Reaction of forsterite with hydrogen molecules at high pressure and temperature

High pressure and temperature reactions of a mixture of forsterite and hydrogen molecules have been carried out using a laser heated diamond anvil cell at 9.8–13.2 GPa and ~1,000 K. In situ X-ray diffraction measurements showed no sign of decomposition or phase transitions of the forsterite under these experimental conditions, indicating that the olivine structure was maintained throughout all runs. However, a substantial expansion of the unit cell volume of the forsterite was observed for samples down to ~3 GPa upon quenching to ambient pressure at room temperature. The Raman spectroscopy measurements under pressure showed significant shifts of the Raman peaks of the Si–O vibration modes for forsterite and of the intramolecular vibration mode for H₂ molecules toward a lower frequency after heating. Additionally, no OH vibration modes were observed by Raman and FT-IR spectroscopic measurements. These lines of evidence show that the observed volume expansion in forsterite is not explained by the incorporation of hydrogen atoms as hydroxyl, but suggest the presence of hydrogen as molecules in the forsterite structure under these high pressure and temperature conditions.     

Sedimentary humic acid and fulvic acid as surface active substances

Surface tension of sedimentary fulvic acid (FA) and humic acid (HA) with molecular weight from < 10,000 to > 300,000 was measured at 5°C and 25°C, over a wide range of concentrations (0.114-107.4 g/l) at pH 8. HA was in the form of sodium humate. Surface tension decreases with an increase in HA and FA concentration and both HA and FA were found to be surface active materials with FA exhibiting the lowest surface tension (31 dynes/cm).Plots of surface tension vs. log concentration gave two straight lines with a break at a certain concentration similar to surfactants. From the concentration at the break point, aggregation concentration (AGC) was determined. For HA with molecular weight above 10,000, the AGC decreased with an increase in molecular weight. The more hydrophobic the HA, the greater was the tendency to form aggregates. Surface excess (surface concentration) was determined (2.3 × 10^?10?5.5 × 10^?10mol/cn²) from the slope of the plot of surface tension vs. log concentration for concentrations lower than the AGC. Adsorption of HA into the surface layer increased with increasing molecular weight of HA.     

A method for extending a general constitutive model to consider the electro-chemo-mechanical phenomena of mineral crystals in expansive soils

The mechanical behavior of expansive soils varies according to the chemical composition of the pore fluid. It is well known that electrochemical phenomena on the surface of clay mineral crystals considerably affect their macrostructural behavior. In particular, a change in the pore fluid composition causes osmotic consolidation or swelling. In this study, a model is constructed to describe the characteristic behavior of expansive soils by coupling the interlaminar behavior of clay mineral crystals and the soil skeleton behavior. The interlaminar behavior is derived from the electro-chemo-mechanical coupling equilibrium of mineral crystals, and the soil skeleton behavior is given by a general elastoplastic constitutive model for soils. This modeling approach extends a general model to consider the electro-chemo-mechanical phenomena of mineral crystals. Oedometer tests with the replacement of the cell fluid and the swelling pressure and deformation tests on expansive clays are simulated with the proposed model. The simulation results indicate that the proposed method can reasonably represent the typical behavior of expansive soils.     

Observations of Coherent Turbulence Structures in the Near-Neutral Atmospheric Boundary Layer

Turbulence structures of high Reynolds number flow in the near-neutral atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) are investigated based on observations at Shionomisaki and Shigaraki, Japan. A Doppler sodar measured the vertical profiles of winds in the ABL. Using the integral wavelet transform for the time series of surface wind data, the pattern of a descending high-speed structure with large vertical extent (from the surface to more than 200-m level) is depicted from the Doppler sodar data. Essentially this structure is a specific type of coherent structure that has been previously shown in experiments on turbulent boundary-layer flows. Large-scale high-speed structures in the ABL are extracted using a long time scale (240 s) for the wavelet transform. The non-dimensional interval of time between structures is evaluated as 3.0–6.2 in most cases. These structures make a large contribution to downward momentum transfer in the surface layer. Quadrant analyses of the turbulent motion measured by the sonic anemometer (20-m height) suggest that the sweep motion (high-speed downward motion) plays a substantial role in the downward momentum transfer. In general, the contribution of sweep motions to the momentum flux is nearly equal to that of ejection motions (low-speed upward motions). This contribution of sweep motions is related to the large-scale high-speed structures.     

