The relative influences of climate and catchment processes on Holocene lake development in glaciated regions

Following deglaciation, the long-term pattern of change in diatom communities and the inferred history of the aquatic environment are affected by a hierarchy of environmental controls. These include direct climate impacts on a lake’s thermal and hydrologic budgets, as well as the indirect affects of climate on catchment processes, such as weathering, soil development, microbial activity, fire, and vegetation composition and productivity, which affect the transfer of solutes and particulates from the terrestrial ecosystem into the lake. Some of these catchment influences on lacustrine systems operate as time-dependent patterns of primary succession that are set in motion by glacier retreat. This paper provides a conceptual model of some dominant pathways of catchment influence on long-term lake development in glaciated regions and uses a series of paleolimnological examples from arctic, boreal, and temperate regions to evaluate the relative role of direct climate influences and of catchment processes in affecting the trajectory of aquatic ecosystems during the Holocene in different environmental contexts.     

A benchmark comparison of numerical methods for infinite Prandtl number thermal convection in two-dimensional Cartesian geometry

Abstract

A comparison is made between seven different numerical methods for calculating two-dimensional thermal convection in an infinite Prandtl number fluid. Among the seven methods are finite difference and finite element techniques that have been used to model thermal convection in the Earth's mantle. We evaluate the performance of each method using a suite of four benchmark problems, ranging from steady-state convection to intrinsically time-dependent convection with recurring thermal boundary layer instabilities. These results can be used to determine the accuracy of other computational methods, and to assist in the development of new ones.     

The Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) Mission for the NASA Earth Observing System (EOS)

The NASA Earth Observing System (EOS) is an advanced study of Earth's long-term global changes of solid Earth, its atmosphere, and oceans and includes a coordinated collection of satellites, data systems, and modeling. The EOS program was conceived in the 1980s as part of NASA's Earth System Enterprise (ESE). The Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) is one of about 20 missions planned for the EOS program, and the SORCE measurement objectives include the total solar irradiance (TSI) and solar spectral irradiance (SSI) that are two of the 24 key measurement parameters defined for the EOS program. The SORCE satellite was launched in January 2003, and its observations are improving the understanding and generating new inquiry regarding how and why solar variability occurs and how it affects Earth's energy balance, atmosphere, and long-term climate changes.     

Generalizations of reaction rate integrals with applications to nuclear synthesis in astrophysics and some corrections to published literature

Under the Maxwell-Boltzmann approach, the study of nuclear reactions in dense astrophysical plasmas under various cases (such as resonant, non-resonant, modified non-resonant, non-resonant under electron screening, and so on) leads to a class of complicated reaction rate integrals. It is shown that this general class of integrals can be identified with an integral involving the product of twoH-functions. This latter integral is evaluated in this article, and following Buschman (1979), several similar results in the published literature are shown to be incorrect.     

On the Red Rectangle optical emission bands

We have observed the Red Rectangle nebula with the Multi-Object Spectrograph on the WIYN telescope. Moderate-resolution spectra (Δ λ =0.4 Å) in the region of 5800 Å were obtained in 3-arcsec apertures at over 50 positions in the nebula. Accurate and precise wavelength calibrations were obtained against a thorium–argon lamp and the sodium lines in the sky and nebula. The peak position and full width at half-maximum of the 5800-Å Red Rectangle band (RRB) were measured to beyond 15 arcsec from the star. The shortest wavelength of the band is found to be 5799.10±0.15 Å in the rest frame of the nebula. None of the emission bands has intensity coincident with the wavelength of the diffuse interstellar band (DIB) at 5797.11±0.05 Å. The 2-Å offset cannot be explained by an instrumental, spectroscopic or photophysical effect. The hypothesis that the same molecule may be the carrier of the RRB and the DIB is contradicted by these observations. As a further test of the hypothesis, absorption has been sought that would be due to a potential DIB carrier in the nebula. Tentative evidence for absorption is found in the RRB spectra taken within 9 arcsec of the star; but any absorption has a peak position essentially coincident in wavelength with the band maximum of the emission band.     

New spectroscopic and polarimetric observations of the A0 supergiant HD 92207

Our recent search for the presence of a magnetic field in the bright early A‐type supergiant HD 92207 using FORS 2 in spectropolarimetric mode revealed the presence of a longitudinal magnetic field of the order of a few hundred Gauss. However, the definite confirmation of the magnetic nature of this object remained pending due to the detection of shortterm spectral variability probably affecting the position of line profiles in left‐ and right‐hand polarized spectra. We present new magnetic field measurements of HD 92207 obtained on three different epochs in 2013 and 2014 using FORS 2 in spectropolarimetric mode. A 3σ detection of the mean longitudinal magnetic field using the entire spectrum, 〈B_z〉_all = 104 ± 34 G, was achieved in observations obtained in 2014 January. At this epoch, the position of the spectral lines appeared stable. Our analysis of spectral line shapes recorded in opposite circularly polarized light, i.e. in light with opposite sense of rotation, reveals that line profiles in the light polarized in a certain direction appear slightly split. The mechanism causing such a behaviour in the circularly polarized light is currently unknown. Trying to settle the issue of short‐term variability, we searched for changes in the spectral line profiles on a time scale of 8–10 min using HARPS polarimetric spectra and on a time scale of 3–4 min using time series obtained with the CORALIE spectrograph. No significant variability was detected on these time scales during the epochs studied. (© 2015 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Impact of climate warming on upper layer of the Bering Sea

The impact of climate warming on the upper layer of the Bering Sea is investigated by using a high-resolution coupled global climate model. The model is forced by increasing atmospheric CO₂ at a rate of 1% per year until CO₂ reaches double its initial value (after 70 years), after which it is held constant. In response to this forcing, the upper layer of the Bering Sea warms by about 2°C in the southeastern shelf and by a little more than 1°C in the western basin. The wintertime ventilation to the permanent thermocline weakens in the western Bering Sea. After CO₂ doubling, the southeastern shelf of the Bering Sea becomes almost ice-free in March, and the stratification of the upper layer strengthens in May and June. Changes of physical condition due to the climate warming would impact the pre-condition of spring bio-productivity in the southeastern shelf.