climate instability during the last interglacial period recorded in the grip ice core isotope and chemical analyses of the grip ice core from summit central greenland reveal that climate in greenland during the last interglacial period was characterized by a series of severe cold periods which began extremely rapidly and lasted from decades to centuries as the last interglacial seems to have been slightly warmer than the present one its unstable climate raises questions about the effects of future global warming

european glacial dust deposits geochemical constraints on atmospheric dust cycle modeling for a long time global paleodust numerical simulations have greatly underestimated dust sources other than modern deserts recent modeling experiments incorporating glaciogenic sources of dust have positively improved the agreement between model and paleodust data this highlights the importance of accurately representing all areas potentially subjected to deflation during an investigated interval geochemical results obtained from european loess sequences collected along a 50 n transect combined with dust emission simulations reveal the geographical distribution of the most important european dust sources between 34 ka and 18 ka we demonstrate that most european dust traveled only a few hundred kilometers or less within the boundary layer from its source before deposition we conclude that our results encourage acquisition of similar geochemical data for other relevant areas in the world further they could provide critical constraints to benchmark atmospheric models contributing to improve their performance in simulating dust cycle and associated climate feedbacks

a gravity wave drag matrix for complex terrain abstractwe propose a simplified scheme to predict mountain wave drag over complex terrain using only the regional average low level wind components u and v the scheme is tuned and tested on data f

palaeotemperatures still exist in the greenland ice sheet the temperature distribution through the greenland ice sheet at the dye 3 borehole is a record of the past climatic changes in the arctic the numerical model of the temperature distribution now presented reproduces the observed temperature distribution within 0 03 k and shows that the basal ice is still cooled 5 k by the cold ice age climate the results suggest a mean ice age temperature of 32 2 c which is 12 k colder than the present temperature and a precipitation rate 50 25 of the present rate calculations of a more detailed temperature history through the present inter glacial period reveal evidence of the ad 1920 50 maximum the little ice age and the atlantic period

late glacial climatic changes in eastern france lake lautrey from pollen lake levels and chironomids high temporal resolution analyses of pollen chironomid and lake level records from lake lautrey provide multi proxy quantitative estimates of climatic change during the late glacial period in eastern france past temperature and moisture parameters were estimated using modern analogues and plant functional types transfer function methods for three pollen records obtained from different localities within the paleolake basin the comparison of these methods shows that they provide generally similar climate signals with the exception of the bolling comparison of pollen and chironomid based temperature of the warmest month reconstructions generally agree except during the bolling major abrupt changes associated with the oldest dryas bolling allerod younger dryas and the younger dryas preboreal transitions were quantified as well as other minor fluctuations related to the cold events e g preboreal oscillation the temperature of the warmest month increased by not vert similar5 c at the start of bolling and by 1 5 3 c at the onset of the holocene while it fell by ca 3 to 4 c at the beginning of younger dryas the comparative analysis of the results based on the three lautrey cores have highlighted significant differences in the climate reconstructions related to the location of each core underlining the caution that is needed when studying single cores not taken from deepest part of lake basins

the tolsta interstadial scotland correlation with d o cycles gi 8 to gi 5 abstract organic sediments buried by till at tolsta head in north lewis in the scottish outer hebridean islands have been re investigated radiocarbon dates of 32 26 kyr bp indicate correlation with the denekamp interstadial of the netherlands and the sandnes alesund interstadial of norway the organic sediments contain an unusually detailed record of the dominantly open grassland vegetation during the interstadial variations in palaeotemperature inferred from the pollen assemblages and sedimentology are provisionally matched with the 18o record of the gisp2 ice core and correlation with the dansgaard oeschger cycles gi 8 gi 5 is proposed the interstadial starts at 38 1k cal yr and 32 8k radiocarbon years the termination of the interstadial and the build up of the late devensian weichselian ice sheets in scotland and north west europe dates from 32k cal yr and 28 7k radiocarbon years whether the tolsta and other contemporaneous episodes are intervals or interstadials is also considered

a modeling of atmospheric gravity waves and wave drag generated by isotropic and anisotropic terrain abstract momentum deposition by orographically generated atmospheric gravity waves has been incorporated into a general circulation model of the troposphere and lower stratosphere by mcfarlane using a parameterization of real terrain and the waves that terrain would generate similar modeling will no doubt follow for extension to greater heights where the effects of momentum deposition are expected to be greater mefarlane s parameterization treated an upward flux of momentum directed into a single azimuth namely that opposed to the surface wind and tacitly assumed a boussinesq approximation and horizontally isotropic terrain these limitations are probed here and to some extent removed the analysis is generalized from the boussinesq to the incompressible approximation with consequences that can be important in some circumstances it is found appropriate to represent the momentum flux from isotropic terrain by two azimuths rather than one these two being at angles of 32 5 or more from the sin

towards a climate event stratigraphy for new zealand over the past 30 000 years nz intimate project it is widely recognised that the acquisition of high resolution palaeoclimate records from southern mid latitude sites is essential for establishing a coherent picture of inter hemispheric climate change and for better understanding of the role of antarctic climate dynamics in the global climate system new zealand is considered to be a sensitive monitor of climate change because it is one of a few sizeable landmasses in the southern hemisphere westerly circulation zone a critical transition zone between subtropical and antarctic influences new zealand has mountainous axial ranges that amplify the climate signals and consequently the environmental gradients are highly sensitive to subtle changes in atmospheric and oceanic conditions since 1995 intimate has through a series of international workshops sought ways to improve procedures for establishing the precise ages of climate events and to correlate them with high precision for the last 30 000 calendar years the nz intimate project commenced in late 2003 and has involved virtually the entire new zealand palaeoclimate community its aim is to develop an event stratigraphy for the new zealand region over the past 30 000 years and to reconcile these events against the established climatostratigraphy of the last glacial cycle which has largely been developed from northern hemisphere records e g last glacial maximum lgm termination i younger dryas an initial outcome of nz intimate has been the identification of a series of well dated high resolution onshore and offshore proxy records from a variety of latitudes and elevations on a common calendar timescale from 30 000 cal yr bp to the present day high resolution records for the last glacial coldest period lgcp including the lgm sensu stricto and last glacial interglacial transition lgit from auckland maars kaipo and otamangakau wetlands on eastern and central north island marine core md97 2121 east of southern north island speleothems on northwest south island okarito wetland on southwestern south island are presented discontinuous fragmentary records comprising compilations of glacial sequences fluvial sequences loess accumulation and aeolian quartz accumulation in an andesitic terrain are described comparisons with ice core records from antarctica epica dome c and greenland gisp2 are discussed a major advantage immediately evident from these records apart from the speleothem record is that they are linked precisely by one or more tephra layers based on these new zealand terrestrial and marine records a reasonably coherent regionally applicable sequence of climatically linked stratigraphic events over the past 30 000 cal yr is emerging three major climate events are recognised 1 lgcp beginning at ca 28 000 cal yr bp ending at termination i ca 18 000 cal yr bp and including a warmer and more variable phase between ca 27 000 and 21 000 cal yr bp 2 lgit between ca 18 000 and 11 600 cal yr bp including a lateglacial warm period from ca 14 800 to 13 500 cal yr bp and a lateglacial climate reversal between ca 13 500 and 11 600 cal yr bp and 3 holocene interglacial conditions with two phases of greatest warmth between ca 11 600 and 10 800 cal yr bp and from ca 6 800 to 6 500 cal yr bp some key boundaries coincide with volcanic tephras copyright 2007 john wiley sons ltd

some aspects of the effect of surface friction on flows over mountains the effect of surface friction on flow over mountains in stratified fluids is investigated using a two dimensional version of the naval research laboratory s non hydrostatic coupled ocean atmosphere mesoscale prediction system coamps without surface friction flow over a mountain attains a maximum speed at the surface on the lee slope with surface friction the flow speed vanishes at the surface and reaches a maximum near the top of the boundary layer bl corresponding to this wind distribution is a shallow layer of very large vertical wind shear beneath the jet maximum and a weaker but deeper sheared layer elsewhere this strong shear generates maximum turbulent kinetic energy tke at the jet maximum region meanwhile the buoyancy effect associated with the mountain gravity wave inhibits the production of the tke above the jet maximum region the combined effects of shear and buoyancy lead to a very shallow bl on the lee slope in general surface friction reduces the amplitude of mountain gravity waves comparison of the flow fields with the outline of the bl height indicates that flow characteristics correspond closely to the distribution of the bl height it is hypothesized that the reduction in mountain wave amplitude in the presence of surface friction is due to the reduction in the slope of the bl height as compared to the terrain height for narrower and or higher mountains the bl height exhibits a secondary peak on the lee side that further modifies the wave simulations using the bl height as a solid mountain without surface friction confirm that characteristics of flow over the mountain are associated with the distribution of bl height rather than the terrain height field as the non dimensional mountain height increases the magnitude of the effect of surface friction decreases due to decreasing bl depth on the lee side with the result that the bl height profile becomes closer to the terrain height field the effect of surface friction on asymmetric mountains is also investigated without surface friction the pressure drag shows distinctive reduction with a secondary peak on the downstream side but the effect is less when the secondary peak is on the upstream side with surface friction all three mountains have similar pressure drag corresponding to their similar bl height profiles copyright 2003 royal meteorological society

