Modelling diatom responses to climate induced fluctuations in the moisture balance in continental Antarctic lakes

The water chemistry of lake systems on the edge of the Antarctic continent responds quickly to changes in the moisture balance. This is expressed as increasing salinity and decreasing lake water level during dry periods, and the opposite during wet periods. The diatom composition of the lakes also changes with these fluctuations in salinity and lake water depth. This is important, as their siliceous remains become incorporated into lake sediments and can provide long-term records of past salinity using transfer functions. In order to develop transfer functions, diatoms and water chemistry data were inter-calibrated from five different East Antarctic oases, namely the Larsemann Hills, the Bølingen Islands, the Vestfold Hills, the Rauer Islands and the Windmill Islands. Results indicate that salinity is the most important environmental variable explaining the variance in the diatom flora in East Antarctic lakes. In oligo- saline lakes the variance is mainly explained by lake water depth. This dataset was used to construct a weighted averaging transfer function for salinity in order to infer historical changes in the moisture balance. This model has a jack-knifed r² of 0.83 and a RMSEP of 0.31. The disadvantage of this transfer function is that salinity changes in oligo-saline lakes are reconstructed inaccurately due to the edge effect and due to the low species turnover along the salinity gradient at its lower end. In order to infer changes in the moisture balance in these lakes, a second transfer function using weighted averaging partial least squares (with two components) for depth was constructed. This model has a jack-knifed r² of 0.76 and a RMSEP of 0.22. Both transfer functions can be used to infer climate driven changes in the moisture balance in lake sediment cores from oligo-, hypo-, meso- and hyper-saline lakes in East Antarctic oases between 102–75°E. The transfer function for lake water depth is promising to track trends in the moisture balance of small freshwater lakes, where changes in shallow and deep-water sediments are readily reflected in changing diatom composition.     

Flow separation at the inner (convex) and outer (concave) banks of constant‐width and widening open‐channel bends

There is a paucity of data and insight in the mechanisms of, and controls on flow separation and recirculation at natural sharply‐curved river bends. Herein we report on successful laboratory experiments that elucidate flow structure in one constant‐width bend and a second bend with an outer‐bank widening. The experiments were performed with both a flat immobile gravel bed and mobile sand bed with dominant bedload sediment transport. In the constant‐width bend with immobile bed, a zone of mainly horizontal flow separation (vertical rotational axis) formed at the inner bank that did not contain detectable flow recirculation, and an outer‐bank cell of secondary flow with streamwise oriented rotational axis. Surprisingly, the bend with widening at the outer bank and immobile bed did not lead to a transverse expansion of the flow. Rather, flow in the outer‐bank widening weakly recirculated around a vertical axis and hardly interacted with the inner part of the bend, which behaved as a constant‐width bend. In the mobile bed experiment, downstream of the bend apex a pronounced depositional bar developed at the inside of the bend and pronounced scour occurred at the outside. Moreover the deformed bed promoted flow separation over the bar, including return currents. In the constant‐width bend, the topographic steering impeded the generation of an outer‐bank cell of secondary flow. In the bend with outer‐bank widening, the topographic steering induced an outward expansion of the flow, whereby the major part of the discharge was conveyed in the central part of the widening section. Flow in the outer‐bank widening was highly three dimensional and included return currents near the bottom. In conclusion, the experiments elucidated three distinct processes of flow separation common in sharp bends: flow separation at the inner bank, an outer‐bank cell of secondary flow, and flow separation and recirculation in an outer‐bank widening. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Active Region Formation through the Negative Effective Magnetic Pressure Instability

The negative effective magnetic-pressure instability operates on scales encompassing many turbulent eddies, which correspond to convection cells in the Sun. This instability is discussed here in connection with the formation of active regions near the surface layers of the Sun. This instability is related to the negative contribution of turbulence to the mean magnetic pressure that causes the formation of large-scale magnetic structures. For an isothermal layer, direct numerical simulations and mean-field simulations of this phenomenon are shown to agree in many details, for example the onset of the instability occurs at the same depth. This depth increases with increasing field strength, such that the growth rate of this instability is independent of the field strength, provided the magnetic structures are fully contained within the domain. A linear stability analysis is shown to support this finding. The instability also leads to a redistribution of turbulent intensity and gas pressure that could provide direct observational signatures.