Crustal observations beneath the southern North Sea and their tectonic and geological implications

In 1991, a deep seismic reflection line, MPNI-9101, was acquired in the southern North Sea from the Mesozoic Broad Fourteens Basin, across the West Netherlands Basin onto the London-Brabant Massif (LBM). The resultant section shows a strongly reflective lower crust beneath the area of Mesozoic basin development. This lower crustal reflectivity continues to be strong beneath the LBM. The travel time to the base of the reflective zone increases from approximately 11.0 s beneath the Mesozoic basins to 12.5 s beneath the LBM, suggesting a southward thickening of the crust (Rijkers et al., 1993). Based on these travel times and information from deep wells and refraction surveys. Moho depth is estimated to increase from about 31 km beneath the Mesozoic basins to about 38 km beneath the LBM. This difference in depth to the Moho can partly be explained by coaxial stretching of the crust beneath the Mesozoic basins. In comparison with the Mesozoic basins, the crust beneath the LBM was thickened during the Caledonian and Variscan orogenies.     

New Data on the Middle–Late Holocene Evolution of Vegetation Cover in the Northern Baikal Region

Doklady Earth Sciences - A continuous peat bog section from a barely accessible mid-mountain area in the northwestern Baikal region has been obtained for the first time. The materials were studied...     

Kleinraummeteorologische Studien im Federseegebiet in Strahlungsnächten

Zusammenfassung Die vorliegende Studie befaßt sich mit den meteorologischen Vorgängen in einer extrem stabil aufgebauten Kaltluft, wie sie sich in Strahlungsnächten in einem abgeschlossenen Becken mit ebener, horizontaler Talsohle von einigen Kilometern Ausdehnung und im wesentlichen einheitlichem Untergrund einer Moorlandschaft herausbildet.Untersucht wird in erster Linie das Eigenleben der so abgeschlossenen Luftmasse. Dabei zeigt sich, daß der Zustand eines ruhenden Kaltluftsees zumeist erst im Endstadium des nächtlichen Prozesses näherungsweise erreicht wird. Während des größten Teiles der Nacht kommen vielmehr überraschend lebhafte und weitreichende angenähert horizontale Bewegungen leicht zustande, die sich im thermischen Gefüge wie in der Windstruktur kundtun und in dem Verhalten der Nebel- und Dunstfelder sichtbar werden. Unter der Wirkung von Schwerkraft, Druckgefälle und Reibung entstehen einfache Gleitvorgänge, Schaukelbewegungen, fortschreitende Wellen und Seiches, die in einzelnen Beispielen beschrieben werden. Ähnlich wie in der Großraummeteorologie bilden sich durch das quantenhafte Verhalten der Energieumsätze Luftkörperindividuen, deren Deformation hier einfacheren Gesetzen folgt. Trotz ihrer sehr verschiedenen Größenordnung von einigen Dekametern bis zu mehreren Kilometern Ausdehnung bei geringer vertikaler Mächtigkeit zeigen sie auf ihrer Vorderseite einheitlich die Form des vonW. Schmidt in Modellversuchen gefundenen Böenkopfes.Der Einfluß höherer Luftschichten auf die stabilisierte Bodenkaltluft äußert sich in aufgeprägten Wellen und Frendlufteinschüben. Das Beispiel eines nächtlichen Wärmeeinbruchs aus der Höhe wird eingehend beschrieben.

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Summary The present study deals with the meteorological processes in an extremely stable cold air, formed in clear nights in a confined basin with a plane, horizontal basis extended for some kilometres, and with an essentially uniform ground in a fen-country.In the first place the proper life of the so limited air is studied. It becomes evident, that the state of a resting lake of cold air generally is approximately reached but in the final phase of the night-time process. Moreover, for the greater part of the night surprising active and extended movements of nearly horizontal course easily occur, becoming evident in the structure of wind and temperature stratification and also visible in the behaviour of fog and haze fields. Produced by gravitation, pressure gradient and friction, simple gliding and swinging motions, proceeding waves and seiches result which are described in single examples. Corresponding to the large scale meteorology individual air bodies form by the quantum-like behaviour of energy transformations. Their deformation in this case however, takes course according to simpler laws. In spite of their much various magnitude of the dimensions of some decametres up to several kilometres, while being of small vertical extension they show in their fore part in all cases the shape of a Böenkopf as found byW. Schmidt by model experiments.The influence of upper atmospheric layers on the stable cold air near the ground manifests itself by impressed waves and by influxes of heterogeneous air. An example of a nocturnal invasion of warm air from aloft is described in detail.