hydraulic and wave aspects of novorossiysk bora bora in novorossiysk seaport on the black sea coast of the caucasus is one of the strongest and most prominent downslope windstorms on the territory of russia in this paper we evaluate the applicability of the hydraulic and wave hypotheses which are widely used for downslope winds around the world to novorossiysk bora on the basis of observational data reanalysis and mesoscale numerical modeling with wrf arw it is shown that mechanism of formation of novorossiysk bora is essentially mixed which is expressed in the simultaneous presence of gravity waves breaking and a hydraulic jump as well as in the significant variability of the contribution of wave processes to the windstorm dynamics effectiveness of each mechanism depends on the elevated inversion intensity and mean state critical level height most favorable conditions for both mechanisms working together are moderate or weak inversion and high or absent critical level

upstream effects of mesoscale mountains abstract the alpine experiment alpex has revealed that low level air is typically diverted around the alps without reaching the mountaintop in pursuit of an understanding of the physical basis of this phenomenon and of its generality we have explored the characteristics of orographic blocking of a rotating continuously stratified quid as revealed in a simple model problem retaining full nonlinear and transient effects hydrostatic dynamics is assumed and the obstacle is taken to be an infinitely long ridge with height h x the key questions treated are the strength of the upstream deceleration of cross mountain flow and the length scale over which the decelerated region extends by means of scale analysis the controlling parameters are found to be the rossby number ro u fl and the froude number fr nhm u where u is the speed of the oncoming flow f is the coriolis parameter l the mountain half width n the brunt vaisala frequency and hm is the maximum mountain height the scale analysis also

climate correlations between greenland and antarctica during the past 100 000 years the ice cores recovered from central greenland by the grip1 2 and gisp23 projects record 22 interstadial warm events during the part of the last glaciation spanning 20 105 kyr before present the ice core from vostok east antarctica records nine interstadials during this period4 5 here we explore links between greenland and antarctic climate during the last glaciation using a high resolution chronology derived by correlating oxygen isotope data for trapped o2 in the gisp2 and vostok cores we find that interstadials occurred in east antarctica whenever those in greenland lasted longer than 2 000 years our results suggest that partial deglaciation and changes in ocean circulation are partly responsible for the climate teleconnection between greenland and antarctica ice older than 115 kyr in the gisp2 core shows rapid variations in the 18o of o2 that have no counterpart in the vostok record the age depth relationship and thus the climate record in this part of the gisp2 core appears to be significantly disturbed

eemian interglacial reconstructed from a greenland folded ice core efforts to extract a greenland ice core with a complete record of the eemian interglacial 130 000 to 115 000 years ago have until now been unsuccessful the response of the greenland ice sheet to the warmer than present climate of the eemian has thus remained unclear here we present the new north greenland eemian ice drilling neem ice core and show only a modest ice sheet response to the strong warming in the early eemian we reconstructed the eemian record from folded ice using globally homogeneous parameters known from dated greenland and antarctic ice core records on the basis of water stable isotopes neem surface temperatures after the onset of the eemian 126 000 years ago peaked at 8 4 degrees celsius above the mean of the past millennium followed by a gradual cooling that was probably driven by the decreasing summer insolation between 128 000 and 122 000 years ago the thickness of the northwest greenland ice sheet decreased by 400 250 metres reaching surface elevations 122 000 years ago of 130 300 metres lower than the present extensive surface melt occurred at the neem site during the eemian a phenomenon witnessed when melt layers formed again at neem during the exceptional heat of july 2012 with additional warming surface melt might become more common in the future

wind direction effects on orographic drag a series of idealised numerical simulations is performed to investigate the effect of wind direction on the pressure forces exerted on a high elliptical mesoscale ridge in the presence of coriolis effects at the rossby number considered here ro 13 rotational effects have a significant impact on the flow fields however the primary effect of rotation on the drag is to provide the asymmetry required to initiate vortex shedding when the flow is perpendicular to the mountain ridge it is found that linear theory although not valid for such high mountains provides a useful scaling for the variation of drag with wind direction for a large range of wind directions the flow is in a high super linear drag state and wave breaking vortex shedding and upstream flow blocking are observed however when the flow is close to being parallel to the major axis of the mountain ridge the drag becomes sub linear and none of the above processes are seen we show that the change from a high drag state to a low drag state can be explained in terms of the aspect ratio of the mountain that is the ratio of the across flow mountain length to the along flow length finally we demonstrate that the results found for the idealised elliptical mountains also apply to a real mountain of similar dimensions copyright 2008 royal meteorological society and crown copyright 2008 published by john wiley sons ltd

a new greenland deep ice core the polar ice sheets are rich sources of information on past atmospheric conditions including paleoclimates a new deep ice core has been drilled in south greenland comparison of the oxygen isotopic profile with that from camp century and with a deep sea foraminifera record indicates that the new core reaches back to about 90 000 years before present in a continuous sequence the details in the wisconsin part of the ice core records seem to be climatically significant and the general trends reveal all of the relevant emiliani stages recorded in deep sea cores the redated camp century record suggests a dramatic termination of the eem sangamon interglacial

the impact of mountain wakes on the drag exerted on downstream mountains the pressure drag exerted on two identical high idealised mountain ridges aligned perpendicular to the mean flow with the second mountain lying directly downstream of the first is investigated using a numerical model the drag is measured for a variety of different distances between the two peaks mountain heights and lengths and incident flows each two mountain simulation has a companion single mountain simulation with an identical mountain and identical upstream flow with which to compare the drag the maximum modelled drag in the two mountain simulations is close to two times the drag in the single mountain case while the minimum two mountain drag is similar to that exerted on the single mountain this change in drag is a result of the wake behind the first mountain reducing the speed of the flow impacting on the second mountain a parametrization of this effect is suggested which combines the distance between the two mountain peaks a measure of the velocity deficit in the wake of the first mountain and the wake decay scale a measure of the length scale over which the flow perturbation generated by the first mountain decays downwind copyright 2008 royal meteorological society and crown copyright 2008 published by john wiley sons ltd

new gravity wave treatments for giss climate models previous versions of giss climate models have either used formulations of rayleigh drag to represent unresolved gravity wave interactions with the model resolved flow or have included a rather complicated treatment of unresolved gravity waves that while being climate interactive involved the specification of a relatively large number of parameters that were not well constrained by observations and also was computationally very expensive here the authors introduce a relatively simple and computationally efficient specification of unresolved orographic and nonorographic gravity waves and their interaction with the resolved flow comparisons of the giss model winds and temperatures with no gravity wave parameterization with only orographic gravity wave parameterization and with both orographic and nonorographic gravity wave parameterizations are shown to illustrate how the zonal mean winds and temperatures converge toward observations the authors also show that the specifications of orographic and nonorographic gravity waves must be different in the northern and southern hemispheres then results are presented where the nonorographic gravity wave sources are specified to represent sources from convection in the intertropical convergencezoneandspontaneousemissionfromjetimbalances finally astrategytoincludetheseeffectsin a climate dependent manner is suggested

late holocene north atlantic climate seesaws storminess changes and greenland ice sheet gisp2 palaeoclimates the oxygen isotope record of palaeotemperature from greenland ice cores has for many years been the kingpin of climate reconstructions for the north atlantic region and northern europe an air temperature seesaw between greenland and northern europe first described in ad 1765 is also well known and is related to the north atlantic oscillation nao whereas the nao index series is based on instrumental records of air pressure the north atlantic climate seesaw has conventionally been based on air temperature records here we describe relationships between this seesaw mechanism and the greenland gisp2 oxygen isotope chronology of air temperature variations as well as relationships between gisp2 na sea salt variations and instrumental records of north atlantic storminess the gisp2 proxy air temperature record is calibrated for the last 130 years with instrumental weather records for west greenland while the na series is compared with instrumental records of north atlantic storminess change reconstruction of an annual series of these climate parameters for the last 1000 years shows that during the mediaeval warm period there were no years characterized by high na extremes high north atlantic storminess but there were many years when there were extremes of temperature remarkably there were no years of exceptionally low air temperature and high na precipitation at gisp2 between ad 1650 and 1710 a period of time that in northern europe incorporates the period of maximum little ice age cooling it would appear also that for the last thousand years the most extreme seesaw winters when gisp2 temperatures were very low and na concentrations were high occurred in discrete clusters and pairs of years

abrupt increase in greenland snow accumulation at the end of the younger dryas event the warming at the end of the last glaciation was characterized by a series of abrupt returns to glacial climate the best known of which is the younger dryas event1 despite much study of the causes of this event and the mechanisms by which it ended many questions remain unresolved1 oxygen isotope data from greenland ice cores2 4 suggest that the younger dryas ended abruptly over a period of about 50 years dust concentrations2 4 in these cores show an even more rapid transition 20 years this extremely short timescale places severe constraints on the mechanisms underlying the transition but dust concentrations can reflect subtle changes in atmospheric circulation which need not be associated with a large change in climate here we present results from a new greenland ice core gisp2 showing that snow accumulation doubled rapidly from the younger dryas event to the subsequent preboreal interval possibly in one to three years we also find that the accumulation rate change from the oldest dryas to the bo11ing allerod warm period was large and abrupt the extreme rapidity of these changes in a variable that directly represents regional climate implies that the events at the end of the last glaciation may have been responses to some kind of threshold or trigger in the north atlantic climate system

