Hemispheric-scale climate response to Northern Eurasia land surface characteristics and snow anomalies

This paper presents a synopsis of recently published studies by the co-authors, which show that several land surface characteristics unique to Northern Eurasia are responsible for facilitating a causal relationship between autumn snow anomalies in this region and subsequent hemispheric winter climate patterns. The large size and extratropical location of the contiguous Eurasian land mass results in broad, continental-scale interannual snow cover extent and depth variations throughout autumn and winter, and corresponding diabatic heating anomalies. These surface anomalies occur in the presence of a large region of stationary wave activity, produced in part by the orographic barriers that separate northern/central Eurasia from southern/eastern Eurasia. This co-location of snow-forced anomalies and ambient wave energy is unique to Northern Eurasia, and initiates a teleconnection pathway involving stationary wave–mean flow interaction throughout the troposphere and stratosphere, ultimately resulting in a modulation of the winter Arctic Oscillation (AO). Complementary new results are also presented which show that partial snow cover extent or snow depth only anomalies in Northern Eurasia are insufficient to initiate the teleconnection pathway and produce a winter AO signal. This synopsis provides a useful interpretation of the earlier studies in the specific context of Northern Eurasia regional climate and environmental change.     

88小时:美国地质调查局国家地震信息中心对2011年3月11日Mw9.0日本地震的响应

引言 2011年3月11日日本本州岛东海岸附近海域发生的M9．0地震（Tohoku earthquake,以下称“东日本大地震”——译者注）及其引发的海啸造成数以万计的人员死亡,造成的财产损失可能超过1万亿美元,这是有历史记录以来最严重的自然灾害之一。     

Mediated climate change in Britain: Scepticism on the web and on television around Copenhagen

Copenhagen 2009 was a major moment in the development of climate change as an issue. But climate sceptics before and during this event, sought to influence the nature of debate, and for this reason, the way Copenhagen was covered in the mass media was particularly important. This paper outlines the contours of contrarian arguments and claims, and assesses their reflection in the coverage at Copenhagen. The focus is on television, and extends to the assessment of internet - both modes of mass communication underrepresented in the existing literature. The results suggest a higher profile for contrarians and scepticism than is perhaps healthy, and speak to the role of these mass media, now and in the future, particularly with regard to the issue of public comprehension of the issues involved.     

Experimental validation of a simplified model for rolling isolation systems

Rolling isolation systems (RISs) protect mission‐critical equipment and valuable property from earthquake hazards by decoupling the dynamic responses of vibration‐sensitive objects from horizontal floor motions. These responses involve the constrained rolling of steel balls between bowl‐shaped surfaces. The light damping of steel balls rolling between steel plates can be augmented by adhering thin rubber sheets to the plates, thereby increasing the rolling resistance and decreasing the displacement demand on the RIS. An assessment of the ability of lightly‐ and heavily‐damped RISs to mitigate the hazard of seismically induced failures requires high‐fidelity models that can adequately capture the systems' intrinsic nonlinear behavior. The simplified model presented in this paper is applicable to RISs with any potential energy function, is amenable to both lightly‐ and heavily‐damped RISs, and is validated through the successful prediction of peak responses for a wide range of disturbance frequencies and intensities. The validated model can therefore be used to compute the spectra of peak floor motions for which displacement demands equal capacity. These spectra are compared with representative floor motion spectra provided by the American Society of Civil Engineers 7–10. The damping provided by rolling between thin viscoelastic sheets increases the allowable floor motion intensity by a factor of 2–3, depending on the period of motion. Acceleration responses of isolation systems with damping supplied in this fashion do not grow with increased damping, even for short‐period excitations. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mobile Learning in a Human Geography Field Course

This article reports on reusable mobile digital learning resources designed to assist human geography undergraduate students in exploring the geographies of life in Dublin. Developing active learning that goes beyond data collection to encourage observation and thinking in the field is important. Achieving this in the context of large class sizes presents several challenges. Combining in situ learning with spatially accurate historical and contemporary multimedia, a set of location-aware digital mobile tools, or mediascapes, was developed. How scaffolding can be achieved in such a context, focusing on the development of students’ observational, enquiry, and thinking skills in the field was explored.     

Lake Boga Granite,northwestern Victoria: mineralogy,geochemistry and geochronology

The Devonian Lake Boga Granite in northern Victoria, while almost entirely under thin Murray Basin cover, is one of the largest plutons in the western Lachlan Fold Belt. Its only exposure is a quarry penetrating the Cenozoic sediments. In the quarry, prominent pod pegmatites and miarolitic cavities suggest a high level of emplacement. The granite, a non-magnetic, fractionated S-type, contains a large range of accessory minerals, including primary uranium- and REE-bearing phosphates and oxides, and primary copper sulfides. Monazite-series minerals show an exceptionally wide range of compositions, from normal monazite-(Ce) through cheralite (Ca – Th-rich) to rare huttonitic monazite (Th-rich) and brabantite; U contents in monazite also vary widely (0 – 7.9 wt%). Primary low-Ca uraninites are well preserved and are unusual in having low Th/U and LREE. Late-stage cavity fluorapatite crystals up to several centimetres across show intricate elemental zoning patterns with extreme U gradients (<10 – 6900 ppm) in some crystals. New ⁴⁰Ar – ³⁹Ar ages for magmatic biotite, muscovite and K-rich feldspar average 365 ± 3 Ma, which approximates the emplacement age of the granite. This is supported by a 377 ± 12 Ma U – Th – Pb (CHIME) age for primary uraninite. New whole-rock geochemical data support earlier observations: the granite is strongly fractionated (SiO₂ 70.7 – 76.0 wt%; 4.2 – 0.6 wt% FeO_t) and peraluminous (ASI = 1.23 – 1.45), and has slightly elevated Na₂O and P₂O₅ (0.30 wt%) contents compared with other fractionated S-type granites from the Lachlan Fold Belt. Trace-element abundances are typical of fractionated granites, although U and Cu concentrations vary strongly and reach >60 and ≈1400 ppm, respectively. REE patterns also vary strongly, from LREE-enriched with moderate Eu depletion, to flat with strong Eu depletion. The flattest of the REE patterns, in samples with FeO_total < 1%, are characterised by M-type tetrad effects. These and other samples also show low (subcrustal average) and variable Zr/Hf (35 – 16) and Nb/Ta (8 – 4) ratios; these and other unusual elemental fractionations are related to changes in elemental partitioning during the late magmatic stage, when felsic peraluminous magma and high-temperature magmatic fluid coexisted.