Scaling Properties of Biologically Active Scalar Concentration Fluctuations in the Atmospheric Surface Layer over a Managed Peatland

The higher-order scalar concentration fluctuation properties are examined in the context of Monin–Obukhov similarity theory for a variety of greenhouse gases that have distinct and separate source/sink locations along an otherwise ideal micrometeorological field site. Air temperature and concentrations of water vapour, carbon dioxide and methane were measured at high frequency (10 Hz) above a flat and extensive peat-land soil in the San Joaquin–Sacramento Delta (California, USA) area, subjected to year-round grazing by beef cattle. Because of the heterogeneous distribution of the sources and sinks of CO₂ and especially CH₄ emitted by cattle, the scaling behaviour of the higher-order statistical properties diverged from predictions based on a balance between their production and dissipation rate terms, which can obtained for temperature and H₂O during stationary conditions. We identify and label these departures as ‘exogenous’ because they depend on heterogeneities and non-stationarities induced by boundary conditions on the flow. Spectral analysis revealed that the exogenous effects show their signatures in regions with frequencies lower than those associated with scalar vertical transport by turbulence, though the two regions may partially overlap in some cases. Cospectra of vertical fluxes appear less influenced by these exogenous effects because of the modulating role of the vertical velocity at low frequencies. Finally, under certain conditions, the presence of such exogenous factors in higher-order scalar fluctuation statistics may be ‘fingerprinted’ by a large storage term in the mean scalar budget.     

The meteorological framework and the cultural memory of three severe winter-storms in early eighteenth-century Europe

Three violent eighteenth-century storms that ravaged the North Sea area (1703), western central Europe (1739) and Portugal (1739) are investigated from the point of view of their meteorological setting, their socio-economic impact, and whether and by what means they secured an enduring place in the cultural memory. The evidence draws on individual narrative sources such as chronicles and poems, and institutional sources such as ship’s logbooks and state-organised ‘windthrow’ inventories of tree loss. Each of the three storms had socio-economic impacts that could be described as ‘war-like’ in the damage caused to buildings and the destruction of forests. The “Great Storm” of December 1703 jeopardized English naval supremacy in the War of the Spanish Succession by sinking a number of Royal Navy ships and taking the life of more than 8000 seamen. In January 1739 two similarly destructive storms swept over mainland Europe. The cultural memory of the three events here considered was however strikingly different. The sequence of storms in January 1739 though being the most protracted of the last centuries, and well-chroniceled, did not persist in the collective memories of those in France, Switzerland and elsewhere who experienced them. Likewise, the “Great Storm” was quickly forgotten on the continent, whereas its memory remained deeply rooted in England through the writings of Defoe (1704). In Portugal the 1739 storm won a lasting place in the country’s cultural memory owing to two poems that it inspired. Furthermore, it was recorded in the Kingdom’s official newspaper, in the astronomical prognoses and in written records of the Old Regime’s cultural elite.     

Hydrocarbons generated by hydropyrolysis of suspended marine particulate organic matter: Relationship to the oceanography of the Black Sea and the Rhodes Gyre

The suspended particulate organic matter, SPOM, in the autumnal Black Sea has been characterised using catalytic hydropyrolysis (HyPy) of the total (bound plus free) lipid material. The technique, which generates maximum yields of volatile products from sediments, kerogens and phytoplankton, was followed using gas chromatography and gas chromatography/mass spectrometry. The generated alkanes were dominated by n-C₁₈, hypothesised to arise predominantly from unsaturated C₁₈ fatty acids. Steranes were generated from reductive conversion of free and bound sterols. The generation of branched alkanes and especially of hopanes provided formal evidence for the participation of bacteria in the mineralisation of the SPOM. Whereas similar distributions of n-alkanes were generated from SPOM sampled from different depths of the comparatively well-stirred Rhodes Gyre (eastern Mediterranean), mineralisation of the SPOM at each depth of the central Black Sea produced characteristic changes in the composition and concentration of the HyPy products. Depth profiles of the n-alkanes generated from SPOM in the region of the Rim Current were affected by the local hydrography. Polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) of anthropogenic origin were present in the surface waters of the central Black Sea. Some methyl benzenes, thiophenes and pyrroles were also generated.     

