Fractographic determination of joint length distribution in chalk

Summary Measurements of fracture joint distribution combined with determinations of plume length and orientation on a vertical section of a single chalk layer near Beer Sheva, Israel, reveal that joints marked by unilateral and circular plumes are skewed towards the shorter sizes while joints decorated by bilateral plumes are skewed towards the longer sizes. The mean lengths of the unilateral and bilateral joints are 66.5 cm and 155.6 cm, with standard deviations of 30 cm and 60.6 cm, respectively. These results as well as joint length observations from other areas seem to suggest a bimodal length distribution. However, since the minor maximum is generally very weak, and due to some additional uncertainties, further confirmation of the present observations is needed.     

Bimodality of the South Asia High simulated by coupled models

The observed South Asia High (SAH) center is characterized by two distinctive equilibrium modes during boreal midsummer, namely the center of SAH is located between 82.5^o--92.5^oE for the Tibetan Plateau mode and between 55^o--65^oE for the Iranian Plateau mode, respectively. The present study describes the ability of 15 coupled general circulation models (CGCM) used in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Changes (IPCC) 4th Assessment Report to reproduce the observed bimodality of the SAH. These models reveal a wide range of skill in simulating this bimodality. Nearly half of the models reproduced the bimodality, while the other half of the models did not simulate well these two modes whereas usually preferring one mode. The models that reproduced the bimodality of the SAH present similar horizontal and vertical circulations as those features from the NCEP reanalysis data. The results from these models identify the warm characteristics of the SAH and indicate that these two modes have different dynamic and thermodynamic properties. Different characteristics of the simulated sensible heat and latent heat related to precipitation partly contribute to the difference in the simulations of the SAH bimodality. The majority of these models that prefer to simulate the Tibetan Plateau mode produce a small sensible heat flux difference between the Iranian Plateau and the Tibetan Plateau, and also generally simulate a very strong false precipitation center over the east of the Tibetan Plateau, which indicates strong latent release and thereby contributes to the preference of the SAH center on the Tibetan Plateau. Whereas, the models that reproduce the bimodality of the SAH tend to simulate large precipitation over the southern Himalayas and no obviously false precipitation is produced over the east of the Tibetan Plateau. In addition, the models resolution may also have important impacts on the simulations of precipitation.     

Evolution of an advancing gravel front: observations from Vedder Canal,British Columbia

Channelization of the lowermost part of Vedder River in 1922 initiated a natural experiment relevant to the unresolved question of how abrupt gravel–sand transitions develop along rivers. The new channel (Vedder Canal) had a fine bed and a much lower slope than the gravel‐bed river immediately upstream. Changes in morphology and sedimentology as gravel advanced into and along the Canal are documented using air photos, historical surveys, and fieldwork. The channel aggraded and steepened until stabilized by occasional gravel extraction in recent decades. The deposited material fines progressively along the Canal but the gravel front has retained an abrupt appearance because it has advanced by the sequential development of discrete gravel tops on initially sandy alternate bars. Near the gravel front the bed is highly bimodal and there is a sharper drop in the extent of gravel‐framework surface facies than in bulk gravel content. Ahead of the front, gravel is restricted to thin ribbons which often become buried by migrating sand. Calculations show that even though the gravel bed at the head of the Canal is almost unimodal, size‐selective transport during floods can account for the strong bimodality farther downstream. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Path Transition of the Kuroshio Due to Mesoscale Eddies: A Two-Layer, Wind-Driven Experiment

We have executed numerical experiments using a two-layer, wind-driven ocean model with simplified coastal geometry and bottom topography to investigate the possibility of the Kuroshio path transition due to mesoscale eddies. A straight path easily changes into a meandering path due to the eddy action. For this transition, an anticyclonic eddy is preferable to a cyclonic one when imposed in the beginning region of the Kuroshio (east of Taiwan). When imposed southeast of Kyushu, on the other hand, a cyclonic eddy is more effective than an anticyclonic one. The reverse transition, from a meandering to a straight path, did not occur at all in this experiment. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The Impact of the South Asia High Bimodality on the Chemical Composition of the Upper Troposphere and Lower Stratosphere

