A late Holocene paleoclimatic history of Lake Tanganyika, East Africa

A nearshore core (LT03-05) from the north basin of Lake Tanganyika provides diatom, pollen, and sedimentary time series covering the last ca. 3800 yr at 15-36 yr resolution. A chronology supported by 21 AMS dates on terrestrial and lacustrine materials allows us to account for ancient carbon effects on ¹⁴C ages and to propose refinements of the region's climatic history. Conditions drier than those of today were followed after ca. 3.30 ka by an overall wetting trend. Several century-scale climate variations were superimposed upon that trend, with exceptionally rainy conditions occurring 1.70-1.40 ka, 1.15-0.90 ka, 0.70-0.55 ka, and 0.35-0.20 ka. Around 0.55-0.35 ka, during the Spörer sunspot minimum, drier conditions developed in the northern Tanganyika basin while more humid conditions were registered at Lakes Victoria and Naivasha. This indicates significant variability in the nature and distribution of near-equatorial rainfall anomalies during much of the Little Ice Age.     

Regaining momentum for international climate policy beyond Copenhagen

The 'Copenhagen Accord' fails to deliver the political framework for a fair, ambitious and legally-binding international climate agreement beyond 2012. The current climate policy regime dynamics are insufficient to reflect the realities of topical complexity, actor coalitions, as well as financial, legal and institutional challenges in the light of extreme time constraints to avoid 'dangerous' climate change of more than 2°C. In this paper we analyze these stumbling blocks for international climate policy and discuss alternatives in order to regain momentum for future negotiations.     

Navigating the dilemmas of climate policy in Europe: evidence from policy evaluation studies

Climate change is widely recognised as a ‘wicked’ policy problem. Agreeing and implementing governance responses is proving extremely difficult. Policy makers in many jurisdictions now emphasise their ambition to govern using the best available evidence. One obvious source of such evidence is the evaluations of the performance of existing policies. But to what extent do these evaluations provide insights into the difficult dilemmas that governors typically encounter? We address this question by reviewing the content of 262 evaluation studies of European climate policies in the light of six kinds of dilemma found in the governance literature. We are interested in what these studies say about the performance of European climate policies and in their capacity to inform evidence-based policy-making. We find that the evaluations do arrive at common findings: that climate change is framed as a problem of market and/or state failure; that voluntary measures tend to be ineffective; that market-based instruments tend to be regressive; that EU-level policies have driven climate policies in the latecomer EU Member States; and that lack of monitoring and weak enforcement are major obstacles to effective policy implementation. However, we also conclude that the evidence base these studies represent is surprisingly weak for such a high profile area. There is too little systematic climate policy evaluation work in the EU to support systematic evidence-based policy making. This reduces the scope for sound policy making in the short run and is a constraint to policy learning in the longer term.     

Water renewal along the aquatic continuum offsets cumulative retention by lakes: implications for the character of organic carbon in boreal lakes

The character of organic carbon (OC) in lake waters is strongly dependent on the time water has spent in the landscape as well as in the lake itself due to continuous biogeochemical OC transformation processes. A common view is that upstream lakes might prolong the water retention in the landscape, resulting in an altered OC character downstream. We calculated the number of lakes upstream for 24,742 Swedish lakes in seven river basins spanning from 56º to 68º N. For each of these lakes, we used a lake volume to discharge comparison on a landscape scale to account for upstream water retention by lakes (T_{n tot}). We found a surprisingly weak relationship between the number of lakes upstream and T_{n tot}. Accordingly, we found that the coloured fraction of organic carbon was not related to lake landscape position but significantly related to T_{n tot} when we analysed lake water chemical data from 1,559 lakes in the studied river basins. Thus, we conclude that water renewal along the aquatic continuum by lateral water inputs offsets cumulative retention by lakes. Based on our findings, we suggest integrating T_{n tot} in studies that address lake landscape position in the boreal zone to better understand variations in the character of organic carbon across lake districts.     

Bioassay‐directed fractionation for analyzing estrogens in surface waters of the German Baltic Sea

A reversed‐phase fractionation method with subsequent biological and chemical analysis has been developed to estimate the contributions of the most potent estrogens to observed estrogenic effect potentials. Surface water samples were taken in the German Baltic Sea (Inner Wismar Bay and Darss Peninsula, sampling campaign July 2003) and were separated into seven individual fractions. Three fractions showed significant estrogenic activities and clear dose‐dependant responses were obtained in the yeast estrogen screen (YES). In the 2nd fractions liquid chromatographic‐electrospray‐tandem mass spectrometric (LC‐ESI‐MS‐MS) analyses showed the presence of bisphenol A (Inner Wismar Bay: 4.8 ng L^–1 and 6 ng L^–1; Darss Peninsula: 0.91 ng L^–1 and 1.7 ng L^–1) and ethinylestradiol (Inner Wismar Bay: 2.0 ng L^–1 and 6.0 ng L^–1; Darss Peninsula: < MDL and 1.7 ng L^–1), whereas estrogenic activities in the YES were only around 10% of the positive control E2. Although not identified prior in the total extract the natural hormones estradiol (Inner Wismar Bay: 0.13 ng L^–1 and 0.19 ng L^–1; Darss Peninsula: 0.12 ng L^–1 and 0.16 ng L^–1) and estriol (Inner Wismar Bay: < MDL and 0.33 ng L^–1; Darss Peninsula: < MDL) could be detected in the 3rd fractions, where high estrogenic potentials could be observed. The 4th fractions showed high responses as well and estrone were herein quantified with concentrations of 0.16 ng L^–1 and 0.18 ng L^–1 (Darss Peninsula) up to 0.37 ng L^–1 (Inner Wismar Bay). Measured and calculated estradiol equivalents for individual fractions correlated very well (R² = 0.78), when disregarding results of the 2nd fraction, where high deviations occurred.     

