Interpretation of SOFIE PMC measurements: Cloud identification and derivation of mass density,particle shape,and particle size

The Solar Occultation For Ice Experiment (SOFIE) was launched onboard the Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere (AIM) spacecraft to measure polar mesospheric clouds (PMCs) and their environment. This work describes methods for identifying PMCs in SOFIE observations and determining mass density, particle shape, particle effective radius, and the parameters of a Gaussian size distribution. Results using SOFIE measurements from the northern summer of 2007 are compared with concurrent observations by the ALOMAR lidar in northern Norway. Ice particle properties determined from SOFIE are in good agreement with the lidar results, considering the differences in instrument characteristics.     

Reconstruction of the Late Holocene climate and environmental history from North Bolgoda Lake,Sri Lanka,using lipid biomarkers and pollen records

The catastrophic impact and unpredictability of the Indian Ocean Monsoon (IOM) over South Asia are evident from devastating floods, mudslides and droughts in one of the most densely populated regions of the globe. However, our understanding as to how the IOM has varied in the past, as well as its impact on local environments, remains limited. This is particularly the case for Sri Lanka, where erosional landscapes have limited the availability of well-stratified, high-resolution terrestrial archives. Here, we present novel data from an undisturbed sediment core retrieved from the coastal Bolgoda Lake. This includes the presentation of a revised Late Holocene age model as well as an innovative combination of pollen, source-specific biomarkers, and compound-specific stable carbon isotopes of n-alkanes to reconstruct the shifts in precipitation, salinity and vegetation cover. Our record documents variable climate between 3000 years and the present, with arid conditions c. 2334 and 2067 cal a bp. This extreme dry period was preceded and followed by more wet conditions. The high-resolution palaeoenvironmental reconstruction fills a major gap in our knowledge on the ramifications of IOM shifts across South Asia and provides insights during a time of major redistribution of dense human settlements across Sri Lanka.     

Implications of the principle of effective stress

Acta Geotechnica - While Terzaghi justified his principle of effective stress for water-saturated soil empirically, it can be derived by means of the neutrality of the mineral with respect to...     

Decadal-scale variations of water mass properties in the deep Weddell Sea

Data from cruises between 1989 and 2003 with FS Polarstern were used to construct section-wide potential temperature and salinity time series of the main water masses in the Weddell Gyre. In tandem with these CTD data, two time series between 1989 and 1995 are presented from moored instruments in the central Weddell Sea. The regional and methodological consistency of the dataset allows us to quantify variations which are not visible in less homogeneous datasets. The data reveal significant temperature and salinity variations of the Warm Deep Water and the Weddell Sea Bottom Water on a decadal time scale. The longest time series were obtained at the prime meridian. Here warming is observed in the Warm Deep Water from 1992 to 1998 followed by cooling. In the Weddell Sea proper, measurements of instruments moored in the Weddell Sea Bottom Water layer recorded a temperature increase over 6 years at a rate of 0.01 °C a^–1. After the mooring period, CTD casts in 1998 point to a weakening of the trend. The warming trend in the bottom water occurs over most of the Weddell Sea, as detected in the additional CTD surveys. The variations are close to the detection level in the voluminous Weddell Sea Deep Water. The initial warming trend of the Warm Deep Water is consistent with warming trends reported in literature of subsurface waters of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. The reversal of the trend in the Weddell Sea seems to be related to variations of the atmospheric conditions which can affect both the intrusion of Circumpolar Deep Water from the north and the circulation of the Weddell Gyre. Because the Warm Deep Water is the major source water for the formation of deep and bottom water in the Weddell Sea, it is suggested that its increase in temperature and salinity is likely to at least partly cause the variations which were observed in the bottom water.Responsible Editor: Jörg-Olaf Wolff     

Geochemical Fingerprinting of Coltan Ores by Machine Learning on Uneven Datasets

Two modern machine learning techniques, Linear Programming Boosting (LPBoost) and Support Vector Machines (SVMs), are introduced and applied to a geochemical dataset of niobium–tantalum (“coltan”) ores from Central Africa to demonstrate how such information may be used to distinguish ore provenance, i.e., place of origin. The compositional data used include uni- and multivariate outliers and elemental distributions are not described by parametric frequency distribution functions. The “soft margin” techniques of LPBoost and SVMs can be applied to such data. Optimization of their learning parameters results in an average accuracy of up to c. 92%, if spot measurements are assessed to estimate the provenance of ore samples originating from two geographically defined source areas. A parameterized performance measure, together with common methods for its optimization, was evaluated to account for the presence of uneven datasets. Optimization of the classification function threshold improves the performance, as class importance is shifted towards one of those classes. For this dataset, the average performance of the SVMs is significantly better compared to that of LPBoost.