analysis of gravity waves generated at the top of a drainage flow abstract drainage or katabatic flows are common mesoscale circulations established as a result of differential radiative cooling of near surface air masses in sloping terrain the initial irruption of these flows with sudden shifts in wind speed and direction may result in vertical displacements of air parcels from their equilibrium position which prove to be a common source of internal gravity waves this paper illustrates this mechanism and describes the main features of the oscillations following the study of observational data gathered throughout one night during the stable atmospheric boundary layer experiment in spain 2006 sables2006 field campaign pressure differences measured by microbarometers set at different levels of a tower help to interpret the evolution of other atmospheric variables provide a detailed picture of the irruption of a drainage current and reveal the formation of gravity waves at its top the main parameters of the waves are derived from wavelet cross correlation of p

dynamics of crystal formation in the greenland northgrip ice core the north greenland icecore project northgrip ice core provides palaeoclimatic information back to about 120 kyr bp the size distributions of ice crystals in the upper 880 m of the northgrip ice core which cover a time span of approximately 5300 years have been obtained previously the distributions evolve towards a universal curve indicating a common underlying physical process in the formation of crystals we identify this process as an interplay between fragmentation of the crystals and diffusion of their grain boundaries the process is described by a two parameter differential equation to which we obtain the exact solution the solution is in excellent agreement with the measured distributions

a three dimensional mountain wave imaged in satellite radiance throughout the stratosphere evidence of the effects of directional wind shear swath scanned thermal radiances from the advanced microwave sounding units amsu a on the noaa and aqua satellites are used to image the horizontal temperature structure of a long wavelength mountain wave that formed over southern scandinavia on 14 january 2003 data from all six stratospheric channels show this wave propagating through the full depth of the stratosphere in channels 9 11 altitudes 20 90 hpa the imaged wave has a phase structure broadly consistent with a stationary wave radiated by the southeastward flow over and above the quasi elliptical terrain of southern norway channel 12 radiances at 10 hpa however show a remarkable abrupt change in imaged wave structure the horizontal wavelength contracts phase lines rotate anticlockwise by 30 40 and peak activity migrates to the south to lie over denmark and northern germany similar structure persists in channels 13 and 14 at 2 5 hpa with progessively increasing radiance amplitudes these features are stable over the 10 hours of amsu a measurements from five separate overpasses and are validated against independent radiances acquired by the atmospheric infrared sounder airs and retrieved airs amsu a temperature profiles from the aqua overpass this change at the channel 11 12 interface coincides with an onset of anticlockwise rotation backing and intensification of background stratospheric winds with height fourier ray and spatial ray modelling incorporating these directionally sheared winds and simplified orographic forcing reproduce the salient features of the observations but only after wave induced temperature perturbations have been converted to channel radiances using a forward model the differential visibility of various components of this three dimensional mountain wave to the amsu a channel weighting functions has a first order impact on the observations at heights above 10 hpa once that is factored in the combined observations and modelling provide direct experimental support for the shutts model s predictions of how backing wind vectors affect the vertical evolution of three dimensional mountain waves implications of these observations for orographic gravity wave drag parametrization are briefly discussed copyright 2007 royal meteorological society

high resolution climate records from the north atlantic during the last interglacial the two deep ice cores recovered by the grip1 and gisp22 projects at summit greenland agree in detail over the past 100 000 years3 and demonstrate dramatic climate variability in the north atlantic region during the last glacial before the current period of holocene stability this glacial climate instability has subsequently been documented in the marine sedimentary record of surface ocean conditions in the north atlantic4 before 100 kyr ago the two ice core records are discrepant however casting doubt on whether the oxygen isotope fluctuations during the last interglacial eemian seen in the grip core1 5 represent a true climate signal here we present high resolution records of foraminiferal assemblages and ice rafted detritus from two north atlantic cores for the interval 65 kyr to 135 kyr ago extending the surface ocean record back to the eemian the correlation between our records and the greenland ice core records is good throughout the period in which the two ice cores agree suggesting a regionally coherent climate response during the eemian our marine records show a more stable climate than that implied by the grip ice core suggesting that localized phenomena may be responsible for the variability in the latter record during the eemian

recent developments in gravity wave effects in climate models and the global distribution of gravity wave momentum flux from observations and models recent observational and theoretical studies of the global properties of small scale atmospheric gravity waves have highlighted the global effects of these waves on the circulation from the surface to the middle atmosphere the effects of gravity waves on the large scale circulation have long been treated via parametrizations in both climate and weather forecasting applications in these parametrizations key parameters describe the global distributions of gravity wave momentum flux wavelengths and frequencies until recently global observations could not define the required parameters because the waves are small in scale and intermittent in occurrence recent satellite and other global datasets with improved resolution along with innovative analysis methods are now providing constraints for the parametrizations that can improve the treatment of these waves in climate prediction models research using very high resolution global models has also recently demonstrated the capability to resolve gravity waves and their circulation effects and when tested against observations these models show some very realistic properties here we review recent studies on gravity wave effects in stratosphere resolving climate models recent observations and analysis methods that reveal global patterns in gravity wave momentum fluxes and results of very high resolution model studies and we outline some future research requirements to improve the treatment of these waves in climate simulations copyright 2010 royal meteorological society and crown in the right of canada

oxygen isotope and palaeotemperature records from six greenland ice core stations camp century dye 3 grip gisp2 renland and northgrip oxygen isotope variations spanning the last glacial cycle and the holocene derived from ice core records for six sites in greenland camp century dye 3 grip gisp2 renland and northgrip show strong similarities this suggests that the dominant influence on oxygen isotope variations reflected in the ice sheet records was regional climatic change differences in detail between the records probably reflect the effects of basal deformation in the ice as well as geographical gradients in atmospheric isotope ratios palaeotemperature estimates have been obtained from the records using three approaches i inferences based on the measured relationship between mean annual 18o of snow and of mean annual surface temperature over greenland ii modelled inversion of the borehole temperature profile constrained either by the dated isotopic profile or iii by using monte carlo simulation techniques the third of these approaches was adopted to reconstruct holocene temperature variations for the dye 3 and grip temperature profiles which yields remarkably compatible results a new record of holocene isotope variations obtained from the northgrip ice core matches the grip short term isotope record and also shows similar long term trends to the dye 3 and grip inverted temperature data the northgrip isotope record reflects i a generally stronger isotopic signal than is found in the grip record ii several short lived temperature fluctuations during the first 1500 yr of the holocene iii a marked cold event at ca 8 2 ka the 8 2 ka event iv optimum temperatures for the holocene between ca 8 6 and 4 3 ka a signal that is 0 6 stronger than for the grip profile v a clear signal for the little ice age and vi a clear signal of climate warming during the last century these data suggest that the northgrip stable isotope record responded in a sensitive manner to temperature fluctuations during the holocene copyright 2001 john wiley sons ltd

internal lee wave closures parameter sensitivity and comparison to observations this paper examines two internal lee wave closures that have been used together with ocean models to predict the time averaged global energy conversion rate into lee waves and dissipation rate associated with lee waves and topographic blocking the garner 2005 scheme and the bell 1975 theory the closure predictions in two southern ocean regions where geostrophic flows dominate over tides are examined and compared to microstructure profiler observations of the turbulent kinetic energy dissipation rate where the latter are assumed to reflect the dissipation associated with topographic blocking and generated lee wave energy it is shown that when applied to these southern ocean regions the two closures differ most in their treatment of topographic blocking for several reasons pointwise validation of the closures is not possible using existing observations but horizontally averaged comparisons between closure predictions and observations are made when anisotropy of the underlying topography is accounted for the two horizontally averaged closure predictions near the seafloor are approximately equal the dissipation associated with topographic blocking is predicted by the garner 2005 scheme to account for the majority of the depth integrated dissipation over the bottom 1000 m of the water column where the horizontally averaged predictions lie well within the spatial variability of the horizontally averaged observations simplifications made by the garner 2005 scheme that are inappropriate for the oceanic context together with imperfect observational information can partially account for the prediction observation disagreement particularly in the upper water column

a 135 000 year vostok specmap common temporal framework the object of the present study is to introduce a means of comparing the vostok and marine chronologies our strategy has been to use the 18o of atmospheric o2 denoted 18oatm from the vostok ice core as a proxy for the 18o of seawater denoted 18osw our underlying premise in using 18oatm as a proxy for 18osw is that past variations in 18osw an indicator of continental ice volume have been transmitted to the atmospheric o2 reservoir by photosynthesizing organisms in the surface waters of the world s oceans we compare our record of 18oatm to the 18osw record which has been developed from studies of the isotopic composition of biogenic calcite 18oforam in deep sea cores we have tied our 18oatm record from vostok to the specmap timescale throughout the last 135 kyr by correlating 18oatm with a 18osw record from v19 30 results of the correlation indicate that 77 of the variance is shared between these two records we observed differences between the 18oatm and the 18osw records during the coldest periods which indicate that there have been subtle changes in the factors which regulate 18oatm other than 18osw our use of 18oatm as a proxy for 18osw must therefore be considered tentative especially during these periods by correlating 18oatm with 18osw we provide a common temporal framework for comparing phase relationships between atmospheric records from ice cores and oceanographic records constructed from deep sea cores our correlated age depth relation for the vostok core should not be considered an absolute vostok timescale we consider it to be the preferred timescale for comparing vostok climate records with marine climate records which have been placed on the specmap timescale we have examined the fidelity of this common temporal framework by comparing sea surface temperature sst records from sediment cores with an antarctic temperature record from the vostok ice core we have demonstrated that when the southern ocean sst and antarctic temperature records are compared on this common temporal framework they show a high degree of similarity we interpret this result as supporting our use of the common temporal framework for comparing other climate records from the vostok ice core with any climate record that has been correlated into the specmap chronology

