Decreasing trend of sunshine hours and related driving forces in Southwestern China

Total hours of sunshine are one of the most important factors affecting climate and environment, and its long-term variation is of much concern in climate studies. Trends of temporal and spatial patterns in sunshine hours and related climatic factors over southwestern China are evaluated for the period 1961–2009 based on data from 111 standard meteorological stations. The results showed that southwestern China is experiencing a statistical decrease of sunshine hours, at the rate of 31.9 h/10a during 1961–2009. The decline was particularly strong in summer, whereas it is nonsignificant in winter. Spatially, statistically significant decreases of sunshine hours mainly occurred in lower altitude regions, especially in the Sichuan basin and Guizhou plateau. Sunshine hours have a high correlation with wind speed, relative humidity, precipitation, cloud cover, surface downwards solar radiation flux, and cloud water content, with wind speed showing the strongest relationship to sunshine hours, implicit in the close correlation (temporally and spatially) between the two variables. Changing water vapor and cloud cover influence sunshine hours in southwestern China. In addition, the increased surface downwards solar radiation flux also made some contribution to a rise of sunshine hours during 1991–2009. The larger decreasing trends of sunshine hours at urban stations than rural stations may reflect the effect of urbanization on sunshine hours. Variations are dominated by the comprehensive functions of multiple factors owing to the complex nature of effects on sunshine hours.     

High‐Precision,High‐Accuracy Oxygen Isotope Measurements of Zircon Reference Materials with the SHRIMP‐SI

Analytical protocols for SHRIMP‐SI oxygen isotope analysis (δ¹⁸O) of a suite of zircon reference materials (RMs) are presented. Data reduction involved a robust estimate of uncertainties associated with the individual spot as well as for groups where the spot data are combined. The repeatability of δ¹⁸O measurements is dependent on both the analytical conditions and the choice of the primary reference material. Under optimised conditions, repeatability was often better than 0.4‰ (2s) allowing sample uncertainties to be obtained to better than 0.2‰ (at 95% confidence limit). Single spot uncertainty combined the within‐spot precision with the scatter associated with repeated measurements of the primary zircon reference material during a measurement session. The uncertainty for individual spots measured under optimised conditions was between 0.3 and 0.4‰ (at 95% confidence). The analytical protocols described were used to assess a variety of zircon RMs that have been used for geochronology and for which laser fluorination oxygen isotope data are available (Temora 2, FC1, R33, QGNG and Ple?ovice), as well as zircons that have been used as RMs for trace element or other types of determination (Mud Tank, Monastery, 91500, AS57, AS3, KIM‐5, OG1, SL13, CZ3 and several other Sri Lankan zircons). Repeated analyses over nine sessions and seven different mounts show agreement within analytical uncertainty for Temora 2, FC1, R33, QGNG, Ple?ovice and 91500, when normalised to Mud Tank. For existing ion microprobe mounts with these materials, an appropriate δ¹⁸O can be determined. However, care should be taken when using zircons from the Duluth Complex (i.e., FC1, AS57 and AS3) as reference materials as our data indicated an excess scatter on δ¹⁸O values associated with low‐U zircon grains.     

Regarding an Oceanic Crust/Upper Mantle Geochemical Signature at the KT Boundary: If not from Chicxulub Crater, then Where Did it Come from?

