Rapid development of arctic cyclone in June 2008 simulated by the cloud resolving global model NICAM

In this study, we conducted a numerical simulation of a rapid development of an arctic cyclone (AC) that appeared in June 2008 using a cloud resolving global model, Nonhydrostatic ICosahedral Atmospheric Model (NICAM). We investigated the three dimensional structure and intensification mechanism of the simulated AC that developed to the minimum sea level pressure of 971 hPa in the model. According to the result, the AC indicates a barotropic structure with a warm core in the lower stratosphere and a cold core in the troposphere. The development of the AC is accompanied by an intense mesoscale cyclone (MC) showing baroclinic structure with a marked local arctic front. The upper level warm core of the AC is formed by an adiabatic heating associated with the downdraft in the lower stratosphere. The rapid development of the AC is caused by the combination of the intensification of the upper level warm core and the merging with the baroclinically growing MC in the lower level. The merging of the AC and MC and the vertical vortex coupling with the upper air polar vortex are the most important mechanisms for the rapid development of the arctic cyclone.     

Emission metrics under the 2 °C climate stabilization target

In multi-gas climate policies such as the Kyoto Protocol one has to decide how to compare the emissions of different greenhouse gases. The choice of metric could have significant implications for mitigation priorities considered under the prospective negotiations for climate mitigation agreements. Several metrics have been proposed for this task with the Global Warming Potential (GWP) being the most common. However, these metrics have not been systematically compared to each other in the context of the 2 °C climate stabilization target. Based on a single unified modeling framework, we demonstrate that metric values span a wide range, depending on the metric structure and the treatment of the time dimension. Our finding confirms the basic salient point that metrics designed to represent different aspects of the climate and socio-economic system behave differently. Our result also reflects a complex interface between science and policy surrounding metrics. Thus, it is important to select or design a metric suitable for climate stabilization based on an interaction among practitioners, policymakers, and scientists.     

Crustal movement along a collision boundary of plates (case of eastern Taiwan)

Recent crustal movements in eastern Taiwan were investigated based on geodetic and seismological data as a case study of the tectonics along a colliding plate boundary. Secular horizontal strain along the Longitudinal Valley, a probable arc-continent collision boundary between the Philippine Sea and Eurasion plates, is compressive with a large rate of 2 microstrains/year, and the maximum compression axis trends in NW-SE direction. This means that nearly two-thirds of the convergence rate between the two plates is consumed in the narrow zone along the valley and confirms the view that the valley is the plate boundary between the two. The amount of uplift in the Central Range, deduced from trigonometric leveling, reaches more than one meter during the past 60 years. Such active orogeny is caused by the high strain rate in this area. Horizontal displacement of the Coastal Range, a leading edge of the Philippine Sea plate, has a left-lateral component, suggesting that the boundary is a region of oblique collision and the range moves toward the north, producing subduction of the Philippine Sea plate off the Coast of northeastern Taiwan.An extensional strain pattern is found northeastern Taiwan near Hualien, in northern Taiwan near Ilan, and in southeastern Taiwan south Taitung. In northeastern Taiwan, the direction of the maximum extension axis is nearly parallel to the isodipth contours of deep-focus earthquakes that occurred under the southern part of the Ryukyu Trench. From a model calculation using a finite-element method, this pattern of strain is interpreted as an edge effect of the collision-subduction junction in northeastern Taiwan. The direction of the maximum extension in northern Taiwan forms high angles with the direction of the tectonic line near Ilan stretching from the Okinawa Trough. This fact is harmonious with the view that the Okinawa Trough is spreading. Extensional strain observed in southeastern Taiwan may be related to the eastward subduction since the area is situated on a transition zone, from collision to subduction.     

Geochemical and isotopic constraints on the age and origin of the Nidar Ophiolitic Complex, Ladakh, India: Implications for the Neo-Tethyan subduction along the Indus suture zone