mountain waves and wakes generated by south georgia implications for drag parametrization high resolution simulations of flows over south georgia south atlantic are used to increase understanding of the likely influence of small isolated mountainous islands on the large scale flow and to ascertain the extent to which parametrization schemes can account for the missing drag in models where such islands are only partially resolved long duration 1 month austral winter forecasts with a horizontal grid spacing of 1 5 km are used to quantify the mountain wave momentum fluxes generated by the island and the low level drag associated with flow blocking dynamics the characteristics of the drag such as the occurrence of high and low drag states its dependence on wind direction and the spectral contributions to the mountain wave momentum flux are considered flow splitting and low level wave breaking are shown to be responsible for wake regions that extend for hundreds of kilometres from the island regions of deceleration are also evident in the stratosphere due to mountain wave dissipation the extent to which an orographic drag parametrization scheme can reproduce the drag is investigated by comparison with coarse resolution 15 km grid spacing simulations in which the orography is poorly resolved and a large proportion of the drag is parametrized it is demonstrated that the total of the resolved plus parametrized drag in these simulations closely resembles that at high resolution although it is underpredicted during instances of high drag simple modifications to the scheme which enhance the drag when the low level flow is approximately normal to the major axis of the subgrid orography are shown to rectify this the study demonstrates that at least for relatively simple isolated mountain ranges the drag and mountain wave momentum fluxes can be predicted in a deterministic sense by a well tuned parametrization scheme of suitable complexity although inclusion of stochastic effects might lead to yet further improvements

comparison of oxygen isotope records from the gisp2 and grip greenland ice cores recent results1 2 from the greenland ice core project grip summit ice core suggest that the climate in greenland has been remarkably stable during the holocene but was extremely unstable for the time period represented by the rest of the core spanning the last two glaciations and the intervening eemian inter glacial here we present the complete oxygen isotope record for the greenland ice sheet project 2 gisp2 core drilled 28 km west of the grip core we observe large rapid climate fluctuations throughout the last glacial period which closely match those reported for the grip core however in the bottom 10 of the cores spanning the eemian interglacial and the previous glacia tion there are significant differences between the two records it is possible that ice flow may have altered the chronological sequences of the stratigraphy for the bottom part of one or both of the cores considerable further work will be necessary to evaluate the likelihood of this and the extent to which it will still be possible to extract meaningful climate information from the lowest sections of the cores

visual stratigraphic dating of the gisp2 ice core basis reproducibility and application annual layers are visible in the greenland ice sheet project 2 ice core from central greenland allowing rapid dating of the core changes in bubble and grain structure caused by near surface primarily summertime formation of hoar complexes provide the main visible annual marker in the holocene and changes in cloudiness of the ice correlated with dustiness mark wisconsinan annual cycles both markers are evident and have been intercalibrated in early holocene ice layer counts are reproducible between different workers and for one worker at different times with 1 error over century length times in the holocene reproducibility is typically 5 in wisconsinan ice age ice and decreases with increasing age and depth cumulative ages from visible stratigraphy are not significantly different from independent ages of prominent events for ice older than the historical record and younger than approximately 50 000 years visible observations are not greatly degraded by brittle ice or many other core quality problems allowing construction of long consistently sampled time series high accuracy requires careful study of the core by dedicated observers

origin of the permian triassic iberian basin central eastern spain abstract the iberian basin was an intracratonic rift basin in central eastern spain developed since early permian times the basin boundary faults were normal listric faults controlling an asymmetric extension propagating northeast with time hercynian or older lineaments controlled the orientation of the iberian basin and extension was accommodated basically in the hanging wall block by the formation of secondary grabens and a central high the basin was related with the coeval ebro catalan and cuenca mancha basins and their connections are discussed subsidence curves show that the early permian early jurassic period of extension can be subdivided into three rifting episodes and a flexural one extension factor increases from 1 17 in the northwest to 1 29 near the mediterranean coast the increasing extension rate was accommodated by transfer faults trending nne ssw more important in the levante area the rift evolution is intermittent and seems to reflect distinct stress fields the collapse of the late hercynian orogen and related increased heat flux extension and rifting is the most probable origin of the iberian basin and related basins the origin of the catalan and the valencia prebetic basins is related to the southwards migration of the hesse burgundy rift along the eastern margin of the iberian microplate

ribbed moraine stratigraphy and formation in southern finnish lapland characteristics of ribbed moraines the dominating moraine type in southern finnish lapland have been studied in detail the ridges are composed of several till units of which the bottommost units consist of mature basal tills and the surficial parts are enriched with local short transport rock fragments and boulders in till and at the surface of ridges as a result of this re examination a two step model of the formation process of ribbed moraines is presented in the first stage while cold based conditions prevailed both the bottommost part of the ice sheet and the frozen substrate fractured under compressive ice flow following glacial transport of fractured blocks and formation of the transverse ridge morphology erosion between the ridges continued owing to freeze thaw process under variable pressure conditions in the areas with a low pre existing till sheet the process caused quarrying of the bedrock surface and subsequent deposition of rock fragments and boulders under high pressure on the next ridge the most suitable conditions for ribbed moraine formation existed during late weichselian deglaciation after the younger dryas when the climate warmed very quickly leading to an imbalance between a warm glacier surface and a cold base copyright 2006 john wiley sons ltd

interactions between mesoscale and submesoscale gravity waves and their efficient representation in mesoscale resolving models abstractas present weather forecast codes and increasingly many atmospheric climate models resolve at least part of the mesoscale flow and hence also internal gravity waves gws it is natural to ask whether even in such configurations subgrid scale gws might impact the resolved flow and how their effect could be taken into account this motivates a theoretical and numerical investigation of the interactions between unresolved submesoscale and resolved mesoscale gws using boussinesq dynamics for simplicity by scaling arguments first a subset of submesoscale gws that can indeed influence the dynamics of mesoscale gws is identified therein hydrostatic gws with wavelengths corresponding to the largest unresolved scales of present day limited area weather forecast models are an interesting example a large amplitude wkb theory allowing for a mesoscale unbalanced flow is then formulated based on multiscale asymptotic analysis utilizing a proper scale separation parameter purely vertical propagation

a new gravity wave drag scheme incorporating anisotropic orography and low level wave breaking impact upon the climate of the uk meteorological office unified model a new anisotropic gravity wave drag parametrization scheme which represents high drag states modelled on hydraulic jump flow blocking and internal wave reflection theory including trapped lee waves is presented the scheme is shown to represent the breaking of waves over mountains better than previous schemes by comparison with mesoscale simulations of pyrex case studies extended simulations of the meteorological office unified model at climate resolution are presented showing the impact of the new scheme and a combination of the scheme with a new orographic roughness parametrization results show a changed distribution of surface gravity wave surface stress mostly due to mountain anisotropy and a greater tendency for lower troposphere wavc drag inclusion of the orographic roughness parametrization halves the gravity wave stress the combined effect of these schemes for climate integrations being a slight improvement to the tropospheric flow

the abrupt termination of the younger dryas climate event previous studies on two deep greenland ice cores have shown that a long series of climate oscillations characterized the late weichselian glaciation in the north atlantic region1 and that the last glacial cold period the younger dryas ended abruptly 10 700 years ago2 here we further focus on this epoch defining event and present detailed heavy isotope and dust concentration profiles which suggest that in less than 20 years the climate in the north atlantic region turned into a milder and less stormy regime as a consequence of a rapid retreat of the sea ice cover a warming of 7 c in south greenland was completed in about 50 years

high elevation paleoenvironmental change during mis 6 4 in the central rockies of colorado as determined from pollen analysis abstract paleoecological studies from rocky mountain usa high elevations encompassing the previous interglacial mis 5e are rare the 10 m composite profile from the ziegler reservoir fossil site 2705 m asl of central colorado allows us to determine paleoenvironments from marine oxygen isotope stages mis 6 4 using pollen zones that are approximately equivalent to marine oxygen isotope stages during pollen zone pz 6 time pollen assemblages dominated by artemisia sagebrush suggest that alpine tundra or steppe occurred nearby the transition to pz 5e was characterized by a rapid increase in tree pollen initially picea spruce and pinus pine but also quercus oak and pseudotsuga menziesii douglas fir non arboreal pollen nap types increased during pz 5d while abies fir and juniperus juniper increased during pz 5c pollen evidence suggests that temperatures during pz 5b were as cold as during pz 6 with the site again surrounded by alpine tundra picea dominated during pz 5a before the onset of cooler conditions during pz 4 the mis 6 mis 5e transition here was similar to the mis 2 mis 1 transition at other rocky mountain sites however the ziegler reservoir pollen record contains evidence suggesting unexpected climatic trends at this site including a warmer than expected mis 5d and cooler than expected mis 5b