Krieger’s conceptualization and measurement of discrimination and internalized oppression in studies of adverse health outcomes

Embodiment is a central concept in Krieger’s ecosocial theory, and is said to be of relevance to the understanding of the relationship between social conditions and a variety of adverse health outcomes. The most detailed empirical investigation of this in Krieger’s work is to be found in her studies of the relationship between racial discrimination and high blood pressure. Of especial relevance here is the idea of internalized oppression which is said to explain the observed association between self-reports of no racial discrimination and increased levels of blood pressure among working-class African Americans. Here we critically examine the empirical evidence pertaining to internalized oppression. Specifically, we focus on the measurement of the construct and the quality of the empirical evidence that has been presented in support of the hypothesis that there is an association between internalized oppression and adverse health outcomes. We argue that the validity of the concept has yet to be established and that the available data linking it to poor health outcomes are open to alternative explanations, notably measurement error and misclassification.

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Rheologies and ages of lava flows on Elysium Mons,Mars

We present results of our study of the rheologies and ages of lava flows in the Elysium Mons region of Mars. Previous studies have shown that the geometric dimensions of lava flows reflect rheological properties such as yield strength, effusion rate and viscosity. In this study the rheological properties of lava flows in the Elysium Mons region were determined and compared to the rheologies of the Ascraeus Mons lava flows. We also derived new crater size-frequency distribution measurements (CSFDs) for the Elysium lava flows to identify possible changes in the rheological properties with time. In addition, possible changes in the rheological properties with the distance from the caldera of Elysium Mons were analyzed.In total, 35 lava flows on and around Elysium Mons were mapped, and divided into three groups, lava flows on the flanks of Elysium Mons, in the plains between the three volcanoes Elysium Mons, Hecates and Albor Tholus and lava flows south of Albor Tholus. The rheological properties of 32 of these flows could be determined. Based on our morphometric measurements of each individual lava flow, estimates for the yield strengths, effusion rates, viscosities, and eruption duration of the studied lava flows were made. The yield strengths of the investigated lava flows range from ～3.8 × 10² Pa to ～1.5 × 10⁴ Pa, with an average of ～3.0 × 10³ Pa. These yield strengths are in good agreement with estimates for terrestrial basaltic lava flows. The effusion rates are on average ～747 m³ s^?1, ranging from ～99 to 4450 m³ s^?1. The viscosities are on average ～4.1 × 10⁶ Pa s, with a range of 1.2 × 10⁵ Pa s to 3.1 × 10⁷ Pa s. The eruption durations of the flows were calculated to be between 6 and 183 days, with an average of ～51 days. The determined rheological properties are generally very similar to those of other volcanic regions on Mars, such as on Ascraeus Mons in the Tharsis region. Calculated yield strengths and viscosities point to a basaltic/andesitic composition of the lava flows, similar to basaltic or andesitic a’a lava flows on Earth.Absolute model ages of all 35 lava flows on Elysium Mons were derived from crater size-frequency distribution measurements (CSFD). The derived model ages show a wide variation from about 632 Ma to 3460 Ma. Crater size-frequency distribution measurements of the Elysium Mons caldera show an age of ～1640 Ma, which is consistent with the resurfacing age of Werner (2009). Significant changes of the rheologies with time could not be observed. Similarly, we did not observe systematic changes in ages with increasing distances of lava flows from the Elysium Mons caldera.     

Dimensionless measures of turbulent magnetohydrodynamic dissipation rates

The magnetic Reynolds number, R _M, is defined as the product of a characteristic scale and associated flow speed divided by the microphysical magnetic diffusivity. For laminar flows, R _M also approximates the ratio of advective to dissipative terms in the total magnetic energy equation, but for turbulent flows this latter ratio depends on the energy spectra and approaches unity in a steady state. To generalize for flows of arbitrary spectra we define an effective magnetic dissipation number,   R _M,e  , as the ratio of the advection to microphysical dissipation terms in the total magnetic energy equation, incorporating the full spectrum of scales, arbitrary magnetic Prandtl numbers, and distinct pairs of inner and outer scales for magnetic and kinetic spectra. As expected, for a substantial parameter range   R _M,e∼ O (1) ≪ R _M  . We also distinguish   R _M,e  from     where the latter is an effective magnetic Reynolds number for the mean magnetic field equation when a turbulent diffusivity is explicitly imposed as a closure. That   R _M,e  and     approach unity even if   R _M≫ 1  highlights that, just as in hydrodynamic turbulence, energy dissipation of large-scale structures in turbulent flows via a cascade can be much faster than the dissipation of large-scale structures in laminar flows. This illustrates that the rate of energy dissipation by magnetic reconnection is much faster in turbulent flows, and much less sensitive to microphysical reconnection rates compared to laminar flows.     

