timing and origin of recent regional ice mass loss in greenland within the last decade the greenland ice sheet gris and its surroundings have experienced record high surface temperatures mote 2007 box et al 2010 ice sheet melt extent fettweis et al 2011 and record low summer sea ice extent nghiem et al 2007 using three independent data sets we derive for the first time consistent ice mass trends and temporal variations within seven major drainage basins from gravity fields from the gravity recovery and climate experiment grace tapley et al 2004 surface ice velocities from inteferometric synthetic aperture radar insar rignot and kanagaratnam 2006 together with output of the regional atmospheric climate modelling racmo2 gr ettema et al 2009 and surface elevation changes from the ice cloud and land elevation satellite icesat sorensen et al 2011 we show that changing ice discharge d surface melting and subsequent run off m r and precipitation p all contribute in a complex and regionally variable interplay to the increasingly negative mass balance of the gris observed within the last decade interannual variability in p along the northwest and west coasts of the gris largely explains the apparent regional mass loss increase during 2002 2010 and obscures increasing m r and d since the 1990s in winter 2002 2003 and 2008 2009 accumulation anomalies in the east and southeast temporarily outweighed the losses by m r and d that prevailed during 2003 2008 and after summer 2010 overall for all basins of the gris the decadal variability of anomalies in p m r and d between 1958 and 2010 w r t 1961 1990 was significantly exceeded by the regional trends observed during the grace period 2002 2011 2012 elsevier b v

glacial stage ice core records from the subtropical dunde ice cap china the first ice core record of both the holocene and wisconsin wiirm late glacial stage lgs from the subtropics has been extracted from three ice cores to bedrock from the dunde ice cap on the north central qinghai tibetan plateau ice thicknesses at the ice cap summit average 138 m the bedrock surface is relatively flat surface and basal temperatures are 7 3 and 4 7 c respectively and the ice cap exhibits radial flow away from the summit dome these records reveal a major change in the climate of the plateau 10 000 years ago and suggest that lgs conditions were colder wetter and dustier than holocene conditions this is inferred from the more negative 6180 ratios increased dust content decreased soluble aerosol concentrations and reduced ice crystal sizes which characterize the lgs part of the cores total b radioactivity from shallow ice cores indicates that over the last 24 years the average accumulation rate has been 400 mm a 1 at the summit the ice cores have been dated using a combination of annual layers in the insoluble dust and 6180 in the upper sections of core visible dust layers which are annual and ice flow modeling the oxygen isotope record which serves as a temperature proxy indicates that the last 60 years have been the warmest in the entire record

laboratory earthquakes the sub rayleigh to supershear rupture transition we report on the experimental observation of spontaneously nucleated supershear rupture and on the visualization of sub rayleigh to supershear rupture transitions in frictionally held interfaces the laboratory experiments mimic natural earthquakes the results suggest that under certain conditions supershear rupture propagation can be facilitated during large earthquake events

atmospheric volcanic loading derived from bipolar ice cores accounting for the spatial distribution of volcanic deposition 1 previous studies have used small numbers of ice core records of past volcanism to represent hemispheric or global radiative forcing from volcanic stratospheric aerosols with the largest ever assembly of volcanic ice core records and state of the art climate model simulations of volcanic deposition we now have a unique opportunity to investigate the effects of spatial variations on sulfate deposition and on estimates of atmospheric loading we have combined 44 ice core records 25 from the arctic and 19 from antarctica and goddard institute for space studies modele simulations to study the spatial distribution of volcanic sulfate aerosols in the polar ice sheets we extracted volcanic deposition signals by applying a high pass loess filter to the time series and examining peaks that exceed twice the 31 year running median absolute deviation our results suggest that the distribution of volcanic sulfate aerosol follows the general precipitation pattern in both regions indicating the important role precipitation has played in affecting the deposition pattern of volcanic aerosols we found a similar distribution pattern for sulfate aerosols from the 1783 1784 laki and 1815 tambora eruptions as well as for the total b activity after the 1952 1954 low latitude northern hemisphere and 1961 1962 high latitude northern hemisphere atmospheric nuclear weapon tests this confirms the previous assumption that the transport and deposition of nuclear bomb test debris resemble those of volcanic aerosols we compare three techniques for estimating stratospheric aerosol loading from ice core data radioactive deposition from nuclear bomb tests pinatubo sulfate deposition in eight antarctic ice cores and climate model simulations of volcanic sulfate transport and deposition following the 1783 laki 1815 tambora 1912 katmai and 1991 pinatubo eruptions by applying the above calibration factors to the 44 ice core records we have estimated the stratospheric sulfate aerosol loadings for the largest volcanic eruptions during the last millennium these loadings agree fairly well with estimates based on radiation petrology and model simulations we also estimate the relative magnitude of sulfate deposition compared with the mean for greenland and antarctica for each ice core record which provides a guideline to evaluate the stratospheric volcanic sulfate aerosol loading calculated from a single or a few ice core records

greenland marine terminating glacier area changes 2000 2010 area changes at 39 of the widest greenland marine terminating glacier outlets are measured in consecutive annual end of melt season moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer modis scenes spanning ten annual intervals 2000 10 the rates of cumulative area change for glaciers and ice shelves are well represented by linear least squares fits r 0 99 and r 0 94 with average rates of 70 and 65 km 2 a 1 respectively collectively during this decade the 39 glaciers lost a cumulative area of 1368 km 2 more than three quarters of the total area change occurred north of 72 n the largest 11 year area change for a single glacier during the survey period is the 311 km 2 loss at humboldt glacier the largest annual change for a single glacier was extreme compared with the others where petermann glacier retreated 17 km between 3 and 5 august 2010 for the 10 year sample on average the count of glaciers retreating is twice that advancing a larger distinction is evident considering area change with the ratio of retreat and advance on average nine times the gain for glaciers with ice shelves we find no year with collective area gain the area change data from this study are posted at http bprc osu edu jbox data gac

eolian dust activity during the last 850 years on the southeastern margin of the arid central asia abstract eolian dust activity studies on the arid central asia aca one of the world s largest dust sources are of great importance to the global climatic system grain size distributions gsds can provide information on sediment sources transport processes and sedimentary environments as a result gsd is the most frequently applied proxy in reconstruction of past eolian dust activities of the aca using lake sediments the gsd dataset for a core spanning the last 850 years from kuhai lake on the northeastern tibetan plateau was unmixed by end member analysis ema for reconstruction of past eolian dust activities on the southeastern margin of the aca the results suggest that em 2 and em 3 which were added together to form an eolian dust activity proxy represent the proximal eolian suspension and saltation loads respectively the fractional abundances of ems suggest that siliciclastic materials in the studied core were mainly from eolian contributions the occurrence of enhanced eolian dust activities within the cold little ice age period together with the gsds of em 2 and em 3 indicate that eolian dust activities on the southeastern margin of the aca were basically governed by the siberian high produced asian winter monsoon over the last millennium at decadal to centennial scales enhanced eolian dust activities generally correspond to warm periods with high total solar irradiance tsi increased temperatures as the result of high tsi would have caused larger increases in evaporation than in precipitation and hence deteriorated vegetation cover and increased dust sources availability

spatial and temporal patterns of variations in tree growth over the northeastern tibetan plateau during the period ad 1450 2001 we analyzed spatial and temporal growth variations of qilian junipers over the northeastern tibetan plateau tp during the period 1450 2001 by applying the empirical orthogonal function eof technique to seven moisture sensitive tree ring width chronologies the first three principal components together explain 78 21 of the total variance the first principal component pc1 accounts for 51 58 of the total variance and represents consistent tree growth variations in the northeastern tp the second eof mode reveals an opposite structure for the southern and northern parts of the northeastern tibetan plateau reflecting the effect of huge topography and associated atmospheric circulation on tree growth anomalies the third eof mode represents an opposite structure for the eastern and western parts of the northeastern tibetan plateau possibly indicating the influence of different branches of atmospheric circulation system in this area the eof analysis results of instrumental precipitation data resembl