Evidence for a mantle and/or basaltic component in KT boundary distal ejecta is apparently inconsistent with ejection from Chicxulub Crater since it is located on~35km thick continental crust(De Paolo et al.,1983;Montanari et al.,1983;Hildebrand and Boynton,1988,1990).This evidence,along with ejected terrestrial chromites(Olds et al.,2016)suggest the impact sampled terrestrial mafic and/or ultramafic target rocks which are not known to exist in the Chicxulub target area.Possible resolutions to the paradox are:1)the existence of an unmapped/unknown suture in Yucatan Platform basement,2)an additional small unmapped/unknown impact site on oceanic lithosphere,or 3)an additional large impact on oceanic lithosphere or continental margin transitional to oceanic lithosphere.The third hypothesis is elaborated here since:1)Ophiolites nearest to Chicxulub crater are found in Cuba and apparently were obducted in latest Cretaceous/earliest Danian times(García-Casco,2008),inconsistent with the documented Eocene collision of Cuba with the Bahamas platform;and 2)Cuba hosts the world’s thickest known KT boundary deposits(Iturralde-Vinent,1992;Kiyokawa et al.,2002;Tada et al.,2003).These and geometric considerations suggest oceanic crust and upper mantle rock,exposed as ophiolite in the Greater Antilles island chain,marks the rim of a roughly 700 km diameter impact basin deformed and dismembered from an originally circular form by at least 50 million years of left-lateral shear displacement along the North American-Caribbeantransform plate boundary.     

Amino acids derived from Titan tholins

An organic heteropolymer (Titan tholin) was produced by continuous dc discharge through a 0.9 N2/0.1 CH4 gas mixture at 0.2 mbar pressure, roughly simulating the cloudtop atmosphere of Titan. Treatment of this tholin with 6N HCl yielded 16 amino acids by gas chromatography after derivatization of N-trifluroacetyl isopropyl esters on two different capillary columns. Identifications were confirmed by GC/MS. Glycine, aspartic acid, and alpha- and beta-alanine were produced in greatest abundance; the total yield of amino acids was approximately 10(-2), approximately equal to the yield of urea. The presence of "nonbiological" amino acids, the absence of serine, and the fact that the amino acids are racemic within experimental error together indicate that these molecules are not due to microbial or other contamination, but are derived from the tholin. In addition to the HCN, HC2CN, and (CN)2 found by Voyager, nitriles and aminonitriles should be sought in the Titanian atmosphere and, eventually, amino acids on the surface. These results suggest that episodes of liquid water in the past or future of Titan might lead to major further steps in prebiological organic chemistry on that body.     

Trade measures and the combat of IUU fishing: Institutional interplay and effective governance in the Northeast Atlantic

The use of trade measures to combat illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing in the Northeast Atlantic has evolved from unilateral denial of the landing of fish taken outside international quota arrangements to a multilateral Scheme of Control and Enforcement under the North-East Atlantic Fisheries Commission (NEAFC). International trade rules have not constrained this development, mostly due to successful management of the interplay between international resource management and trade regimes. States protect resource management objectives from such constraint by inserting clauses that establish a normative hierarchy, or they employ various means for adapting IUU measures to the ‘environmental window’ of the global trade regime. The fact that regional states have introduced trade restrictions only when non-restrictive or less restrictive measures have failed enhances such compatibility, as do the gradual shift from unilateral to multilateral measures and the rise in transparency, openness and target-state involvement. None of those features reduces the effectiveness of regional trade measures; they minimize tension with trade commitments and largely strengthen their clout in the struggle to combat IUU fishing in the Northeast Atlantic.     

Discriminant analysis of a Cretaceous foraminifer using shrunken estimators

Canonical variate analysis of living and fossil organisms, based on morphological characters, can sometimes greatly distort the biological interpretation (i.e., reification) of the coefficients of the eigenvectors forming the canonical variates through the inclusion of redundant within-group directions. Instability is associated with the smallest eigenvalues, particularly if these do not greatly differ from zero. In the present study of 46 borehole samples of the Late Cretaceous foraminifer Afrobolivina afraReyment, stability of the canonical variate coefficients is attained by removal of a near redundant direction of within-group variation. This leads to improved interpretability of the morphometric relationships in this species. on leave from Division of Mathematics and Statistics, CSIRO, Wembley, 6014, Western Australia.     

