SOLAR ACTIVITY VARIATIONS RECORDED IN VARVED SEDIMENTS FROM THE CRATER LAKE OF HOLZMAAR – A MAAR LAKE IN THE WESTEIFEL VOLCANIC FIELD, GERMANY

Annually laminated sediments from Lake Holzmaar (Germany) provide high resolution sedimentological and palaeoenvironmental data of the last 22,500 years. Weichselian periglacial varves and Holocene organic varves indicate different depositional environments. For the best preserved sections from both parts, spectral analyses were performed in order to detect cyclic fluctuations in varve thickness. Weichselian varves are dominated by an 88 year periodicity. Linear spectral analysis of Holocene varves provides no significant cyclicity. But, supposing nonlinear transformations of the solar signal through the Lake Holzmaar ecosystem during the Holocene, an adequate nonlinear spectral analysis method was able to detect periodicities of 11, 88, and 208 years. The existence of these cyclicities, comparable to the solar activity fluctuations, give further evidence for the existence of a sun-climate relationship, based on a not yet completely understood mechanism.     

The bubble bursts for cavitation in natural rivers: laboratory experiments reveal minor role in bedrock erosion

The erosion of rock‐bedded channels generally is considered a slow process caused mainly by abrasion due to bedload or suspended sediments, but the mechanisms of rapid erosion remain unclear. Cavitation is a clear‐fluid erosive process, well known for its effect on engineering structures, when water vapour bubbles collapse and the resultant pressure shocks erode the boundary. However, although the occurrence of cavitation erosion in natural watercourses has long been a matter of debate, as yet there are no incontrovertible examples of cavitation damage to natural river beds. Using flume experiments, we show for the first time that only weakly‐cavitating clear‐water flows can occur for the range of flow velocities observed in rivers, and these do not erode medium‐hardness rocks after 68 hours. During this time period, only a very soft rock featured erosional marks due to dissolution. Thus, our results cast significant doubt on the likelihood of identifying cavitation damage in most rivers, and provide pointers to those river systems that might be investigated further to identify cavitation erosion. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Synoptic patterns associated with landslide events in the Serra do Mar, Brazil

Heavy rains frequently occur over the Serra do Mar, in the southeast coastal mountain region in Brazil, particularly during the summer season. These rains can cause landslides and loss of life. The objective of this work is to produce a synoptic climatology of heavy rainfall episodes of the period from November to April using 10-year reanalyses data. The identification of the synoptic pattern of these events should provide guidance to forecasters. The landslide events were mostly related to cold front passages and the South Atlantic Convergence Zone (SACZ). These systems differed from the climatology by exhibiting more intense characteristics for the frontal situations and a blocking circulation configuration for the SACZ situations. In both cases, the composite fields showed that the 250-hPa mass divergence was strikingly more intense than the climatology and had a preferred location in the 24 h prior to landslide events. Anomalies of this ten-year event climatology showed above-normal moisture anomalies, which are more evident in the SACZ than in the frontal cases.     

Impact of intensive fish farming on methane emission in a tropical hydropower reservoir

Fisheries and aquaculture are important sources of food for hundreds of millions of people around the world. World fish production is projected to increase by 15% in the next 10 years, reaching around 200 million tonnes per year. The main driver of this increase will be based on fish farming management in developing countries. In Brazil, fish farming is increasing due to the climate conditions and large supply of water resources, with the production system based on Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) farming in reservoirs. Inland waters like reservoirs are a natural source of methane (CH₄) to the atmosphere. However, knowledge of the impact from intensive fish production in net cages on CH₄ fluxes is not well known. This paper presents in situ measurements of CH₄ fluxes and dissolved CH₄ (DM) in the Furnas Hydroelectric Reservoir in order to evaluate the impact of fish farming on methane emissions. Measurements were taken in a control area without fish production and three areas with fish farming. The overall mean of diffusive methane flux (DMF) (5.9?±?4.5 mg CH₄ m^?2 day^?1) was significantly lower when compared to the overall mean of bubble methane flux (BMF) (552.9?±?1003.9 mg CH₄ m^?2 day^?1). The DMF and DM were significantly higher in the two areas with fish farming, whereas the BMF was not significantly different. The DMF and DM were correlated to depth and chlorophyll-a. However, the low production of BMF did not allow the comparison with the limnological parameters measured. This case study shows that CH₄ emissions are influenced more by reservoir characteristics than fish production. Further investigation is necessary to assess the impact of fish farming on the greenhouse gas emissions.     