growth of greenland ice sheet measurement measurements of ice sheet elevation change by satellite altimetry show that the greenland surface elevation south of 72 degrees north latitude is increasing the vertical velocity of the surface is 0 20 0 06 meters per year from measured changes in surface elevations at 5906 intersections between geosat paths in 1985 and seasat in 1978 and 0 28 0 02 meters per year from 256 694 intersections of geosat paths during a 548 day period of 1985 to 1986

hybrid inventory gravimetry and altimetry higa mass balance product for greenland and the canadian arctic abstract we present a novel inversion algorithm that generates a mass balance field that is simultaneously consistent with independent observations of glacier inventory derived from optical imagery cryosphere attributed mass trends derived from satellite gravimetry and ice surface elevation trends derived from airborne and satellite altimetry we use this algorithm to assess mass balance across greenland and the canadian arctic over the sep 2003 to oct 2009 period at 26 km resolution we evaluate local algorithm inferred mass balance against forty in situ point observations this evaluation yields an rmse of 0 15 mwe a and highlights a paucity of in situ observations from regions of high dynamic mass loss and peripheral glaciers we assess mass losses of 212 67 gt a to the greenland ice sheet proper 38 11 gt a to peripheral glaciers in greenland and 42 11 gt a to glaciers in the canadian arctic these magnitudes of mass loss are dependent on the gravimetry derived spherical harmonic mass trend we invert we spatially partition the transient glacier continuity equation by differencing algorithm inferred mass balance from modeled surface mass balance in order to solve the horizontal divergence of ice flux as a residual this residual ice dynamic field infers flux divergence or submergent flow in the ice sheet accumulation area and at tidewater margins and flux convergence or emergent flow in land terminating ablation areas which is consistent with continuum mechanics theory

vulnerability of southeast greenland glaciers to warm atlantic water from operation icebridge and ocean melting greenland data we employ national aeronautics and space administration nasa s operation icebridge high resolution airborne gravity from 2016 nasa s ocean melting greenland bathymetry from 2015 ice thickness from operation icebridge from 2010 to 2015 and bedmachine v3 to analyze 20 major southeast greenland glaciers the results reveal glacial fjords several hundreds of meters deeper than previously thought the full extent of the marine based portions of the glaciers deep troughs enabling warm salty atlantic water aw to reach the glacier fronts and melt them from below and few shallow sills that limit the access of aw the new oceanographic and topographic data help to fully resolve the complex pattern of historical ice front positions from the 1930s to 2017 glaciers exposed to aw and resting on retrograde beds have retreated rapidly while glaciers perched on shallow sills or standing in colder waters or with major sills in the fjords have remained stable

major volcanic eruptions and climate a critical evaluation abstract this paper examines whether major volcanic eruptions of the past century have had a significant impact on surface land and ocean temperatures surface pressure and precipitation both multieruption composites and individual eruption time series are constructed and analyzed included in this work is an attempt to remove one source of interannual variability the el nino southern oscillation enso these exercises indicate that only the largest eruptions in terms of producing a stratospheric dust cloud are suggested in the climatic record removing the enso signal in the composite and individual eruption series enhances the apparent volcanic effect of the largest eruptions no volcanic signal is obvious in pressure and precipitation records

tropical glaciers potential for ice core paleoclimatic reconstructions the objective of this work is to evaluate the potential of tropical glaciers and ice caps for the reconstruction of past climatic conditions by the analysis of firn and ice cores samples were collected in pits and from cores retrieved on three snow fields in the south american andes quelccaya ice cap and huascaran in peru and chimborazo in ecuador these are compared with results from west africa and indonesia measurements include the microparticle concentration oxygen isotopic abundance ratios and total beta radioactivity which in polar regions often exhibit seasonal depositional cycles annual variations in these three parameters are fairly well defined on quelccaya and huascaran and are apparently absent on chimborazo the quelccaya ice cap contains the best preserved annual signal for all three parameters and although in some instances the annual cycle is difficult to distinguish the measurement of more than one stratigraphic parameter aids in the interpretation of the firn core records the relatively flat bottom topography under quelccaya suggests a simple ice flow regime and depth age calculations indicate that an ice core to bedrock should contain a record of 600 to 1300 years this inference was confirmed by drilling to bedrock in 1983 this investigation of tropical glaciers indicates that the quelccaya ice cap on the eastern edge of the peruvian andes has excellent potential to contain a lengthy and interpretable record of climatic conditions within the tropics of south america

a 220 year continuous record of volcanic h2so4 in the antarctic ice sheet continuous h2so4 profiles observed in snow from several antarctic locations reveal four major volcanic events of the past two centuries agung krakatoa tambora and another large scale event not recorded historically acid deposition and interhemispheric distribution mechanisms are quantified and then used to obtain an order of magnitude estimate for the h2so4 emissions from these eruptions

contrasting patterns of early twenty first century glacier mass change in the himalayas glaciers are among the best terrestrial climate indicators an important water resource in mountains1 2 and a major contributor to global sea level rise3 4 in the hindu kush karakoram himalaya region hkkh a paucity of appropriate glacier data has prevented a comprehensive assessment of current regional mass balance5 however there are indirect evidences of a complex pattern of glacial responses5 8 in reaction to heterogeneous climate change signals9 here we provide the first coherent data set of detailed glacier thickness changes over the hkkh during 2003 2009 by combining satellite laser altimetry and a global elevation model in the eastern central and south western parts of the hkkh glacier wastage is widespread with regional thinning rates up to 0 66 0 09 m a 1 in the jammu kashmir region conversely in the karakoram glaciers are close to balance with only a slight thinning of 0 07 0 04 m a 1 regionally averaged thinning rates under debris mantled ice are similar to those of clean ice despite insulation by debris covers the 2003 2008 specific mass balance for our hkkh study region is 0 21 0 05 m a 1 water equivalent we significantly less negative than the global average of 0 7 m a 1 we for glaciers and ice caps4 10 this difference is mainly an effect of the balanced glacier mass budget in the karakoram the corresponding hkkh sea level contribution is 0 035 0 009 mm a 1 amounting to 1 of the present day sea level rise11 our 2003 2008 mass budget of 12 8 3 5 gt a 1 is more negative than recent satellite gravimetry based estimates of 5 6 gt a 1 over 2003 2010 ref 12 for the mountain catchments of the indus and ganges basins13 the glacier imbalance contributes 3 5 and 2 0 respectively to the annual average river discharge13 and up to 10 for the upper indus basin14

growth of greenland ice sheet interpretation an observed 0 23 m year thickening of the greenland ice sheet indicates a 25 to 45 excess ice accumulation over the amount required to balance the outward ice flow the implied global sea level depletion is 0 2 to 0 4 mm year depending on whether the thickening is only recent 5 to 10 years or longer term 100 years if there is a similar imbalance in the northern 60 of the ice sheet area the depletion is 0 35 to 0 7 mm year increasing ice thickness suggests that the precipitation is higher than the long term average higher precipitation may be a characteristic of warmer climates in polar regions

