Support for global climate reorganization during the “Medieval Climate Anomaly”

Widely distributed proxy records indicate that the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA; ~900–1350 AD) was characterized by coherent shifts in large-scale Northern Hemisphere atmospheric circulation patterns. Although cooler sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific can explain some aspects of medieval circulation changes, they are not sufficient to account for other notable features, including widespread aridity through the Eurasian sub-tropics, stronger winter westerlies across the North Atlantic and Western Europe, and shifts in monsoon rainfall patterns across Africa and South Asia. We present results from a full-physics coupled climate model showing that a slight warming of the tropical Indian and western Pacific Oceans relative to the other tropical ocean basins can induce a broad range of the medieval circulation and climate changes indicated by proxy data, including many of those not explained by a cooler tropical Pacific alone. Important aspects of the results resemble those from previous simulations examining the climatic response to the rapid Indian Ocean warming during the late twentieth century, and to results from climate warming simulations—especially in indicating an expansion of the Northern Hemisphere Hadley circulation. Notably, the pattern of tropical Indo-Pacific sea surface temperature (SST) change responsible for producing the proxy-model similarity in our results agrees well with MCA-LIA SST differences obtained in a recent proxy-based climate field reconstruction. Though much remains unclear, our results indicate that the MCA was characterized by an enhanced zonal Indo-Pacific SST gradient with resulting changes in Northern Hemisphere tropical and extra-tropical circulation patterns and hydroclimate regimes, linkages that may explain the coherent regional climate shifts indicated by proxy records from across the planet. The findings provide new perspectives on the nature and possible causes of the MCA—a remarkable, yet incompletely understood episode of Late Holocene climatic change.     

Coral skeleton P/Ca proxy for seawater phosphate: Multi-colony calibration with a contemporaneous seawater phosphate record

A geochemical proxy for surface ocean nutrient concentrations recorded in coral skeleton could provide new insight into the connections between sub-seasonal to centennial scale nutrient dynamics, ocean physics, and primary production in the past. Previous work showed that coralline P/Ca, a novel seawater phosphate proxy, varies synchronously with annual upwelling-driven cycles in surface water phosphate concentration. However, paired contemporaneous seawater phosphate time-series data, needed for rigorous calibration of the new proxy, were lacking. Here we present further development of the P/Ca proxy in Porites lutea and Montastrea sp. corals, showing that skeletal P/Ca in colonies from geographically distinct oceanic nutrient regimes is a linear function of seawater phosphate (PO_4 SW) concentration. Further, high-resolution P/Ca records in multiple colonies of Pavona gigantea and Porites lobata corals grown at the same upwelling location in the Gulf of Panamá were strongly correlated to a contemporaneous time-series record of surface water PO_4 SW at this site (r² = 0.7-0.9). This study supports application of the following multi-colony calibration equations to down-core records from comparable upwelling sites, resulting in ±0.2 and ±0.1 μmol/kg uncertainties in PO_4 SW reconstructions from P. lobata and P. gigantea, respectively.

     

Effects of predation by sea-run juvenile alewise (Alosa pseudoharengus) on the zooplankton community at Hamilton Reservoir,Rhode Island

The zooplankton of Mill Pond and Hamilton Reservoir in the Annaquatucket River drainage system, North Kingstown, R.I., were compared. While the taxonomic composition of the heleoplankton of the two ponds was similar, the ponds differed in dominant species of Cladocera, distribution of species during the year, and abundance of each taxonomic group. These differences are attributed to the abundance of juvenile Alosa pseudoharengus in Hamilton Reservoir. Overexploitation of food resources is the probable cause of reduced growth of juvenile alewives from Hamilton Reservoir.     

Fuzzy Set Approaches to Spatial Data Mining of Association Rules

This paper presents an approach to the discovery of association rules for fuzzy spatial data. Association rules provide information of value in assessing significant correlations that can be found in large databases. Here we are interested in correlations of spatially related data such as soil types, directional or geometric relationships, etc. We have combined and extended techniques developed in both spatial and fuzzy data mining in order to deal with the uncertainty found in typical spatial data.     

New fumarolic activity on Mt. Baker: observations during April through July, 1975

On 10 March, 1975, large amounts of steam were first sighted coming from the Sherman Crater of Mt. Baker, long the site of mild fumarole activity. To document and evaluate the new activity, we conducted a series of aerial and ground-based observations and experiments including the collection of samples within the crater, installation of 35-mm automatic sequence cameras at Park and Anderson Buttes, and overflights with a mapping camera and infrared scanner. Significant changes characterizing the new activity are: development of a new, energetic fumarole in an area of earlier mild activity; growth of crevasses within and concentric to the crater walls; collapse of a central 70 m diameter plug of ice to form a warm lake; and ejection of tephra rich in analcite and sulfides from the new fumarole. Although the tephra contains minor amounts of unaltered glass, it does not differ in this or other respects from material collected from the west crater wall, where fumaroles have long been active. This suggests that the glass is older tephra derived from the fumarole vent walls.Weather and lighting conditions were such that the Park Butte sequence camera provided acceptable images of the crater area on 27% of the frames for the period 1825 Pacific Daylight Time June 5 to 1825 PDT August 2. Of these, 8% show a significant plume (>300 m above the vent). Large plumes occur during favorable weather conditions of low wind and high relative humidity, and all appear white.While there are abundant manifestations of increased heat emission from Sherman Crater, there is as yet no sign of a fundamental change in the style of activity, or that the rise of fresh magma is the cause.     

EURD: The Mission and the Stellar Absolute Fluxes of B-Type Stars

We present here stellar spectra of B stars obtained with the EURD spectrograph, one of the three instruments on board MINISAT-01. EURD is a spectrograph specially designed to detect diffuse radiation in thewavelength range between 350 and 1100 Å with 5 Å spectral resolution. EURD main scientific targets are: the spectrum of interstellar medium,atmospheric airglow, decaying neutrinos, Moon and early type stars.