and decreased with distance landward. Select samples were analyzed for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) with values as high as 16.7 microg g(-1) for total naphthalenes and phenanthrenes/anthracenes. These remaining PAHs are mainly C(4)-naphthalenes and C(1)-, C(2)-, and C(3)-phenanthrenes/anthracenes revealing preferential loss of almost all of the naphthalenes and the parent compound phenanthrene. Inspection of the data indicates that biodegradation, water-washing and evaporation were major removal processes for many of the petroleum hydrocarbons in the marsh sediments. In addition, historical data and photographs combined with their recent counterparts indicate that erosion has physically removed these contaminants from this site.     

No large-angle correlations on the non-Galactic microwave sky

We investigate the angular two-point correlation function of temperature in the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe ( WMAP) maps. Updating and extending earlier results, we confirm the lack of correlations outside the Galaxy on angular scales greater than about 60° at a level that would occur in 0.025 per cent of realizations of the concordance model. This represents a dramatic increase in significance from the original observations by the Cosmic Background Explorer Differential Microwave Radiometer ( COBE-DMR) and a marked increase in significance from the first-year WMAP maps. Given the rest of the reported angular power spectrum   C _ℓ  , the lack of large-angle correlations that one infers outside the plane of the Galaxy requires covariance among the   C _ℓ  up to  ℓ= 5  . Alternately, it requires both the unusually small (5 per cent of realizations) full-sky large-angle correlations and an unusual coincidence of alignment of the Galaxy with the pattern of cosmological fluctuations (less than 2 per cent of those 5 per cent). We argue that unless there is some undiscovered systematic error in their collection or reduction, the data point towards a violation of statistical isotropy. The near-vanishing of the large-angle correlations in the cut-sky maps, together with their disagreement with results inferred from full-sky maps, remains open problems, and are very difficult to understand within the concordance model.     

Hydrated goethite (α-FeOOH) (1 0 0) interface structure: Ordered water and surface functional groups

Goethite(α-FeOOH), an abundant and highly reactive iron oxyhydroxide mineral, has been the subject of numerous studies of environmental interface reactivity. However, such studies have been hampered by the lack of experimental constraints on aqueous interface structure, and especially of the surface water molecular arrangements. Structural information of this type is crucial because reactivity is dictated by the nature of the surface functional groups and the structure or distribution of water and electrolyte at the solid-solution interface. In this study we have investigated the goethite (1 0 0) surface using surface diffraction techniques, and have determined the relaxed surface structure, the surface functional groups, and the three dimensional nature of two distinct sorbed water layers. The crystal truncation rod (CTR) results show that the interface structure consists of a double hydroxyl, double water terminated interface with significant atom relaxations. Further, the double hydroxyl terminated surface dominates with an 89% contribution having a chiral subdomain structure on the (1 0 0) cleavage faces. The proposed interface stoichiometry is ((H₂O)(H₂O)OH₂OHFeOOFeR) with two types of terminal hydroxyls; a bidentate (B-type) hydroxo group and a monodentate (A-type) aquo group. Using the bond-valence approach the protonation states of the terminal hydroxyls are predicted to be OH type (bidentate hydroxyl with oxygen coupled to two Fe³⁺ ions) and OH₂ type (monodentate hydroxyl with oxygen tied to only one Fe³⁺). A double layer three dimensional ordered water structure at the interface was determined from refinement of fits to the experimental data. Application of bond-valence constraints to the terminal hydroxyls with appropriate rotation of the water dipole moments allowed a plausible dipole orientation model as predicted. The structural results are discussed in terms of protonation and H-bonding at the interface, and the results provide an ideal basis for testing theoretical predictions of characteristic surface properties such as pK_a , sorption equilibria, and surface water permittivity.     

Leaky savannas: the significance of lateral carbon fluxes in the seasonal tropics

Globally, dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) accounts for more than half the annual flux of carbon exported from terrestrial ecosystems via rivers. Here, we assess the relative influences of biogeochemical and hydrological processes on DIC fluxes exported from a tropical river catchment characterized by distinct land cover, climate and geology transition from the wet tropical mountains to the low‐lying savanna plains. Processes controlling changes in river DIC were investigated using dissolved organic carbon, particulate organic carbon and DIC concentrations and stable isotope ratios of DIC (δ¹³C_DIC) at two time scales: seasonal and diel. The recently developed Isotopic Continuous Dissolved Inorganic Carbon Analyser was used to measure diel DIC concentration and δ¹³C_DIC changes at a 15‐min temporal resolution. Results highlight the predominance of biologically mediated processes (photosynthesis and respiration) controlling diel changes in DIC. These resulted in DIC concentrations varying between 3.55 and 3.82 mg/l and δ¹³C_DIC values ranging from ?19.7 ± 0.31‰ to ?17.1 ± 0.08‰. In contrast, at the seasonal scale, we observed wet season DIC variations predominantly from mixing processes and dry season DIC variations due to both mixing processes and biological processes. The observed wet season increases in DIC concentrations (by 6.81 mg/l) and δ¹³C_DIC values of river water (by 5.4‰) largely result from proportional increases in subsurface inflows from the savanna plains (C₄ vegetation) region relative to inflows from the rainforest (C₃ vegetation) highlands. The high DIC river load during the wet season resulted in the transfer of 97% of the annual river carbon load. Therefore, in this gaining river, there are significant seasonal variations in both the hydrological and carbon cycles, and there is evidence of substantial coupling between the carbon cycles of the terrestrial and the fluvial environments. Recent identification of a substantial carbon sink in the savannas of northern Australia during wetter years in the recent past does not take into account the possibility of a substantial, rapid, lateral flux of carbon to rivers and back to the atmosphere. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Jupiter’s Great Red Spot: compactness condition and stability

Linear Rossby wave dispersion relationships suggest that Jupiter’s Great Red Spot (GRS) is a baroclinic structure embedded in a barotropic shearing zonal flow. Quasi-geostrophic (QG) two-layer simulations support the theory, as long as an infinitely deep zonal flow is assumed. However, once a finite depth of the lower layer is assumed, a self-interaction of the baroclinic eddy component produces a barotropic radiating field, so that the GRS-like eddy can no longer remain compact. Compactness is recovered by explicitly introducing a deep dynamics of the interior for the lower layer, instead of the shallow QG formulation. An implication of the result is a strong coupling of the GRS to a convectively active interior.Paper presented to the NP Symposia of the 1991 Wiesbaden EGS Assembly on “Nonlinear processes in Geophysics”     

Numerical studies of barotropic modons

Numerical solutions of barotropic modons are examined to assess the accuracy with which they can be calculated, their behavior under the influence of dissipation, and their resistance to perturbations.     

Simple applications of McWilliams' “A note on a consistent quasigeostrophic model in a multiply connected domain”

We have solved several linear quasigeostrophic problems in singly and multiply connected domains to illustrate the use and effects of correct boundary conditions which balance circulation changes with forcing along each boundary. The results with these boundary conditions differ markedly from those obtained by setting the streamfunction to zero on the walls either when the fluid is forced by a time-dependent wind stress curl or when the fluid oscillates in a free basin mode in a domain which contains interior islands.