seasonal to multiyear variability of glacier surface velocity terminus position and sea ice ice melange in northwest greenland glacier ice discharge which depends on ice velocity and terminus fluctuations is a primary component of greenland ice sheet mass loss some research suggests that ice melange influences terminus calving in turn affecting glacier velocity the details and broad spatiotemporal consistency of these relationships however is undetermined focusing on 16 northwestern greenland glaciers during 2009 through summer 2014 we examined seasonal surface velocity changes glacier terminus position and sea ice and ice melange conditions for a longer term analysis we also produced extended records of four glaciers from 1999 to 2014 there is a strong correspondence between seasonal near terminus sea ice melange conditions and terminus change with rigid ice melange conditions associated with advance and open water associated with retreat extended sea ice free periods and reduced rigid melange are also linked with anomalously large terminus retreat in all but one case sustained multiyear retreat of greater than 1 km during both the 15 year and 6 year records was accompanied by interannual velocity increases seasonal velocity patterns however correspond more strongly with runoff changes than terminus behavior projections of continued warming and longer sea ice free periods around greenland indicate that notable retreat over wide areas may continue this sustained retreat likely will contribute to multiyear speedup longer melt seasons and earlier breakup of melange may also alter the timing of seasonal ice flow variability

scaling of fracture energies the rationalization of different laboratory measurements the fracture energy g c is an important parameter involved in earthquake processes researchers have been trying to estimate g c from both geophysical field data and laboratory fracture experiments conducted on either intact rocks or frictional contacts faults simulated by saw cut rocks the g c measured from these two types of experiments can differ by several orders of magnitude and the reason for this difference is still unknown i show that if we divide g c into three parts namely surface energy frictional fracture energy and the damage zone energy we can explain this discrepancy through simple scaling relations i also attempt to make the connection from the laboratory measured g c to the seismological estimates

acceleration of the contribution of the greenland and antarctic ice sheets to sea level rise 1 ice sheet mass balance estimates have improved substantially in recent years using a variety of techniques over different time periods and at various levels of spatial detail considerable disparity remains between these estimates due to the inherent uncertainties of each method the lack of detailed comparison between independent estimates and the effect of temporal modulations in ice sheet surface mass balance here we present a consistent record of mass balance for the greenland and antarctic ice sheets over the past two decades validated by the comparison of two independent techniques over the last 8 years one differencing perimeter loss from net accumulation and one using a dense time series of time variable gravity we find excellent agreement between the two techniques for absolute mass loss and acceleration of mass loss in 2006 the greenland and antarctic ice sheets experienced a combined mass loss of 475 158 gt yr equivalent to 1 3 0 4 mm yr sea level rise notably the acceleration in ice sheet loss over the last 18 years was 21 9 1 gt yr2 for greenland and 14 5 2 gt yr2 for antarctica for a combined total of 36 3 2 gt yr2 this acceleration is 3 times larger than for mountain glaciers and ice caps 12 6 gt yr2 if this trend continues ice sheets will be the dominant contributor to sea level rise in the 21st century

glaciological studies at siple station antarctica potential ice core paleoclimatic record the quality and utility of the records of oxygen isotopic abundances dust concentrations and anionic concentrations preserved in the ice at siple station 75 55 s 84 15 w are assessed from four shallow 20 m cores the combination of high accumulation 0 56 m a 1 w e and low mean annual temperature 24 c preserves the prominent seasonal variations in 18 which are very spatially coherent sulfate concentrations vary seasonally and in conjunction with 18 will allow accurate dating of deeper cores from siple station the concentrations of insoluble dust are the lowest measured in antarctica making siple station an excellent location to examine large increases in atmospheric tubidity the seasonal variations and annual fluxes of the anions are examined for the last two decades ad 1966 85 with regard to probable sources an unusually high sulfate flux in 1976 may reflect the february 1975 eruption of mount ngauruhoe new zealand no annual signal in nitrate concentration is confirmed and no unusually high nitrate fluxes support the suggestion of nitrate production by large solar flares however nitrate flux is higher for the latter half of the 1970s and early 1980s possibly reflecting the recent loss of stratospheric ozone finally comparison of the 18 o record with available surface temperature data ad 1957 85 reveals that multi year trends along the western coast of the antarctic peninsula are recorded at siple more importantly comparison with areally weighted temperature reconstructions suggests that the 18 record may reflect larger scale persistent trends in the high southern latitudes the strong spatial coherence of the preserved records the potential for accurate dating and possible relevance to larger scale processes make siple station an excellent site for paleoenvironmental reconstruction from ice cores

little ice age cold interval in west antarctica evidence from borehole temperature at the west antarctic ice sheet wais divide 1 the largest climate anomaly of the last 1000 years in the northern hemisphere was the little ice age lia from 1400 1850 c e but little is known about the signature of this event in the southern hemisphere especially in antarctica we present temperature data from a 300 m borehole at the west antarctic ice sheet wais divide results show that wais divide was colder than the last 1000 year average from 1300 to 1800 c e the temperature in the time period 1400 1800 c e was on average 0 52 0 28 c colder than the last 100 year average this amplitude is about half of that seen at greenland summit grip this result is consistent with the idea that the lia was a global event probably caused by a change in solar and volcanic forcing and was not simply a seesaw type redistribution of heat between the hemispheres as would be predicted by some ocean circulation hypotheses the difference in the magnitude of the lia between greenland and west antarctica suggests that the feedbacks amplifying the radiative forcing may not operate in the same way in both regions

nine centuries of microparticle deposition at the south pole abstract the analysis of microparticles in a 101 m core from amundsen scott south pole station antarctica has revealed a substantial increase in total particle concentration between approximately 1450 and 1850 a d a period encompassing the latest neoglacial interval or little ice age it is likely that this reflects a simultaneous increase in the concentration of particulate material in the antarctic atmosphere this is important climatologically for the antarctic atmosphere may represent the closest approximation to the natural background aerosol thus cores from east antarctica may contain long and detailed records of the natural global background aerosol such records are unavailable from any other medium additionally a cyclical variation which appears to be annual has been detected in the south pole particle record these features allow construction of a relative time scale for ice cores older than 100 yr from regions of low accumulation 1 where many traditional techniques are not applicable this is especially significant as the comparison of climatic data extracted from ice cores with other records of proxy data depends upon the ability to assign an accurate time scale to the ice core an estimated nine century record of net annual accumulation at the south pole has been compiled and the calculated error in the time scale is 90 yr

recurring dynamically induced thinning during 1985 to 2010 on upernavik isstrom west greenland this is the publisher s version also available electronically from http onlinelibrary wiley com

energy budget and propagation of faults via shearing and opening using work optimization we present numerical models of faults propagating by work optimization in a homogeneous medium these simulations allow quantification and comparison of the energy budgets of fault growth by shear versus tensile failure the energy consumed by growth of a fault wgrow propagating by in line shearing is 76 of the total energy associated with that growth while 24 is spent on frictional work during propagation wgrow for a fault propagating into intact rock by tensile failure at an angle to the parent fault consumes 60 of the work budget while only 6 is consumed by frictional work associated with propagation following the conservation of energy this leaves 34 of the energy budget available for other activities and suggests that out of plane propagation of faults in earth s crust may release energy for other processes such as permanent damage zone formation or rupture acceleration comparison of these estimates of wgrow with estimates of the critical energy release rate and earthquake fracture energy at several scales underscores their theoretical similarities and their dependence on stress drop

a reconciled estimate of ice sheet mass balance we combined an ensemble of satellite altimetry interferometry and gravimetry data sets using common geographical regions time intervals and models of surface mass balance and glacial isostatic adjustment to estimate the mass balance of earth s polar ice sheets we find that there is good agreement between different satellite methods especially in greenland and west antarctica and that combining satellite data sets leads to greater certainty between 1992 and 2011 the ice sheets of greenland east antarctica west antarctica and the antarctic peninsula changed in mass by 142 49 14 43 65 26 and 20 14 gigatonnes year 1 respectively since 1992 the polar ice sheets have contributed on average 0 59 0 20 millimeter year 1 to the rate of global sea level rise

