Warming of an elevated layer over the Caribbean

Air temperatures in the trade wind inversion (~850 hPa) over the Caribbean have been rising much faster than sea temperatures. This is associated with an accelerated Hadley circulation, with sinking motions over the Caribbean corresponding with increasing rising motion over the Amazon. The sinking motions induce a faster rate of warming and drying in the trade wind inversion than at other levels. Much of the trend in Caribbean climate is attributable to physical mechanisms; changes in atmospheric composition play a secondary role. Smoke and dust plumes from Africa, drifting westward across the Atlantic, enhance the greenhouse effect in an elevated (1–3 km) layer. A stabilized lower atmosphere across the Caribbean has contributed to warming and drying trends over the twentieth century which are projected to continue. The atmosphere is warming faster than the ocean, causing a decline in sensible heat fluxes that fuel tropical cyclones.     

Spatiotemporal change in China’s climatic growing season: 1955–2000

The timing, length, and thermal intensity of the climatic growing season in China show statistically significant changes over the period of 1955 to 2000. Nationally, the average start of the growing season has shifted 4.6–5.5 days earlier while the average end has moved 1.8–3.7 days later, increasing the length of the growing season by 6.9–8.7 days depending on the base temperature chosen. The thermal intensity of the growing season has increased by 74.9–196.8 growing degree-days, depending on the base temperature selected. The spatial characteristics of the change in the timing and length of the growing season differ from the geographical pattern of change in temperatures over this period; but the spatial characteristics of change in growing degree-days does resemble the pattern for temperatures, with higher rates in northern regions. Nationally, two distinct regimes are evident over time: an initial period where growing season indicators fluctuate near a base period average, and a second period of rapidly increasing growing season length and thermal intensity. Growing degree-days are highly correlated with March-to-November mean air temperatures in all climatic regions of China; the length of the growing season is likewise highly correlated with March-to-November mean air temperatures except in east, southeast and southwest China at base temperature of 0°C and southeast China at base temperature of 5°C. The growing season start date appears to have the greater influence on the length of the growing season. In China, warmer growing seasons are also likely to be longer growing seasons.     

Tropical cyclones in the SW Indian Ocean. Part 2: structure and impacts at the event scale

The southwest Indian Ocean (5°–20°S, 45°–70°E) experiences frequent tropical cyclones (TC) in the December–March season. In this paper, TC composite and case-study structure and impacts are studied using daily oceanic and atmospheric fields from model-reanalyzed data, satellite remote sensing, and in situ station data. The TC environment is characterized according to mean track: W-, SW-, and S-moving. Case studies of TC are investigated, and impacts such as storm surge and rainfall are evaluated through comparison of ‘real’ and ‘model’ datasets in the period since 1998. The northern sub-tropical jet stream is found to influence the intensity and track of TC in the SWIO. The composite SW-moving TC maintains intensity compared to the other tracks, which decline in strength. Variability is found in TC rainfall distribution, with maximum intensity in a spiral band 1–2 days before peak intensity, based on satellite estimates. There is a re-establishment of equatorial rainfall in the case of southward moving TC after peak intensity. The W-moving TC lacks monsoon inflow compared to the recurving TC. Comparisons are made between low-resolution model-estimated rainfall, various satellite products, and station-observed rainfall. TC spiral rain-band intensity is found to be similar to that reported elsewhere in the tropics, based on a limited sample of TRMM PR data and station reports. The satellite-derived daily rainfall out-performs NCEP reanalysis due to low resolution and underestimated diabatic heating. Similarly, the circulation within a 300-km radius of the composite TC is poorly resolved by re-analysis; winds, swells, and storm surges are too low by a factor of two compared with QuikSCAT and in situ measurements. This work will offer ways to adjust operational forecasts of winds, rainfall, and swells around tropical cyclones, so that TC risk and impacts are better managed.     

Desert environments: landscapes and stratigraphy

It is common to think of hot deserts, i.e. hot arid or dry lands, as areas of little rain situated in the middle parts of the world, that are simply 'just there'. However, most of the world's deserts have a long geological history, sometimes of 50 million years or more and ways have been developing for some time now, particularly from geomorphological studies, of not only erecting the law of superposition of strata for the desert but also 'absolute' dating. The authors have often worked commercially in deserts world-wide but their recent experiences in the Oman have brought home to them the excellent work that has been going on in the last two or three decades in evaluating the geological history of deserts. The Oman experience is described in a feature in the next issue.     

Non‐mass‐dependent oxygen isotopic fractionation in smokes produced in an electrical discharge

Abstract— We report the first production of non‐mass‐dependently fractionated silicate smokes from the gas phase at room temperature from a stream of silane and/or pentacarbonyl iron in a molecular hydrogen (or helium) flow mixed with molecular oxygen (or nitrous oxide). The smokes were formed at the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) at total pressures of just under 100 Torr in an electrical discharge powered by a Tesla coil, were collected from the surfaces of the copper electrodes after each experiment and sent to the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) for oxygen isotopic analysis. Transmission electron microscopy studies of the smokes show that they grew in the gas phase rather than on the surfaces of the electrodes. We hypothesize at least two types of fractionation processes occurred during formation of the solids: a mass‐dependent process that made isotopically lighter oxides compared to our initial oxygen gas composition followed by a mass‐independent process that produced oxides enriched in ¹⁷O and ¹⁸O. The maximum Δ¹⁷O observed is + 4.7‰ for an iron oxide produced in flowing hydrogen, using O2 as the oxidant. More typical displacements are 1–2‰ above the equilibrium fractionation line. The chemical reaction mechanisms that yield these smokes are still under investigation.     