The South Asia High (SAH) is the dominant feature of the circulation in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere (UTLS) during the boreal summer,and the upper tropospheric anticyclonic circulation extends into the lower stratosphere.The preferred locations of the center of the SAH occur in two different regions,and the center can be located over the Iranian Plateau or over the Tibetan Plateau.This bimodality has an impact on the distribution of chemical constituents in the UTLS region.We analyzed water vapor (H 2 O),carbon monoxide (CO),and ozone (O 3) data derived from the Aura Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) and total column ozone data from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI).For the Iranian Plateau mode of the SAH,the tropospheric tracers exhib-ited a positive anomaly over the Iranian Plateau and a negative anomaly over the Tibetan Plateau,whereas the stratospheric tracer exhibited a negative and a positive anomaly over the Iranian Plateau and the Tibetan Plateau,respectively.For the Tibetan Plateau mode,however,the distribution of the anomaly was the reverse of that found for the chemical species in the UTLS region.Furthermore,the locations of the extrema within the anomaly seemed to differ across chemical species.The anomaly extrema for H 2 O occurred in the vicinity of the SAH ridgeline,whereas CO and O 3 exhibited a northward shift of 4-8 degrees.These impacts of the variation in the SAH on the chemical constitutes in the UTLS region can be attributed in part to the dynamical structure delineated by the tro-popause field and the temperature field at 100 hPa.     

准周期振荡(QPO)天体GX5-1的双分支谱的唯象分析

本文对小质量X射线双星的准周期振荡的差频模型做了修正和补充。修正的要点是:要考虑柱吸积过程中的粘滞阻尼。由此即可成功地解释QPO天体GX5-1的双分支谱特性。     

Downstream variation in bed sediment size along the East Carpathian rivers: evidence of the role of sediment sources

Taking as an example six main rivers that drain the western flank of the Eastern Carpathians, a conceptual model has been developed, according to which fluvial bed sediment bimodality can be explained by the overlapping of two grain size distribution curves of different origins. Thus, for Carpathian tributaries of the Siret, coarse gravel joins an unimodal distribution presenting a right skewness with enhanced downstream fining. The source of the coarse material distributions is autohtonous (by abrasion and hydraulic sorting mechanisms). A second distribution with a sandy mode is, in general, skewed to the left. The source of the second distribution is allohtonous (the quantity of sand that reaches the river‐bed through the erosion of the hillslope basin terrains). The intersection of the two distributions occurs in the area of the 0·5–8 mm fractions, where, in fact, the right skewness (for gravel) and left skewness (for sand) histogram tails meet. This also explains the lack of particles in the 0·5–8 mm interval. For rivers where fine sediment sources are low, the 0·5–8 mm fractions have a higher proportion than the fractions under 1 mm. For the Siret River itself, bed sediment bimodality is greatly enhanced due to the fact that the second mode is more than 25% of the full sample. As opposed to its tributaries, the source of the first mode, of gravel, is allohtonous to the Siret river, generated by the massive input of coarse sediment through the Carpathian tributaries, while the second mode, of the sands, is local. In this case we can also observe that the two distributions of particles of different origins overlap in the 0·5–8 mm fraction domain, creating the illusion of ‘particle lack’ in the fluvial bed sediments. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Sedimentological analysis of the tephra from the 12–15 August 1991 eruption of Hudson volcano

