Estimating present day extreme water level exceedance probabilities around the coastline of Australia: tropical cyclone-induced storm surges

The incidence of major storm surges in the last decade have dramatically emphasized the immense destructive capabilities of extreme water level events, particularly when driven by severe tropical cyclones. Given this risk, it is vitally important that the exceedance probabilities of extreme water levels are accurately evaluated to inform risk-based flood and erosion management, engineering and for future land-use planning and to ensure the risk of catastrophic structural failures due to under-design or expensive wastes due to over-design are minimised. Australia has a long history of coastal flooding from tropical cyclones. Using a novel integration of two modeling techniques, this paper provides the first estimates of present day extreme water level exceedance probabilities around the whole coastline of Australia, and the first estimates that combine the influence of astronomical tides, storm surges generated by both extra-tropical and tropical cyclones, and seasonal and inter-annual variations in mean sea level. Initially, an analysis of tide gauge records has been used to assess the characteristics of tropical cyclone-induced surges around Australia. However, given the dearth (temporal and spatial) of information around much of the coastline, and therefore the inability of these gauge records to adequately describe the regional climatology, an observationally based stochastic tropical cyclone model has been developed to synthetically extend the tropical cyclone record to 10,000 years. Wind and pressure fields derived for these synthetically generated events have then been used to drive a hydrodynamic model of the Australian continental shelf region with annual maximum water levels extracted to estimate exceedance probabilities around the coastline. To validate this methodology, selected historic storm surge events have been simulated and resultant storm surges compared with gauge records. Tropical cyclone induced exceedance probabilities have been combined with estimates derived from a 61-year water level hindcast described in a companion paper to give a single estimate of present day extreme water level probabilities around the whole coastline of Australia. Results of this work are freely available to coastal engineers, managers and researchers via a web-based tool (www.sealevelrise.info). The described methodology could be applied to other regions of the world, like the US east coast, that are subject to both extra-tropical and tropical cyclones.     

Archean to Recent aeolian sand systems and their sedimentary record: Current understanding and future prospects

The sedimentary record of aeolian sand systems extends from the Archean to the Quaternary, yet current understanding of aeolian sedimentary processes and product remains limited. Most preserved aeolian successions represent inland sand‐sea or dunefield (erg) deposits, whereas coastal systems are primarily known from the Cenozoic. The complexity of aeolian sedimentary processes and facies variability are under‐represented and excessively simplified in current facies models, which are not sufficiently refined to reliably account for the complexity inherent in bedform morphology and migratory behaviour, and therefore cannot be used to consistently account for and predict the nature of the preserved sedimentary record in terms of formative processes. Archean and Neoproterozoic aeolian successions remain poorly constrained. Palaeozoic ergs developed and accumulated in relation to the palaeogeographical location of land masses and desert belts. During the Triassic, widespread desert conditions prevailed across much of Europe. During the Jurassic, extensive ergs developed in North America and gave rise to anomalously thick aeolian successions. Cretaceous aeolian successions are widespread in South America, Africa, Asia, and locally in Europe (Spain) and the USA. Several Eocene to Pliocene successions represent the direct precursors to the present‐day systems. Quaternary systems include major sand seas (ergs) in low‐lattitude and mid‐latitude arid regions, Pleistocene carbonate and Holocene–Modern siliciclastic coastal systems. The sedimentary record of most modern aeolian systems remains largely unknown. The majority of palaeoenvironmental reconstructions of aeolian systems envisage transverse dunes, whereas successions representing linear and star dunes remain under‐recognized. Research questions that remain to be answered include: (i) what factors control the preservation potential of different types of aeolian bedforms and what are the characteristics of the deposits of different bedform types that can be used for effective reconstruction of original bedform morphology; (ii) what specific set of controlling conditions allow for sustained bedform climb versus episodic sequence accumulation and preservation; (iii) can sophisticated four‐dimensional models be developed for complex patterns of spatial and temporal transition between different mechanisms of accumulation and preservation; and (iv) is it reasonable to assume that the deposits of preserved aeolian successions necessarily represent an unbiased record of the conditions that prevailed during episodes of Earth history when large‐scale aeolian systems were active, or has the evidence to support the existence of other major desert basins been lost for many periods throughout Earth history?     