representing drag on unresolved terrain as a distributed momentum sink abstract in numerical weather prediction models drag on unresolved terrain is usually represented by augmenting the boundary drag on the model atmosphere in terms of an effective surface roughness length but as is shown here if a terrain following coordinate is defined relative to smoothed terrain the residual unresolved terrain component implies a volumetric momentum sink as recently implemented in the canadian climate centre gcm and as is implicit in the orographic stress profile method thus treating drag on unresolved terrain by way of an internal rather than enhanced surface momentum sink is a better method in principle while the skill of both methods hinges on limited fundamental knowledge of drag on terrain a distributed momentum sink arguably offers greater flexibility to improve modeling of mountain winds if necessary by tailoring the sink to achieve success in specific regions by trial and error a consequence of the new method is that unresolved terrain results in a ground based

an assessment of a mountain wave parametrization scheme using satellite observations of stratospheric gravity waves gravity wave induced temperature fluctuations predicted by a mountain wave parametrization scheme are compared with observed stratospheric temperature fluctuations from the high resolution dynamics limb sounder hirdls instrument the focus of the study is on the southern andes region during the month of august 2006 the comparison reveals that while the mean amplitude of temperature fluctuations predicted by the parametrization is broadly consistent with those observed by hirdls there are significant differences for individual cases ray tracing calculations performed for these cases suggest that these differences are likely to be associated with horizontal propagation of mountain waves which is not represented by current column based parametrization schemes the results presented in this note suggest that this is a deficiency of mountain wave parametrization schemes that may affect models at resolutions typical of both climate and numerical weather prediction modelling copyright 2011 royal meteorological society and british crown copyright the met office

the greenland ice sheet project 2 depth age scale methods and results the greenland ice sheet project 2 gisp2 depth age scale is presented based on a multiparameter continuous count approach to a depth of 2800 m using a systematic combination of parameters that have never been used to this extent before the ice at 2800 m is dated at 110 000 years b p with an estimated error ranging from 1 to 10 in the top 2500 m of the core and averaging 20 between 2500 and 2800 m parameters used to date the core include visual stratigraphy oxygen isotopic ratios of the ice electrical conductivity measurements laser light scattering from dust volcanic signals and major ion chemistry gisp2 ages for major climatic events agree with independent ages based on varve chronologies calibrated radiocarbon dates and other techniques within the combined uncertainties good agreement also is obtained with greenland ice core project ice core dates and with the specmap marine timescale after correlation through the 18 o of o 2 although the core is deformed below 2800 m and the continuity of the record is unclear we attempted to date this section of the core on the basis of the laser light scattering of dust in the ice

the δ18o record along the greenland ice core project deep ice core and the problem of possible eemian climatic instability over 70 000 samples from the 3029 m long greenland ice core project grip ice core drilled on the top of the greenland ice sheet summit have been analyzed for 8o a highly detailed and continuous 8o profile has thus been obtained and is discussed in terms of past temperatures in greenland we also discuss a three core stacked annual 8o profile for the past 917 years the short term 50 years variability of the annual 8o signal is found to be 1 in the holocene and estimates for the coldest parts of the last glacial are 3 or higher these data also provide insights into possible disturbances of the stratigraphic layering in the core which seems to be sound down to the onset of the eemian spectral analysis of highly detailed sequences of the profile helps determine the smoothing of the 8o signal which for the holocene ice is found to be considerably stronger than expected we suggest this is due to a process involving diffusion of water molecules along crystal boundaries in the recrystallizing ice matrix deconvolution techniques were employed for restoring with great confidence the highly attenuated annual 8o signal in the holocene we confirm earlier findings of dramatic temperature changes in greenland during the last glacial cycle abrupt and strong climatic shifts are also found within the eem sangamon interglaciation which is normally recorded as a period of warm and stable climate in lower latitudes the stratigraphic continuity of the eemian layers is consequently discussed in section 3 of this paper in terms of all pertinent data which we are not able to reconcile

gravity waves over antarctica and the southern ocean consistent momentum fluxes in mesoscale simulations and stratospheric balloon observations stratospheric balloons from the vorcore campaign have provided a unique description of the gravity wave field in the lower stratosphere above antarctica and the southern ocean during the austral spring of 2005 mesoscale simulations are carried out to analyze further the gravity wave field first the realism of the simulated waves is assessed by comparison to the observations a satisfactory overall agreement is found but different behaviour is noted for orographic waves overestimation in the simulations relative to the observations and non orographic waves underestimation second the gravity wave field is analyzed in more detail than was possible from observations alone it is necessary to distinguish and quantify orographic and non orographic waves separately orographic waves are larger and more intermittent yet affect only a limited geographical region hence although orographic sources stand out as hot spots for gravity waves their contribution to momentum fluxes entering the stratosphere is comparable to or smaller than the contribution of non orographic sources a diagnostic for intermittency the gini coefficient is proposed it clearly marks the distinction between orographic and non orographic sources intermittencies of 0 8 and 0 5 respectively sensitivity to resolution is quite small regarding the spatial structure of the gravity wave field but is significant for the amplitudes the momentum flux values increase by 2 when the horizontal resolution is doubled and possible biases of both simulations and observations are discussed nonetheless the good agreement between observations and simulations and the complementary information on the biases of each dataset promises that in the future these different estimates of gravity wave momentum fluxes may converge copyright 2012 royal meteorological society

low latitude dusty events vs high latitude icy heinrich events it has been proposed that tropical events could have participated in the triggering of the classic high latitude iceberg discharge heinrich events he we explore low latitude heinrich events equivalents at high resolution in a piston core recovered from the tropical north western african margin they are characterized by an increase of total dust lacustrine diatoms and fibrous lacustrine clay minerals thus low latitude events clearly reflect severe aridity events that occurred over africa at the saharan latitudes probably induced by southward shifts of the inter tropical convergence zone at a first approximation it seems that there is more likely synchronicity between the high latitude heinrich events hes and low latitude events lle rather than asynchronous behaviours

slope dependent friction in a barotropic model 1 an evaluation of different bottom friction parameterizations has been performed with a nonlinear barotropic shallow water model the model was set up for the baltic sea and forced with meteorological data during 1 year the simulations were validated using hourly observations from 38 tide gauge stations around the baltic a new parameterization with friction proportional to the scalar product between the flow velocity and the bottom slope was tested and compared with parameterizations using rayleigh friction ekman friction laplacian viscosity or quadratic bottom friction the new parameterization consistently gave both a smaller error and a better correlation with the observations the average error with slope friction was 5 0 cm as compared with 5 2 cm using quadratic bottom friction the best of the other parameterizations the correlation using slope friction was 0 92 as compared with 0 91 using quadratic bottom friction the results were slightly improved by combining slope friction and rayleigh friction

improvement of orographic gravity wave parameterization using a mesoscale gravity wave model abstract parameterization of gravity waves due to subgrid scale orography is now included in most existing large scale models of the atmosphere parameterization schemes however have so far been evaluated mainly in view of the overall performance of the large scale models this may lead to an inappropriate assessment of the schemes since errors from various sources may interact with one another to avoid this situation an approach is taken in which a numerical model that explicitly resolves gravity waves is used to evaluate the performance of the schemes for this purpose a mesoscale two dimensional nonlinear anelastic nonhydrostatic model is developed and used to numerically simulate gravity waves for a variety of orographic conditions regarding a subdomain of the mesoseale model as the horizontal grid interval of a large scale model two vertical profiles of gravity wave drag are compared one for the subdomain averaged values of the drag simulated by the mesoseale model and the other for the drag c

irregular glacial interstadials recorded in a new greenland ice core the greenland ice sheet offers the most favourable conditions in the northern hemisphere for obtaining high resolution continuous time series of climate related parameters profiles of 18o 16o ratio along three previous deep greenland ice cores1 3 seemed to reveal irregular but well defined episodes of relatively mild climate conditions interstadials during the mid and late parts of the last glaciation but there has been some doubt as to whether the shifts in oxygen isotope ratio were genuine representations of changes in climate rather than artefacts due to disturbed stratification here we present results from a new deep ice core drilled at the summit of the greenland ice sheet where the depositional environ ment and the flow pattern of the ice are close to ideal for core recovery and analysis the results reproduce the previous findings to such a degree that the existence of the interstadial episodes can no longer be in doubt according to a preliminary timescale based on stratigraphic studies the interstadials lasted from 500 to 2 000 years and their irregular occurrence suggests complexity in the behaviour of the north atlantic ocean circulation

impacts of horizontal propagation of orographic gravity waves on the wave drag in the stratosphere and lower mesosphere the impact of horizontal propagation of mountain waves on the orographic gravity wave drag ogwd in the stratosphere and lower mesosphere of the northern hemisphere is evaluated for the first time using a fine resolution 1 arc min terrain and 2 5 2 5 european centre for medium range weather forecasts era interim reanalysis data during 2011 2016 two sets of ogwd are calculated offline according to a traditional parameterization scheme without horizontal propagation and a newly proposed scheme with horizontal propagation in both cases the zonal mean ogwds show similar spatial patterns and undergo a notable seasonal variation in winter the ogwd is mainly distributed in the upper stratosphere and lower mesosphere of middle to high latitudes whereas the summertime ogwd is confined in the lower stratosphere comparison between the two sets of ogwd reveal that the horizontal propagation of mountain waves tends to decrease increase the ogwd in the lower stratosphere middle to upper stratosphere and lower mesosphere consequently including the horizontal propagation of mountain waves in the parameterization of ogwd can reduce the excessive ogwd in the lower stratosphere and strengthen the insufficient gravity wave forcing in the mesosphere which are the known problems of traditional ogwd schemes the impact of horizontal propagation is more prominent in winter than in summer with the ogwd in western tibetan plateau rocky mountains and greenland notably affected