The tephra fallout from the 12–15 August 1991 explosive eruption of Hudson volcano (Cordillera de los Andes, 45°54 S-72°58 W; Chile) was dispersed on a narrow, elongated ESE sector of Patagonia, covering an area (on land) of more than 100 000 km². The elongated shape of the deposit, together with the relatively coarse mean and median values of the particles at a considerable distance from the vent, were the result of strong winds blowing to the southeast during the eruption. The thickness of the fall deposit decreases up to 250 km ESE from Hudson volcano, where it begins to thicken again. Secondary maxima are well developed at approximately 500 km from the vent. Secondary maxima, together with grainsize bimodality in individual layers and in the bulk deposit suggest that particle aggregation played an important role in tephra sedimentation. The fallout deposit is well stratified, with alternating fine-grained and coarsegrained layers, which is probably a result of strong eruptive pulses followed by relatively calm periods and/or changes in the eruptive style from plinian to phreatoplinian. The tephra is mostly composed of juvenile material: the coarse mode (mostly pumice) shifts to finer sizes with distance from the volcano; the fine mode (mostly glass shards) is always about 5/6 phi. Glass shards and pumice are mostly light gray to colorless. However, considerable amounts of dark, poorly vesiculated, blocky shards, suggest a hydromagmatic component in the eruption. A land-based tephra volume of 4.35 km³ was estimated, and a total volume of 7.6 km³ arose from an extrapolation, which took into account the probable volume sedimented in the sea. Bulk density ranges from 0.9 to 1.10 gr/cm³ (beyond 110 km from the vent). Rather uniform density values measured in crushed samples (2.45–2.50 gr/cm³ at all distances from the vent) reveal a relatively homogeneous composition. Mean and median sizes decrease rapidly up to 270 km from the vent; beyond that point they are more or less constant, whereas the maximum size (1 phi) shows a steady decrease up to 550 km. A concomitant improvement in sorting is observed. This is attributed to sorting due to wind transport combined with particle aggregation at different times and distances from the vent. The Hudson tephra fallout shares some strikingly similar features with the Mount St. Helens (18 May 1980) and Quizapu (1932) eruptions.     

The bimodality of the Luzon Strait deep water

Combined conductivity-temperature-depth(CTD) casts and Argo profiles, 3 086 historical hydrocasts were used to quantify the water column characteristics in the northern South China Sea(SCS) and its adjacent waters. Based on a two-dimensional "gravest empirical mode"(GEM), a gravitational potential(, a vertically integrated variable) was used as proxy for the vertical temperature profiles TG(p,). integrated from 8 MPa to the surface shows a close relationship with the temperature, except in the deep layer greater than 15 MPa, which was caused by the bimodal deep water in the region. The GEM temperature profiles successfully revealed the bimodality of the Luzon Strait deep water, that disparate hydrophic vertical profiles can produce distinct specific volume anomaly() in the SCS and the western Philippine Sea(WPS), but failed in the Luzon Strait, where different temperature profiles may produce a same. A significant temperature divergence between the SCS water and the WPS water confirmed that the bimodal structure is strong. The deepwater bifurcation starts at about 15 MPa, and gets stronger with increasing depth. As the only deep channel connecting the bimodal-structure waters, water column characteristics in the Luzon Strait is in between, but much closer to the SCS water because of its better connectivity with the SCS. A bimodal temperature structure below 15 MPa reveals that there was a persistent baroclinic pressure gradient driving flow through the Luzon Strait. A volume flux predicted through the Bashi Channel with the hydraulic theory yields a value of 5.62×106 m3/s using all available profiles upstream and downstream of the overflow region, and 4.03×106and 2.70×106 m3/s by exclusively using the profiles collected during spring and summer, respectively. No volume flux was calculated during autumn and winter because profiles are only available for the upstream of the Bashi Channel during the corresponding period.     

我国青藏高原气候动力学研究的近期进展

文章回顾了我国在青藏高原气象学的基础上发展起来的青藏高原气候动力学研究的近期进展；指出了青藏高原“感热驱动气泵(SHAP)”在调制东亚季风及全球气候中的重要作用；在强调全球海陆分布所产生的“四叶型”加热L0SECOD激发出夏季副热带基本环流型的基础上指出高原的隆升增强了东亚季风的北伸；论述与青藏高原抬升相联系的高原负涡度源所激发的Rossby波对全球气候异常的影响，指出春季青藏高原的表面感热加热是造成东亚环流季节突变的重要原因，并导致亚洲夏季风首先在孟加拉湾东部地区爆发；还就进一步发展青藏高原气候动力学问题作了探讨。