Experimentelle Untersuchung der Metamorphose von kieselig dolomitischen Sedimenten

During an experimental investigation of the metamorphism of siliceous dolomites the equilibrium data of the heterogeneous bivariant reaction 1 $$3{\text{ dolomite + 4 quartz + 1 H}}_{\text{2}} O \rightleftharpoons + 3 calcite + 3 CO_2 $$ were determined for the total fluid pressures of 1,000, 3,000 and 5,000 bars. The equilibrium conditions were found by experiments in which dolomite, quartz and water react to form talc, calcite and CO₂, as well as by experiments with reversible reaction direction. Results are shown on the temperature- \(X_{CO_2 } \) -diagram of Fig. 3. The temperature of formation of talc and calcite depends to a considerable extent on the composition of the CO₂-H₂O-gas phase; this can be read straight off the isobaric (P _f =const.) equilibrium curves in Fig. 3. In addition a strong dependence of the equilibrium temperature on the total pressure P _f was established (see Fig. 5). At a total gas pressure of 1,000 bars dolomite and quartz can react, according to the composition of the CO₂-H₂O-gas phase, to talc and calcite over the whole of the temperature range between about 350° and 490° C. This indicates that at low pressures the formation of talc and calcite takes place in the field of the albite-epidote-hornfels facies. At a pressure of 3,000 bars dolomite and quartz are stable up to about 550° C if the fluid phase is rich in carbon dioxide and correspondingly poor in water. Thus, this paragenesis can occur up to the stability field of staurolite [see annotation (5)] if the partial pressure of CO₂ is large. At the higher total gas pressure of 5,000 bars dolomite and quartz react even at medium CO₂-concentrations only at about 580° C to give talc and calcite. Therefore it is expected that in regional metamorphism at about 5,000 bars pressure or more the paragenesis dolomite plus quartz exists up to and within the stability field of staurolite and reacts only here to form talc and calcite after reaction (1) or tremolite and calcite after the following reaction (2)¹: $$5 dolomite + 8 quartz + 1 H_2 O \rightleftharpoons 1 tremolite + 3 calcite + 7 CO_2 $$ . The exact physico-chemical conditions under which dolomite, quartz and water react on the one hand to form talc, calcite and CO₂, and on the other hand to form tremolite, calcite and carbon dioxide, will be discussed later when our experimental investigations on the formation of tremolite are completed. First results were already published in a short note by Metz, Puhan and Winkler (1968).     

Fingerprint of tropical climate variability and sea level in sediments of the Cariaco Basin during the last glacial period

High‐resolution palaeorecords of climate are critical to improving current understanding of climate variability, its sensitivity and impact on the environment in the past and in the future. Sediments from the Cariaco Basin off the coast of Venezuela have proven to be sensitive recorders of tropical palaeoclimate variability down to an annual scale. However, the fingerprint of climate and sea level in the sediments of the last glacial period is still not completely understood. In this study, lamination analysis of sediments from the Cariaco Basin is extended to the last glacial period. Detailed sedimentological and geochemical analysis (laser ablation–inductively coupled plasma–mass spectrometry) reveals couplets of light‐coloured, terrigenous‐rich and dark‐coloured, biogenic opal‐rich laminae, which are interpreted to reflect the seasonal migration of the Intertropical Convergence Zone. In addition, a previously undescribed, nearly pure terrigenous lamina type is observed, which is referred to hereafter as a ‘C‐layer’. The C‐layers in the sedimentary sequence are interpreted as flood layers that originate from local rivers. The occurrence of these C‐layers is investigated for two core locations in the Cariaco Basin over the last 110 kyr by continuous X‐ray fluorescence scanning. Dansgaard–Oeschger oscillations are most clearly traced by proxies reflecting productivity and marine organic matter content of the sediment. In contrast, the abundance of terrigenous material differs at times between the two sites. On an interglacial to glacial timescale, the ability to record events causing C‐layers is likely to be influenced by changes in sea level and source proximity. On a millennial scale, both sediment cores contain more C‐layers during warmer interstadials compared with colder stadials during Marine Isotope Stage 3. This finding implies that interstadials were not only wetter than stadials, but probably also characterized by increased rainfall variability, leading to an enhanced frequency of flooding events in the hinterland of the Cariaco Basin.     

Regional geoid determination in Antarctica utilizing airborne gravity and topography data

Antarctica is the only continent that suffers major gaps in terrestrial gravity data coverage. To overcome this problem and to close these gaps as well as to densify the global satellite gravity field solutions, the International Association of Geodesy (IAG) Commission Project 2.4 “Antarctic Geoid” was set into action. This paper reviews the current situation concerning the gravity field in Antarctica. It is shown that airborne geophysical surveys are the most promising tools to gain new gravity data in Antarctica. In this context, a number of projects to be carried out during the International Polar Year 2007/2008 will contribute to this goal. To demonstrate the feasibility of the regional geoid improvement in Antarctica, we present a case study using gravity and topography data of the southern Prince Charles Mountains, East Antarctica. During the processing, the remove–compute– restore (RCR) technique and least-squares collocation (LSC) were applied. Adding signal parts of up to 6 m to the global gravity field model that was used as a basis, the calculated regional quasigeoid reveals the dominant features of bedrock topography in that region, namely the graben structure of the Lambert glacier system. The accuracy of the improved regional quasigeoid is estimated to be at the level of 15 cm.     