Full‐waveform based microseismic event detection and signal enhancement: An application of the subspace approach

Microseismic monitoring has proven invaluable for optimizing hydraulic fracturing stimulations and monitoring reservoir changes. The signal to noise ratio of the recorded microseismic data varies enormously from one dataset to another, and it can often be very low, especially for surface monitoring scenarios. Moreover, the data are often contaminated by correlated noises such as borehole waves in the downhole monitoring case. These issues pose a significant challenge for microseismic event detection. In addition, for downhole monitoring, the location of microseismic events relies on the accurate polarization analysis of the often weak P‐wave to determine the event azimuth. Therefore, enhancing the microseismic signal, especially the low signal to noise ratio P‐wave data, has become an important task. In this study, a statistical approach based on the binary hypothesis test is developed to detect the weak events embedded in high noise. The method constructs a vector space, known as the signal subspace, from previously detected events to represent similar, yet significantly variable microseismic signals from specific source regions. Empirical procedures are presented for building the signal subspace from clusters of events. The distribution of the detection statistics is analysed to determine the parameters of the subspace detector including the signal subspace dimension and detection threshold. The effect of correlated noise is corrected in the statistical analysis. The subspace design and detection approach is illustrated on a dual‐array hydrofracture monitoring dataset. The comparison between the subspace approach, array correlation method, and array short‐time average/long‐time average detector is performed on the data from the far monitoring well. It is shown that, at the same expected false alarm rate, the subspace detector gives fewer false alarms than the array short‐time average/long‐time average detector and more event detections than the array correlation detector. The additionally detected events from the subspace detector are further validated using the data from the nearby monitoring well. The comparison demonstrates the potential benefit of using the subspace approach to improve the microseismic viewing distance. Following event detection, a novel method based on subspace projection is proposed to enhance weak microseismic signals. Examples on field data are presented, indicating the effectiveness of this subspace‐projection‐based signal enhancement procedure.     

Die kurzwellige Strahlung von Sonne und Himmel auf einen nach Süden orientierten Würfel

Zusammenfassung In Locarno-Monti am Alpensüdfuss wurde von Juni 1961 bis Dezember 1964 die kurzwellige Strahlung von Sonne und Himmel (Globalstrahlung) auf die Flächen eines nach Süden orientierten Würfels registriert. An Hand dieses Materials konnten mittlere Tages- und Jahresgänge der Globalstrahlung für extreme und mittlere Strahlungsbedingungen gewonnen werden. Der Anteil der Strahlungsenergie, die auf eine senkrechte Fläche fällt, an der gesamten Strahlung auf den Würfel, wird von der Orientierung der Wand und der relativen Sonnenscheindauer beeinflusst. Es wurde die Abhängigkeit des Strahlungsgenusses der verschieden orientierten Wände von der relativen Sonnenscheindauer untersucht. Mit Hilfe dieser Zusammenhänge wurden klimatologische Mittelwerte der Globalstrahlung aus langjährigen Mittelwerten der relativen Sonnenscheindauer in Locarno-Monti abgeleitet. Um auch für Stationen, an denen die Globalstrahlung nur auf die horizontale Fläche gemessen wird, jene auf senkrechte Flächen berechnen zu können, werden die Verhältnisse der Strahlung von Sonne und Himmel auf eine Wand zu der auf die horizontale Fläche angegeben.

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Summary Measurements of the short wave radiation of sund and sky (global radiation) on surfaces of a cube orientated to the south have been carried out at Locarno-Monti (Switzerland) from June 1961 to December 1964. These data were used for deducing the annual and daily variations of the global radiation under extreme and average conditions. The percentage of the radiation energy on a vertical surface on the entire radiation on the cube depends on the orientation of the surface and on the relative duration of sunshine. Further researches involve the dependence of the radiation on vertical walls of different orientation on the duration of sunshine. With the aid of these relations and the climatological means of the relative duration of sunshine at Locarno-Monti average values of the global radiation could be determined. In order to calculate the radiation on vertical surfaces for those stations, for which only measurements of the global radiation on a horizontal surface are available, the relations between the radiation on a wall to that on a horizontal surface must be known.

