The impact of African aridity on the isotopic signature of Atlantic deep waters across the Middle Pleistocene Transition

A high resolution analysis of benthic foraminifera as well as of aeolian terrigenous proxies extracted from a 37 m-long marine core located off the Mauritanian margin spanning the last ~ 1.2 Ma, documents the possible link between major continental environmental changes with a shift in the isotopic signature of deep waters around 1.0–0.9 Ma, within the so-called Mid-Pleistocene Transition (MPT) time period. The increase in the oxygen isotopic composition of deep waters, as seen through the benthic foraminifera δ¹⁸O values, is consistent with the growth of larger ice sheets known to have occurred during this transition. Deep-water mass δ¹³C changes, also estimated from benthic foraminifera, show a strong depletion for the same time interval. This drastic change in δ¹³C values is concomitant with a worldwide 0.3‰ decrease observed in the major deep oceanic waters for the MPT time period. The phase relationship between aeolian terrigeneous signal increase and this δ¹³C decrease in our record, as well as in other paleorecords, supports the hypothesis of a global aridification amongst others processes to explain the deep-water masses isotopic signature changes during the MPT. In any case, the isotopic shifts imply major changes in the end-member δ¹⁸O and δ¹³C values of deep waters.     

Diffusion and dispersion in magnetohydrodynamic turbulence: The influence of mean magnetic fields

The properties of magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence under the influence of a strong mean magnetic field are investigated from the Lagrangian viewpoint by tracking fluid particles in direct numerical simulations. The particle trajectories show characteristic bends near vortex sheets. A strong mean magnetic field leads to preferential diffusion parallel to the mean magnetic field. The two‐particle relative dispersion process shows a dependence on the orientation of the initial separation vector. The relative dispersion is slowed down for initial separation vectors aligned with the mean magnetic field. (© 2008 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

A model of time-periodic mantle flow

Summary. The instability of a layer consisting of a lighter viscous fluid on top of a heavier less viscous fluid is considered in the case when the heavy fluid is adiabatically stratified and the light fluid contains heat sources and possesses a lower heat conductivity. A perturbation in the thickness of the upper fluid layer causes horizontal temperature variations in the lower fluid. The motions induced by thermal buoyancy can interact with the distortion of the interface in such a way that the initial perturbation is reinforced in the form of an overstable oscillation. It is proposed that this mechanism is relevant to the problem of time-dependent flow in the Earth's mantle.     

Transition to two-dimensional turbulent convection in a rapidly-rotating annulus

Abstract

We study a semi-analytical model of convection in a rapidly-rotating, differentially-heated annulus with sloping top and bottom lids. Rapid rotation leads to a preservation of relatively simple, two-dimensional (2-D) structure in the experimentally-observed flow, while temporal complexity increases with the Rayleigh number. The model is, therefore, two-dimensional; it exhibits a sequence of bifurcations from steadily-drifting, azimuthally-periodic convection columns, also called thermal Rossby waves, through vacillation and a period-doubling cascade, to aperiodic, weakly-turbulent solutions.

Our semi-analytical results match to within a few percent previous numerical results with a limited-resolution 2-D model, and extend these results, due to the greater flexibility of the model presented here. Two types of vacillation are obtained, which we call, by analogy with classical nomenclature of the baroclinic annulus with moderate rotation rates, amplitude vacillation and tilted-trough vacillation. Their properties and dependence on the problem's nondimensional parameters are investigated. The period-doubling cascade for each type of vacillation is studied in some detail.     

On the onset of thermal convection in slowly rotating fluid shells

Abstract

The problem of the removal of the degeneracy of the patterns of convective motion in a spherically symmetric fluid shell by the effects of rotation is considered. It is shown that the axisymmetric solution is preferred in sufficiently thick shells where the minimum Rayleigh number corresponds to degree l = 1 of the spherical harmonics. In all cases with l > 1 the solution described by sectional spherical harmonics Y^l _l (θ,φ) is preferred.     

Systematics in the interpretation of aggregated neutrino flux limits and flavor ratios from gamma-ray bursts

Gamma-ray burst analyses at neutrino telescopes are typically based on diffuse or stacked (i.e., aggregated) neutrino fluxes, because the number of events expected from a single burst is small. The interpretation of aggregated flux limits implies new systematics not present for a single burst, such as by the integration over parameter distributions (diffuse fluxes), or by the low statistics in small burst samples (stacked fluxes). We simulate parameter distributions with a Monte Carlo method computing the spectra burst by burst, as compared to a conventional Monte Carlo integration. With this approach, we can predict the behavior of the flux in the diffuse limit as well as in low statistics stacking samples, such as used in recent IceCube data analyses. We also include the flavor composition at the detector (ratio between muon tracks and cascades) into our considerations. We demonstrate that the spectral features, such as a characteristic multi-peak structure coming from photohadronic interactions, flavor mixing, and magnetic field effects, are typically present even in diffuse neutrino fluxes if only the redshift distribution of the sources is considered, with z ? 1 dominating the neutrino flux. On the other hand, we show that variations of the Lorentz boost can only be interpreted in a model-dependent way, and can be used as a model discriminator. For example, we illustrate that the observation of spectral features in aggregated fluxes will disfavor the commonly used assumption that bursts with small Lorentz factors dominate the neutrino flux, whereas it will be consistent with the hypothesis that the bursts have similar properties in the comoving frame.     

Generation of magnetic fields by convection in a rotating sphere,I

The magnetohydrodynamic dynamo problem is solved for an electrically conducting spherical fluid shell with spherically symmetric distributions of gravity and heat sources. The dynamics of motions generated by thermal buoyancy are dominated by the effects of rotation of the fluid shell. Dynamos are found for low and intermediate values of the Taylor number, T ? 10⁵, if the scale of the nonaxisymmetric component of the velocity field is sufficiently small. The generation of magnetic fields of quadrupolar symmetry is preferred at Rayleigh numbers close to the critical value R_c for onset of convection. As the Rayleigh number increases, the generation of dipolar magnetic fields becomes preferred.     

Gut content analyses of three dominant Antarctic copepod species during an induced phytoplankton bloom EIFEX (European iron fertilization experiment)

The diet of three Antarctic copepods, Calanus simillimus , Rhincalanus gigas and Pleuromamma robusta , was studied from samples collected during the European iron fertilization experiment (EIFEX) in austral fall 2004. The diet was investigated using microscopical gut content analysis. The food spectra of the three copepod species showed a clear overlap. The pennate diatom Fragilariopsis kerguelensis was commonly found in all guts. Large numbers of cells were fractured, but some were found complete when arranged as chains. The same was true for the genus Chaetoceros , a centric diatom, of which even their long and complete setae could be observed. In general the ingested food particles extended over a wide size range up to a few 100 μm. The copepod C. simillimus , for example, fed on large foraminifera and swallowed them whole. Compared to C. simillimus and R. gigas , P. robusta guts contained a higher percentage and larger diversity of hard-shelled protozoa including tintinnids, Radiolaria and Acantharia.