Glacial-isostatic Adjustment and the Viscosity Structure Underlying the Vatnajökull Ice Cap,Iceland

We examine the dependence of glacial-isostatic adjustment (GIA) due to changes in the Vatnajökull Ice Cap, Iceland, on the underlying viscosity structure. Iceland offers a unique case study for GIA research, with a thinner elastic lithosphere underlain by a low-viscosity zone or asthenosphere, as opposed to regions such as Fennoscandia or North America described by a thicker lithosphere, while not necessarily featuring an asthenosphere.A laterally homogeneous spherical earth model is used consisting of an elastic lithosphere, a viscoelastic asthenosphere, a viscoelastic upper and lower mantle and a fluid core. We examine the response of the earth model to three ice models with circular plans and cross-section profiles based on the assumption of perfectly plastic material, but with different load histories. These are: (1) A history where the ice cap grows from a AD 900 minimum to a maximum at 1890, followed by a uniform decrease until 1991, continuing to the present day at an average rate based on recent mass-balance measurements, (2) a history that is the same as the first, except for constant ice volumes prior to 1890, and (3) a history that is again the same as the first model, except that the post-1991 changes correspond to the measured mass-balance values. We first compare the response to each ice model using typical earth-model parameters for Iceland presented in the literature. We then undertake a parameter-space search, where we assess the importance of lithosphere thickness, asthenosphere viscosity and basal asthenosphere depth, to predicted vertical-displacement rates, and compare them to rates determined from GPS measurements obtained from campaigns conducted between 1991 and 1999.The earth-viscosity structure that provides the optimum predictions with respect to the GPS-derived vertical-displacement rates consists of an elastic lithosphere with a thickness of between 20 and 30 km, an asthenosphere viscosity between 1 and 2 × 10¹⁸ Pa s, and a basal asthenosphere depth between 250 km and possibly greater than 400 km. We find that the very low asthenosphere viscosity values of ca. 10¹⁷ Pa s sometimes suggested in the literature are not necessary to account for the rapid vertical-displacement rates observed, which are the result of the contemporary decrease in the mass of the ice cap not considered previously.     

The representative concentration pathways: an overview

This paper summarizes the development process and main characteristics of the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs), a set of four new pathways developed for the climate modeling community as a basis for long-term and near-term modeling experiments. The four RCPs together span the range of year 2100 radiative forcing values found in the open literature, i.e. from 2.6 to 8.5 W/m². The RCPs are the product of an innovative collaboration between integrated assessment modelers, climate modelers, terrestrial ecosystem modelers and emission inventory experts. The resulting product forms a comprehensive data set with high spatial and sectoral resolutions for the period extending to 2100. Land use and emissions of air pollutants and greenhouse gases are reported mostly at a 0.5?×?0.5 degree spatial resolution, with air pollutants also provided per sector (for well-mixed gases, a coarser resolution is used). The underlying integrated assessment model outputs for land use, atmospheric emissions and concentration data were harmonized across models and scenarios to ensure consistency with historical observations while preserving individual scenario trends. For most variables, the RCPs cover a wide range of the existing literature. The RCPs are supplemented with extensions (Extended Concentration Pathways, ECPs), which allow climate modeling experiments through the year 2300. The RCPs are an important development in climate research and provide a potential foundation for further research and assessment, including emissions mitigation and impact analysis.     

Deglacial land emergence and lateral upper-mantle heterogeneity in the Svalbard Archipelago—II. Extended results for high-resolution load models

In Paper I (Breuer & Wolf 1995), a preliminary interpretation of the postglacial land emergence observed at a restricted set of six locations in the Svalbard Archipelago was given. The study was based on a simple model of the Barents Sea ice sheet and suggested increases in lithosphere thickness and asthenosphere viscosity with increasing distance from the continental margin.
In the present paper, the newly developed high-resolution load model. BARENTS-2, and land-uplift observations from an extended set of 25 locations are used to study further the possibility of resolving lateral heterogeneity in the upper mantle below the northern Barents Sea. A comparison of the calculated and observed uplift values shows that the lithosphere thickness is not well resolved by the observations, although values above 110 km are most common for this parameter. In contrast to this, there are indications of a lateral variation of asthenosphere viscosity. Whereas values in the range 10¹⁸-10²⁰Pas are inferred for locations close to the continental margin, 10²⁰-10²¹ Pa s are suggested further away from the margin.
A study of the sensitivity of the values found for lithosphere thickness and asthenosphere viscosity to modifications of load model BARENTS-2 shows that such modifications can be largely accommodated by appropriate changes in lithosphere thickness, whereas the suggested lateral variation of asthenosphere viscosity is essentially unaffected. An estimate of the influence of the Fennoscandian. ice sheet leads to the conclusion that its neglect results in an underestimation of the thickness of the Barents Sea ice sheet by about 10 per cent.     