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Résumé De juin 1961 à décembre 1964, le rayonnement de courtes longueurs d'onde du soleil et du ciel (rayonnement global) a été enregistré à Locarno-Monti, au pied sud des Alpes, au moyen de surfaces réceptrices disposées suivant les faces d'un cube orienté vers le sud. Le matériel de mesure recueilli permet d'établir les variations journalières et saisonnières moyennes du rayonnement global lors de conditions extrêmes et moyennes de rayonnement. Rapportée à l'énergie rayonnante totale interceptée par le cube, la fraction de rayonnement reçue par une certaine face verticale dépend de l'orientation de cette face et de la durée relative d'insolation. On étudie l'influence de cette dernière sur l'éclairement dont jouissent les différentes faces du cube. A l'aide des relations trouvées, on calcule des moyennes climatologiques du rayonnement global à partir de moyennes tirées des longues séries d'enregistrements de la durée relative d'insolation à Locarno-Monti. En donnant encore le rapport des rayonnements du soleil et du ciel reçus respectivement par une surface verticale et par l'horizontale, on rend possible l'évaluation du rayonnement global tombant sur une paroi verticale aux stations où seuls des récepteurs horizontaux sont mis en uvre.

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Riassunto A Locarno-Monti, al piede meridionale delle Alpi, fu registrata dal giugno 1961 al dicembre 1964 la radiazione a onde corte del sole e cielo (radiazione globale) sulle superficie di un cubo orientato verso sud. Partendo da questo materiale poterono essere ricavati gli andamenti medi giornalieri e annuali della radiazione globale per condizioni di radiazione estreme e media. La parte di energia della radiazione, che cade su una superficie verticale, rispetto all'energia totale sul cubo è influenzata dall'orientamento della superficie e dalla durata relative dell'insolazione. È stata studiata la dipendenza tra la radiazione ricevuta dalle superficie diversamente orientate e la durata relativa dell'insolazione. Con l'ausilio di queste relazioni furono calcolati valori medi climatologici della radiazione globale dai valori medi pluriannuali della durata dell'insolazione a Locarno-Monti. Per poter calcolare anche per le stazioni, per le quali la radiazione globale fu misurata solo su una superficie orizzontale, quella su superficie verticali, vengono comunicati i rapporti tra la radiazione sole e cielo su una superficie verticale e la radiazione sulla superficie orizzontale.

     

Die kurzwellige Strahlung von Sonne und Himmel auf verschieden orientierte und geneigte Flächen

Zusammenfassung In Locarno-Monti am Alpensüdfu? wurde w?hrend zwei Jahren die kurzwellige Strahlung von Sonne + Himmel (Globalstrahlung) auf eine horizontale, je eine um 30° bzw. 60° nach Süden und je eine um 30° nach Osten bzw. Westen geneigte Auffangfl?che mit Solarimetern registriert. Die Tages- und Jahresg?nge der Globalstrahlung zeigen an wolkenlosen Tagen gro?e Unterschiede im Strahlungsgenu? der verschieden orientierten und verschieden geneigten Fl?chen. Im Mittel aller Tage sind diese Unterschiede zwar kleiner, jedoch wegen der gro?en relativen Sonnenscheindauer in Locarno-Monti immer noch sehr ausgepr?gt. Bei vollkommen bedecktem Himmel verschwinden die Unterschiede fast v?llig. Aufgrund der Beziehungen zwischen der Globalstrahlung und der relativen Sonnenscheindauer genügen Parallelmessungen von wenigen Jahren, um daraus klimatologische Mittelwerte der Globalstrahlung auf verschieden orientierte und geneigte Fl?chen berechnen zu k?nnen. Das Verh?ltnis der Strahlung auf geneigte H?nge zu der auf die horizontale Fl?che h?ngt von der Jahreszeit und der Bew?lkung ab. Diese Beziehung kann dazu dienen, bei Kenntnis der Globalstrahlung auf eine horizontale Fl?che jene auf eine geneigte Auffangfl?che zu bestimmen. Schlie?lich wird auf die Bedeutung dieser Untersuchungen für die praktische Meteorologie hingewiesen.

