Climate variability,snow, and physiographic controls on storm hydrographs in small forested basins,western Cascades,Oregon

Large floods are often attributed to the melting of snow during a rain event. This study tested how climate variability, snowpack presence, and basin physiography were related to storm hydrograph shape in three small (<1 km²) basins with old‐growth forest in western Oregon. Relationships between hydrograph characteristics and precipitation were tested for approximately 800 storms over a nearly 30‐year period. Analyses controlled for (1) snowpack presence/absence, (2) antecedent soil moisture, and (3) hillslope length and gradient. For small storms (<150 mm precipitation), controlling for precipitation, the presence of a snowpack on near‐saturated soil increased the threshold of precipitation before hydrograph rise, extended the start lag, centroid lag, and duration of storm hydrographs, and increased the peak discharge. The presence of a snowpack on near‐saturated soil sped up and steepened storm hydrographs in a basin with short steep slopes, but delayed storm hydrographs in basins with longer or more gentle slopes. Hydrographs of the largest events, which were extreme regional rain and rain‐on‐snow floods, were not sensitive to landform characteristics or snowpack presence/absence. Although the presence of a snowpack did not increase peak discharge in small, forested basins during large storms, it had contrasting effects on storm timing in small basins, potentially synchronizing small basin contributions to the larger basin hydrograph during large rain‐on‐snow events. By altering the relative timing of hydrographs, snowpack melting could produce extreme floods from precipitation events whose size is not extreme. Further work is needed to examine effects of canopy openings, snowpack, and climate warming on extreme rain‐on‐snow floods at the large basin scale. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A statistical study of Galactic SNRs using the PMN survey

The Parkes–MIT–NRAO (PMN) radio survey has been used to generate a quasi all-sky study of Galactic Supernova Remnants (SNRs) at a common frequency of 4.85 GHz (λ=6 cm). We present flux densities estimated for the sample of 110 Southern Galactic SNRs (up to δ=−65°) observed with the Parkes 64-m radio telescope and an additional sample of 54 from the Northern PMN (up to δ=+64°) survey undertaken with the Green Bank 43-m (20 SNRs) and 91-m (34 SNRs) radio telescopes. Out of this total sample of 164 selected SNRs (representing 71% of the currently 231 known SNRs in the Green catalogue) we consider 138 to provide reliable estimates of flux density and surface brightness distribution. This sub-sample represents those SNRs which fall within carefully chosen selection criteria which minimises the effects of the known problems in establishing reliable fluxes from the PMN survey data. Our selection criteria are based on a judicious restriction of source angular size and telescope beam together with careful evaluation of fluxes on a case by case basis. Direct comparison of our new fluxes with independent literature values gives excellent overall agreement. This gives confidence in the newly derived PMN fluxes when the selection criteria are respected. We find a sharp drop off in the flux densities for Galactic SNRs beyond 4 Jy and then a fairly flat distribution from 5 to 9 Jy, a slight decline and a further flat distribution from 9 to 20 Jy though the numbers of SNR in each Jy bin are low. We also re-visit the contentious Σ–D (radio surface brightness–SNRs diameter) relation to determine a new power law index for a sub-sample of shell type SNRs which yields β=−2.2±0.6. This new evaluation of the Σ–D relation, applied to the restricted sample, provides new distance estimates and their Galactic scale height distribution. We find a peak in the SNR distribution between 7–11 kpc with most restricted to ±100 pc Galactic scale height.     

A Late‐glacial chironomid record from Hawes Water,northwest England

This paper presents the results of a high‐resolution Late‐glacial chironomid stratigraphy from Hawes Water, a small carbonate lake in northern Lancashire. The samples were from a core taken from the terrestrialised margin of the present lake, which represents an intermediate depth between the true littoral and the profundal. The chironomid assemblage showed a high degree of sensitivity to both broad‐scale and short‐term temperature changes. Comparison with an existing proxy temperature record (δ¹⁸O) for the site confirmed the presence of four temperature inversions within the Late‐glacial Interstadial. A mean July air temperature inference model, derived from acid, soft‐water lakes in Norway and Svalbard, was applied to the data. Despite the absence of carbonate lakes within the Norwegian training set, there was a close similarity between trends in estimated July air temperature and the δ¹⁸O trace, with a particularly strong correspondence in the periods of clay deposition. This suggests that this model is highly robust. The inferred maximum Interstadial temperature was 13.4°C, dropping initially to 7.5°C in the Loch Lomond Stadial. Temperatures reach a maximum of nearly 10°C in this period, cool for a short period before rising rapidly to 13.2°C at the start of the Holocene. These temperatures are similar to but slightly higher than those estimated for Whitrig Bog, southeast Scotland, and lower than those inferred from coleopteran‐based models for sites in South Wales. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Neogene echinoids from the Cayman Islands,West Indies: regional implications