Shattering and coagulation of dust grains in interstellar turbulence

We investigate shattering and coagulation of dust grains in turbulent interstellar medium (ISM). The typical velocity of dust grain as a function of grain size has been calculated for various ISM phases based on a theory of grain dynamics in compressible magnetohydrodynamic turbulence. In this paper, we develop a scheme of grain shattering and coagulation and apply it to turbulent ISM by using the grain velocities predicted by the above turbulence theory. Since large grains tend to acquire large velocity dispersions as shown by earlier studies, large grains tend to be shattered. Large shattering effects are indeed seen in warm ionized medium within a few Myr for grains with radius   a ≳ 10⁻⁶  cm. We also show that shattering in warm neutral medium can limit the largest grain size in ISM  ( a ∼ 2 × 10⁻⁵ cm)  . On the other hand, coagulation tends to modify small grains since it only occurs when the grain velocity is small enough. Coagulation significantly modifies the grain size distribution in dense clouds (DC), where a large fraction of the grains with   a < 10⁻⁶ cm  coagulate in 10 Myr. In fact, the correlation among   R_V   , the carbon bump strength and the ultraviolet slope in the observed Milky Way extinction curves can be explained by the coagulation in DC. It is possible that the grain size distribution in the Milky Way is determined by a combination of all the above effects of shattering and coagulation. Considering that shattering and coagulation in turbulence are effective if dust-to-gas ratio is typically more than ∼1/10 of the Galactic value, the regulation mechanism of grain size distribution should be different between metal-poor and metal-rich environments.     

Micro-FTIR spectroscopic signatures of Bacterial lipids in Proterozoic microfossils

Precambrian microbial fossils show carbonaceous cellular structure, which often resemble in shape and size cyanobacteria and other prokaryotes. Morphological taxonomy of these minute, simple, and more or less degraded fossils is, however, often not enough to determine their precise phylogenetic positions. Here we report the results of micro-FTIR spectroscopic analyses of well-preserved microfossils in 850 Ma and 1900 Ma stromatolites, together with those of 8 species of extant prokaryotes and 5 of eukaryotes for comparison. These Proterozoic fossils have low CH₃/CH₂ absorbance ratios (R_3/2 < 0.5) of aliphatic CH moieties, suggesting selective preservation of long, straight, aliphatic carbon chains probably derived from bacterial membrane lipids. All the observed R_3/2 values of coccoids, filaments and amorphous organic matter resemble lipid fractions of extant Bacteria including cyanobacteria, but not Archaea. The results indicate that Proterozoic microfossils belong to Bacteria, which is consistent with the cyanobacterial origin inferred from morphology. Moreover, the R_3/2 value of fossilized cell would reflect chemical composition of its precursor membrane lipid, thus could be a useful new tracer for distinguishing Archaea, Bacteria and possibly Eucarya for fossilized and extant microorganisms.     

The Kuroshio Current System as a jet and twin “relative” recirculation gyres embedded in the Sverdrup circulation

By analyzing the results of a realistic ocean general circulation model (OGCM) and conducting a series of idealized OGCM experiments, the dynamics of the Kuroshio Current System is examined. In the realistic configuration, the Kuroshio Current System is successfully simulated when the horizontal resolution of OGCMs is increased from 1/2° to 1/10°. The difference between the two experiments shows a jet, the model’s Kuroshio Extension, and a pair of cyclonic and anticyclonic, “relative,” recirculation gyres (RRGs) on the northern and southern flanks of the jet. We call them recirculation gyres because they share some features with ordinary recirculation gyres in previous studies, and we add the adjective “relative” to emphasize that they may not be apparent in the total field. Similar zonal jet and RRGs are obtained also in the idealized model with a rectangular basin and a flat bottom with a horizontal resolution of 1/6°. The northern RRG is generated by the injection of high potential vorticity (PV) created in the viscous sublayer of the western boundary current, indicating the importance of a no-slip boundary condition. Since there is no streamline with such high PV in the Sverdrup interior, the eastward current in the northern RRG region has to lose its PV anomaly by viscosity before connecting to the interior. In the setup stage this injection of high PV is carried out by many eddies generated from the instability of the western boundary current. This high PV generates the northern RRG, which induces the separation of the western boundary current and the formation of the zonal jet. In the equilibrium state, the anomalous high PV values created in the viscous sublayer are carried eastward in the northern flank of the zonal jet. The southern RRG is due to the classical Rhines–Young mechanism, where low PV values are advected northward within the western boundary inertial sublayer, and closed, PV-conserving streamlines form to the south of the Kuroshio Extension, allowing slow homogenization of the low PV anomalies. The westward-flowing southern branch of this southern RRG stabilizes the inertial western boundary current and prevents its separation in the northern half of the Sverdrup subtropical gyre, where the western boundary current is unstable without the stabilizing effect of the southern RRG. Therefore, in the equilibrium state, the southern RRG should be located just to the north of the center of the Sverdrup subtropical gyre, which is defined as the latitude of the Sverdrup streamfunction maximum. The zonal jet (the Kuroshio Extension) and the northern RRG gyre are formed to the north of the southern RRG. This is our central result. This hypothesis is confirmed by a series of sensitivity experiments where the location of the center of the Sverdrup subtropical gyre is changed without changing the boundaries of the subtropical gyre. The locations of the zonal jets in the observed Kuroshio Current System and Gulf Stream are consistent as well. Sensitivities of the model Kuroshio Current System are also discussed with regard to the horizontal viscosity, strength of the wind stress, and coastline.     