Consistent estimation of geodetic parameters from SLR satellite constellation measurements

In this paper, we consistently estimate geodetic parameters such as weekly 3-D station coordinates, Earth orientation parameters (EOP) including daily x/y-pole coordinates and the excess length of day \(\Delta \hbox {LOD}\), and selected weekly Earth’s gravitational field (Stokes) coefficients up to degree and order 6 from Satellite Laser Ranging measurements to up to 11 geodetic satellites. The SLR constellation consists of LAGEOS-1/2, Etalon-1/2, Stella, Starlette, Ajisai, Larets, LARES, BLITS and WESTPAC, and its observations cover a time span of 38 years ranging from February 16, 1979, to April 30, 2017. If multiple satellites with various altitudes and orbit inclinations are combined, correlations between estimated parameters are significantly reduced. This allows us (i) to investigate the ability of satellite constellations to reduce existing correlations and (ii) to estimate reliable parameters with higher precision compared to the standard 4-satellite constellation (LAGEOS-1/2, Etalon-1/2) which is currently used by the International Laser Ranging Service for the determination of the Terrestrial Reference Frame (TRF) and EOP products. In particular, the Stokes coefficients, EOP and TRF datum parameters (three translations, three rotations, one scale factor), which are highly correlated with satellite-specific orbit parameters, are improved. From our investigations, we found for an 11-satellite solution compared to the above-mentioned 4-satellite solution a decrease in the scatter of the TRF datum parameters of up to 37%, the transformation residuals are decreased by up to 22%, the scatter of the EOP is decreased by up to 22%, and their mean values are decreased by up to 84% w.r.t. the reference solutions. The largest improvement is obtained for the Stokes coefficients which significantly benefit from a combination of multiple satellites (inclinations and orbit altitudes). In total, single coefficients are improved by up to 93% and the overall improvement is up to 74%. Moreover, it could be clearly identified that Ajisai significantly disturbs the TRF solution due to an erroneous center-of-mass correction. We further quantify the impact of specific satellites on the determination of different geodetic parameters and finally evaluate the potential of the existing SLR-tracked spherical satellite constellation to support the goals of GGOS.     

Impact of in-consistency between the climate model and its initial conditions on climate prediction

We investigated the influence of dynamical in-consistency of initial conditions on the predictive skill of decadal climate predictions. The investigation builds on the fully coupled global model “Coupled GCM for Earth Simulator” (CFES). In two separate experiments, the ocean component of the coupled model is full-field initialized with two different initial fields from either the same coupled model CFES or the GECCO2 Ocean Synthesis while the atmosphere is initialized from CFES in both cases. Differences between both experiments show that higher SST forecast skill is obtained when initializing with coupled data assimilation initial conditions (CIH) instead of those from GECCO2 (GIH), with the most significant difference in skill obtained over the tropical Pacific at lead year one. High predictive skill of SST over the tropical Pacific seen in CIH reflects the good reproduction of El Niño events at lead year one. In contrast, GIH produces additional erroneous El Niño events. The tropical Pacific skill differences between both runs can be rationalized in terms of the zonal momentum balance between the wind stress and pressure gradient force, which characterizes the upper equatorial Pacific. In GIH, the differences between the oceanic and atmospheric state at initial time leads to imbalance between the zonal wind stress and pressure gradient force over the equatorial Pacific, which leads to the additional pseudo El Niño events and explains reduced predictive skill. The balance can be reestablished if anomaly initialization strategy is applied with GECCO2 initial conditions and improved predictive skill in the tropical Pacific is observed at lead year one. However, initializing the coupled model with self-consistent initial conditions leads to the highest skill of climate prediction in the tropical Pacific by preserving the momentum balance between zonal wind stress and pressure gradient force along the equatorial Pacific.

     

Fusion of Radar and Optical Data for Land Cover Mapping

Abstract

This study examined the complementarity of radar and optical data for feature identification. Spaceborne radar and Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM ) multispectral data sets were assessed independently and in combination to classify a site near Wad Medani, Sudan. Radar processing procedures included speckle reduction, texture extraction and post‐processing smoothing. Relative accuracy of the resultant classifications was established by comparison to ground truth information derived from field visitation. Neither speckle filtering nor post‐classification smoothing were improvements over the poor results obtained with the unfiltered, original radar data. Texture measures were significant improvements over the original data (20 percent overall accuracy increase) and several, but not all, individual classes had excellent results. Landsat TM had good overall results (80 percent correct) but considerable spectral confusion between urban and bare soil. Combination of radar with Landsat TM greatly improved results, achieving near perfect classification of all individual classes. The systematic strategy of this study, determination of the best individual method before introducing the next procedure, was effective in managing a complex set of analysis possibilities.