Glacial/interglacial sea surface temperature changes in the Southwest Pacific ocean over the past 360 ka

The phase relationship between climate parameters during terminations gives insight into deglaciation mechanisms. By combining foraminiferal Mg/Ca and alkenone thermometers with planktonic and benthic foraminiferal δ¹⁸O, we determined the phase relationship between local sea surface temperature (SST) and global seawater δ¹⁸O changes in the Coral Sea in the Southwestern Pacific over the last 360 ka. The onset of the SST warming preceded the seawater δ¹⁸O change by several ka for Termination I, II and III. During Termination I, the SST warming started at 20 ka BP, earlier than atmospheric CO₂ rise suggesting that the greenhouse effect was not the main trigger of this early warming. Compilation of ¹⁴C-dated SST records from the whole Pacific during Termination I reveals that the onset of the warming is generally earlier in the Southern and the tropical Pacific than in the North Pacific. This spatio-temporal warming pattern suggests linkage between the southern ocean and tropical Pacific. The early tropical warming could provide heat and moisture to the northern high latitudes, modifying radiative balance and precipitation over ice sheets at the onset of deglaciation.     

Fine-grained landuse characterization using ground-based pictures: a deep learning solution based on globally available data

ABSTRACT

We study the problem of landuse characterization at the urban-object level using deep learning algorithms. Traditionally, this task is performed by surveys or manual photo interpretation, which are expensive and difficult to update regularly. We seek to characterize usages at the single object level and to differentiate classes such as educational institutes, hospitals and religious places by visual cues contained in side-view pictures from Google Street View (GSV). These pictures provide geo-referenced information not only about the material composition of the objects but also about their actual usage, which otherwise is difficult to capture using other classical sources of data such as aerial imagery. Since the GSV database is regularly updated, this allows to consequently update the landuse maps, at lower costs than those of authoritative surveys. Because every urban-object is imaged from a number of viewpoints with street-level pictures, we propose a deep-learning based architecture that accepts arbitrary number of GSV pictures to predict the fine-grained landuse classes at the object level. These classes are taken from OpenStreetMap. A quantitative evaluation of the area of Île-de-France, France shows that our model outperforms other deep learning-based methods, making it a suitable alternative to manual landuse characterization.     

Calibration and testing of an empirical chloritoid-chlorite Mg-Fe exchange thermometer and thermodynamic data for daphnite

A compilation of literature data on the Fe-Mg composition of coexisting chlorite and chloritoid from metapelites metamorphosed at various P - T  conditions shows that the logarithm of the Fe-Mg partitioning (ln K _D) varies linearly with the inverse of temperature, from about 2.4 at 300  °C to about 1.3 at 600  °C. In contrast, no trend was observed with pressure, and the molar volumes of Mg- and Fe-chlorite end-members suggest that the pressure dependence of ln K _D is not significant. Therefore, the chloritoid-chlorite Mg-Fe exchange reaction is a potential thermometer and has been empirically calibrated using the analyses of 112 chloritoid-chlorite pairs from 28 different localities. Temperatures estimated using the Chl-Cld thermometer were checked against independent estimates for 20 samples not involved in the calibration (Beni Mzala window, Morocco), and the results are in fair agreement with independent temperature estimates. However, the analytical uncertainties and errors are too large to obtain reliable temperature estimates for extremely Mg-rich or Fe-rich compositions. The Chl-Cld thermometer is unreliable at XMg-_CLD<0.2 and XMg-_CLD>0.8 at 700  °C, and XMg-_CLD<0.1 and XMg-_CLD>0.9 at 300  °C. Using the results of the empirical calibration, we calculated new thermodynamic data for daphnite. Implementing these data, it becomes possible to estimate T  and P conditions of metamorphism for the invariant chlorite-chloritoid-quartz-aluminosilicate assemblage that is widespread in low-grade metapelites. These estimates appear to be relevant only in the stability field of kyanite, whereas the uncertainties on the calculated pressure conditions are very large in the stability field of kaolinite and pyrophyllite.     