Coral Sr/Ca and Mg/Ca records in Con Dao Island off the Mekong Delta: Assessment of their potential for monitoring ENSO and East Asian monsoon

The climate of the South China Sea (SCS) is dominated by the East Asian monsoon (EAM) and can be related to the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) owing to the interaction between ENSO and the EAM. An annually-banded coral (Porites sp.) collected from Con Dao Island in the southern SCS was measured for Sr/Ca and Mg/Ca ratios at near-monthly resolution through the annual bands of AD 1948–1999. This island is only ~ 90 km from the Mekong Delta coast and thus significantly influenced by riverine discharge, suggesting relatively severe environmental stress on corals. The Sr/Ca time series shows a clear annual cyclicity chiefly modulated by sea-surface temperature (SST), whereas the Mg/Ca time series exhibits an indistinct annual cyclicity, indicating that the previously-proposed coral Mg/Ca thermometry is greatly disturbed. An instrumental SST record in Con Dao Island (since 1980) has been compared with the Sr/Ca time series to calibrate a Sr/Ca thermometer. The Sr/Ca vs. SST comparison shows that the Sr/Ca thermometer is sometimes disturbed by some factor and that almost all of the disturbances occur around the annual-maximum SST in the warm/wet season. The Sr/Ca data around the annual-minimum SST in the cool/dry season is almost free from the disturbance and thus useful as a SST proxy. The disturbances of the Sr/Ca and Mg/Ca thermometers may be ascribed to the Mekong River discharge and its accompanying phenomena (i.e., large freshwater input, suspended-sediment loads, intense phytoplankton blooms, etc.), which are likely to disturb coral physiological processes. Applying the Sr/Ca thermometer to the whole Sr/Ca time series provides a SST reconstruction from 1948 through 1999. Reconstructed annual-minimum SSTs show a clear quasi-biennial oscillation significantly correlated with ENSO, indicating that the annual-minimum SST in the southern SCS tends to be higher (lower) in El Niño (La Niña) phases. This is compatible with previous observations that the East Asian winter monsoon is weakened (strengthened) in El Niño (La Niña) phases. The reconstructed SST record suggests a warming of 1.0 °C for the latter half of the 20th century. The Sr/Ca and Mg/Ca time series exhibit similar decadal-to-bidecadal variations, which do not seem to be primarily due to SST variability but rather due to some other factor possibly related to disturbance or fluctuation of coral physiological processes. Although both of our Sr/Ca and Mg/Ca data are affected, to a greater or lesser extent, by some non-temperature factor, a part of the Sr/Ca data provides a useful SST proxy and suggests that coral-based SST reconstruction in the southern SCS may be an effective means for monitoring the EAM and ENSO.     

Late Holocene Asian monsoon variations recorded in Lake Rara sediment,western Nepal

The Himalayas are a key location for understanding centennial‐ to millennial‐scale variations in the Asian monsoon, yet few studies of the late Holocene have been conducted in this sensitive area. Direct evidence for shifts in monsoonal wind strength is often limited to marine proxy records, while terrestrial reconstructions (e.g. lake levels and spleothems) focus on precipitation. Here, we present the first evidence of terrestrial summer monsoon wind strength changes from Lake Rara, western Nepal, based on Mn/Ti ratios, a proxy for lake stratification. These data indicate a link between the Arabian Sea and the Himalayas, suggesting that centennial‐ to millennial‐scale changes in wind strength occurred synchronously. Distinct similarity is also observed between Lake Rara and the southern part of China, which may support previous suggestions that the southern part of China is influenced by Indian summer monsoon. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.