a 1000 year climate ice core record from the guliya ice cap china its relationship to global climate variability in 1992 an american chinese expedition successfully recovered three ice cores 308 6 93 2 and 34 5m from the guliya ice cap summit 6710 m a s l in the far western kunlun on the qinghai tibetan plateau china guliya resembles a polar icecap with 10 m 200 m and basal temperatures of 15 6 5 9 and 2 1 c respectively the 308 6 m core to bedrock is the longest ice core retrieved from an elevation greater than 4000 m a s l and provides the first ice core history from the western side of the qinghai plateau the plateau experiences a pronounced annual precipitation cycle during which 70 80 of annual total precipitation falls in the summer monsoon season this leads to a marked visible stratigraphy in the glaciers which allows accurate dating of the ice cores and reconstruction of the net mass accumulation this paper presents 1 the results of the geophysical program to determine ice thickness ice flow and surface topography 2 an assessment of net accumulation from stake measurements snow pits and shallow core samples and 3 the analyses of the upper 100 m of the 308 6 m core which provide a 1000 year history including the little ice age which is compared with chinese historical records extended periods of positive accumulation on guliya are closely contemporaneous with dry periods in eastern china a trans pacific teleconnection is suggested by the strong temporal coherence between extended wet and dry phases on guliya and on the quelccaya ice cap peru

volcanic forcing of climate over the past 1500 years an improved ice core based index for climate models 1 understanding natural causes of climate change is vital to evaluate the relative impacts of human pollution and land surface modification on climate we have investigated one of the most important natural causes of climate change volcanic eruptions by using 54 ice core records from both the arctic and antarctica our recently collected suite of ice core data more than double the number of cores ever used before reduces errors inherent in reconstructions based on a single or small number of cores which enables us to obtain much higher accuracy in both detection of events and quantification of the radiative effects we extracted volcanic deposition signals from each ice core record by applying a high pass loess filter to the time series and examining peaks that exceed twice the 31 year running median absolute deviation we then studied the spatial pattern of volcanic sulfate deposition on greenland and antarctica and combined this knowledge with a new understanding of stratospheric transport of volcanic aerosols to produce a forcing data set as a function of month latitude and altitude for the past 1500 years we estimated the uncertainties associated with the choice of volcanic signal extraction criteria ice core sulfate deposition to stratospheric loading calibration factor and the season for the eruptions without a recorded month we forced an energy balance climate model with this new volcanic forcing data set together with solar and anthropogenic forcing to simulate the large scale temperature response the results agree well with instrumental observations for the past 150 years and with proxy records for the entire period through better characterization of the natural causes of climate change this new data set will lead to improved prediction of anthropogenic impacts on climate the new data set of stratospheric sulfate injections from volcanic eruptions for the past 1500 years as a function of latitude altitude and month is available for download in a format suitable for forcing general circulation models of the climate system

holocene records of effective precipitation in west greenland holocene changes in effective precipitation precipitation evaporation p e were reconstructed for the sondre stromfjord region of southwest greenland using the sediment records of two neighbourin

pre incan agricultural activity recorded in dust layers in two tropical ice cores in south america no documentary records survive from before the incursion of the spaniards in the mid sixteenth century knowledge of pre hispanic civilizations in this region comes largely from archaeological excavations which may now be supplemented by information recorded in two ice cores drilled in the quelccaya ice cap in southern peru fig 1 1 2 a 1 500 year record of particle concentrations and conductivity in these cores shows two major dust episodes each lasting about 130 years centred at ad 920 and 600 here we examine these dust events in the light of oxygen isotope and net accumulation records and suggest a correlation with pre incan agricultural activity the annual net accumulation record for ad 1915 1984 compares well with annual changes in lake titicaca water levels and with annual precipitation at el alto lapaz bolivia suggesting that the 1 500 year net accumulation record from quelccaya may serve as a proxy for water level changes in lake titicaca the ice core record suggests that climatic variability reflected in lake level changes has strongly influenced fluctuations in agricultural activity in southern peru

el nino southern oscillation events recorded in the stratigraphy of the tropical quelccaya ice cap peru snow accumulation measured during 1982 1983 on the quelccaya ice cap peru was 70 percent of the average from 1975 through 1983 inspection of 19 years 1964 through 1983 of accumulation measured near the summit of quelccaya reveals a substantial decrease 30 percent in association with the last five el nino southern oscillation enso occurrences in the equatorial pacific the enso phenomenon is now recognized as a global event arising from large scale interactions between the ocean and the atmosphere understanding this extreme event with the goal of prediction requires a record of past occurrences the quelccaya ice cap which contains 1500 years of annually accumulated ice layers may provide a long and detailed record of the most extreme enso events

an aerial view of 80 years of climate related glacier fluctuations in southeast greenland both marine and land terminating glaciers in southeast greenland have experienced dramatic recent retreat an 80 year record of historical aerial photographs and satellite imagery shows that many land terminating glaciers in this region retreated more rapidly in the 1930s than today whereas marine terminating glaciers have retreated faster in the 2000s

changes in the velocity structure of the greenland ice sheet using satellite radar interferometry observations of greenland we detected widespread glacier acceleration below 66 north between 1996 and 2000 which rapidly expanded to 70 north in 2005 accelerated ice discharge in the west and particularly in the east doubled the ice sheet mass deficit in the last decade from 90 to 220 cubic kilometers per year as more glaciers accelerate farther north the contribution of greenland to sea level rise will continue to increase

local to regional scale variability of annual net accumulation on the greenland ice sheet from parca cores a suite of spatially distributed cores collected under the program for arctic regional climate assessment parca provides an unprecedented opportunity to assess local to regional variability of annual accumulation rates over the greenland ice sheet parca cores are unique in their broad spatial distribution and accurate dating of annual layers using multiple seasonally varying indicators the core data provide 1 a more rigorous evaluation of spatial and temporal variations in accumulation rates 2 critical input to ice sheet mass balance estimates 3 ground truth measurements for satellite observations and climate model based precipitation estimates and 4 important constraints on paleoclimatic interpretations from ice cores multiple closely spaced cores demonstrate that signals of high frequency annual to possibly decadal scale climate variability preserved in the ice sheet are partially masked by glaciological noise two 350 year accumulation histories one from northwest greenland and one from the summit area reveal significant multidecadal variability the regional trends show long periods 60 90 years of strong positive correlation and an equally long period of strong negative correlation since 1940 the trends have been decoupled this spatial variability reflects the strong modulation of greenland precipitation and the climate information it contains by changes in north atlantic atmospheric circulation patterns proxy records from the parca cores document that climate reconstructions from a single core must be interpreted cautiously with application of appropriate filters to reduce local noise and careful extrapolations from local to regional scales richer more robust ice core derived data sets should result from combining multiple more widely spaced cores to produce regional stacked records

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

annually resolved southern hemisphere volcanic history from two antarctic ice cores the continuous sulfate analysis of two antarctic ice cores one from the antarctic peninsula region and one from west antarctica provides an annually resolved proxy history of southern semisphere volcanism since early in the 15th century the dating is accurate within 3 years due to the high rate of snow accumulation at both core sites and the small sample sizes used for analysis the two sulfate records are consistent with each other a systematic and objective method of separating outstanding sulfate events from the background sulfate flux is proposed and used to identify all volcanic signals the resulting volcanic chronology covering 1417 1989 a d resolves temporal ambiguities about several recently discovered events a number of previously unknown moderate eruptions during late 1600s are uncovered in this chronology the eruption of tambora 1815 and the recently discovered eruption of kuwae 1453 in the tropical south pacific injected the greatest amount of sulfur dioxide into the southern hemisphere stratosphere during the last half millennium a technique for comparing the magnitude of volcanic events preserved within different ice cores is developed using normalized sulfate flux for the same eruptions the variability of the volcanic sulfate flux between the cores is within 20 of the sulfate flux from the tambora eruption

