Effects of 12 years' operation of a sewage treatment plant on trace metal occurrence within a Mediterranean commercial sponge (Spongia officinalis, Demospongiae)

The present field study uses Spongia officinalis for assessing trace metals occurrence in time and space within Mediterranean rocky communities. Nine sites were selected in the Marseille area for studying spatial trends in 12 metal concentrations. Long term changes in 8 metal concentrations were assessed at sites that had been sampled before and 12 years after the opening of a treatment plant. Spongia officinalis highly concentrated all the trace metal surveyed excepted Hg and Cd. The overall contamination level registered provided a classification of the study sites which is congruent with that given by other studies on pollutant accumulation in neighbouring sandy-bottoms or benthic assemblages. Among the metals studied, Fe, Pb, Cr are those that best highlighted a pollution gradient. In the present study, only Cd concentration did not vary in space. Except for Ni, all pollutant concentrations clearly decreased between 1984 and 1999. This very impressive decrease in heavy metal concentrations within the Marseille area represents an indisputable evidence of the improvement of the seawater quality resulting from 12 years' operation of the Marseille sewage plant. Moreover, the significant decrease also recorded in the reference population at Port-Cros might reflect an overall improvement in the seawater quality of the NW Mediterranean.     

Estimating nutrient budgets in tropical estuaries subject to episodic flows

Most Australian estuaries are subject to riverine discharge regimes that are highly episodic. This characteristic poses difficulties for estimating nutrient budgets of such systems based on sampling regimes that do not resolve the discharge variation and the changes in nutrient distributions that they cause. This paper presents a method for calculating nutrient budgets in estuaries having episodic hydrology. The method utilises a simple hydrodynamic transport model that is calibrated using measured salinities and which is used to describe the transport properties of the estuary as they respond to river discharge. Using this transport model, the temporal variation in nutrient concentrations within the estuary can be resolved between sampling surveys even when the discharge events are of short duration. An inverse method is then applied to calculate internal fluxes of nutrients from measurements obtained on successive sampling surveys. The approach is demonstrated through an application to the Fitzroy Estuary in Queensland, Australia.     

Field assessment of innovative sensor for monitoring of sediment accumulation at inshore coral reefs

Sediment accumulation rate is a frequently required parameter in environmental and management studies, in particular near coral reefs where sediment accumulation can potentially cause severe impact. However, opportunities to obtain accurate sediment accumulation measurements are often limited by a lack of adequate instrumentation, in particular for high temporal resolution monitoring. For instance the traditional use of sediment traps, as the most widespread technique, offers poor temporal resolution (commonly of weeks) besides having significant hydrodynamic shortcomings. Therefore, a new optical backscatter sediment accumulation sensor (SAS) was developed to continuously measure in situ short-term sediment accumulation in sensitive riverine and coastal environments, enabling high temporal and vertical resolution (order of 1 h and with a deposited thickness resolution in the order of 20 microm respectively). This allows investigations of various parameters that influence accumulation: tides, current, waves, rain, or anthropogenic activity such as sediment dumping. This paper briefly describes the SAS and presents three field applications on nearshore coral reefs at Ishigaki Island (Japan), Lihir Island (Papua New Guinea), and Magnetic Island (Australia).     

Can dynamite-blasted reefs recover? A novel, low-tech approach to stimulating natural recovery in fish and coral populations

Throughout Southeast Asia, blast fishing creates persistent rubble fields with low coral cover and depauperate fish communities. We stabilized a 20-year-old rubble field in a Marine Protected Area in the Philippines, using plastic mesh and rock piles in replicated 17.5m(2) plots, thereby increasing topographic complexity, fish habitat, and recruitment substrate surface area. Multivariate analysis revealed fish community shifts within the rehabilitated area from that characteristic of rubble fields to one similar to the adjacent healthy reef within three years, as measured by changes in fish abundance and body size. Coral recruitment and percent cover increased over time, with 63.5% recruit survivorship within plots, compared with 6% on rubble. Our low-cost approach created a stable substrate favoring natural recovery processes. Both rehabilitation and the elimination of poaching were integral to success, emphasizing the synergism between the two and the need to incorporate both when considering mitigation.     