Water Resources Implications of Global Warming: A U.S. Regional Perspective

The implications of global warming for the performance of six U.S. water resource systems are evaluated. The six case study sites represent a range of geographic and hydrologic, as well as institutional and social settings. Large, multi-reservoir systems (Columbia River, Missouri River, Apalachicola-Chatahoochee-Flint (ACF) Rivers), small, one or two reservoir systems (Tacoma and Boston) and medium size systems (Savannah River) are represented. The river basins range from mountainous to low relief and semi-humid to semi-arid, and the system operational purposes range from predominantly municipal to broadly multi-purpose. The studies inferred, using a chain of climate downscaling, hydrologic and water resources systems models, the sensitivity of six water resources systems to changes in precipitation, temperature and solar radiation. The climate change scenarios used in this study are based on results from transient climate change experiments performed with coupled ocean-atmosphere General Circulation Models (GCMs) for the 1995 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment. An earlier doubled-CO₂ scenario from one of the GCMs was also used in the evaluation. The GCM scenarios were transferred to the local level using a simple downscaling approach that scales local weather variables by fixed monthly ratios (for precipitation) and fixed monthly shifts (for temperature). For those river basins where snow plays an important role in the current climate hydrology (Tacoma, Columbia, Missouri and, to a lesser extent, Boston) changes in temperature result in important changes in seasonal streamflow hydrographs. In these systems, spring snowmelt peaks are reduced and winter flows increase, on average. Changes in precipitation are generally reflected in the annual total runoff volumes more than in the seasonal shape of the hydrographs. In the Savannah and ACF systems, where snow plays a minor hydrological role, changes in hydrological response are linked more directly to temperature and precipitation changes. Effects on system performance varied from system to system, from GCM to GCM, and for each system operating objective (such as hydropower production, municipal and industrial supply, flood control, recreation, navigation and instream flow protection). Effects were generally smaller for the transient scenarios than for the doubled CO₂ scenario. In terms of streamflow, one of the transient scenarios tended to have increases at most sites, while another tended to have decreases at most sites. The third showed no general consistency over the six sites. Generally, the water resource system performance effects were determined by the hydrologic changes and the amount of buffering provided by the system's storage capacity. The effects of demand growth and other plausible future operational considerations were evaluated as well. For most sites, the effects of these non-climatic effects on future system performance would about equal or exceed the effects of climate change over system planning horizons.     

The behavior of total lightning activity in severe Florida thunderstorms

The development of a new observational system called LISDAD (Lightning Imaging Sensor Demonstration and Display) has enabled a study of severe weather in central Florida. The total flash rates for storms verified to be severe are found to exceed 60 fpm, with some values reaching 500 fpm. Similar to earlier results for thunderstorm microbursts, the peak flash rate precedes the severe weather at the ground by 5–20 min. A distinguishing feature of severe storms is the presence of lightning ‘jumps' — abrupt increases in flash rate in advance of the maximum rate for the storm. The systematic total lightning precursor to severe weather of all kinds — wind, hail, tornadoes — is interpreted in terms of the updraft that sows the seeds aloft for severe weather at the surface and simultaneously stimulates the ice microphysics that drives the intracloud lightning activity.     

环境规制对无锡市区污染密集型制造业区位选择的影响

随着生态环境的恶化,发达地区制造业区位选择表现出强烈的环境容量制约性和政府规制主导性.本文在对1998-2008年无锡市区污染密集型制造业格局演变分析的基础上,构筑了引入环境规制影响因子的企业区位演变理论分析框架,并运用GIS空间自回归模型,对以上理论框架进行验证.结果表明,1998-2003年影响企业区位选择的主要要素为交通可达性、土地价格、开发区规划等,而环境规制相关要素对其影响不显著;而2003-2008年,表征环境规制影响强度的水质目标、清水通道等因子对制造业区位选择的影响显著,这表明环境规制开始成为影响污染密集型制造业区位的重要因子.本研究对于正确制定城市产业结构调整政策和合理引导经济环境协调发展具有重要的理论借鉴意义.