covariation of sea ice and methanesulphonic acid in wilhelm ii land east antarctica sea ice plays an important role in ocean atmosphere heat exchange global albedo and the marine ecosystem knowledge of variation in sea ice extent is essential in order to understand past climates and to model possible future climate scenarios this paper presents results from a short firn core spanning 15 years collected from near mount brown wilhelm ii land east antarctica variations of methanesulphonic acid msa at mount brown were positively correlated with sea ice extent from the coastal region surrounding mount brown 60 1208 e and from around the entire antarctic coast 0 3608 e previous results from law dome identified this msa sea ice relationship and proposed it as an antarctic sea ice proxy curran and others 2003 with the strongest results found for the local law dome region our data provide supporting evidence for the law dome proxy at another site in east antarctica but a deeper mount brown ice core is required to confirm the sea ice decline suggested by curran and others 2003 results also indicate that this deeper record may also provide a more circum antarctic sea ice proxy

the little ice age as recorded in the stratigraphy of the tropical quelccaya ice cap the analyses of two ice cores from a southern tropical ice cap provide a record of climatic conditions over 1000 years for a region where other proxy records are nearly absent annual variations in visible dust layers oxygen isotopes microparticle concentrations conductivity and identification of the historical a d 1600 huaynaputina ash permit accurate dating and time scale verification the fact that the little ice age about a d 1500 to 1900 stands out as a significant climatic event in the oxygen isotope and electrical conductivity records confirms the worldwide character of this event

spread of ice mass loss into northwest greenland observed by grace and gps 1 greenland s main outlet glaciers have more than doubled their contribution to global sea level rise over the last decade recent work has shown that greenland s mass loss is still increasing here we show that the ice loss which has been well documented over southern portions of greenland is now spreading up along the northwest coast with this acceleration likely starting in late 2005 we support this with two lines of evidence one is based on measurements fromthegravityrecoveryandclimateexperiment grace satellite gravity mission launched in march 2002 the other comes from continuous global positioning system gps measurements from three long term sites on bedrock adjacent to the ice sheet the grace results provide a direct measure of mass loss averaged over scales of a few hundred km the gps data are used to monitor crustal uplift caused by ice mass loss close to the sites the grace results can be used to predict crustal uplift which can be compared with the gps data in addition to showing that the northwest ice sheet margin is now losing mass the uplift results from both the gps measurements and the grace predictions show rapid acceleration in southeast greenland in late 2003 followed by a moderate deceleration in 2006 because that latter deceleration is weak southeast greenland still appears to be losing ice mass at a much higher rate than it was prior to fall 2003 in a more general sense the analysis described here demonstrates that gps uplift measurements can be used in combination with grace mass estimates to provide a better understanding of ongoing greenland mass loss an analysis approach that will become increasingly useful as long time spans of data accumulate from the 51 permanent gps stations recently deployed around the edge of the ice sheet as part of the greenland gps network gnet citation khan s a j wahr m bevis i velicogna and e kendrick 2010 spread of ice mass loss into northwest greenland observed by grace and gps geophys res lett 37 l06501 doi 10 1029 2010gl042460

a multi century ice core perspective on 20th century climate change with new contributions from high arctic and greenland parca cores a global collection of high temporally resolved ice core derived d 18 o records is examined to assess whether the proxy records are consistent with contemporaneous observed temperature variations in their respective regions this is prerequisite to using the older parts of the proxy d 18 o records to assess whether 20th century temperatures remain within the range of longer term natural variability excluding the high plateaus in east and west antarctica where 20th century temperatures show modest cooling the ice core records from other regions suggest modest to strong 20th century warming the recent warming over greenland has been modest and spatially variable the 20th century warming over both the barents sea region and the tibetan plateau now falls well outside the range of prior longer term temperature variability similarly over the south american andes and the antarctic peninsula the recent warming exceeds the long term mean for the last 1000 and 500 years respectively the ice fields in these regions are in danger of being compromised or lost if the present warming trend in these regions persists

fracture process zone in granite a microstructural analysis shear fracture propagation in rock is accompanied by localized microcracking in a process zone surrounding the fracture tip we investigated the crack microstructures along experimentally formed shear fractures from four granite samples uniaxial compression tests five transects across a macroscopic fracture were inspected optically in transmitted light five hundred thirty two photomicrographs were taken from seven study areas along each transect we determined length width density and orientation of open cracks and their assignment to intra transgranular or grain boundary cracks crack density decreases with increasing distance to the macroscopic shear fracture and toward the fracture tip the highest crack densities correlate with the maximum number of acoustic emissions most cracks enclose a small angle 0 20 with the macroscopic shear fracture intragranular cracks are more abundant than transgranular and grain boundary cracks the number of transgranular cracks increases towards the macroscopic shear fracture but the number of grain boundary cracks decreases the decrease in crack density with increasing distance to the fault is accompanied by a change from strongly preferred crack orientation in the fault core to a random crack distribution away from the fault fracture process zone widths range from 2 1 0 8 mm ag51r to 5 6 1 9 mm ag18r the ratio of process zone width to fault length is approximately 0 04 0 07 this observation agrees with observations from natural fault zones the fracture surface energy ranges from 0 2 to 1 2 j this corresponds to 10 of the total strain energy

a constitutive scaling law and a unified comprehension for frictional slip failure shear fracture of intact rock and earthquake rupture 1 it is widely recognized that some of the physical quantities inherent in a rupture are scale dependent and the scale dependence is one of the most no facts and features of rupture phenomena the paper addresses how such scale dependent shear rupture of a broad range from laboratory scale frictional slip failure and shear fracture of intact rock to field scale rupture as an earthquake source can be unified by a single constitutive law noting that the earthquake rupture is a mixed process between frictional slip failure and the shear fracture of intact rock it is concluded that the constitutive law for the earthquake rupture be formulated as a unifying law that governs both frictional slip failure and shear fracture of intact rock it is demonstrated that the slip dependent constitutive law is such a unifying law and a constitutive scaling law is derived from laboratory data on both frictional slip failure and shear fracture of intact rock this constitutive scaling law enables one to provide a consistent and unified comprehension for scale dependent physical quantities inherent in the rupture over a broad range from small scale frictional slip failure and shear fracture in the laboratory to large scale earthquake rupture in the field

dynamic thinning of glaciers on the southern antarctic peninsula growing evidence has demonstrated the importance of ice shelf buttressing on the inland grounded ice especially if it is resting on bedrock below sea level much of the southern antarctic peninsula satisfies this condition and also possesses a bed slope that deepens inland such ice sheet geometry is potentially unstable we use satellite altimetry and gravity observations to show that a major portion of the region has since 2009 destabilized ice mass loss of the marine terminating glaciers has rapidly accelerated from close to balance in the 2000s to a sustained rate of 56 8 gigatons per year constituting a major fraction of antarctica s contribution to rising sea level the widespread simultaneous nature of the acceleration in the absence of a persistent atmospheric forcing points to an oceanic driving mechanism

ice core evidence for an explosive tropical volcanic eruption 6 years preceding tambora high resolution analyses of ice cores from antarctica and greenland reveal an explosive volcanic eruption in the tropics in a d 1809 which is not reflected in the historical record a comparison in the same ice cores of the sulfate flux from the a d 1809 eruption to that from the tambora eruption a d 1815 indicates a near equatorial location and a magnitude roughly half that of tambora thus this event should be considered comparable to other eruptions producing large volumes ofsulfur rich gases such as coseguina krakatau agung and el chichtn the increase in the atmospheric concentration of sulfuric acid may have contributed to the northern hemisphere cooling observed in the early nineteenth century and may account partially for the decline in surface temperatures which preceded the eruption of tamborn in a d 1815