Determination of synthetic wind functions for estimating open water evaporation with Computational Fluid Dynamics

A computational fluid dynamics (CFD)‐based methodology is proposed to derive convective mass‐transfer coefficients (wind functions) that are required for estimating evaporation of water bodies with the mass‐transfer method. Three‐dimensional CFD was applied to model heat transfer in two water bodies: a Class‐A tank evaporimeter and an on‐farm artificial pond. The standard k–? model assuming isotropic turbulence was adopted to describe turbulent heat transport, whereas the heat and mass transfer analogy was assumed to derive the wind functions. The CFD‐derived wind functions were very similar to those empirically derived from the experimental water bodies. The evaporation rates calculated with the synthetic wind functions were in good agreement with hourly and daily evaporation measurements for the tank and pond, respectively. The proposed CFD‐approach is generalisable and cost effective, because it has low input data requirements. Besides, it provides additional capability of modelling the spatial distribution of the evaporation rate over the water surface. Although the application of CFD to water bodies evaporation modelling is still in development, it looks very promising. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Impact of the unpredictable changes in agricultural groundwater use on long-term sustainable exploitation: the case study of Bouhefna-Haffouz aquifer system,central Tunisia

Long-term exploitation schemes in many regions are often based solely on hydrodynamic factors, while the agricultural use of groundwater undergoes significant changes over time. The Bouhefna-Haffouz aquifer system in central Tunisia is one of those cases where an aquifer exploitation scheme was well designed hydrodynamically to address the political needs at the time. Fifty years later, a numerical groundwater model has been conducted to assess the sustainability of the scheme. Results show that the scheme aimed to lower the groundwater level to reduce overflow to Merguellil Wadi and maintain it at a level that benefits agricultural profitability. This caused loss of the Merguellil baseflow, forcing farmers to switch from traditional irrigation canals to deep wells and motor pumps, thereby disrupting the hydrological budget even further. The numerical model indicates that the flow to the wadi reached zero in 1978, the average flow by vertical leakage decreased from 8 hm³ in 1970 to 2 hm³ in 2020, and the horizontal percolation between the regional aquifer units increased from 1 hm³ in 1970 to 6 hm³ in 2020. Although the groundwater exploitation scheme was not previously considered a factor in local hydrological changes, the results of this study demonstrate the significant impact of societal behavior following the scheme’s implementation on the hydrological budget of Merguellil Wadi.

     

Comparative analysis of coatings on granitic substrates from urban and natural settings (NW Spain)

Rock coatings are frequent on natural rock outcrops and even more on stone surfaces of historical buildings and monuments. They are interesting as some of them have a protective effect against erosion. In the last 30 years, research on rock coatings has been performed separately on either buildings or natural outcrops. This paper studies and compares thin coatings found on granitic rock surfaces of historical buildings with coatings found on natural granite outcrops in a same climatic area (NW Spain) by analysing their surface and cross-sections. As rock surfaces of buildings have known age they can be used to assess rates of weathering and coating growth. This is the first comparative study of formation of coatings on natural and built surfaces in the same region. Both endogenous (rock characteristics) and exogenous factors (climatic conditions, air pollution) that could affect the coatings formation are considered to assess the origin and formation of coatings. X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) and X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) analyses of the underlying rocks, XRD analyses of the coatings and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) observations of surface and cross-sections of the coatings, performing Energy Dispersive Spectrometry (EDS) and X-ray maps, were carried out to establish their composition. Fieldwork and results indicate that natural outcrops are widely covered by biological coatings or coatings formed due to rock weathering, while coatings found on rock ashlars are highly variable with air pollution, other building materials, organic droppings and micro-environmental factors contributing to coatings on rock ashlars in a more significant way than substrate characteristics and exposure time.