16 c rapid temperature variation in central greenland 70 000 years ago variations in the29n2 28n2 ratio of air bubbles trapped in polar ice cores and their relation to variations of the 18o 16o of the ice allow past surface temperature variations and ice age gas age differences to be determined high resolution measurements of29n2 28n2 in dansgaard oeschger event 19 around 70 000 years before the present in ice from central greenland show that at the beginning of the event the ice age gas age difference was 1090 100 years with the use of a combined firn densification temperature and gas diffusion model the 18oice temperature coefficient was determined to be 0 42 0 05 per mil per kelvin this coefficient implies a mean surface temperature change of 16 0 kelvin between 14 3 and 18 1 kelvin which differs substantially from values derived from borehole temperatures and modern spatial 18oice surface temperature correlations

past circulation along the western iberian margin a time slice vision from the last glacial to the holocene abstract fifteen iberian margin sediment cores distributed between 43 12 n and 35 53 n have been used to reconstruct spatial and temporal sub surface circulation along the iberian margin since the last glacial period time slice maps of planktonic foraminiferal derived summer sea surface temperature sst and export productivity pexp were established for specific time intervals within the last 35 ky the holocene recent and last 8 ky younger dryas yd heinrich stadials hs 1 2a 2b 3 and the last glacial maximum lgm the sst during the holocene shows the same latitudinal gradient along the western iberian margin as present day with cold but productive areas that reflect the influence of coastal upwelling centers the lgm appears as a slightly less warm but more productive period relative to the holocene and present day conditions suggesting that sea level minima forced a westward displacement of the coastal upwelling centers possibly accompanied by a strengthening of northward winds during the yd a longitudinal thermal front is depicted at 10 w with cold polar waters offshore and warmer subtropical waters inshore suggesting that the subtropical paleo iberian poleward current more likely flowed at a more inshore location masking the local sst signal and amplitude of variation a substantial cooling and drop in productivity is observed during all hs in particular hs1 and hs3 reflecting the penetration of icebergs derived meltwater these most extreme southward extensions of very cold waters define a strong sst gradient that marks a possible paleo azores front higher production south of this front was likely fed by frontal nutrient advection

ch4 and δ18o of o2 records from antarctic and greenland ice a clue for stratigraphic disturbance in the bottom part of the greenland ice core project and the greenland ice sheet project 2 ice cores the suggestion of climatic instability during the last interglacial period eem based on the bottom 10 of the greenland ice core project grip isotopic profile has been questioned because the bottom record from the neighboring greenland ice sheet project 2 gisp2 core 28 km away is strikingly different over the same interval and because records of the 18o of atmospheric o2 from both cores showed unexpected rapid fluctuations here we present detailed methane records from the vostok antarctica grip and gisp2 cores over the relevant intervals the grip and gisp2 data show rapid and large changes in methane concentration which are correlative with variations of the 18o of the ice while the vostok record shows no such variations this discrepancy reinforces the suggestion that the bottom sections of the greenland records are disturbed by combining the methane data with measurements of 18o of o2 in the same samples we attempt to constrain the nature of the stratigraphic disturbance and the age of the analyzed ice samples our results suggest that ice layers from part of the last interglacial period exist in the lower section of both ice cores and that some of the apparent climate instabilities in the grip core would be the result of a mixture of ice from the last interglacial with ice from the beginning of the last glaciation or from the penultimate glaciation

nonpropagating form drag and turbulence due to stratified flow over large scale abyssal hill topography abstractdrag and turbulence in steady stratified flows over abyssal hills have been parameterized using linear theory and rates of energy cascade due to wave wave interactions linear theory has

parameterization of directional absorption of orographic gravity waves and its impact on the atmospheric general circulation simulated by the weather research and forecasting model abstractin this work a new parameterization scheme is developed to account for the directional absorption of orographic gravity waves ogws using elliptical mountain wave theory the vertical mom

oxygen 18 16 variability in greenland snow and ice with 10 3 to 105 year time resolution the 3 km long greenland ice sheet project 2 gisp2 ice core presents a 100 000 year detailed oxygen isotope profile covering almost a full glacial interglacial cycle measuranents of isotopic fluctuations in snow frost and atmospheric water vapor samples collected during summer field seasons up to 20 0 are compatible with the large and abrupt 80 160 changes observed in accumulated tim snow pit 15 80 profiles from the gisp2 summit area however show rapid smoothing of the 180 160 signal near the surface beyond about 2 m depth the smoothedi5180 signal is fairly well preserved and can be interpreted in terms of average local weather conditions and climate the longer climate fluctuations also have regional and often global significance in the older part of the record corresponding to marine isotope stages mis 5a to 5d the effect of orbital climate forcing via the 19 and 23 kyr precession cycles and the 41 kyr obliquity cycle is obvious from the end ofmis 5a at about 75 000 years b p till the end of the glacial at the younger dryas preboreal transition at 11 650 years b p the o180 160 record shows frequent rapid switches between intermediate interstadial and low stadial values fourier spectra of the oscillations that are superimposed on the orbitally induced changes contain a strong periodicity at 1 5 kyr a broad peak at 4 0 kyr and additional shorter periods detailed comparison of the gisp2 180 160 record with the vostok antarctica 15d record pacific ocean foraminiferal 180 160 grande pile france tree pollen and insolation indicates that a counterpart to many of the rapid 180 160 fluctuations of gisp2 can be found in the other records and that the gisp2 isotopic changes clearly are the local expression of climate changes of worldwide extent correlation of events on the independent gisp2 and specmap time scales for the interval 10 000 50 000 years b p shows excellent chronometric agreement except possibly for the event labeled 3 1 the glacial to interglacial transition evidently started simultaneously in the arctic and the antarctic but its development and its expression in greenland isotopes was later suppressed by the influence of meltwater especially from the barents sea ice sheet on deep water formation and ocean circulation meltwaters from different ice sheets bordering the north atlantic also influenced ocean circulation during the bolling allerod interstadial complex and the younger dryas and led to a distinct development of european climate and greenland 180 160 values the holocene interval with long term stable mean isotopic values contains several fluauations with periods from years to millennia dominant is a 6 3 year oscillation with amplitude up to 3 to 4 0 periodicities of 11 and 210 years also found in the solar modulated records of the cosmogenic isotopes 1obe and 14c suggest solar processes as the cause of these cycles depression of180 160 values cooling by volcanic eruptions is observed in stacked gisp215 80 records but the effect is small and not likely to trigger major climate changes

borehole versus isotope temperatures on greenland seasonality does matter new simulation results obtained with the hamburg atmosphere general circulation model echam 4 under maximum glacial boundary lgm conditions confirm the paleotemperatures on greenland determined by borehole thermometry the disagreement between 18o isotope based temperatures and the borehole temperatures of the lgm is not only reproduced by the model but the simulation results provide a plausible explanation paleotemperatures inferred from 18o measurements in ice cores are biased by a substantially increased seasonality of precipitation over greenland during the lgm during the glacial winter a much more zonal circulation prevents the effective transport of moisture to the greenland ice sheet and therefore reduces the contribution of isotopically strongly depleted winter snow to the annual mean isotope signal

the characteristics and source of laminated mud at lake barrine northeast australia abstract in a small 1 km 2 crater lake in the australian upland tropics 17 15 s 145 38 e 721 m a s l laminated mud has accumulated throughout the past 5 ka it is limited to a central region below 50 67 m of water where it is protected by a monimolimnion the contents of the laminae e g total lake products organic detritus diatoms pollen grains vivianite crystals distinguish two contrasting types namely detritus rich and detritus poor judged against radiocarbon dates over long sequences these couplets are not annual gravimetric mineralogical and chemical observations on the mud and on suspended organic and inorganic matter caught through several periods indicate some diagenetic changes across the mud water interface diatom analyses do not assist in relating mud type to source or period of origin the most likely mechanism of lamination is that continuous deposition of clay with small and varied detrital accompaniment is periodically enhanced by greater detrital input this occurs in some but not all periods of winter isothermy when ground temperatures fall to zero and below on several consecutive nights this leads to the stirring of sediments in water shallower than 50 m and their relocation in the deeper meromictic zone fine variations in e g diatom content partly independent of lamination type probably contain a wealth of detail about the lake s environmental history

atmospheric mountain wave generation on venus and its influence on the solid planet s rotation rate the akatsuki spacecraft observed a 10 000 km long meridional structure at the top of the cloud deck of venus that appeared stationary with respect to the surface and was interpreted as a gravity wave additionally over four venus solar days of observations other such waves were observed to appear in the afternoon over equatorial highland regions this indicates a direct influence of the solid planet on the whole venusian atmosphere despite dissimilar rotation rates of 243 and 4 days respectively how such gravity waves might be generated on venus is not understood here we use general circulation model simulations of the venusian atmosphere to show that the observations are consistent with stationary gravity waves over topographic highs or mountain waves that are generated in the afternoon in equatorial regions by the diurnal cycle of near surface atmospheric stability we find that these mountain waves substantially contribute to the total atmospheric torque that acts on the planet s surface we estimate that mountain waves along with the thermal tide and baroclinic waves can produce a change in the rotation rate of the solid body of about 2 minutes per solar day this interplay between the solid planet and atmosphere may explain some of the difference in rotation rates equivalent to a change in the length of day of about 7 minutes measured by spacecraft over the past 40 years

