scholarly journals A high-altitude snow chemistry record from Amundsenisen, Dronning Maud Land, Antarctica

2001 ◽  
Vol 47 (158) ◽  
pp. 489-496 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Isaksson ◽  
Wibjörn Karlén ◽  
Paul Mayewski ◽  
Mark Twickler ◽  
Sallie Whitlow

AbstractIn this paper a detailed record of major ions from a 20 m deep firn core from Amundsenisen, western Dronning Maud Land, Antarctica, is presented. The core was drilled at 75° S, 2° E (2900 m a.s.l.) during austral summer 1991/92. The following ions were measured at 3 cm resolution: Na+, Mg2+, Ca2+, Cl−, NO3−, S042− and CH3SO3H (MSA). The core was dated back to 1865 using a combination of chemical records and volcanic reference horizons. The volcanic eruptions identified in this core are Mount Ngauruhoe, New Zealand (1974–75), Mount Agung, Indonesia (1963), Azul, Argentina (1932), and a broad peak that corresponds in time toTarawera, New Zealand (1886), Falcon Island, South Shetlands, Southern Ocean (1885), and Krakatau, Indonesia (1883). There are no trends in any of the ion records, but the annual to decadal changes are large. The mean concentrations of the measured ions are in agreement with those from other high-altitude cores from the Antarctic plateau. At this core site there may be a correspondence between peaks in the MSA record and major El Niño–Southern Oscillation events.

2005 ◽  
Vol 18 (5) ◽  
pp. 702-718 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leila M. V. Carvalho ◽  
Charles Jones ◽  
Tércio Ambrizzi

Abstract The Antarctic Oscillation (AAO) has been observed as a deep oscillation in the mid- and high southern latitudes. In the present study, the AAO pattern is defined as the leading mode of the empirical orthogonal function (EOF-1) obtained from daily 700-hPa geopotential height anomalies from 1979 to 2000. Here the objective is to identify daily positive and negative AAO phases and relationships with intraseasonal activity in the Tropics and phases of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) during the austral summer [December–January–February (DJF)]. Positive and negative AAO phases are defined when the daily EOF-1 time coefficient is above (or below) one standard deviation of the DJF mean. Composites of low-frequency sea surface temperature variation, 200-hPa zonal wind, and outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) indicate that negative (positive) phases of the AAO are dominant when patterns of SST, convection, and circulation anomalies resemble El Niño (La Niña) phases of ENSO. Enhanced intraseasonal activity from the Tropics to the extratropics of the Southern (Northern) Hemisphere is associated with negative (positive) phases of the AAO. In addition, there is indication that the onset of negative phases of the AAO is related to the propagation of the Madden–Julian oscillation (MJO). Suppression of intraseasonal convective activity over Indonesia is observed in positive AAO phases. It is hypothesized that deep convection in the central tropical Pacific, which is related to either El Niño or eastward-propagating MJO, or a combination of both phenomena, modulates the Southern Hemisphere circulation and favors negative AAO phases during DJF. The alternation of AAO phases seems to be linked to the latitudinal migration of the subtropical upper-level jet and variations in the intensity of the polar jet. This, in turn, affects extratropical cyclone properties, such as origin, minimum/maximum central pressure, and their equatorward propagation.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luciano Marquetto ◽  
Susan Kaspari ◽  
Jefferson Cardia Simões

Abstract. Black carbon (BC) is an important climate-forcing agent that affects snow albedo. In this work, we present a record of refractory black carbon (rBC) variability, measured from a 20-meter deep snow and firn core drilled in West Antarctica (79°55'34.6"S, 94°21'13.3"W) during the 2014–2015 austral summer. The core was analyzed using a Single Particle Soot Photometer (SP2) coupled to a CETAC Marin-5 nebulizer. Results show a well-defined seasonality with geometric mean concentrations of 0.015 µg L−1 for the wet season (summer/fall) and 0.057 µg L−1 for the dry season (winter/spring). The core was dated to 47 years (1968–2015) using rBC seasonality as the main parameter, along with Na, S and Sr variations. The annual rBC concentration geometric mean was 0.03 µg L−1, the lowest of all rBC cores in Antarctica referenced in this work, while the annual rBC flux was 6.25 µg m−2 a−1, the lowest flux in West Antarctica records so far. No long-term trend was observed. Snow albedo changes in the site due to BC were simulated using SNICAR-online and found to be very low comparing to clean snow (−0.48 %). Fire spots inventory and BC emission estimates from the Southern Hemisphere suggest Australia and Southern Hemisphere South America as the most probable emission sources of BC to the drilling site. Spectral analysis (REDFIT method) of the BC record showed cycles related to the Antarctic Oscillation (AAO) but not to El Niño Southern Oscillation ENSO, and comparison with time series of co-registered Na record suggest BC transport to the site not to be related to the intrusion of marine air masses.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard N. Holdaway