温度自动预报系统——英国气象局数值天气预报模式输出统计的应用

1.引言 MOS(模式输出统计)方法,是用来预报那些数值天气预报(NWP)模式不直接表示的气象变量,它的基础是建立固定等压面分散网格点上高度、温度、湿度和风等直接表示变量的数值预报值和地面温度、云高云量及能见度等观测值之间的关系。通常使用多变量线性回归模型来确定这种关系。 PP(完全预报)方法,是建立观测得到的大气变量和感兴趣的“天气”特征之间的关系,在预报时使用数值预报代替观测变量作为预报因子。美国研究组进行了大量的MOS方面的工作,将这一技术方法应用于预报很多天气变量,取得不同程度的成功。其中所设计的地面温度自动预报业务系统,在很大程度上推动了本文所描述的试验。     

Planetary-Scale Wave Structures of the Earth’s Atmosphere Revealed from the COSMIC Observations

GPS radio occultation（GPS RO） method,an active satellite-to-satellite remote sensing technique,is capable of producing accurate,all-weather,round the clock,global refractive index,density,pressure,and temperature profiles of the troposphere and stratosphere.This study presents planetary-scale equatorially trapped Kelvin waves in temperature profiles retrieved using COSMIC（Constellation Observing System for Meteorology,Ionosphere,and Climate） satellites during 2006-2009 and their interactions with background atmospheric conditions.It is found that the Kelvin waves are not only associated with wave periods of higher than 10 days（slow Kelvin waves） with higher zonal wave numbers（either 1 or 2）,but also possessing downward phase progression,giving evidence that the source regions of them are located at lower altitudes.A thorough verification of outgoing longwave radiation（OLR） reveals that deep convection activity has developed regularly over the Indonesian region,suggesting that the Kelvin waves are driven by the convective activity.The derived Kelvin waves show enhanced（diminished） tendencies during westward（eastward） phase of the quasi-biennial oscillation（QBO） in zonal winds,implying a mutual relation between both of them.The El Nino and Southern Oscillation（ENSO） below 18 km and the QBO features between 18 and 27km in temperature profiles are observed during May 2006-May 2010 with the help of an adaptive data analysis technique known as Hilbert Huang Transform（HHT）.Further,temperature anomalies computed using COSMIC retrieved temperatures are critically evaluated during different phases of ENSO,which has revealed interesting results and are discussed in light of available literature.     

Long-Term variability of the indian summer monsoon and related parameters

The long-term variability of the Indian summer monsoon rain-fall and related regional and global param-eters are studied. The cubic spline is used as a digital filter to smooth the high frequency signals in the time series of the various parameters. The length of the data series varies from 95 to 115 years during the period 1871-1985. The parameters studied within the monsoon system are: (a) monsoon rainfall of the country as a whole; (b) number of break-monsoon days during July and August; (c) number of storms/ depressions in Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea during summer monsoon season; and (d) dates of onset of summer monsoon over South Kerala Coast. The parameters studied outside the monsoon system are: (a) the Wright’s Southern Oscillation Index (June-July-August); (b) the January mean Northern Hemi-spheric surface air temperature anomaly; and (c) the East-equatorial Pacific sea surface temperature anomaly.In order to examine the variability under various degrees of the smoothing, the series are filtered with splines of 50% variance reduction frequency of one cycle per 10, 20 and 30 years. It is observed that the smoothed time series of the parameters within the monsoon system comprise a common slowly varying com-ponent in an episodic manner distinctly showing the excess and deficient rainfall epochs. The change of intercorrelations between the time series with increasing degree of smoothing throws some light on the time scales of the dominant interactions. The relation between Southern Oscillation and East equatorial Pacific sea surface temperature and the Indian summer monsoon seems to be dominant on the interannual scale. The low frequency variations are found to have significantly contributed to the instability of the correlations of monsoon rainfall with parameters outside the monsoon system.     

IMPLICIT NONLINEAR NORMAL MODE INITIALIZATION:A MULTIGRID APPROACH

The implicit nonlinear normal mode initialization (INMI) is applied to a tropical limited area shallow water modelin spherical coordinates.The boundary condition for the INMI scheme is based on the boundary formulation of themodel.The INMI scheme is found to be very efficient in suppressing spurious gravity wave oscillation and providing awell balanced initial data set for the model.The INMI scheme involves solving a number of elliptic type equations withvarying complexity.and hence an efficient numerical technique is required for solving such equations.In order to makeINMI computationally more attractive,we are employing the multigrid method for solving all the elliptic type equationsin the INMI scheme.The numerical procedures for the development of such multigrid solvers are briefly described.     

热带气象学——其经济意义及科学任务

载于《世界气象组织公报》1975年7月号。近年来,不管实用方面或科学方面都越来越着眼于热带气象的重要性.在实用方面,农业和水力资源的利用越来越需要热带气象观测资料以及几个月以上的长期天