Evaporation in Mediterranean conditions: Estimations based on isotopic approaches at the watershed scale

In Mediterranean regions, the marked climatic seasonality and uneven precipitation distribution complicate the application of isotope mass balances to obtain meaningful basin-wide annual average evaporation rates. In the present study, a mass balance approach carried out on the Tavignanu River watershed in Corsica (France), showed unrealistic evaporation rate estimates: 10% for 2017–2018 and 1% for 2018–2019. This suggests that not only does evaporation alter the seasonal isotopic composition in the river, but that there is complex variability of the dominant water reservoirs contributing to the streamflow. Therefore, we propose a modified mass balance approach, including monthly quantifications of different water sources contributing to the river discharge. This allows the discrimination of isotopic variation occurring by evaporation from that originating by mixing processes. By applying this modified approach, we estimated evaporation rates on the Tavignanu River watershed that were in good agreement with results obtained by hydrological modelling: 40% for 2017–2018 and 46% for 2018–2019, respectively. An uncertainty analysis showed that evaporation rates obtained with the modified isotopic approach are close to those obtained with the non-modified approach. Therefore, we recommend using this modified isotope mass balance approach to estimate evaporation rates in such regions as the Mediterranean with high seasonality in hydrological processes.     

Atmospheric boundary layer over steep surface waves

Turbulent air-sea interactions coupled with the surface wave dynamics remain a challenging problem. The needs to include this kind of interaction into the coupled environmental, weather and climate models motivate the development of a simplified approximation of the complex and strongly nonlinear interaction processes. This study proposes a quasi-linear model of wind-wave coupling. It formulates the approach and derives the model equations. The model is verified through a set of laboratory (direct measurements of an airflow by the particle image velocimetry (PIV) technique) and numerical (a direct numerical simulation (DNS) technique) experiments. The experiments support the central model assumption that the flow velocity field averaged over an ensemble of turbulent fluctuations is smooth and does not demonstrate flow separation from the crests of the waves. The proposed quasi-linear model correctly recovers the measured characteristics of the turbulent boundary layer over the waved water surface.     

Alteration and chemical U-Th-total Pb dating of heterogeneous high-uranium zircon from a pegmatite from the Aduiskii massif,middle Urals,Russia

Mineralogy and Petrology - The U-Th-Pb isotope system in the accessory mineral zircon may be disturbed, as for instance by the secondary loss of radiogenic lead. The recognition of such alteration...