River sediments,great floods and centennial‐scale Holocene climate change

A new analysis of all 346 published ¹⁴C dated Holocene alluvial units in Britain offers a unique insight into the regional impacts of global change and shows how surprisingly sensitive British rivers have been to relatively modest but repeated changes in climate. Fourteen major but probably brief periods of flooding are identified bracketed within the periods 400–1070, 1940–3940, 7520–8100 and at ca. 10 420 cal. yr BP. There is a strong correspondence between climatic deteriorations inferred from mire wet shifts and major periods of flooding, especially at ca. 8000 cal. yr BP and since ca. 4000 cal. yr BP. The unusually long and complete British record also demonstrates that alterations in land cover have resulted in a step change in river basin sensitivity to variations in climate. This has very important implications for assessing and mitigating the impact of increasing severe flooding. In small and medium‐sized river basins land use is likely to play a key role in either moderating or amplifying the climatic signal. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Disc–Planet Interactions: Migration and Resonances in Extrasolar Planetary Systems

We consider orbital resonances in multiplanet systems. These are expected to arise during or just after formation in a gaseous disc. Disc–planet interaction naturally produces orbital migration and circularization through the action of tidal torques which in turn may lead to an orbital resonance. The mass and angular momentum content of the disc is likely to be comparable to that in the planets so that it is essential to fully incorporate the disc in the analysis.We study the orbital evolution of two planets locked in 2:1 commensurability through migration tidally induced by the disc using both analytic methods and numerical hydrodynamic simulations. The planets are assumed to orbit in an inner cavity containing at most only a small amount of disc material. Results are found to be sensitive to initial surface density profile, planet masses and disc parameters. The evolution may range between attaining and subsequently maintaining a resonance lock with two angles librating to divergent migration with no commensurability formed. In the former case eccentricities increase monotonically with time while the system undergoes inward migration. If the migration is halted by loss of the disc leaving the planets in a final configuration, there is likely to be a low probability of seeing resonant planets at small radii as well as a sensitive dependence on past history.We have also considered a multiplanet system in secular apsidal resonance. We consider the system as being in just one secular normal mode and include the effects of a gaseous disc. It is suggested that a normal mode may be selected by adding in some weak dissipative process in the disc and that it may remain, involving only the planets, when the disc is slowly removed.     

The Homoclinic Tangle of A 1:2 Resonance in a 2-D Hamiltonian System

We study in great detail the geometry of the homoclinic tangle, with respect to the energy, corresponding to an unstable periodic orbit of type 1:2, on a surface of section representing a 2-D Hamiltonian system. The tangle consists of two resonance areas, in contrast with the tangles of type-l or -{l, m, k, x = 0} considered in previous studies, that consist of only one resonance area. We study the intersections of the inner and outer lobes of the same resonance area and of the two resonance areas. The intersections of the lobes follow certain rules. The detailed study of these rules allows us to derive quantitative relations about the number of intersections and to understand the complex behavior of the higher order lobes by studying the lower order lobes. We find 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. order intersections formed by lobes making 1, 2, 3, etc. turns around an island. After a sufficiently high order of iterations a lobe may intersect its image and thus produce a Poincaré recurrence. Numerical results for a wide interval of energies are presented. The number of intersections changes through tangencies. In any finite interval of the energy between two tangencies of 1st order, an infinite number of higher order tangencies occur and thus, according to the Newhouse theorem, there exist nearby islands of stability.     

Late Quaternary vegetation changes around Lake Rutundu,Mount Kenya,East Africa: evidence from grass cuticles,pollen and stable carbon isotopes

Woody, subalpine shrubs and grasses currently surround Lake Rutundu, Mount Kenya. Multiple proxies, including carbon isotopes, pollen and grass cuticles, from a 755‐cm‐long core were used to reconstruct the vegetation over the past 38 300 calendar years. Stable carbon‐isotope ratios of total organic carbon and terrestrial biomarkers from the lake sediments imply that the proportion of terrestrial plants using the C₄ photosynthetic pathway was greater during the Late Pleistocene than in the Holocene. Pollen data show that grasses were a major constituent of the vegetation throughout the Late Pleistocene and Holocene. The proportion of grass pollen relative to the pollen from other plants was greatest at the last glacial maximum (LGM). Grass cuticles confirm evidence that C₄ grass taxa were present at the LGM and that the majority followed the cold‐tolerant NADP‐MEC₄ subpathway. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Three-dimensional calculations of high- and low-mass planets embedded in protoplanetary discs

We analyse the non-linear, three-dimensional response of a gaseous, viscous protoplanetary disc to the presence of a planet of mass ranging from 1 Earth mass (1 M_⊕) to 1 Jupiter mass (1 M_J) by using the zeus hydrodynamics code. We determine the gas flow pattern, and the accretion and migration rates of the planet. The planet is assumed to be in a fixed circular orbit about the central star. It is also assumed to be able to accrete gas without expansion on the scale of its Roche radius. Only planets with masses   M _p≳ 0.1 M_J  produce significant perturbations in the surface density of the disc. The flow within the Roche lobe of the planet is fully three-dimensional. Gas streams generally enter the Roche lobe close to the disc mid-plane, but produce much weaker shocks than the streams in two-dimensional models. The streams supply material to a circumplanetary disc that rotates in the same sense as the orbit of the planet. Much of the mass supply to the circumplanetary disc comes from non-coplanar flow. The accretion rate peaks with a planet mass of approximately 0.1 M_J and is highly efficient, occurring at the local viscous rate. The migration time-scales for planets of mass less than 0.1 M_J, based on torques from disc material outside the Roche lobes of the planets, are in excellent agreement with the linear theory of type I (non-gap) migration for three-dimensional discs. The transition from type I to type II (gap) migration is smooth, with changes in migration times of about a factor of 2. Starting with a core which can undergo runaway growth, a planet can gain up to a few M_J with little migration. Planets with final masses of the order of 10 M_J would undergo large migration, which makes formation and survival difficult.