The first fossil echinoids are recorded from the Cayman Islands. A regular echinoid, Arbacia? sp., the spatangoids Brissus sp. cf. B. oblongus Wright and Schizaster sp. cf. S. americanus (Clark), and the clypeasteroid Clypeaster sp. are from the Middle Miocene Cayman Formation. Test fragments of the mellitid clypeasteroid, Leodia sexiesperforata (Leske), are from the Late Pleistocene Ironshore Formation. Miocene echinoids are preserved as (mainly internal) moulds; hence, all species are left in open nomenclature because of uncertainties regarding test architecture. All Miocene taxa are recorded from single specimens apart from the 27 assigned to Brissus. Schizaster sp. cf. S. americanus (Clark) is compared to a species from the Oligocene of the south‐east USA. Brissus sp. cf. B. oblongus is close in gross morphology to a taxon from the Miocene of Malta. Leodia sexiesperforata is identified from fragments with confidence, being the only extant Antillean sand dollar with elongate ambulacral petals that is limited to carbonate substrates. The Miocene echinoids of Grand Cayman, although of limited diversity, are mainly comprised of genera common in comparable mid‐Cenozoic carbonate environments. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Highly reducing conditions during core formation on Mercury: Implications for internal structure and the origin of a magnetic field

The high average density and low surface FeO content of the planet Mercury are shown to be consistent with very low oxygen fugacity during core segregation, in the range 3-6 log units below the iron-wüstite buffer. These low oxygen fugacities, and associated high metal content, are characteristic of high-iron enstatite (EH) and Bencubbinite (CB) chondrites, raising the possibility that such materials may have been important building blocks for this planet. With this idea in mind we have explored the internal structure of a Mercury sized planet of EH or CB bulk composition. Phase equilibria in the silicate mantle have been modeled using the thermodynamic calculator p-MELTS, and these simulations suggest that orthopyroxene will be the dominant mantle phase for both EH and CB compositions, with crystalline SiO₂ being an important minor phase at all pressures. Simulations for both compositions predict a plagioclase-bearing “crust” at low pressure, significant clinopyroxene also being calculated for the CB bulk composition. Concerning the core, comparison with recent high pressure and high temperature experiments relevant to the formation of enstatite meteorites, suggest that the core of Mercury may contain several wt.% silicon, in addition to sulfur. In light of the pressure of the core-mantle boundary on Mercury (∼7 GPa) and the pressure at which the immiscibility gap in the system Fe-S-Si closes (∼15 GPa) we suggest that Mercury’s core may have a complex shell structure comprising: (i) an outer layer of Fe-S liquid, poor in Si; (ii) a middle layer of Fe-Si liquid, poor in S; and (iii) an inner core of solid metal. The distribution of heat-producing elements between mantle and core, and within a layered core have been quantified. Available data for Th and K suggest that these elements will not enter the core in significant amounts. On the other hand, for the case of U both recently published metal/silicate partitioning data, as well as observations of U distribution in enstatite chondrites, suggest that this element behaves as a chalcophile element at low oxygen fugacity. Using these new data we predict that U will be concentrated in the outer layer of the mercurian core. Heat from the decay of U could thus act to maintain this part of Mercury’s core molten, potentially contributing to the origin of Mercury’s magnetic field. This result contrasts with the Earth where the radioactive decay of U represents a negligible contribution to core heating.     

Statistical Feature Recognition for Multidimensional Solar Imagery

A maximum a posteriori (MAP) technique is developed to identify solar features in cotemporal and cospatial images of line-of-sight magnetic flux, continuum intensity, and equivalent width observed with the NASA/National Solar Observatory (NSO) Spectromagnetograph (SPM). The technique facilitates human understanding of patterns in large data sets and enables systematic studies of feature characteristics for comparison with models and observations of long-term solar activity and variability. The method uses Bayes’ rule to compute the posterior probability of any feature segmentation of a trio of observed images from per-pixel, class-conditional probabilities derived from independently-segmented training images. Simulated annealing is used to find the most likely segmentation. New algorithms for computing class-conditional probabilities from three-dimensional Gaussian mixture models and interpolated histogram densities are described and compared. A new extension to the spatial smoothing in the Bayesian prior model is introduced, which can incorporate a spatial dependence such as center-to-limb variation. How the spatial scale of training segmentations affects the results is discussed, and a new method for statistical separation of quiet Sun and quiet network is presented.