Storminess variation during the last 6500 years as reconstructed from an ombrotrophic peat bog in Halland,southwest Sweden

Cores taken from an ombrotrophic peat bog in the coastal zone of Halland, southwest Sweden, were examined for wind transported mineral grains, pollen and humidity indicators. The core covers the period from 6500 cal. yr BP to present. Ombrotrophic conditions existed from ca. 4200 cal. yr BP onwards. Bog surface wetness fluctuated strongly until ca. 3700 cal. yr BP, with an apparent dominance of dry summer conditions from 4800–4500 cal. yr BP. Local wet shifts occurred around 4300, 2800, 2400 and 1500 cal. yr BP, whereas the most recent 600 years of the record show increasingly dry conditions. Mineral grain content, interpreted as aeolian sand influx (ASI), was used as a proxy for (winter) storm frequency and intensity until ca. 1500 cal. yr BP, after which increasing human impact, as reconstructed by pollen analysis, became a second important potential cause for increased sand drift. Strongly increased storminess occurred at 4800, 4200, 2800–2200, 1500, 1100 and 400–50 cal. yr BP, indicating a dominance of cold and stormy winters during these periods. Many of these storm periods apparently coincide with storm events in other sites in southwestern Scandinavia, suggesting that our ASI record reflects a regional scale climatic signal. Furthermore these stormy periods correlate to well‐known cold phases in the North Atlantic region, suggesting a link to large‐scale fluctuations in atmospheric circulation patterns. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Rydberg Matter as the dust atmosphere in comets: Spectroscopic and polarization signatures

The long-lived excited state of matter called Rydberg Matter (RM) may explain several spectroscopic features in space, like the diffuse interstellar bands (DIBs) and the unidentified infrared bands (UIR, UIB). RM is here used to interpret some previously unexplained or inconsistent features in comets: (1) line absorption in the emission from the nucleus, (2) IR band emission from the coma, (3) selective and variable molecular line emission from the coma, (4) extended sources of molecules in the coma, (5) degree of linear polarization of light scattered from the coma. (1) The unexplained IR absorptions observed in the flyby of the nucleus of the Comet Borrelly agree well with RM emission bands observed by stimulated emission in the laboratory. It is proposed that RM is the so-called ultrared matter or at least formed from it. (2) The IR bands previously attributed to silicate particles are shown to be better described by RM theory. Transitions in atoms in RM are shown to dominate. (3) The inverted RM medium will optically amplify light from molecular transitions in the comet comae, in agreement with observations that many of the molecular IR emission lines lie within the emission bands from RM, or much too close to Rydberg transitions to be accidental. (4) The unexplained extended sources observed, e.g., for CO are proposed to be due to release of molecules previously incorporated in the RM clusters at low temperature. Such clusters may be the very small particles observed by space probes. (5) Finally, the largely unexplained measurements of the degree of linear polarization of scattered sunlight from comets are explained as due to scattering by the planar RM clusters. Quantitative agreement is demonstrated.     

Amplification by Stimulated Emission in Rydberg Matter Clusters as the Source of Intense Maser Lines in Interstellar Space

The detailed processes giving maser line radiation from various molecules in space are not well understood, as can be seen from many recent detailed studies of maser line emission with high spatial and velocity resolution, and with polarization measurements. We now propose an improved maser mechanism based on amplification of the original molecular line emission by stimulated emission in Rydberg Matter (RM) clouds in HII regions, containing clusters H _N and (H₂) _N . This mechanism will amplify the molecular lines, depending on the position, velocity, cluster size and state of excitation of the clusters in the RM cloud. RM will only support certain frequencies, corresponding to rotational transitions of the clusters. The bond lengths in the RM clusters are known within 1% from radio frequency emission measurements in the laboratory, and it is now shown that all the commonly studied maser lines agree well with stimulated emission transitions in several types of RM clusters simultaneously. This may explain the strongly varying intensities of neighboring or related maser lines, an important effect that is not well understood previously. It is also pointed out that the magnetic field due to RM is of the same order of magnitude as observed from the Zeeman splitting in maser lines; thus, the molecules that are the original sources of the lines may be embedded in the RM clouds, for example in dense HII regions that are likely to be RM regions.     

Northern hudson bay and foxe basin: Water masses,circulation and productivity

Abstract

Total alkalinity and total carbonate determinations together with salinity and temperature are used to characterize water masses in Foxe Basin, Hudson Bay and Hudson Strait. From these measurements, we are able to infer the amounts of fresh water from river runoff and from sea‐ice meltwater. The average ice cover is estimated to be 1.9 m, and the residence time of river runoff in Hudson Bay is 3—4 years. Estimates of biological productivity were made by “correcting” total carbonate measurements for effects of biological processes, giving a value of 24 gC m a for new production.     