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Résumé Cette étude traite des processus météorologiques dans un air froid d'une stratification extrêmement stable, qui se développent pendant des nuits claires dans un bassin fermé, ayant une base plane et horizontale, d'une étendue de quelques km, et recouverte par le sol essentiellement homogène d'une région marécageuse.C'est surtout la «vie propre» de cette masse d'air limitée qui est étudiée. Il se trouve que, le plus souvent, l'état d'un «lac immobile d'air froid» n'est atteint approximativement qu'à la fin du processus nocturne. Pendant la plus grande partie de la nuit, se produisent au contraire facilement des mouvements presque horizontaux étonnamment actifs et étendus, qui se manifestent dans la structure thermique et du vent, et qui deviennent visibles par le comportement des couches de brouillard et de brume. De simples processus de glissement, des oscillations, des ondes progressives et des seiches se forment sous l'influence de la gravitation, du gradient de pression et du frottement; ils sont décrits par des exemples particuliers. Comme cela se produit dans la météorologie à grande échelle, il se forme des corps atmosphériques individuels à la suite du comportement en quanta des transformations d'énergie. Leur déformation a lieu cependant selon des lois plus simples. En dépit de leur étendue très variable allant de quelques decamètres à plusieurs km, et leur épaisseur peu considérable, ils montrent tous à leur partie antérieure la forme d'un «Böenkopf», pareil à celui queW. Schmidt a trouvé à la suite de ses expériences qu'il fit avec des modèles.L'influence des couches supérieures de l'atmosphère sur l'air froid stable au sol se manifeste par l'impression d'ondes et par des apports d'air étranger. On décrit ensuite en détail une invasion nocturne d'air chaud depuis les couches supérieures.

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Mit 13 Textabbildungen.

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Herrn Prof. Dr.W. Peppler, zum 70. Geburtstag.     

R. E. (Ted) Munn — Founding editor; a mini-biography

Ted Munn founded Boundary-Layer Meteorology in 1970 and served as Editor for 75 volumes over a 25 year period. This short article briefly reviews Ted's scientific career with the Atmospheric Environment Service (of Canada), the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria and with the Institute of Environmental Studies at the University of Toronto, and as editor of this journal.     

Real-time multi-model decadal climate predictions

We present the first climate prediction of the coming decade made with multiple models, initialized with prior observations. This prediction accrues from an international activity to exchange decadal predictions in near real-time, in order to assess differences and similarities, provide a consensus view to prevent over-confidence in forecasts from any single model, and establish current collective capability. We stress that the forecast is experimental, since the skill of the multi-model system is as yet unknown. Nevertheless, the forecast systems used here are based on models that have undergone rigorous evaluation and individually have been evaluated for forecast skill. Moreover, it is important to publish forecasts to enable open evaluation, and to provide a focus on climate change in the coming decade. Initialized forecasts of the year 2011 agree well with observations, with a pattern correlation of 0.62 compared to 0.31 for uninitialized projections. In particular, the forecast correctly predicted La Niña in the Pacific, and warm conditions in the north Atlantic and USA. A similar pattern is predicted for 2012 but with a weaker La Niña. Indices of Atlantic multi-decadal variability and Pacific decadal variability show no signal beyond climatology after 2015, while temperature in the Niño3 region is predicted to warm slightly by about 0.5 °C over the coming decade. However, uncertainties are large for individual years and initialization has little impact beyond the first 4 years in most regions. Relative to uninitialized forecasts, initialized forecasts are significantly warmer in the north Atlantic sub-polar gyre and cooler in the north Pacific throughout the decade. They are also significantly cooler in the global average and over most land and ocean regions out to several years ahead. However, in the absence of volcanic eruptions, global temperature is predicted to continue to rise, with each year from 2013 onwards having a 50 % chance of exceeding the current observed record. Verification of these forecasts will provide an important opportunity to test the performance of models and our understanding and knowledge of the drivers of climate change.     

The potential to narrow uncertainty in projections of regional precipitation change

We separate and quantify the sources of uncertainty in projections of regional (～2,500 km) precipitation changes for the twenty-first century using the CMIP3 multi-model ensemble, allowing a direct comparison with a similar analysis for regional temperature changes. For decadal means of seasonal mean precipitation, internal variability is the dominant uncertainty for predictions of the first decade everywhere, and for many regions until the third decade ahead. Model uncertainty is generally the dominant source of uncertainty for longer lead times. Scenario uncertainty is found to be small or negligible for all regions and lead times, apart from close to the poles at the end of the century. For the global mean, model uncertainty dominates at all lead times. The signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) of the precipitation projections is highest at the poles but less than 1 almost everywhere else, and is far lower than for temperature projections. In particular, the tropics have the highest S/N for temperature, but the lowest for precipitation. We also estimate a ‘potential S/N’ by assuming that model uncertainty could be reduced to zero, and show that, for regional precipitation, the gains in S/N are fairly modest, especially for predictions of the next few decades. This finding suggests that adaptation decisions will need to be made in the context of high uncertainty concerning regional changes in precipitation. The potential to narrow uncertainty in regional temperature projections is far greater. These conclusions on S/N are for the current generation of models; the real signal may be larger or smaller than the CMIP3 multi-model mean. Also note that the S/N for extreme precipitation, which is more relevant for many climate impacts, may be larger than for the seasonal mean precipitation considered here.     