Fire and drought as drivers of early Holocene tree line changes in the Peruvian Andes

Three pollen and charcoal records from three lakes lying at 3400 m elevation in southern Peru provided a record of landscape change spanning the last ca.18 000 cal. a BP. The tree line lay close to the site between ca. 16 000 and 12 000 cal. a BP, with Polylepis woodlands growing near the lakes. Progressively drying conditions led to increased fire after 12 000 cal. a BP, coinciding with a decline in Polylepis cover and Andean forest relicts as puna grasslands expanded. A strong decrease in the rate of sediment deposition between ca. 12 000 and ca. 4400 cal. a BP was interpreted to indicate the presence of sedimentary hiatuses. With the return of wet conditions after 4400 cal. a BP, forests did not reassemble around the lakes. Instead, fire‐maintained grasslands dominated the landscape. Humans probably induced the intensified fire activity during the late Holocene and thereby deflected local successions. The modern fragmented landscape, with Polylepsis woodlands existing in fire‐resistant pockets above the general limit of the Andean tree line, resulted from the intensification of human land use practices during the last 4400 cal. a BP. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Magnetic fields in protoplanetary disks

Magnetic fields likely play a key role in the dynamics and evolution of protoplanetary disks. They have the potential to efficiently transport angular momentum by MHD turbulence or via the magnetocentrifugal acceleration of outflows from the disk surface. Magnetically-driven mixing has implications for disk chemistry and evolution of the grain population, and the effective viscous response of the disk determines whether planets migrate inwards or outwards. However, the weak ionisation of protoplanetary disks means that magnetic fields may not be able to effectively couple to the matter. I examine the magnetic diffusivity in a minimum solar nebula model and present calculations of the ionisation equilibrium and magnetic diffusivity as a function of height from the disk midplane at radii of 1 and 5 AU. Dust grains tend to suppress magnetic coupling by soaking up electrons and ions from the gas phase and reducing the conductivity of the gas by many orders of magnitude. However, once grains have grown to a few microns in size their effect starts to wane and magnetic fields can begin to couple to the gas even at the disk midplane. Because ions are generally decoupled from the magnetic field by neutral collisions while electrons are not, the Hall effect tends to dominate the diffusion of the magnetic field when it is able to partially couple to the gas, except at the disk surfaces where the low density of neutrals permits the ions to remain attached to the field lines. For a standard population of 0.1 μm grains the active surface layers have a combined column Σ_active≈2 g cm⁻² at 1 AU; by the time grains have aggregated to 3 μm, Σ_active≈80 g cm⁻². Ionisation in the active layers is dominated by stellar X-rays. In the absence of grains, X-rays maintain magnetic coupling to 10% of the disk material at 1 AU (i.e. Σ_active≈150 g cm⁻²). At 5 AU the Σ_active≈Σ_total once grains have aggregated to 1 μm in size.     

Adiabatic temperature changes of magma–gas mixtures during ascent and eruption

Most quantitative studies of flow dynamics in eruptive conduits during volcanic eruptions use a simplified energy equation that ignores either temperature changes, or the thermal effects of gas exsolution. In this paper we assess the effects of those simplifications by analyzing the influence of equilibrium gas exsolution and expansion on final temperatures, velocities, and liquid viscosities of magma-gas mixtures during adiabatic decompression. For a given initial pressure (p₁), temperature (T₁) and melt composition, the final temperature (T_f) and velocity (u_max) will vary depending on the degree to which friction and other irreversible processes reduce mechanical energy within the conduit. The final conditions range between two thermodynamic end members: (1) constant enthalpy (dh=0), in which T_f is maximal and no energy goes into lifting or acceleration; and (2) constant entropy (ds=0), in which T_f is minimal and maximum energy goes into lifting and acceleration. For ds=0, T₁=900 °C and p₁=200 MPa, a water-saturated albitic melt cools by ~200 °C during decompression, but only about 250 °C of this temperature decrease can be attributed to the energy of gas exsolution per se: the remainder results from expansion of gas that has already exsolved. For the same T₁ and p₁, and dh=0, T_f is 10-15 °C hotter than T₁ but is about 10-25 °C cooler than T_f in similar calculations that ignore the energy of gas exsolution. For ds=0, p₁=200 MPa and T₁=9,000 °C, assuming that all the enthalpy change of decompression goes into kinetic energy, a water-saturated albitic mixture can theoretically accelerate to ~800 m/s. Similar calculations that ignore gas exsolution (but take into account gas expansion) give velocities about 10-15% higher. For the same T₁, p_I=200 MPa, and ds=0, the cooling associated with gas expansion and exsolution increases final melt viscosity more than 2.5 orders of magnitude. For dh=0, isenthalpic heating decreases final melt viscosity by about 0.7 orders of magnitude. Thermal effects of gas exsolution are responsible for less than 10% of these viscosity changes. Isenthalpic heating could significantly reduce flow resistance in eruptive conduits if heat generation were concentrated along conduit walls, where shearing is greatest. Isentropic cooling could enhance clast fragmentation in near-surface vents in cases where extremely rapid pressure drops reduce gas temperatures and chill the margins of expanding pyroclasts.