Evaluation of anthropogenic carbon in the Nordic Seas using observed relationships of N, P and C versus CFCs

Several methods to compute the anthropogenic component of total dissolved inorganic carbon () in the ocean have been reported, all in some way deducing (a) the effect by the natural processes, and (b) the background concentration in the pre-industrial scenario. In this work we present a method of calculating using nutrient and CFC data, which takes advantage of the linear relationships found between nitrate (N), phosphate (P) and CFC-11 in the Nordic Seas sub-surface waters. The basis of the method is that older water has lower CFC-11 concentration and also has been exposed to more sinking organic matter that has decayed, resulting in the slopes of P versus CFC-11 and N versus CFC-11 being close to the classic Redfield ratio of 1:16. Combining this with the slope in total alkalinity (A_T) versus CFC-11 to correct for the dissolution of metal carbonates gives us the possibility to deduce the concentration of anthropogenic C_T in the Nordic Seas. This further allowed us to compute the inventory of anthropogenic C_T below 250 m in the Nordic Seas in spring 2002, to ∼1.2 Gt C.     

Grazing effects by Nereis diversicolor on development and growth of green algal mats

Nereis diversicolor is generally considered to be a predator and deposit feeder, but have also been found to graze on benthic algae in shallow coastal areas. In this study we investigated the grazing effects on the development and growth of green algae, Ulva spp. Algal growth was studied in an experiment including two levels of sediment thickness; 100 mm sediment including macrofauna and 5 mm sediment without macrofauna, and three treatments of varying algal biomass; sediment with propagules, sediment with low algal biomass (120 g dry weight (dwt) m^− 2) and sediment with high algal biomass (240 g dwt m^− 2). In the 100 mm sediment, with a natural population of macrofauna, N. diversicolor was the dominating (60% of total biomass) species. After three weeks of experimentation the result showed that N. diversicolor was able to prevent initial algal growth, affect growth capacity and also partly reduce full-grown algal mats. The weight of N. diversicolor was significantly higher for polychaetes in treatments with algae added compared to non-algal treatments. There were also indications that a rich nutrient supply per algae biomass counteracted the grazing capacity of N. diversicolor.     

Early Holocene Tree Growth at a High Elevation Site in the Northernmost Scandes of Sweden (Lapland): A Palaeobiogeographical Case Study Based on Megafossil Evidence

The paper focuses on early Holocene tree growth and alpine tree-limits in the northernmost Swedish Scandes (Lapland). Megafossil wood remnants in peats and lakes were searched for over a large area at elevations high above the modern tree-limits. Wood of Pinus sylvestris, Betula pubescens spp. tortuosa and Alnus incana was discovered near the shore of a small lake (999 m a.s.l.) c. 500 m higher than today's tree-limit of Pinus sylvestris in this region. Radiocarbon dating yielded values of unprecedented age, c. 8500–8100 ¹⁴C years BP for all three species and in addition 5400–4500 ¹⁴C years BP for Betula and Alnus. The highest position of the Pinus tree-limit occurred during the early Holocene, which compares well with the situation reconstructed by megafossils in the southern Scandes. It now appears that the long-term tree-limit and climate histories are broadly the same in entire mid- and northern Fennoscandia. Corrected for glacio-isostatic land uplift, the tree-limit record suggests that the summers were c. 2.4°C warmer than today at 8500 ¹⁴C years BP . A dry continental climate with substantial seasonal contrasts is likely to have prevailed during this period, which restricted the occurrence of glaciers and glacier activity. Most circumstances point to the overriding importance of the Milankovitch orbital theory for pacing or forcing the long-term postglacial climate change. The results are inconsistent with most inferences based on pollen, certain macrofossil records and general circulation simulations. These proxy environmental histories have frequently advocated a mid-Holocene thermal optimum and an oceanic and humid climate in northern and western Fennoscandia during the early Holocene. The uncovered discrepancy between the outcome of the objective and factual megafossil method and more subjective/inferential microfossil methods should be important for Quaternary plant ecology in general, stressing the usefulness of megafossil studies.     

The mean magnetic field of the Sun: Observations at Stanford

A solar telescope has been built at Stanford University to study the organization and evolution of large-scale solar magnetic fields and velocities. The observations are made using a Babcock-type magnetograph which is connected to a 22.9 m vertical Littrow spectrograph. Sun-as-a-star integrated light measurements of the mean solar magnetic field have been made daily since May 1975. The typical mean field magnitude has been about 0.15 G with typical measurement error less than 0.05 G. The mean field polarity pattern is essentially identical to the interplanetary magnetic field sector structure (see near the Earth with a 4 day lag). The differences in the observed structures can be understood in terms of a warped current sheet model.