Abstract. Current consensus places a Southern Hemisphere post-glacial cooling episode earlier than the Younger Dryas in the Northern Hemisphere. New Zealand sequences of glacial moraines and speleothem isotopic data are generally interpreted as supporting the absence of a Southern Hemisphere Younger Dryas. Radiocarbon age series of habitat specialist moa (Aves: Dinornithiformes) show, however, that a sudden return to glacial climate in central New Zealand contemporary with the Younger Dryas. The cooling followed significant warming, not cooling, during the period of the Antarctic Cold Reversal. In addition, the moa sequence chronology also shows that the Oruanui (New Zealand) and Mt Takahe (Antarctica) volcanic eruptions were contemporary with abrupt cooling events in New Zealand. The independent high spatial and temporal resolution climate chronology reported here is contrary to an inter-hemispheric post-glacial climate see-saw model.


1998 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 378-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malin Stenbrrg ◽  
Elisabeth Isaksson ◽  
Margareta Hansson ◽  
WibjöRn Karlen ◽  
Paul A. Mayewski ◽  
...  

During the austral summer of 1993-94 a number of 1-2 m deep snow pits were sampled in connection with firn-coring in western Dronning Maud Land, Antarctica. The traverse went from 800 to about 3000 m a.s.l. upon the high-altitude plateau. Profiles of cations (Na+, K+, Mg2+, Ca2+), anions (Cl−, NO3-, SO4 2- , CH3SO3 −) and stable oxygen isotopes (δ18O) from 11 snow pils are presented here. Close to the coast 2 m of snow accumulates in about 2-3 years, whilst at sites on the high-altitude plateau 2 m of snow accumulates in 10—14 years. The spatial variation in ion concentrations shows that the ions can be divided into two groups, one with sea-salt elements and methane sulfonate and the other with nitrate and sulfate. For the sca-salt elements and methane sulfonate the concentrations decrease with increasing altitude and increasing distance from the coast, as well as with decreasing temperature and decreasing accumulation rate. For nitrate and sulfate the concentrations are constant or increase with respect to these parameters. This pattern suggests that the sources for sca-salt elements and methane sulfonate are local, whereas the sources for nitrate and sulfate are a mixture of local and long-range transport.


Author(s):  
Alistair Fox

The analysis in this chapter focuses on Christine Jeffs’s Rain as evidence of a shift that had occurred in New Zealand society whereby puritan repression is no longer perceived as the source of emotional problems for children in the process of becoming adults, but rather its opposite – neoliberal individualism, hedonism, and the parental neglect and moral lassitude it had promoted. A comparison with Kirsty Gunn’s novel of the same name, upon which the adaptation is based, reveals how Jeffs converted a poetic meditation on the human condition into a cinematic family melodrama with a girl’s discovery of the power of her own sexuality at the core.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shraddha Gupta ◽  
Niklas Boers ◽  
Florian Pappenberger ◽  
Jürgen Kurths

AbstractTropical cyclones (TCs) are one of the most destructive natural hazards that pose a serious threat to society, particularly to those in the coastal regions. In this work, we study the temporal evolution of the regional weather conditions in relation to the occurrence of TCs using climate networks. Climate networks encode the interactions among climate variables at different locations on the Earth’s surface, and in particular, time-evolving climate networks have been successfully applied to study different climate phenomena at comparably long time scales, such as the El Niño Southern Oscillation, different monsoon systems, or the climatic impacts of volcanic eruptions. Here, we develop and apply a complex network approach suitable for the investigation of the relatively short-lived TCs. We show that our proposed methodology has the potential to identify TCs and their tracks from mean sea level pressure (MSLP) data. We use the ERA5 reanalysis MSLP data to construct successive networks of overlapping, short-length time windows for the regions under consideration, where we focus on the north Indian Ocean and the tropical north Atlantic Ocean. We compare the spatial features of various topological properties of the network, and the spatial scales involved, in the absence and presence of a cyclone. We find that network measures such as degree and clustering exhibit significant signatures of TCs and have striking similarities with their tracks. The study of the network topology over time scales relevant to TCs allows us to obtain crucial insights into the effects of TCs on the spatial connectivity structure of sea-level pressure fields.


