Combined Separation of Cu,Fe and Zn from Rock Matrices and Improved Analytical Protocols for Stable Isotope Determination

Isotope ratios of heavy elements vary on the 1/10000 level in high temperature materials, providing a fingerprint of the processes behind their origin. Ensuring that the measured isotope ratio is precise and accurate depends on employing an efficient chemical purification technique and optimised analytical protocols. Exploiting the disparate speciation of Cu, Fe and Zn in HCl and HNO₃, an anion exchange chromatography procedure using AG1‐×8 (200–400 mesh) and 0.4 × 7 cm Teflon columns was developed to separate them from each other and matrix elements in felsic rocks, basalts, peridotites and meteorites. It required only one pass through the resin to produce a quantitative and pure isolate, minimising preparation time, reagent consumption and total analytical blanks. A ThermoFinnigan Neptune Plus MC‐ICP‐MS with calibrator‐sample bracketing and an external element spike was used to correct for mass bias. Nickel was the external element in Cu and Fe measurements, while Cu corrected Zn isotopes. These corrections were made assuming that the mass bias for the spike and analyte element was identical, and it is shown that this did not introduce any artificial bias. Measurement reproducibilities were ± 0.03‰, ± 0.04‰ and ± 0.06‰ (2s) for δ⁵⁷Fe, δ⁶⁵Cu and δ⁶⁶Zn, respectively.     

Landslide prediction from machine learning

Predicting where and when landslides are likely to occur in a specific region of interest remains a key challenge in natural hazards research and mitigation. While the basic mechanics of slope‐failure initiation and runout can be cast into physical and numerical models, a scarcity of sufficiently detailed and real‐time measurements of soil, rock‐mass and groundwater conditions prohibits accurate landslide forecasting. Researchers are therefore increasingly exploring multivariate data analysis techniques from the fields of data mining or machine learning in order to approximate future occurrences of landslides from past distribution patterns. This work has elucidated patterns of spatial susceptibility, but temporal forecasts have remained largely empirical. Most machine learning techniques achieve overall success rates of 75–95 percent. Whilst this may seem very promising, issues remain with data input quality, potential overfitting and commensurate inadequate choice of prediction models, inadvertent inclusion of redundant or noise variables, and technical limits to predicting only certain types and sizes of landslides. Simpler models provide only slightly inferior predictions to more complex models, and should guide the way for a more widespread application of data mining in regional landslide prediction. This approach should especially be communicated to planners and decision makers. Future research may want to develop: (1) further best‐practice guidelines for model selection; (2) predictions of occurrence and runout of large slope failures at the regional scale; and (3) temporal forecasts of landslides.     

Baroclinic instability with variable static stability—a design study for a spherical atmospheric model experiment

Abstract

Exact solutions are obtained for a quasi-geostrophic baroclinic stability problem in which the rotational Froude number (inverse Burger number) is a linear function of the height. The primary motivation for this work was to investigate the effect of a radially-variable, dielectric body force, analogous to gravity, on baroclinic instability for the design of a spherical, synoptic-scale, atmospheric model experiment for a Spacelab flight. Such an experiment cannot be realized in a laboratory on the Earth's surface because the body force cannot be made strong enough to dominate terrestrial gravity. Flow in a rotating, rectilinear channel with a vertically variable body force and with no horizontal shear of the basic state is considered. The horizontal and vertical temperature gradients of the basic and reference states are taken as constants. Consequences of the body force variation and the other assumptions of the model are that the static stability (Brunt-Väisälä frequency squared) and the vertical shear of the basic state flow have the same functional form and that the transverse gradient of the potential vorticity of the basic state vanishes. The solutions show that the stability characteristics of the model are qualitatively similar to those of Eady's model. A short wavelength cutoff and a wavenumber of maximum growth rate are present. Further, the stability characteristics are quantitatively similar to Eady's results for parameters based on the vertically averaged Brunt-Väisälä: frequency. The solutions also show that the temperature amplitude distribution is particularly sensitive to the vertical variation of the static stability. For the static stability and shear decreasing (increasing) with height a relative enhancement of the temperature amplitude occurs at the lower (upper) surface. The other amplitudes and phases are only slightly influenced by the variation. The implication for the Spacelab experiment is that the variable body force will not significantly alter the dynamics from the constant gravity case. The solutions can be relevant to other geophysical fluid flows, including the atmosphere, ocean and annulus system in which the static stability undergoes variation with height.     