The surface radiation budget over South America in a set of regional climate models from the CLARIS-LPB project

The performance of seven regional climate models in simulating the radiation and heat fluxes at the surface over South America (SA) is evaluated. Sources of uncertainty and errors are identified. All simulations have been performed in the context of the CLARIS-LPB Project for the period 1990–2008 and are compared with the GEWEX-SRB, CRU, and GLDAS2 dataset and NCEP-NOAA reanalysis. Results showed that most of the models overestimate the net surface short-wave radiation over tropical SA and La Plata Basin and underestimate it over oceanic regions. Errors in the short-wave radiation are mainly associated with uncertainties in the representation of surface albedo and cloud fraction. For the net surface long-wave radiation, model biases are diverse. However, the ensemble mean showed a good agreement with the GEWEX-SRB dataset due to the compensation of individual model biases. Errors in the net surface long-wave radiation can be explained, in a large proportion, by errors in cloud fraction. For some particular models, errors in temperature also contribute to errors in the net long-wave radiation. Analysis of the annual cycle of each component of the energy budget indicates that the RCMs reproduce generally well the main characteristics of the short- and long-wave radiations in terms of timing and amplitude. However, a large spread among models over tropical SA is apparent. The annual cycle of the sensible heat flux showed a strong overestimation in comparison with the reanalysis and GLDAS2 dataset. For the latent heat flux, strong differences between the reanalysis and GLDAS2 are calculated particularly over tropical SA.     

Waveshapes of continuing currents and properties of M-components in natural negative cloud-to-ground lightning from high-speed video observations

Continuing current is a continuous mode of charge transfer to ground in a lightning flash. The extent to which the continuing current contributes to the total negative charge lowered to earth is large. In order to study the waveshape of the continuing currents of natural flashes, we developed a computational algorithm that analyzes the pixels of the images obtained by a high-speed camera and plots luminosity-versus-time. Tower measurements have shown that during the continuing current phase of the flash the luminosity of the channel is directly proportional to the current that flows through it. Using this information it was possible to infer the continuing current waveshape for 63 natural discharges and classify them into six different types. Statistics on some characteristics of 345 M-components (that occurred during the same 63 events) are also presented. As far as we know, this is the first study on waveshapes of continuing currents for natural lightning.     

Mixing at the front of gravity currents

Observations made with the help of a movable-bed tank designed and operated to freeze the motion of gravity current fronts indicate that both the scale of the apparatus and the magnitude of the current Reynolds number have a strong influence on mixing rates. Low mixing rates are associated with fronts in relatively shallow fresh water depths and low Reynolds numbers. Mixing rates increase more rapidly as the ratio of current thickness to fresh water depth increases. For the deepest fresh water flow conditions, when scale effects can be expected to be negligible, the dimensionless mixing rate is approximately equal to three times the relative current thickness and has an upper limit of about 0.3. Lower mixing rates are observed as the current Reynolds number decreases, suggesting that viscous effects can still exist even for deep fresh water conditions. Application of the experimental results to estimate some parameters of a hypothetical gravity current on the continental shelf yield reasonable values. However, it is clear that, owing to the scale and Reynolds number effects that might be present in laboratory experiments, particular care should be exercised when trying to extrapolate results to gravity currents in nature.     

Estimating the Random Error in Eddy-Covariance Based Fluxes and Other Turbulence Statistics: The Filtering Method

A spatially local decomposition of turbulent fluxes based on properties of spatial filters is used to develop a new method of estimating random error in turbulent moments of any order. The proposed error estimation method does not require an estimate of the integral time scale, which can be highly sensitive to the method used to calculate it. The error estimation method is validated using synthetic flux data with a known ensemble mean and intercompared with existing methods using data from the Advection Horizontal Array Turbulence Study (AHATS). Typical errors for a 27.3-min block of data collected at a height of 8 m are found to be approximately 10% for the heat flux and 7–15% for variances. The error in the momentum flux increases rapidly with increasing atmospheric instability, reaching values of 40% or greater for unstable conditions. A new method based on filtering is also proposed to estimate integral time scales of turbulent quantities.