Atmosphere ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 217
Author(s):  
Jiangping Zhu ◽  
Aihong Xie ◽  
Xiang Qin ◽  
Yetang Wang ◽  
Bing Xu ◽  
...  

The European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) released its latest reanalysis dataset named ERA5 in 2017. To assess the performance of ERA5 in Antarctica, we compare the near-surface temperature data from ERA5 and ERA-Interim with the measured data from 41 weather stations. ERA5 has a strong linear relationship with monthly observations, and the statistical significant correlation coefficients (p < 0.05) are higher than 0.95 at all stations selected. The performance of ERA5 shows regional differences, and the correlations are high in West Antarctica and low in East Antarctica. Compared with ERA5, ERA-Interim has a slightly higher linear relationship with observations in the Antarctic Peninsula. ERA5 agrees well with the temperature observations in austral spring, with significant correlation coefficients higher than 0.90 and bias lower than 0.70 °C. The temperature trend from ERA5 is consistent with that from observations, in which a cooling trend dominates East Antarctica and West Antarctica, while a warming trend exists in the Antarctic Peninsula except during austral summer. Generally, ERA5 can effectively represent the temperature changes in Antarctica and its three subregions. Although ERA5 has bias, ERA5 can play an important role as a powerful tool to explore the climate change in Antarctica with sparse in situ observations.


2015 ◽  
Vol 112 (30) ◽  
pp. 9210-9215 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda R. Manzanilla

In this paper, I address the case of a corporate society in Central Mexico. After volcanic eruptions triggered population displacements in the southern Basin of Mexico during the first and fourth centuries A.D., Teotihuacan became a multiethnic settlement. Groups from different backgrounds settled primarily on the periphery of the metropolis; nevertheless, around the core, intermediate elites actively fostered the movement of sumptuary goods and the arrival of workers from diverse homelands for a range of specialized tasks. Some of these skilled craftsmen acquired status and perhaps economic power as a result of the dynamic competition among neighborhoods to display the most lavish sumptuary goods, as well as to manufacture specific symbols of identity that distinguished one neighborhood from another, such as elaborate garments and headdresses. Cotton attire worn by the Teotihuacan elite may have been one of the goods that granted economic importance to neighborhood centers such as Teopancazco, a compound that displayed strong ties to the Gulf Coast where cotton cloth was made. The ruling elite controlled raw materials that came from afar whereas the intermediate elite may have been more active in providing other sumptuary goods: pigments, cosmetics, slate, greenstone, travertine, and foreign pottery. The contrast between the corporate organization at the base and top of Teotihuacan society and the exclusionary organization of the neighborhoods headed by the highly competitive intermediate elite introduced tensions that set the stage for Teotihuacan’s collapse.


1983 ◽  
Vol 72 (288) ◽  
pp. 466-472 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurie Barber ◽  
Michael Selby

1988 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-330 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie M. Palais ◽  
Philip R. Kyle

The chemical composition of ice containing tephra (volcanic ash) layers in 22 sections of the Byrd Station ice core was examined to determine if the volcanic eruptions affected the chemical composition of the atmosphere and precipitation in the vicinity of Byrd Station. The liquid conductivity, acidity, sulfate, nitrate, aluminum, and sodium concentrations of ice samples deposited before, during, and after the deposition of the tephra layers were analyzed. Ice samples that contain tephra layers have, on average, about two times more sulfate and three to four times more aluminum than nonvolcanic ice samples. The acidity of ice samples associated with tephra layers is lowered by hydrolysis of silicate glass and minerals. Average nitrate, sodium, and conductivity are the same in all samples. Because much of the sulfur and chlorine originally associated with these eruptions may have been scavenged by ash particles, the atmospheric residence time of these volatiles would have been minimized. Therefore the eruptions probably had only a small effect on the composition of the Antarctic atmosphere and a negligible effect on local or global climate.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document