relative sea level change in greenland during the last 700 yrs and ice sheet response to the little ice age this paper presents new evidence regarding relative sea level rsl changes and vertical land motions at three sites in greenland since 1300 a d a time interval that spans the later part of the medieval climate anomaly mca and the little ice age lia we observe rsl rise at two sites in central west greenland from c 0 80 0 20 m at c 1300 a d to c 0 20 m 0 25 m at c 1600 a d after which rsl slowed and then stabilised at a third site in south greenland we observe rsl rise from c 1 40 0 20 m at c 1400 a d until c 1750 a d after which rsl slowed and was stable during at least the latter part of the 20th century the c 1600 a d rsl slow down seen at the two former sites is surprising because it occurs during the lia when one might expect the ice sheet to be gaining mass and causing rsl to rise we interpret this rsl slowdown to indicate a period of enhanced regional mass loss from central west greenland since c 1600 a d and propose two hypotheses for this loss first a reduction in precipitation during cold and dry conditions and second higher air temperatures and increased peripheral surface melt of the ice sheet from this date onwards the latter hypothesis is compatible with a well established temperature seesaw between western greenland and northern europe and potentially a previously identified shift from a positive to generally more negative nao conditions around 1400 to 1600 a d our study shows how rsl data from greenland can provide constraints on the timing of ice sheet fluctuations in the last millennium and challenges the notion that during cold periods in northern europe the ice sheet in west greenland gained mass

isotopic events in the grip ice core a stratotype for the late pleistocene an event stratigraphy for the last termination based on the stratotype of the grip ice core record has been outlined for the north atlantic region it is suggested that such an approach to stratigraphic subdivision may o er a more satisfactory alternative to conventional stratigraphical procedures for those parts of the recent quaternary record that are characterised by rapid and or short term climatic uctuations 1999 elsevier science ltd all rights reserved

large arctic temperature change at the wisconsin holocene glacial transition analysis of borehole temperature and greenland ice sheet project ii ice core isotopic composition reveals that the warming from average glacial conditions to the holocene in central greenland was large approximately 15 c this is at least three times the coincident temperature change in the tropics and mid latitudes the coldest periods of the last glacial were probably 21 c colder than at present over the greenland ice sheet

alleviation of stationary biases in a gcm through a mountain drag parameterization scheme and a simple representation of mountain lift forces abstract the problem of the representation of the orientation of mountain forces in a gcm is examined first a series of winter simulations is presented with the laboratoire de meteorologie dynamique gcm where the model ground is flat and where the mountains are represented by applying forces to the flow that are either strictly opposite to the local wind i e a drag or strictly perpendicular to it i e a lift these experiments show that the drag forces improve the zonal wind but do not improve the steady planetary wave everywhere while the lift forces scarcely affect the zonal wind but force a steady planetary wave that is everywhere realistic the drag force is formulated following the realistic subgrid scale orographic sso scheme developed recently at ecmwf the lift force essentially enhances vortex stretching over large scale mountains to address issues concerning the representation of sso in gcms experiments with mean orography the ecmwf sso scheme and enhanced lift forces over mounta

evidence for general instability of past climate from a 250 kyr ice core record recent results1 2 from two ice cores drilled in central greenland have revealed large abrupt climate changes of at least regional extent during the late stages of the last glaciation suggesting that climate in the north atlantic region is able to reorganize itself rapidly perhaps even within a few decades here we present a detailed stable isotope record for the full length of the greenland ice core project summit ice core extending over the past 250 kyr according to a calculated timescale we find that climate instability was not confined to the last glaciation but appears also to have been marked during the last interglacial as explored more fully in a companion paper3 and during the previous saale holstein glacial cycle this is in contrast with the extreme stability of the holocene suggesting that recent climate stability may be the exception rather than the rule the last interglacial seems to have lasted longer than is implied by the deep sea specmap record4 in agreement with other land based observations5 6 we suggest that climate instability in the early part of the last interglacial may have delayed the melting of the saalean ice sheets in america and eurasia perhaps accounting for this discrepancy

synoptic responses to mountain gravity waves encountering directional critical levels abstract a heuristic model is used to study the synoptic response to mountain gravity waves gws absorbed at directional critical levels the model is a semigeostrophic version of the eady model for baroclinic instability adapted by smith to study lee cyclogenesis the gws exert a force on the large scale flow where they encounter directional critical levels this force is taken into account in the model herein and produces potential vorticity pv anomalies in the midtroposphere first the authors consider the case of an idealized mountain range such that the orographic variance is well separated between small and large scale contributions in the absence of tropopause the pv produced by the gw force has a surface impact that is significant compared to the surface response due to the large scales for a cold front the gw force produces a trough over the mountain and a larger amplitude ridge immediately downstream it opposes somehow to the response due to the large scales of the mountain range whic

an accurate spectral nonorographic gravity wave drag parameterization for general circulation models abstract an accurate method of solution is developed for the warner and mcintyre parameterization of nonorographic gravity wave drag for the case of hydrostatic dynamics in the absence of rotation the new scheme is sufficiently fast that it is suitable for operational use in a general circulation model multiyear climate runs of the canadian middle atmosphere model are performed using the new scheme and these are compared against equivalent climate runs using the full warner and mcintyre scheme which includes nonhydrostatic and rotational wave dynamics the results indicate that the new operational scheme closely reproduces the seasonal distribution of time and zonal mean zonal winds and the seasonal evolution of lower stratospheric temperatures that are obtained when the full warner and mcintyre scheme is used in addition these quantities are shown to compare favorably with observations

gaseous components in the atmosphere and the historic record revealed by ice cores the composition of air in bubbles of ice reveals important information on the composition of the atmosphere at the time at which the ice was formed the enclosed air has essentially an atmospheric composition if the ice formation occurred by dry sintering of snow and firn at low temperatures the history of atmospheric co2 concentration is of special interest due to its present increase and its climatic implications currently co2 analysis of air extracted from ice cores seems the best and most direct method of determining the natural co2 concentration before 1950 and possible pre industrial variations analyses of ice samples representing the past 40 ka show that there were significant changes in concentration of atmospheric co2 at the end and probably during part of the last glaciation 13c measurements on co2 extracted from ice cores can indicate possible mechanisms causing these changes in the concentration of atmospheric co2

geochronology of betula extensions in pollen diagrams of alpine late glacial lake deposits a case study of the late glacial deposits of the gasserplatz soil archives vorarlberg austria pollen diagrams of alpine late glacial calcareous lake deposits show several extensions of betula the geochronology of these extensions cannot be based on radiocarbon dating due to reservoir effects of such lakes on the radiocarbon ages a robust geochronology can be based on the oxygen isotope stratigraphy additionally recognition of 12 920 calbp lst in the sediment cores provides a secure time marker the combined results of pollen macro remains and stable isotope analyses of the gasserplatz cores point to a correlation of the betula extensions with the oscillations in the oxygen isotope curve and are related to global climatic oscillations this is sustained by the correlation of the gasserplatz isotope oscillations with the oscillations as registered in the greenland ice cores comparison of the results of the gasserplatz cores with the results of similar alpine lake deposits makes clear that the fluctuations in the betula curve are not a local but a regional phenomenon

evidence for massive discharges of icebergs into the north atlantic ocean during the last glacial period sediments in the north atlantic ocean contain a series of layers that are rich in ice rafted debris and unusually poor in foraminifera1 here we present evidence that the most recent six of these heinrich layers deposited between 14 000 and 70 000 years ago record marked decreases in sea surface temperature and salinity decreases in the flux of planktonic foraminifera to the sediments and short lived massive discharges of icebergs originating in eastern canada the path of the icebergs clearly marked by the presence of ice rafted detrital carbonate can be traced for more than 3 000 km a remarkable distance attesting to extreme cooling of surface waters and enormous amounts of drifting ice the cause of these extreme events is puzzling they may reflect repeated rapid advances of the laurentide ice sheet perhaps associated with reductions in air temperatures yet temperature records from greenland ice cores appear to exhibit only a weak corresponding signal moreover the 5 10 000 yr intervals between the events are inconsistent with milankovitch orbital periodicities raising the question of what the ultimate cause of the postulated cooling may have been

an event stratigraphy for the last termination in the north atlantic region based on the greenland ice core record a proposal by the intimate group it is suggested that the grip greenland ice core should constitute the stratotype for the last termination based on the oxygen isotope signal in that core a new event stratigraphy spanning the time interval from ca 22 0 to 11 5 k grip yr bp ca 19 0 10 0 k 14 c yr bp is proposed for the north atlantic region this covers the period from the last glacial maximum through termination 1 of the deep ocean record to the pleistocene holocene boundary and encompasses the last glacial late glacial of the traditional northwest european stratigraphy the isotopic record for this period is divided into two stadial episodes greenland stadials 1 gs 1 and 2 gs 2 and two interstadial events greenland interstadials 1 gi 1 and 2 gi 2 in addition gi 1 and gs 2 are further subdivided into shorter episodes the event stratigraphy is equally applicable to ice core marine and terrestrial records and is considered to be a more appropriate classificatory scheme than the terrestrially based radiocarbon dated chronostratigraphy that has been used hitherto 1998 john wiley sons ltd