The Nidar ophiolite complex is exposed within the Indus suture zone in eastern Ladakh, India. The suture zone is considered to represent remnant Neo-Tethyan Ocean that closed via subduction as the Indian plate moved northward with respect to the Asian plate. The two plates ultimately collided during the Middle Eocene. The Nidar ophiolite complex comprises a sequence of ultra-mafic rocks at the base, gabbroic rocks in the middle and volcano-sedimentary assemblage on the top. Earlier studies considered the Nidar ophiolite complex to represent an oceanic floor sequence based on lithological assemblage. However, present study, based on new mineral and whole rock geochemical and isotopic data (on bulk rocks and mineral separates) indicate their generation and emplacement in an intra-oceanic subduction environment. The plutonic and volcanic rocks have nearly flat to slightly depleted rare earth element (REE) patterns. The gabbroic rocks, in particular, show strong positive Sr and Eu anomalies in their REE and spidergram patterns, probably indicating plagioclase accumulation. Depletion in high field strength elements (HFSE) in the spidergram patterns may be related to stabilization of phases retaining the HFSE in the subducting slab and / or fractional crystallization of titano-magnetite phases. The high radiogenic Nd- and low radiogenic Sr-isotopic ratios for these rocks exclude any influence of continental material in their genesis, implying an intra-oceanic environment.

Nine point mineral–whole rock Sm–Nd isochron corresponds to an age of 140 ± 32 Ma with an initial ¹⁴³Nd/¹⁴⁴Nd of 0.513835 ± 0.000053 (E_Nd t = + 7.4). This age is consistent with the precise Early Cretaceous age of Hauterivian (132 ± 2 to 127 ± 1.6 Ma) to Aptian (121 ± 1.4 to 112 ±1.1 Ma) for the overlying volcano-sedimentary (radiolarian bearing chert) sequences based on well-preserved radiolarian fossils (Kojima, S., Ahmad, T., Tanaka, T., Bagati, T.N., Mishra, M., Kumar, R. Islam, R., Khanna, P.P., 2001. Early Cretaceous radiolarians from the Indus suture zone, Ladakh, northern India. In: News of Osaka Micropaleontologists (NOM), Spec. Vol., 12, 257–270.) and cooling ages of 110–130 Ma based on ³⁹Ar/⁴⁰Ar for Nidar–Spontang ophiolitic rocks (Mahéo, G., Berttrand, H., Guillot, S., Villa, I. M., Keller, F., Capiez, P., 2004. The South Ladakh Ophiolites (NW Himalaya, India): an intra-oceanic tholeiitic arc origin with implications for the closure of the Neo-Tethys. Chem. Geol., 203, 273–303.). As these gabbroic and volcanic rocks are interpreted to be arc related, the new Sm–Nd age data may indicate that intra-ocean subduction in the Neo-Tethyan ocean may have started much before  140 ± 32 Ma as this date is interpreted as the age of crystallization of the arc magma. Present and published age data on the arc magmatic rocks from the Indus suture zone may collectively indicate episodic magmatism with increasing maturity of the arc from more basic (during ~ 140 ± 32 Ma) when the arc was immature through intermediate (andesitic/granodioritic) at ~ 100 Ma to more felsic (rhyolitic/dioritic) magmatism at ~ 50–45 Ma, when the Indian and the Asian plates collided.     

Characteristics of turbulent boundary layers over a rough bed under saw-tooth waves and its application to sediment transport

A large number of studies have been done dealing with sinusoidal wave boundary layers in the past. However, ocean waves often have a strong asymmetric shape especially in shallow water, and net of sediment movement occurs. It is envisaged that bottom shear stress and sediment transport behaviors influenced by the effect of asymmetry are different from those in sinusoidal waves. Characteristics of the turbulent boundary layer under breaking waves (saw-tooth) are investigated and described through both laboratory and numerical experiments. A new calculation method for bottom shear stress based on velocity and acceleration terms, theoretical phase difference, φ and the acceleration coefficient, a_c expressing the wave skew-ness effect for saw-tooth waves is proposed. The acceleration coefficient was determined empirically from both experimental and baseline k–ω model results. The new calculation has shown better agreement with the experimental data along a wave cycle for all saw-tooth wave cases compared by other existing methods. It was further applied into sediment transport rate calculation induced by skew waves. Sediment transport rate was formulated by using the existing sheet flow sediment transport rate data under skew waves by Watanabe and Sato [Watanabe, A. and Sato, S., 2004. A sheet-flow transport rate formula for asymmetric, forward-leaning waves and currents. Proc. of 29th ICCE, ASCE, pp. 1703–1714.]. Moreover, the characteristics of the net sediment transport were also examined and a good agreement between the proposed method and experimental data has been found.     