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Summary For a two years' period the total (short wave) radiation of sun and sky falling on a horizontal surface, on southern slopes of 30° and 60° inclination, resp., and on eastern and western slopes of 30° inclination has been recorded with solarimeters at Locarno-Monti (Switzerland). On cloudless days the diurnal and annual variations of the total radiation indicate rather big differences between the radiation falling on the surfaces of different inclination and orientation. Considering the radiation covering all days, these differences are smaller but still distinctly marked because of the high relative duration of sunshine at Locarno-Monti. On overcast days all surfaces receive almost the same amount of radiation. Climatological averages of the total radiation falling on surfaces of different orientation and inclination can be deduced using the relation between the total radiation and the duration of sunshine. The ratio between the radiation falling on inclined planes and the radiation falling on a horizontal surface depends on season and cloudiness. By means of these relations the radiation falling on inclined surfaces can be calculated using the radiation falling on the horizontal surface. Finally the importance of such investigations for applied meteorology is pointed out.

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Résumé Le rayonnement de courte longueur d'onde du soleil et du ciel (rayonnement global) a été enregistré pendant deux ans à Locarno-Monti, au pied sud des Alpes, au moyen de solarimètres présentant différentes orientations. Les surfaces réceptrices étaient respectivement horizontale, inclinées de 30° et 60° vers le sud, ainsi que de 30° vers l'est et l'ouest. Les variations journalières et saisonnières du rayonnement global mettent en évidence les grandes différences d'éclairement des surfaces réceptrices selon leur azimut et leur inclinaison, lors des journées ensoleillées surtout. Ces différences sont plus faibles lorsque l'on prend tous les jours en considération, mais restent cependant bien marquées par suite de la grande durée relative d'insolation à Locarno-Monti; elles disparaissent presque complètement par ciel entièrement couvert. En s'appuyant sur les relations entre le rayonnement global et la durée relative d'insolation, l'on peut calculer des moyennes climatologiques du rayonnement global tombant sur des surfaces d'orientation différente à l'aide de quelques années seulement d'enregistrements parallèles. Le quotient des rayonnements re?us par une pente inclinée et par une surface horizontale dépend de la saison et de la couverture nuageuse. Une fois cette relation connue, il est possible d'évaluer le rayonnement global re?u par une surface inclinée à partir des valeurs relatives à une surface horizontale. Enfin, l'on signale l'importance de ces recherches pour la météorologie appliquée.

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Riassunto A Locarno-Monti al piede meridionale delle Alpi durante due anni fu registrata con solarimetri la radiazione ad onde corte del sole + cielo (radiazione globale) su superfici orizzontale, inclinate di 30° e rispettivamete 60° e rivolte verso sud, nonchè su superfici orizzontale, inclinate di 30° e rivolte verso est, rispettivamente verso ovest. Gli andamenti giornaliero ed annuale della radiazione globale mostrano nei giorni senza nuvole grandi differenze nella quantità di radiazione ricevuta dalle superfici diversamente inclinate e orientate. Nella media di tutti i giorni tali differenze sono si più piccole, tuttavia sempre ancora ben pronunciate causa l'elevata durata relativa dell'insolazione. Con cielo completamente coperto le differenze scompaiono quasi completamente. In base alle relazioni tra la radiazione globale e la durata relativa dell'insolazione, sono sufficienti misure parallele di soli pochi anni per poter calcolare valori climatologici della radiazione globale su diverse superfici orientate e inclinate. Il rapporto tra la radiazione su pendii inclinati e quella su superfici orizzontale dipende dalla stagione e dalla nuvolosità. Questa relazione può servire, conoscendo la radiazione globale su una superficie orizzontale, a determinare quella su una superficie di ricezione inclinata. Da ultimo viene accennato all'importanza di queste ricerche per la meteorologia pratica.

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