the parametrization of drag induced by stratified flow over anisotropic orography a new parametrization of drag arising from the flow over unresolved topography ut in a general circulation model gcm is presented it is comprised of three principle components a parametrization of the source spectrum and drag associated with freely propagating hydrostatic gravity waves in the absence of rotation a parametrization of the drag associated with low level wave breaking and a parametrization of low level drag associated with upstream blocking and lee vortex dynamics novel features of the scheme include a new procedure for defining the ut in each gcm grid cell which takes account of the gcm resolution and includes only the scales represented by the parametrization scheme a new method of representing the azimuthal distribution of vertical momentum flux by two waves whose direction and magnitude systematically vary with the flow direction and with the anisotropy of the ut in each gcm grid cell and a new application of form drag in the lowest levels which can change the direction of the low level flow so that it is more parallel to unresolved two dimensional topographic ridges the new scheme is tested in the canadian centre for climate modelling and analysis third generation atmospheric gcm at horizontal resolutions of t47 and t63 five year seasonal means of present day climate show that the new scheme improves mean sea level pressures or mass distribution and improves the tropospheric circulation when compared with the gravity wave drag scheme used currently in the gcm the benefits are most pronounced during northern hemisphere winter it is also found that representing the azimuthal distribution of the momentum flux of the freely propagating gravity wave field with two waves rather than just one allows 30 50 more gravity wave momentum flux up into the middle atmosphere depending on the season the additional momentum flux into the middle atmosphere is expected to have a beneficial impact on gcms that employ a more realistic representation of the stratosphere

holocene climatic records from agassiz ice cap ellesmere island nwt canada four ice cores from the top of the agassiz ice cap and down a flow line have been variously analysed for 8 18o ecm solid conductivity and ice melt layer stratigraphy stratigraphic correlation

energy sinks for lee waves in shear flow abstractmicrostructure measurements in drake passage and on the flanks of kerguelen plateau find turbulent dissipation rates e on average factors of 2 3 smaller than linear lee wave generation pred

effects of horizontal geometrical spreading on the parameterization of orographic gravity wave drag part i numerical transform solutions abstractnumerical transform solutions for hydrostatic gravity waves generated by both uniform and sheared flow over elliptical obstacles are used to quantify effects of horizontal geometrical spreading on amplitude evolution with height both vertical displacement and steepness amplitudes are considered because of their close connections to drag parameterizations in weather and climate models novel diagnostics quantify the location and value of the largest wavefield amplitudes most likely to break at each altitude these horizontal locations do not stray far from the obstacle peak even at high altitudes resulting vertical profiles of wave amplitude are normalized to remove density and refraction effects thereby quantifying the horizontal geometrical spreading contribution currently absent from parameterizations horizontal geometrical spreading produces monotonic amplitude decreases with height through wave action conservation as waves propagate into progressively larger horizontal areas accumulated

a new subgrid scale orographic drag parametrization its formulation and testing a scheme for the representation of subgrid scale orography sso in numerical weather prediction and climate models is presented the new scheme arose in part from a desire to represent nonlinear low level mountain drag effects not currently parametrized an important feature of the scheme is that it deals explicitly with a low level flow which is blocked when the effective height of the subgrid scale orography is sufficiently high in this new scheme it is assumed that for this blocked flow separation occurs at the mountain flanks resulting in a form drag this drag is parametrized on model levels which are intersected by the sso and provides a dynamically based replacement for envelope orography the upper part of the low level flow goes over the orography and generates gravity waves at the model resolutions considered t106 and t213 it is assumed that the length scales characteristic of the sso are sufficiently small for the coriolis force to be neglected the various parameters of the scheme are adjusted using an off line procedure in which the scheme is used to estimate the mountain drag and the momentum profiles above the pyrenees and these estimates are validated with the pyrex data forecasts using t106 and t213 resolutions with this new scheme and with mean orography show that the forecast mountain drag consistently reproduces the drag measured during pyrex whenever the flow component normal to the ridge is large isentropic flow diagnostics further show that the new scheme has a realistic impact on the flow dynamics reinforcing the low level wake observed in mesoscale analyses of the flow with this new scheme and a mean orography the ecmwf model outperformed in forecast skill a version of the model which had an envelope orography and the old gravity wave drag scheme while no longer suffering any disadvantages of envelope orography the proposed low level drag parametrization should also be relevant at model horizontal resolutions much higher than t213

chronology and paleoenvironment of marine isotope stage 3 from two high elevation speleothems austrian alps abstract a new high resolution stable isotope record from the alpine kleegruben cave 2165 m central alps is presented this record largely duplicates a previously reported speleothem record from this site high precision u series thermal ionization mass spectrometry dates constrain the growth history of this new sample 56 48 ka to the marine isotope stage mis 3 both stalagmites reveal highly similar variations in o isotopes that can be directly compared to o isotope variability associated with dansgaard oeschger interstadials recorded in the greenland ice cores greenland interstadials gis based on the new record we refine our previous age assignments of the gis during this time interval i e gis 15b at 55 7 ka gis 15a at 55 3 ka onset mid point of the prominent gis 14 at 54 5 yr and onset of gis 12 at 48 ka the overall uncertainties associated with these ages are 0 1 0 3 ka the timing of these dansgaard oeschger interstadials is within 0 2 ka of the newly proposed grip sfcp04 timescale the age data for both kleegruben stalagmites demonstrate that liquid water was at least seasonally present in the shallow sub surface allowing calcite precipitation to continue even during stadials of mis 3 given the present day low temperature 2 4 c we propose that these unusual speleothems formed in a karst system overlain by a warm based glacier

temperature accumulation and ice sheet elevation in central greenland through the last deglacial transition we present a combined heat and ice flow model constrained by measurements of temperature in the greenland ice sheet project 2 gisp2 borehole and by the gisp2 18o record and depth age scale which determines a history of temperature accumulation rate and ice sheet elevation for the past 50 000 years in central greenland important results are that the temperature increase from average glacial to holocene conditions was large approximately 15 c with a 20 c warming from late glacial to holocene that the average accumulation rate during the last glacial maximum between 15 and 30 kyr b p was 5 5 to 7 cm yr 1 approximately 25 of the modern accumulation rate that long term 500 1000 years averaged accumulation rate and temperature have been inversely correlated during the most recent 7 millennia of the holocene and that the greenland ice sheet probably thickened during the deglacial transition the inverse correlation of accumulation rate and temperature in the mid and late holocene suggests that the greenland ice sheet is more prone to volume reduction in a warmed climate than previously thought and demonstrates that accumulation rate is not a reliable proxy for temperature the elevation history of the ice sheet is poorly constrained by the model and independent evidence is needed we also present a simple estimate of the response time for thinning of the interior region of an ice sheet due to retreat of its margins this was approximately 1900 years for central greenland during deglaciation

mesoscale model initialization of the fourier method for mountain waves abstract a fourier method is combined with a mesoscale model to simulate mountain waves the mesoscale model describes the nonlinear low level flow and predicts the emerging wave field above the mountain this solution serves as the lower boundary condition for the fourier method which follows the waves upward to much higher altitudes and downward to the ground to examine parameterizations for the orography and the lower boundary condition a high drag case with a froude number of is presented

paleoceanographic reconstructions of surface ocean conditions in the greenland iceland and norwegian seas through the last 14 ka based on diatoms prior reconstructions of the last glacial maximum and the holocene did not include detailed paleoclimate data from the greenland iceland and norwegian gin seas which cover sensitive areas for oceanographic boundaries sea ice distribution and deep water formation in order to fill this gap we studied nine well dated sediment cores from this area and reconstructed the paleoceanographic conditions of the surface gin seas at 2000 year intervals since 13 400 bp based on the diatom record results show that a n s extending sea ice free corridor had opened along norway already at 13 400 bp indicating a northward flow of a branch of the north atlantic drift possibly caused by a change in the jet stream flow due to the decreased height of the north american ice sheet a major change of climatic conditions occurred over the gin seas as the insolation anomaly reached its maximum around 9000 bp when the sea ice cover and the oceanic fronts retreated to a northwesterly position along greenland and the ocean temperatures rose the first half of the holocene is recorded as the warmest period during the last 13 400 bp in the gin seas the duration of this climatic optimum decreased both toward the north and toward the margins of the area the second half of the holocene is characterized by a cooling trend in step with the decreasing insolation these results support the proposal of imbrie et al 1992 that the gin seas region acts as an initial responder to insolation changes

age dating and the orbital theory of the ice ages development of a high resolution 0 to 300 000 year chronostratigraphy using the concept of orbital tuning a continuous high resolution deep sea chronostratigraphy has been developed spanning the last 300 000 yr the chronology is developed using a stacked oxygen isotope stratigraphy and four different orbital tuning approaches each of which is based upon a different assumption concerning the response of the orbital signal recorded in the data each approach yields a separate chronology the error measured by the standard deviation about the average of these four results which represents the best chronology has an average magnitude of only 2500 yr this small value indicates that the chronology produced is insensitive to the specific orbital tuning technique used excellent convergence between chronologies developed using each of five different paleoclimatological indicators from a single core is also obtained the resultant chronology is also insensitive to the specific indicator used the error associated with each tuning approach is estimated independently and propagated through to the average result the resulting error estimate is independent of that associated with the degree of convergence and has an average magnitude of 3500 yr in excellent agreement with the 2500 yr estimate transfer of the final chronology to the stacked record leads to an estimated error of 1500 yr thus the final chronology has an average error of 5000 yr