Holocene and Pleistocene pluvial periods in Yemen,southern Arabia

Arabia is an important potential pathway for the dispersal of Homo sapiens (“out of Africa”). Yet, because of its arid to hyper-arid climate humans could only migrate across southern Arabia during pluvial periods when environmental conditions were favorable. However, knowledge on the timing of Arabian pluvial periods prior to the Holocene is mainly based on a single and possibly incomplete speleothem record from Hoti Cave in Northern Oman. Additional terrestrial records from the Arabian Peninsula are needed to confirm the Hoti Cave record. Here we present a new speleothem record from Mukalla Cave in southern Yemen. The Mukalla Cave and Hoti Cave records clearly reveal that speleothems growth occurred solely during peak interglacial periods, corresponding to Marine Isotope Stages (MIS) 1 (early to mid-Holocene), 5.1, 5.3, 5.5 (Eemian), 7.1, 7.5 and 9. Of these humid periods, highest precipitation occurred during MIS 5.5 and lowest during early to middle Holocene.     

Quantifying seasonal export and retention of nutrients in West European lowland rivers at catchment scale

To set accurate critical values for the protection of lakes and coastal areas, it is crucial to know the seasonal variation of nutrient exports from rivers. This article presents an improved method for estimating export and in‐stream nutrient retention and its seasonal variation. For 13 lowland river catchments in Western Europe, inputs to surface water and exports were calculated on a monthly basis. The catchments varied in size (21 to 486 km²), while annual in‐stream retention ranged from 23 to 84% for N and 39 to 72% for P. A novel calculation method is presented that quantifies monthly exports from lowland rivers based on an annual load to the river system. Inputs in the calculation are annual emission to the surface waters, average monthly river discharge, average monthly water temperature and fraction of surface water area in the catchment. The method accounts for both seasonal variation of emission to the surface water and seasonal in‐stream retention. The agreement between calculated values and calibration data was high (N: r² = 0·93; p < 0·001 and P: r² = 0·81; p < 0·001). Validation of the model also showed good results with model efficiencies for the separate catchments ranging from 31 to 95% (average 76%). This indicates that exports of nitrogen and phosphorus on a monthly basis can be calculated with few input data for a range of West European lowland rivers. Further analysis showed that retention in summer is higher than that in winter, resulting in lower summer nutrient concentrations than that calculated with an average annual input. This implies that accurate evaluation of critical thresholds for eutrophication effects must account for seasonal variation in hydrology and nutrient loading. Our quantification method thus may improve the modelling of eutrophication effects in standing waters. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Lateglacial environmental and climatic changes at the Maloja Pass,Central Swiss Alps,as recorded by chironomids and pollen

Chironomids and pollen were studied in a radiocarbon-dated sediment sequence obtained from a former lake near the Maloja Pass in the Central Swiss Alps (1865 m a.s.l.) to reconstruct the Lateglacial environment. Pollen assemblages imply a vegetation development around the Maloja Pass from shrub tundra at the beginning of the Allerød to coniferous forest during the early Holocene with a lowering of the timberline during the Younger Dryas. Chironomid assemblages are characterized by several abrupt shifts in dominant taxa through the Lateglacial. The occurrence of taxa able to survive hypoxia in the second part of the Allerød and during the Preboreal, and their disappearance at the onset of the Younger Dryas cold phase suggest summer thermal stratification and unfavourable hypolimnetic oxygen conditions in the palaeo-lake during the warmer periods of the Lateglacial interstadial and early Holocene. Mean July air temperatures were reconstructed using a chironomid-temperature transfer function from the Alpine region. The pattern of reconstructed temperature changes agrees well with the Greenland δ¹⁸O record and other Lateglacial temperature inferences from Central Europe. The inferred July temperatures of ca 10.0 °C during most of the Allerød were slightly lower than modern values (10.8 °C) and increased up to ca 11.7 °C (i.e., above present-day values) at the end of the Allerød. The first part of the Younger Dryas was colder (ca 8.8 °C) than the second part (ca 9.8 °C). During most of the Preboreal, the temperatures persisted within the limits of 13.5–14.5 °C (i.e., ca 3 °C above present-day values). The amplitudes of temperature changes at the Allerød–Younger Dryas–Preboreal transitions were ca 3.5–4.0 °C. The temperature reconstruction also shows three short-lived cooling events of ca 1.5–2.0 °C, which may be attributed to the centennial-scale Greenland Interstadial events GI-1d and GI-1b, and the Preboreal Oscillation.