A non-main-sequence secondary in SY Cancri

Simultaneous spectroscopic and photometric observations of the Z Cam type dwarf nova SY Cancri were used to obtain absolute flux calibrations. A comparison of the photometric calibration with a wide-slit spectrophotometric calibration showed that either method is equally satisfactory. A radial velocity study of the secondary star, made using the far-red Na  i doublet, yielded a semi-amplitude of   K ₂= 127 ± 23 km s⁻¹  . Taking the published value of  86 ± 9 km s⁻¹  for K ₁ gives a mass ratio of   q = M ₂/ M ₁= 0.68 ± 0.14  ; this is very different from the value of  1.13 ± 0.35  quoted in the literature. Using the new lower mass ratio, and constraining the mass of the white dwarf to be within reasonable limits, then leads to a mass for the secondary star that is substantially less than would be expected for its orbital period if it satisfied a main-sequence mass–radius relationship. We find a spectral type of M0 that is consistent with that expected for a main-sequence star of the low mass we have found. However, in order to fill its Roche lobe, the secondary must be significantly larger than a main-sequence star of that mass and spectral type. The secondary is definitely not a normal main-sequence star.     

A Relationship Between Transition Region Brightenings,Abundances, and Magnetic Topology

We present multi-instrument observations of active region (AR) 8048, made between 3 June and 5 June 1997, as part of the SOHO Joint Observing Program 33. This AR has a sigmoid-like global shape and undergoes transient brightenings in both soft X-rays and transition region (TR) lines. We compute a magneto-hydrostatic model of the AR magnetic field, using as boundary condition the photospheric observations of SOHO/MDI. The computed large-scale magnetic field lines show that the large-scale sigmoid is formed by two sets of coronal loops. Shorter loops, associated with the core of the SXT emission, coincide with the loops observed in the hotter CDS lines. These loops reveal a gradient of temperature, from 2 MK at the top to 1 MK at the ends. The field lines most closely matching these hot loops extend along the quasi-separatrix layers (QSLs) of the computed coronal field. The TR brightenings observed with SOHO/CDS can also be associated with the magnetic field topology, both QSL intersections with the photosphere, and places where separatrices issuing from bald patches (sites where field lines coming from the corona are tangent to the photosphere) intersect the photosphere. There are, furthermore, suggestions that the element abundances measured in the TR may depend on the type of topological structure present. Typically, the TR brightenings associated with QSLs have coronal abundances, while those associated with BP separatrices have abundances closer to photospheric values. We suggest that this difference is due to the location and manner in which magnetic reconnection occurs in two different topological structures. Supplementary material to this paper is available in electronic form at http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1013302317042     

The 2005 outburst of GRO J1655−40: spectral evolution of the rise, as observed by Swift

We present Swift observations of the black hole X-ray transient, GRO J1655−40, during the recent outburst. With its multiwavelength capabilities and flexible scheduling, Swift is extremely well suited for monitoring the spectral evolution of such an event. GRO J1655−40 was observed on 20 occasions and data were obtained by all instruments for the majority of epochs. X-ray spectroscopy revealed spectral shapes consistent with the 'canonical' low/hard, high/soft and very high states at various epochs. The soft X-ray source (0.3–10 keV) rose from quiescence and entered the low/hard state, when an iron emission line was detected. The soft X-ray source then softened and decayed, before beginning a slow rebrightening and then spending ∼3 weeks in the very high state. The hard X-rays (14–150 keV) behaved similarly but their peaks preceded those of the soft X-rays by up to a few days; in addition, the average hard X-ray flux remained approximately constant during the slow soft X-ray rebrightening, increasing suddenly as the source entered the very high state. These observations indicate (and confirm previous suggestions) that the low/hard state is key to improving our understanding of the outburst trigger and mechanism. The optical/ultraviolet light curve behaved very differently from that of the X-rays; this might suggest that the soft X-ray light curve is actually a composite of the two known spectral components, one gradually increasing with the optical/ultraviolet emission (accretion disc) and the other following the behaviour of the hard X-rays (jet and/or corona).