palaeoclimatic implications of a storm erosion record from late holocene lake sediments north island new zealand abstract a ca 2250 year storm history has been identified from a high resolution lake sediment record from the east coast of the north island new zealand this event based chronology identifies 340 storms in the pre european record the record is largely one of natural variability without human impacts layers of minerogenic sediment representing the products of individual storm events are clearly visible in lake cores these storm sediment pulses derived mainly from landslides record the frequency and magnitude of storms clusters of pulses identify six periods of high sedimentation and associated erosion before european settlement a d 1878 at least five of these are interpreted as periods of higher rainfall and probably warmer temperatures since historic records show that most large storms are derived from the subtropics tropics most of the storm periods correspond to warm climate intervals previously identified from new zealand and from southern hemisphere palaeoclimatic evidence the mapara 2 period ca 2090 1855 cal yr b p was the stormiest other periods were of shorter duration the mapara 2 period occurred at times of sustained warmth in the tasmanian and chilean tree ring records which might suggest hemispheric warming at this time one storm period burrell which occurred during the historical enso record was at a time of moderately high enso activity three earlier periods also appear to show responses to enso two storm periods correspond to previously proposed new zealand wide periods of increased erosion and sedimentation estimates of palaeo storm rainfalls from relationships between storm rainfall and sediment thickness of historical events suggest that storm pulses ca 12 mm thick represent palaeo storms of ca 450 mm rainfall

mass loss of greenland s glaciers and ice caps 2003 2008 revealed from icesat laser altimetry data 1 the recently finalized inventory of greenland s glaciers and ice caps gic allows for the first time to determine the mass changes of the gic separately from the ice sheet using space borne laser altimetry data corrections for firn compaction and density that are based on climatic conditions are applied for the conversion from volume to mass changes the gic which are clearly separable from the icesheet i e have a distinct ice divide or no connection lost 27 9 10 7 gt a 1 or 0 08 0 03 mm a 1 sea level equivalent sle between october 2003 and march 2008 all gic including those with strong but hydrologically separable connections lost 40 9 16 5 gt a 1 0 12 0 05 mm a 1 sle this is a significant fraction 14 or 20 of the reported overall mass loss of greenland and up to 10 of the estimated contribution from the world s gic to sea level rise the loss was highest in southeastern and lowest in northern greenland

aerial photographs reveal late 20th century dynamic ice loss in northwestern greenland global warming is predicted to have a profound impact on the greenland ice sheet and its contribution to global sea level rise recent mass loss in the northwest of greenland has been substantial using aerial photographs we produced digital elevation models and extended the time record of recent observed marginal dynamic thinning back to the mid 1980s we reveal two independent dynamic ice loss events on the northwestern greenland ice sheet margin from 1985 to 1993 and 2005 to 2010 which were separated by limited mass changes our results suggest that the ice mass changes in this sector were primarily caused by short lived dynamic ice loss events rather than changes in the surface mass balance this finding challenges predictions about the future response of the greenland ice sheet to increasing global temperatures

effects of physical fault properties on frictional instabilities produced on simulated faults laboratory studies of large scale simulated faults show that physical properties of the fault specifically normal stress and fault roughness significantly influence the unstable shear failure behavior of the fault in addition the experiments provide insights into important length scaling effects that are useful for assessing concepts such as critical crack length or rupture nucleation dimension stick slip shear failures have been generated along a 2 m long simulated fault in a block of sierra white granite experiments were conducted at normal stresses between 0 6 and 4 mpa with two different prepared roughnesses of the simulated fault a smooth fault with a profilometer measured roughness of 0 2 m and a rough fault with a measured roughness of 80 m high speed records of shear strains and slip velocities clearly show both the propagation of the stick slip failures and details of the local deformations and motions from which slip weakening of the fault at the onset of sliding can be resolved both the dynamic stress drops of the stick slip events and the apparent fracture energies of the events determined from the records of the fault slip weakening increase with increasing normal stress although critical slip weakening displacements are insensitive to normal stress they increase with increased fault roughness such that the apparent fracture energies are also larger on the rough fault than on the smooth fault slip velocities in these experiments are influenced by roughness and are proportional to stress drop although the onset of slip is sharply defined the termination of slip is more gradual without a clear stopping phase measured rupture velocities on the rough fault are lower than those on the smooth fault when a length scale based on rupture nucleation dimensions directly proportional to critical displacements is introduced the data suggest that at fault lengths close to the nucleation lengths rupture velocity and slip velocity increase with increasing fault length

forty six years of greenland ice sheet mass balance from 1972 to 2018 we reconstruct the mass balance of the greenland ice sheet using a comprehensive survey of thickness surface elevation velocity and surface mass balance smb of 260 glaciers from 1972 to 2018 we calculate mass discharge d into the ocean directly for 107 glaciers 85 of d and indirectly for 110 glaciers 15 using velocity scaled reference fluxes the decadal mass balance switched from a mass gain of 47 21 gt y in 1972 1980 to a loss of 51 17 gt y in 1980 1990 the mass loss increased from 41 17 gt y in 1990 2000 to 187 17 gt y in 2000 2010 to 286 20 gt y in 2010 2018 or sixfold since the 1980s or 80 6 gt y per decade on average the acceleration in mass loss switched from positive in 2000 2010 to negative in 2010 2018 due to a series of cold summers which illustrates the difficulty of extrapolating short records into longer term trends cumulated since 1972 the largest contributions to global sea level rise are from northwest 4 4 0 2 mm southeast 3 0 0 3 mm and central west 2 0 0 2 mm greenland with a total 13 7 1 1 mm for the ice sheet the mass loss is controlled at 66 8 by glacier dynamics 9 1 mm and 34 8 by smb 4 6 mm even in years of high smb enhanced glacier discharge has remained sufficiently high above equilibrium to maintain an annual mass loss every year since 1998

microparticle concentration variations linked with climatic change evidence from polar ice cores the microparticle concentrations in three deep ice cores reveal a substantial increase in the concentration of insoluble particles in the global atmosphere during the latter part of the last major glaciation the ratio of the average particle concentration in the late glacial strata to that in the holocene strata is 6 1 for the core from dome c antarctica 3 1 for the core from byrd station antarctica and 12 1 for the core from camp century greenland whether this temporal correlation between increased atmospheric particle load and the lower surface temperatures is directly causal is unknown however the variations in these two parameters must be satisfactorily resolved in any successful hypothesis that addresses the causes of climatic change

synchronous deposition of volcanic ash and sulfate aerosols over greenland in 1783 from the laki eruption iceland 1 sulfate aerosols from the 1783 1784 a d laki eruption are widely used as a reference horizon for constraining greenland ice core time scales yet the timing of the arrival of the sulfate remains under discussion two ice cores from western greenland analyzed with high temporal resolution confirm that sulfate aerosols arrived over greenland late in 1783 concomitant with the tephra elevated concentrations of cd bi and tl all indicators of volcanic emissions and with a short lived rare earth elements anomaly thereafter sulfate deposition declined rapidly very modest concentrations of sulfate in 1784 snowfall evident in six greenland cores suggest a relatively short less than 1 year atmospheric residence time and an injection height limited to the lower stratosphere an improved estimate of the associated stratospheric sulfate burden is calculated and provides an important input for models assessing climatic impacts of this volcanic eruption

volcanic deposits in antarctic snow and ice major volcanic eruptions are able to spread large amounts of sulfuric acid all over the world acid layers of volcanic origin were detected for the first time a few years ago by hammer in greenland ice the present paper deals with volcanic deposits in the antarctic the different methods that can be used to find volcanic acid deposits in snow and ice cores are compared electrical conductivity sulfate and acidity measurements numerous snow and ice samples collected at several antarctic locations were analyzed the results reveal that the two major volcanic events recorded by h2so4 fallout in antarctic ice over the last century are the eruptions of krakatoa 1883 and agung 1963 both located at equatorial latitudes in the southern hemisphere the volcanic signals are found to be particularly well defined at central antarctic locations apparently in relation to the low snow accumulation rates in these areas it is demonstrated that volcanic sulfuric acid in snow is not even partially neutralized by ammonia the possible influence of antarctic volcanic activity on snow chemistry is also discussed using the three recent eruptions of the deception island volcano as examples only one of them seems to have had a significant effect on the chemistry of snow at a location 200 km from this volcano it is concluded that antarctic volcanic ice records are less complicated than greenland records because of the limited number of volcanos in the southern hemisphere and the apparently higher signal to background ratio for acidity in antarctica than in greenland