Deep convection in a lake triggered by wind: Two-dimensional numerical experiments with a nonhydrostatic model

We have investigated the fundamental processes of deep convection in a lake at high latitudes triggered by wind during spring or autumn and the associated deep water formation, executing vertically two-dimensional numerical experiments with a nonhydrostatic model. The water column in which a relatively cold mixed layer overlies a relatively warm layer becomes unstable, when the Ekman convergence on the shore due to along-shore wind deepens the mixed layer below the compensation depth, where water densities in both layers becomes equal to each other because of the thermobaric effect. At the onset of deep convection, the critical Rayleigh number agrees with that predicted by the linear theory. The onset time of deep convection is inversely proportional to the magnitude of wind stress. On the other hand, the onset time is minimal when water temperature in the mixed layer _m is 3.1°C because a change of _m has two effects oppositely acting on the stability of the water column. After the first onset, deep convection occurs intermittently for a few days. The sinking of the mixed layer water occurs in a thermal-like shape, and its amount is 4184% of the time-integrated Ekman transport when _m 3°C while it decreases to less than 10% for _m lower than 1.5°C. The present process can explain 30% of the amount of deep water renewal which is expected from the observation in Lake Baikal.     

Water and sediment quality, partial mass budget and effluent N loading in coastal brackishwater shrimp farms in Bangladesh

The present study aimed to quantify the water and sediment quality and growth and production parameters and to establish nutrient budgets for an average of five selected semi-intensive shrimp ponds in Bangladesh over a growing cycle. Physico-chemical parameters of water and sediments were measured and analyzed by standard methods. Gross yield (kg ha-1) of shrimp was calculated from the stocking and harvesting data. Finally, a partial nutrient mass budget for N and P was calculated. Most of the parameters of water and sediments correlated significantly with each other suggesting a high degree of interactions between different parameters in the system. Significantly higher concentrations of all species of nitrogenous nutrients were recorded in the effluent waters than that entering into the ponds. Therefore, a high loading and net output of nitrogenous nutrients in effluent waters was documented. The study also indicated a net discharge of solids and minerals through effluent loading. However, significantly lower concentrations of phosphorus in the effluent water indicated a net retention and trapping of phosphatic nutrients in the environment. Total production ranged between 532.0 and 697.0 kg ha-1 cycle-1 and P. monodon production between 484.0 and 562.0 kg ha-1 cycle-1. Ponds gained nitrogen primarily from intake water (55%) and fertilizers (29%), and nitrogen was lost primarily from water exchange (78%) and harvested shrimp (12%). Phosphorus gain occurred mostly from intake water (52%) and fertilizers (25%), and phosphorus was lost primarily from water exchange (52%) and harvested shrimp (3.3%). About 10% of input nitrogen and 44% of phosphorus were not accounted for in measured losses, and presumably were fixed or metabolized in the system. On average, 78 g N was discharged to and 25 g P was removed from the surrounding water by the system for each kilogram of shrimp produced. Mean conversion of feed nitrogen and phosphorus to shrimp flesh averaged 74% and 40%, respectively. It was concluded that semi-intensive systems serve as net supplier of N to and net remover of P from the surrounding water.     

Impact of in-consistency between the climate model and its initial conditions on climate prediction

We investigated the influence of dynamical in-consistency of initial conditions on the predictive skill of decadal climate predictions. The investigation builds on the fully coupled global model “Coupled GCM for Earth Simulator” (CFES). In two separate experiments, the ocean component of the coupled model is full-field initialized with two different initial fields from either the same coupled model CFES or the GECCO2 Ocean Synthesis while the atmosphere is initialized from CFES in both cases. Differences between both experiments show that higher SST forecast skill is obtained when initializing with coupled data assimilation initial conditions (CIH) instead of those from GECCO2 (GIH), with the most significant difference in skill obtained over the tropical Pacific at lead year one. High predictive skill of SST over the tropical Pacific seen in CIH reflects the good reproduction of El Niño events at lead year one. In contrast, GIH produces additional erroneous El Niño events. The tropical Pacific skill differences between both runs can be rationalized in terms of the zonal momentum balance between the wind stress and pressure gradient force, which characterizes the upper equatorial Pacific. In GIH, the differences between the oceanic and atmospheric state at initial time leads to imbalance between the zonal wind stress and pressure gradient force over the equatorial Pacific, which leads to the additional pseudo El Niño events and explains reduced predictive skill. The balance can be reestablished if anomaly initialization strategy is applied with GECCO2 initial conditions and improved predictive skill in the tropical Pacific is observed at lead year one. However, initializing the coupled model with self-consistent initial conditions leads to the highest skill of climate prediction in the tropical Pacific by preserving the momentum balance between zonal wind stress and pressure gradient force along the equatorial Pacific.