An experimental comparison of three direct methods of marine source signature estimation

Three methods for estimation of the pressure wavefield generated by a marine airgun array are tested experimentally and compared. In the trial a variety of radiation angles and array configurations were used and some large synchronization errors were deliberately introduced. The source was equipped with near-field hydrophones and a subsource ministreamer. A tethered far-field hydrophone was used so that the three estimated far-field signatures could be compared with an independent measurement. The knowledge of the source signature is important for on-board source array QC, deconvolution, multiple attenuation, stratigraphic trap prediction, modelling and inversion, AVO analysis and reservoir monitoring. The methods perform very well and give estimates whose frequency-domain spectra match the measured spectra to within a few dB and within a few tens of degrees of phase over the tested bandwidth of 3.5–110 Hz. The time-domain error-energy is typically only a few per cent of the signal energy for radiation angles within about 30° of the vertical. The third method proved to be sensitive to an experimental shortcoming leading to overloading of the ministreamer and meaningful comparison was not possible for some test configurations.     

Rough seas and statistical deconvolution

The rough‐sea reflection‐response varies (1) along the streamer (2) from shot to shot and (3) with time along the seismic trace. The resulting error in seismic data can be important for time‐lapse imaging. One potential way of reducing the rough‐sea receiver error is to use conventional statistical deconvolution, but special care is needed in the choice of the design and application windows. The well‐known deconvolution problem associated with the non‐whiteness of the reflection series is exacerbated by the requirement of an unusually short design window – a requirement that is imposed by the non‐stationary nature of the rough‐sea receiver wavelet. For a synthetic rough‐sea data set, with a white 1D reflection series, the design window needs to be about 1000 ms long, with an application window about 400 ms long, centred within the design window. Although such a short design window allows the deconvolution operator to follow the time‐variation of the rough‐sea wavelet, it is likely to be too short to prevent the non‐whiteness of the geology from corrupting the operator when it is used on real data. If finely spatial‐sampled traces are available from the streamer, the design window can be extended to neighbouring traces, making use of the spatial correlations of the rough‐sea wavelet. For this ‘wave‐following’ approach to be fruitful, the wind (and hence the dominant wave direction) needs to be roughly along the line of the streamer.     

Beyond world cities: Central America in a global space of flows

Central America is a region without a world city. Traditionally, the region's national projects have been based upon openness to the world economy: how do the region's contemporary transnational projects connect to the world economy under the new conditions of openness that is contemporary globalization? Focusing upon advanced producer services, three connections into the world city network are identified: global service firms operating directly in Central American cities, local service firms operating indirectly through extra-regional world cities and global service firms operating through Latin American regional offices. Miami is confirmed as the primary world city through which Central America connects into the world economy     

Trace metals in porewater of surface sediments and their bioavailability in Jiaozhou Bay,Qingdao, China

Samples of porewater and the edible tissue of mottled clams, Ruditapes variegatus, were collected simultaneously at each of 12 stations from Jiaozhou Bay near Qingdao, China, in June of 2003. Chemical analysis focused on trace metals and major elements. Porewater concentrations of Cd, Cr, Pb, and Zn were distributed in a bimodal fashion among the 12 stations, with mean concentrations at six of the stations being 8–32 times mean values at the other six stations. The concentrations of the same metals in clams were remarkably similar among stations, the coefficients of variation being only 12–37%. Calculations performed with the computer program PHREEQC indicated that Pb and Cr in porewater were present only in the +2 and +3 states, respectively, and because dissolved Cd and Zn exist only in the +2 state, the bimodal distribution of these four metals likely reflects secondary effects associated with their scavenging by Fe and/or Mn under oxidizing conditions and subsequent dissolution in the reducing environment of the porewaters. Consistent with this hypothesis is the fact that the distribution of high and low metal concentrations was closely correlated with the granularity of the sediment, with lower metal concentrations associated with relatively coarse sediment. Comparison of published biological concentration factors with the ratios of metal concentrations in the clams to porewater metal concentrations indicated that the porewaters were not the primary sources of the metals in the clams. Mixing processes in the bay likely account for the rather uniform concentrations of metals in clam tissue.