improved ice loss estimate of the northwestern greenland ice sheet 1 we estimate ice volume change rates in the northwest greenland drainage basin during 2003 2009 using ice cloud and land elevation satellite icesat laser altimeter data elevation changes are often reported to be largest near the frontal portion of outlet glaciers to improve the volume change estimate we supplement the icesat data with altimeter surveys from nasa s airborne topographic mapper from 2002 to 2010 and nasa s land vegetation and ice sensor from 2010 the airborne data are mainly concentrated along the ice margin and thus have a significant impact on the estimate of the volume change our results show that adding airborne topographic mapper and land vegetation and ice sensor data to the icesat data increases the catchment wide estimate of ice volume loss by 11 mainly due to an improved volume loss estimate along the ice sheet margin furthermore our results show a significant acceleration in mass loss at elevations above 1200m both the improved mass loss estimate along the ice sheet margin and the acceleration at higher elevations have implications for predictions of the elastic adjustment of the lithosphere caused by present day ice mass changes our study shows that the use of icesat data alone to predict elastic uplift rates biases the predicted rates by several millimeters per year at gps locations along the northwestern coast

a direct measurement of shear fracture energy in rocks shear fracture energy has been measured for a granite and a limestone using a torsional method we monitor failure with periodic stiffness determinations and measure strain energy released by integrating the load displacement record values of strain energy release rate g3c obtained for zero normal stress lie in the range 10 10 jm 2 these fall between the values of g1c from tensile experiments and of shear fracture energy measured under high normal stress in triaxial tests

climate of the last 500 years high resolution ice core records precipitation accumulating on the earth s ice sheets and ice caps records a variety of physical and chemical information about the atmosphere and in some cases provides unique insight to both the history and the mechanics of the earth s environmental system high resolution well dated dust records from both polar ice sheets suggest a linkage between increased atmospheric dust and cooler temperatures over antarctica but a similar relationship is not observed in ice cores from either greenland or china net accumulation histories for the last 490 years reveal no discemible global pattern although interesting regional differences and similarities exist excess non sea salt sulfate profiles provide

changes in ice front position on greenland s outlet glaciers from 1992 to 2007 1 previous studies in greenland show that retreat of tidewater glaciers may be linked to recent increases in ice loss raising greenland s contribution to sea level rise we examined ice front changes of 203 tidewater glaciers land terminating glaciers and glaciers terminating with ice shelves to understand greenland glacier behavior over three periods 1992 2000 2000 2006 and 2006 2007 we observed synchronous ice sheet wide increases in tidewater retreat during 2000 2006 relative to 1992 2000 coinciding with a 1 1 c increase in mean summer temperature at coastal weather stations rates of retreat for the southeast and east slowed during 2006 2007 when temperatures were slightly cooler than the 2000 2006 average our work suggests that regional greenland tidewater retreat responds strongly to climate change with higher temperatures corresponding to increasing retreat and helps confirm a link between ice thickness velocity and ice front position

holocene late pleistocene climatic ice core records from qinghai tibetan plateau three ice cores to bedrock from the dunde ice cap on the north central qinghai tibetan plateau of china provide a detailed record of holocene and wisconsin wurm late glacial stage lgs climate changes in the subtropics the records reveal that lgs conditions were apparently colder wetter and dustier than holocene conditions the lgs part of the cores is characterized by more negative 18 o ratios increased dust content decreased soluble aerosol concentrations and reduced ice crystal sizes than the holocene part these changes occurred rapidly 10 000 years ago in addition the last 60 years were apparently one of the warmest periods in the entire record equalling levels of the holocene maximum between 6000 and 8000 years ago

fracture process zone in granite in uniaxial compression tests performed on aue granite cores diameter 50 mm length 100 mm a steel loading plate was used to induce the formation of a discrete shear fracture a zone of distributed microcracks surrounds the tip of the propagating fracture this process zone is imaged by locating acoustic emission events using 12 piezoceramic sensors attached to the samples propagation velocity of the process zone is varied by using the rate of acoustic emissions to control the applied axial force the resulting velocities range from 2 mm s in displacement controlled tests to 2 m s in tests controlled by acoustic emission rate wave velocities and amplitudes are monitored during fault formation p waves transmitted through the approaching process zone show a drop in amplitude of 26 db and ultrasonic velocities are reduced by 10 the width of the process zone is 9 times the grain diameter inferred from acoustic data but is only 2 times the grain size from optical crack inspection the process zone of fast propagating fractures is wider than for slow ones the density of microcracks and acoustic emissions increases approaching the main fracture shear displacement scales linearly with fracture length fault plane solutions from acoustic events show similar orientation of nodal planes on both sides of the shear fracture the ratio of the process zone width to the fault length in aue granite ranges from 0 01 to 0 1 inferred from crack data and acoustic emissions respectively the fracture surface energy is estimated from microstructure analysis to be 2 j a lower bound estimate for the energy dissipated by acoustic events is 0 1 j

a new present day temperature parameterization for greenland near surface air temperature 2 m over the greenland ice sheet gris is parameterized using data from automatic weather stations located on land and on the ice sheet the parameterization is expressed in terms of mean annual temperatures and mean july temperatures both depending linearly on altitude latitude and longitude the temperature parameterization is compared to a previous study and is shown to be in better agreement with observations the temperature parameterization is tested in a positive degree day model to simulate the present 1996 2006 mean melt area extent of the gris the model accounts for firn warming rainfall and refreezing of meltwater with different degree day factors for ice and snow under warm and cold climate conditions the simulated melt area extent is found to have reasonable agreement with satellite derived observations

determination of constitutive relations of fault slip based on seismic wave analysis constitutive laws define the boundary conditions on fault plane and govern many aspects of earthquake failure although several constitutive laws have been formulated based on laboratory rock experiments and applied to theoretical studies in various fields no actual relation during a natural earthquake has been determined the 1995 kobe earthquake is suitable for detailed kinematic analysis and this enables the first evaluation of constitutive relations for a natural earthquake in this study we determine spatiotemporal slip distribution on an assumed fault plane of the 1995 kobe earthquake by waveform inversion and then solve elastodynamic equations using a finite difference method to determine the stress distribution and constitutive relations on the fault plane an inversion method based on bayes theorem is employed to obtain a spatiotemporal slip distribution and enables us to ensure the objective uniqueness of the solution with numerous parameters and smoothing constraints this slip distribution is then used as part of the boundary condition in the finite difference calculation the time histories of slip and shear stress obtained then provide a constitutive relation at each point on the fault plane they show slip weakening relations almost everywhere on the fault plane while slip rate dependency is not clear the slip weakening behavior has a clear depth dependency indicating that the slip weakening rate d du is smaller in the shallow crust than that in the deep crust this may be associated with the paucity of shallow seismicity observed in the source region of this earthquake as reported for many mature fault systems

