Reconstruction of late Quaternary sea-level change in southwestern British Columbia from sediments in isolation basins

Bracketing ages on marine—freshwater transitions in isolation basins extending from sea level to 100 m elevation on Lasqueti Island, and data from shallow marine cores and outcrops on eastern Vancouver Island, constrain late Pleistocene and Holocene sea-level change in the central Strait of Georgia. Relative sea level fell from 150 m elevation to about —15 m from 14000 cal. yr BP to 11 500 cal. yr BP. Basins at higher elevations exhibit abrupt changes in diatom assemblages at the marine-freshwater transition. At lower elevations an intervening brackish phase suggests slower rates of uplift. Relative sea level rose to about +1 m about 9000 cal. yr BP to 8500 cal. yr BP, and then slowly fell to the modern datum. The mean rate of glacio-isostatic rebound in the first millennium after deglaciation was about 0.11 in a ^-1, similar to the peak rate at the centres of the former Laurentide and Fennoscandian ice complexes. The latter feature smooth, exponential-style declines in sea level up to the present day, whereas in the study area the uplift rate dropped to less than one-tenth of its initial value in only about 2500 years. Slower, more deeply seated isostatic recovery generated residual uplift rates of <0.01 m a^-1 in the early Holocene after the late-Pleistocene wasting of the Cordilleran ice sheet.     

Dust Morphology Of Comet Hale-Bopp (C/1995 O1): I. Pre-Perihelion Coma Structures In

In 1996 comet Hale-Bopp exhibited a porcupine-like coma with straight jets of dust emission from several active regions on the nucleus. The multi-jet coma geometry developed during the first half of 1996. While the jet orientation remained almost constant over months, the relative intensity of the jets changed with time. By using the embedded fan model of Sekanina and Boehnhardt (1997a) the jet pattern of comet Hale-Bopp in 1996 can be interpreted as boundaries of dust emission cones (fans) from four — possibly five — active regions on the nucleus (for a numerical modelling see part II of the paper by Sekanina and Boehnhardt, 1997b). This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Sensitivity analysis of the climate of a chaotic system

This paper addresses some fundamental methodological issues concerning the sensitivity analysis of chaotic geophysical systems. We show, using the Lorenz system as an example, that a naïve approach to variational ("adjoint") sensitivity analysis is of limited utility. Applied to trajectories which are long relative to the predictability time scales of the system, cumulative error growth means that adjoint results diverge exponentially from the "macroscopic climate sensitivity"(that is, the sensitivity of time‐averaged properties of the system to finite‐amplitude perturbations). This problem occurs even for time‐averaged quantities and given infinite computing resources. Alternatively, applied to very short trajectories, the adjoint provides an incorrect estimate of the sensitivity, even if averaged over large numbers of initial conditions, because a finite time scale is required for the model climate to respond fully to certain perturbations. In the Lorenz (1963) system, an intermediate time scale is found on which an ensemble of adjoint gradients can give a reasonably accurate (O(10%)) estimate of the macroscopic climate sensitivity. While this ensemble‐adjoint approach is unlikely to be reliable for more complex systems, it may provide useful guidance in identifying important parameter‐combinations to be explored further through direct finite‐amplitude perturbations.