Extreme events,trends, and variability in Northern Hemisphere lake-ice phenology (1855–2005)

Often extreme events, more than changes in mean conditions, have the greatest impact on the environment and human well-being. Here we examine changes in the occurrence of extremes in the timing of the annual formation and disappearance of lake ice in the Northern Hemisphere. Both changes in the mean condition and in variability around the mean condition can alter the probability of extreme events. Using long-term ice phenology data covering two periods 1855–6 to 2004–5 and 1905–6 to 2004–5 for a total of 75 lakes, we examined patterns in long-term trends and variability in the context of understanding the occurrence of extreme events. We also examined patterns in trends for a 30-year subset (1975–6 to 2004–5) of the 100-year data set. Trends for ice variables in the recent 30-year period were steeper than those in the 100- and 150-year periods, and trends in the 150-year period were steeper than in the 100-year period. Ranges of rates of change (days per decade) among time periods based on linear regression were 0.3−1.6 later for freeze, 0.5−1.9 earlier for breakup, and 0.7−4.3 shorter for duration. Mostly, standard deviation did not change, or it decreased in the 150-year and 100-year periods. During the recent 50-year period, standard deviation calculated in 10-year windows increased for all ice measures. For the 150-year and 100-year periods changes in the mean ice dates rather than changes in variability most strongly influenced the significant increases in the frequency of extreme lake ice events associated with warmer conditions and decreases in the frequency of extreme events associated with cooler conditions.     

Long-term changes in physical and chemical conditions of nutrient-poor lakes along a latitudinal gradient: is there a coherent phytoplankton community response?

To evaluate climate and atmospheric deposition induced physical and water chemical changes and their effects on phytoplankton communities, we used complete time series (14 years, monthly measurements during the growing season) of 18 physical and chemical variables and phytoplankton data from 13 nutrient-poor Swedish reference lakes along a latitudinal gradient. We found numerous strong significant changes over time that were most coherent among lakes for sulfate concentrations, conductivity, calcium, magnesium, chloride, potassium, water color, surface water temperature and the intensity of thermal stratification. Despite these pronounced coherent physical and water chemical changes over Sweden, the phytoplankton biomass and species richness of six phytoplankton groups, measured at the same time as the water chemical variables, showed only few and weak significant changes over time. The only coherent significant change over Sweden, occurring in seven lakes, was observed in the species richness of chlorophytes. The number of chlorophyte taxa significantly declined over Sweden. Using a partial least square model for each lake, we attributed the decline primarily to an increase in water temperatures and water color, which were among the most important variables for the model performance of each lake. All other taxonomic groups were driven primarily by non-coherent changes in nutrient concentrations, pH and probably also non-coherent grazing pressure. We concluded that coherent phytoplankton responses can only be achieved for taxonomic groups that are driven primarily by coherent physical/chemical changes. According to our study, chlorophytes belong to such a group, making them possible global change indicators. Our findings give new insights into global change effects on different phytoplankton taxonomic groups in nutrient-poor lakes.     

Monitoring the sedimentary budget and dislocated boulders in western Greece – results since 2008

Dislocated boulders are one sign of high-energy wave impacts on coasts. These high-energy impacts, caused by severe storms or tsunamis, can trigger initial cracking and transport of boulders. Monitoring of these boulders, as well as the associated coastal sites is important in distinguishing between gradual coastal processes and high-energy events. Western Greece is a seismically active area, where tsunamis and high-energetic storms might occur and such past events are documented by historic and geoscientific research, making it an ideal location for monitoring dislocated boulders. Since 2008, monitoring of eight different coastal sites in this region was conducted by terrestrial laser scanning and photogrammetric approaches, with low-cost unmanned aerial vehicles. The re-use of similar surveying points in following years, allowed highly accurate monitoring. Point clouds derived from these methods were evaluated for change detection by point cloud comparisons. The data were also used to establish accurate three-dimensional models of dislocated boulders (n = 70). The determined boulder volumes of these accurate three-dimensional models were incorporated in wave transport equations and wave decay curves, and compared with monitoring results. A comprehensive overview of dislocated boulders in western Greece is presented. Three-dimensional boulder reconstruction is compared to an approach which uses a tape-based measuring of boulder axes, with the tape-based measurement showing a mean overestimation of mass by 32%. Accurate monitoring over time by both methods, is achieved by using fixed networks of reference points. Changes for each site over time, detected by direct point cloud comparisons, are fit to the possible inundation calculated by wave decay curves based on computed minimum wave heights for boulder transport. Both storm and tsunami waves may have initiated movement from the cliff edge and further transport is also possible. However, boulders showed no further movement from their current position in the area for the time period of this study.