eight centuries of volcanic signal and climate change at talos dome east antarctica 1 during the 1996 programma nazionale di ricerche in antartide international trans antarctic scientific expedition traverse two firn cores were retrieved from the talos dome area east antarctica at elevations of 2316 m td 89 m long and 2246 m st556 19 m long cores were dated by using seasonal variations in non sea salt nss so42 concentrations coupled with the recognition of tritium marker level 1965 1966 and nss so42 spikes due to the most important volcanic events in the past pinatubo 1991 agung 1963 krakatoa 1883 tambora 1815 kuwae 1452 unknown 1259 the number of annual layers recognized in the td and st556 cores was 779 and 97 respectively the d record obtained from the td core has been compared with other east antarctic isotope ice core records dome c epica south pole taylor dome these records suggest cooler climate conditions between the middle of 16th and the beginning of 19th centuries which might be related to the little ice age lia cold period because of the high degree of geographical variability the strongest lia cooling was not temporally synchronous over east antarctica and the analyzed records do not provide a coherent picture for east antarctica the accumulation rate record presented for the td core shows a decrease during part of the lia followed by an increment of about 11 in accumulation during the 20th century at the st556 site the accumulation rate observed during the 20th century was quite stable

an inter hemispheric volcanic time marker in ice cores from greenland and antarctica a strong volcanic acid signal is clearly registered using an acidity measuring technique in the a d 1259 ice layer in four different greenland ice cores camp century milcent crete and dye 3 this signal is similar in amplitude to the laki iceland a d 1783 volcanic event as recorded in the central and south greenland ice cores measurement of ice layers from corresponding age levels in antarctic ice cores byrd station south pole and j 9 on the ross ice shelf provides similar strong acid signals there is no historical record of a significant volcanic eruption for the period around a d 1260 in the northern hemisphere subsequent chemical analyses of all a d 1259 ice layers show similar compositions we suggest that the a d 1259 signals registered in both greenland and antarctica were caused by the same volcanic disturbance and that its epicenter was located at the earth s equatorial zone which enabled global distribution of the acid gases these results indicate that inter hemispheric dating of ice sheets is possible by the chemical identification of major eruptive volcanic events in the equatorial zone

changes in the dynamics of marine terminating outlet glaciers in west greenland 2000 2009 1 recent changes in the dynamics of greenland s marine terminating outlet glaciers indicate a rapid and complex response to external forcing despite observed ice front retreat and recent geophysical evidence for accelerated mass loss along greenland s northwestern margin it is unclear whether west greenland glaciers have undergone the synchronous speed up and subsequent slow down as observed in southeastern glaciers earlier in the decade to investigate changes in west greenland outlet glacier dynamics and the potential controls behind their behavior we derive time series of front position surface elevation and surface slope for 59 marine terminating outlet glaciers and surface speeds for select glaciers in west greenland from 2000 to 2009 using these data we look for relationships between retreat thinning acceleration and geometric parameters to determine the first order controls on glacier behavior our data indicate that changes in front positions and surface elevations were asynchronous on annual time scales though nearly all glaciers retreated and thinned over the decade we found no direct relationship between retreat acceleration and external forcing applicable to the entire region in regard to geometry we found that following retreat 1 glaciers with grounded termini experienced more pronounced changes in dynamics than those with floating termini and 2 thinning rates declined more quickly for glaciers with steeper slopes overall glacier geometry should influence outlet glacier dynamics via stress redistribution following perturbations at the front but our data indicate that the relative importance of geometry as a control of glacier behavior is highly variable throughout west greenland

a 2000 year dust storm record from lake sugan in the dust source area of arid china 1 arid northwestern china is considered to be a major source of atmospheric dust supply to the northern hemisphere however dust storm evolution and dust emission processes in the past remain unclear due to the scarcity of geologic archives in this region hydrologically closed lakes in dust source areas act as a trap providing the opportunity to trace the history of dust emission or eolian activity here we present the results of dust storm proxies and a dust storm history from lake sugan in the qaidam basin a dust source area on the northern qinghai tibetan plateau grain size analyses of the materials deposited during modern dust storms and of the lake surface sediments demonstrate that the coarse component of the lake sediments was transported primarily by ambient winds when dust storms occurred in combination with a sediment chronology generated by counting annual laminations a 2000 year dust storm history was reconstructed on the basis of changes in the coarse component and magnetic susceptibility of the lake sediments frequent and or intensive dust storms occurred during the intervals ad 300 500 ad 1180 1240 and ad 1500 1700 the occurrence of dust storms largely coincided with the strengthening of the siberian high with colder air masses from high latitudes such as during the little ice age frequently encroaching into the dust source areas in northwestern china our results suggest that wind strength plays an important role in dust emissions in arid source areas however dust storms in the late 20th century are most likely associated with disturbance of the ground surface caused by petroleum exploitation in the qaidam basin

influence of sea ice decline atmospheric warming and glacier width on marine terminating outlet glacier behavior in northwest greenland at seasonal to interannual timescales 1 discharge from marine terminating outlet glaciers represents a key component of the greenland ice sheet mass budget and observations suggest that mass loss from northwest greenland has recently accelerated despite this the factors controlling outlet glacier dynamics within this region have been comparatively poorly studied here we use remotely sensed data to investigate the influence of atmospheric oceanic and glacier specific controls on the frontal position of alison glacier ag northwest greenland and nine surrounding outlet glaciers ag retreated by 9 7 km between 2001 and 2005 following at least 25 years of minimal change results suggest that sea ice and air temperatures influence glacier frontal position at seasonal and interannual timescales however the response of individual outlet glaciers to forcing was strongly modified by factors specific to each glacier specifically variations in fjord width and terminus type overall our results underscore the need to consider these factors in order to interpret recent rapid changes and predict the dynamic response of marine terminating outlet glaciers to atmospheric and oceanic forcing

climate variability in central china over the last 1270 years revealed by high resolution stalagmite records oxygen and carbon isotopic variations in the upper section of a stalagmite sf 1 from buddha cave 33 40 n 109 05 e dated by 230th 234u 210pb and lamination counting to a time resolution as fine as 1 3 years have recorded climate changes in central china for the last 1270 years the changes include those corresponding to the medieval warm period little ice age and 20th century warming lending support to the global extent of these events the isotopic records also show cycles of 33 22 11 9 6 and 7 2 years the 33 year cycle could well represent the 35 year periodicity of climate fluctuations previously recognized in china and europe cycles of 22 11 and 9 6 years have often been associated with the sunspot or lunar orbit variations the 7 2 year cycle was recently identified also in tree ring records from an area close to buddha cave these cycles suggest that external forcing e g solar irradiance may affect the summer monsoon over eastern china the general consistency between the climate characteristics inferred from the stable isotope records of sf 1 and those from other proxy records underscores the value of stalagmites as recorders of paleoclimate

the 1452 or 1453 a d kuwae eruption signal derived from multiple ice core records greatest volcanic sulfate event of the past 700 years 1 we combined 33 ice core records 13 from the northern hemisphere and 20 from the southern hemisphere to determine the timing and magnitude of the great kuwae eruption in the mid 15th century we extracted volcanic deposition signals by applying a high pass loess filter to the time series and examining peaks that exceed twice the 31 year running median absolute deviation by accounting for the dating uncertainties associated with each record these ice core records together reveal a large volcanogenic acid deposition event during 1453 1457 a d the results suggest only one major stratospheric injection from the kuwae eruption and confirm previous findings that the kuwae eruption took place in late 1452 or early 1453 which may serve as a reference to evaluate and improve the dating of ice core records the average total sulfate deposition from the kuwae eruption was 93 kg so4 km 2 in antarctica and 25 kg so4 km 2 in greenland the deposition in greenland was probably underestimated since it was the average value of only two northern greenland sites with very low accumulation rates after taking the spatial variation into consideration the average kuwae deposition in greenland was estimated to be 45 kg so4 km 2 by applying the same technique to the other major eruptions of the past 700 years our result suggests that the kuwae eruption was the largest stratospheric sulfate event of that period probably surpassing the total sulfate deposition of the tambora eruption of 1815 which produced 59 kg so4 km 2 in antarctica and 50 kg so4 km 2 in greenland