The effect of the Baltic Sea level on gravity at the Metsähovi station

The loading effect of the Baltic Sea is immediately recognizable in the gravity record of the superconducting gravimeter T020 in Metsähovi, Finland, by simply inspecting residual gravity together with the tide gauge record at Helsinki 30 km away. The station is 10 km from the nearest bay of the Baltic Sea and 15 km from the open sea. Sea level variations in the Baltic are non-tidal and driven at short periods primarily by wind stress, at longer periods by water exchange through the Danish straits. Locally they can have a range of 2–3 m. Loading calculations show that a uniform layer of water covering the complete Baltic Sea increases the gravity in Metsähovi by 31 nm/s² per 1 m of water, and the vertical deformation is −11 mm. The observed gravity response to the local sea level is generally less, since the variations at short periods are far from uniform areally, the same water volume just being redistributed to different places. Regression of the whole gravity record (1994-2001) on local sea level gives 50–70% of the uniform layer response, as do loading calculations using actual water distributions derived from 11 tide gauges. However, both fits are dominated by some extreme values of short duration, and parts of the gravity record with long-period variations in sea level are close to the uniform layer response. The gravity observations can be used to test corrections for other co-located geodetic observations (GPS, satellite laser ranging) which are influenced by the load effect but not sensitive enough to discriminate between models.     

Phantom midge-based models for inferring past fish abundances

We sampled living and subfossil phantom midge (Diptera: Chaoboridae) larvae from surface sediments of 21 small lakes in Southern Sweden to examine the influence of fish and selected abiotic variables on the abundance and species composition of chaoborid assemblages. We expected total Chaoborus abundance to be inversely correlated with fish abundance and Chaoborus species most sensitive to fish predation to be found only in fishless lakes. We aimed to use the observed relationships to develop models to reconstruct past fish abundances from chaoborid remains and the abiotic environment. C. flavicans occurred in almost every lake, whereas subfossil C. obscuripes were found in the surface sediments of only one fishless lake. The density of living C. flavicans larvae correlated negatively with fish abundance, lake order and size. The concentration of C. flavicans subfossils was negatively associated with pH, lake size, water transparency and fish abundance. Regression models that included lake morphometry and landscape position as additional predictors of fish abundance performed better than models that used only Chaoborus predictors. The explained variance in fish abundance varied from 52 to 86%. Leave-one-out cross-validation indicated moderate performance of the two best models. These models explained 51 and 56% of the observed untransformed fish density and biomass, respectively. In addition, all Chaoborus models were unbiased in closely following the 1:1 reference line in plots of observed versus predicted values. These results are a promising step in developing midge-based paleolimnological reconstructions of past fish abundance, and the approach might be improved by including chironomid remains in the models.     

The Relationship Between Radiative Forcing and Temperature: What Do Statistical Analyses of the Instrumental Temperature Record Measure?

Comparing statistical estimates for the long-run temperature effect of doubled CO₂ with those generated by climate models begs the question, is the long-run temperature effect of doubled CO₂ that is estimated from the instrumental temperature record using statistical techniques consistent with the transient climate response, the equilibrium climate sensitivity, or the effective climate sensitivity. Here, we attempt to answer the question, what do statistical analyses of the observational record measure, by using these same statistical techniques to estimate the temperature effect of a doubling in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide from seventeen simulations run for the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 2 (CMIP2). The results indicate that the temperature effect estimated by the statistical methodology is consistent with the transient climate response and that this consistency is relatively unaffected by sample size or the increase in radiative forcing in the sample.     

Holocene temperatures in Bohuslän, southwest Sweden: a quantitative reconstruction from fossil pollen data

Inferred mean annual temperatures (Tann) from a radiocarbon-dated fossil pollen stratigraphy obtained from Lake Trehörningen, southwest Sweden, provide evidence of climate variability during the Holocene in the boreal-nemoral zone of Sweden. The record indicates low early Holocene temperatures, followed by a rising trend and maximum temperature values from about 7000 to 4000 cal. yr BP. During the later part of the Holocene until present day, a cooling trend is reflected in the temperature record. At about 8200 cal. yr BP, temperatures temporarily drop, and at 8000 cal. yr BP the rising temperature trend is recovered. Inferred mid-Holocene temperatures are about 2.5-3°C higher than at present, and also higher than other pollen-inferred mid-Holocene temperatures of 1.5-2.5°C further to the north and east in Scandinavia. The reconstructed long-term climate pattern in Trehörningen has an overall consistency with temperature reconstructions from Scandinavia, suggesting a regional climate link for the Holocene variability in Sweden. Holocene climate trends in Trehörningen also show a remarkably similar pattern with the classic work on postglacial climate change by Sernander (1893, Sernander 1909), Andersson (1909) and von Post (1924).     

Simulations of dense planetary rings: IV. Spinning self-gravitating particles with size distribution

Previous self-gravitating simulations of dense planetary rings are extended to include particle spins. Both identical particles as well as systems with a modest range of particle sizes are examined. For a ring of identical particles, we find that mutual impact velocity is always close to the escape velocity of the particles, even if the total rms velocity dispersion of the system is much larger, due to collective motions associated to wakes induced by near-gravitational instability or by viscous overstability. As a result, the spin velocity (i.e., the product of the particle radius and the spin frequency) maintained by mutual impacts is also of the order of the escape velocity, provided that friction is significant. For the size distribution case, smaller particles have larger impact velocities and thus larger spin velocities, particularly in optically thick rings, since small particles move rather freely between wakes. Nevertheless, the maximum ratio of spin velocities between the smallest and largest particles, as well as the ratio for translational velocities, stays below about 5 regardless of the width of the size distribution. Particle spin state is one of the important factors affecting the temperature difference between the lit and unlit face of Saturn's rings. Our results suggest that, to good accuracy, the spin frequency is inversely proportional to the particle size. Therefore, the mixing ratio of fast rotators to slow rotators on the scale of the thermal relaxation time increases with the width of the particle size distribution. This will offer means to constrain the particle size distribution with the systematic thermal infrared observations carried by the Cassini probe.     

N-body simulations of viscous instability of planetary rings

We study viscous instability of planetary rings in terms of N-body simulations. We show that for rings composed of fairly elastic particles (e.g. as in Hatzes et al. [Hatzes, A., Bridges, F.G., Lin, D.N.C., 1988. Collisional properties of ice spheres at low impact velocities. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 231, 1091-1115]) the instability may lead to the spontaneous formation of dense ringlets in a background of lower density. In most parts of Saturn’s rings the particle collisions are probably much more dissipative, as suggested by the presence of self-gravity wakes, and classic viscous instability should be suppressed. However, our results demonstrate that the mechanism of viscous instability itself is valid. The dynamical effects of size-dependent elasticity in a system with a size distribution have never been studied before. We show that this may in principle lead to a size-selective viscous instability, small particles concentrating on ringlets against the more uniform background of large particles.