ALBERT

Description: Arctic sea ice has displayed significant thinning as well as an increase in drift speed in recent years. Taken together this suggests an associated rise in sea ice deformation rate. A winter and spring expedition to the sea ice covered region north of Svalbard–the Norwegian young sea ICE2015 expedition (N-ICE2015)—gave an opportunity to deploy extensive buoy arrays and to monitor the deformation of the first-year and secondyear ice now common in the majority of the Arctic Basin. During the 5 month long expedition, the ice cover underwent several strong deformation events, including a powerful storm in early February that damaged the ice cover irreversibly. The values of total deformation measured during N-ICE2015 exceed previously measured values in the Arctic Basin at similar scales: At 100 km scale, N-ICE2015 values averaged above 0.1 d-1, compared to rates of 0.08 d-1 or less for previous buoy arrays. The exponent of the power law between the deformation length scale and total deformation developed over the season from 0.37 to 0.54 with an abrupt increase immediately after the early February storm, indicating a weakened ice cover with more free drift of the sea ice floes. Our results point to a general increase in deformation associated with the younger and thinner Arctic sea ice and to a potentially destructive role of winter storms.

Description: An intercomparison of four low-resolution remotely sensed ice-drift products in the Arctic Ocean is presented. The purpose of the study is to examine the uncertainty in space and time of these different drift products. The comparison is based on monthly mean ice drifts from October 2002 to December 2006. The ice drifts were also compared with available buoy data. The result shows that the differences of the drift vectors are not spatially uniform, but are covariant with ice concentration and thickness. In high (low) ice-concentration areas, the differences are small (large), and in thick (thin) ice-thickness areas, the differences are small (large). A comparison with the drift deduced from buoys reveals that the error of the drift speed depends on the magnitude of the drift speed: larger drift speeds have larger errors. Based on the intercomparison of the products and comparison with buoy data, uncertainties of the monthly mean drift are estimated. The estimated uncertainty maps reasonably reflect the difference between the products in relation to ice concentration and the bias from the buoy drift in relation to drift speed. Examinations of distinctive features of Arctic sea ice motion demonstrate that the transpolar drift speed differs among the products by 13% (0.32 cm s−1) on average, and ice drift curl in the Amerasian Basin differs by up to 24% (3.3 × 104 m2 s−1). These uncertainties should be taken into account if these products are used, particularly for model validation and data assimilation within the Arctic.

Description: Cold seeps in the deep sea harbor various animals that have adapted to utilize seepage chemicals with the aid of chemosynthetic microbes that serve as primary producers. Corals are among the animals that live near seep habitats and yet, there is a lack of evidence that corals gain benefits and/or incur costs from cold seeps. Here, we focused on Callogorgia delta and Paramuricea sp. type B3 that live near and far from visual signs of currently active seepage at five sites in the deep Gulf of Mexico. We tested whether these corals rely on chemosynthetically-derived food in seep habitats and how the proximity to cold seeps may influence; (i) coral colony traits (i.e., health status, growth rate, regrowth after sampling, and branch loss) and associated epifauna, (ii) associated microbiome, and (iii) host transcriptomes. Stable isotope data showed that many coral colonies utilized chemosynthetically derived food, but the feeding strategy differed by coral species. The microbiome composition of C. delta, unlike Paramuricea sp., varied significantly between seep and non-seep colonies and both coral species were associated with various sulfur-oxidizing bacteria (SUP05). Interestingly, the relative abundances of SUP05 varied among seep and non-seep colonies and were strongly correlated with carbon and nitrogen stable isotope values. In contrast, the proximity to cold seeps did not have a measurable effect on gene expression, colony traits, or associated epifauna in coral species. Our work provides the first evidence that some corals may gain benefits from living near cold seeps with apparently limited costs to the colonies. Cold seeps provide not only hard substrate but also food to cold-water corals. Furthermore, restructuring of the microbiome communities (particularly SUP05) is likely the key adaptive process to aid corals in utilizing seepage-derived carbon. This highlights that those deep-sea corals may upregulate particular microbial symbiont communities to cope with environmental gradients.

Description: [1]  Frost cracking, the breakdown of rock by freezing, is one of the most important mechanical weathering processes acting on Earth's surface. Insights on the mechanisms driving frost cracking stem mainly from laboratory and theoretical studies. Transferring insights from such studies to natural conditions, involving jointed bedrock and heterogeneous thermal and hydrological properties, is a major challenge. We address this problem with simultaneous in-situ measurements of acoustic emissions, used as proxy of rock damage, and rock temperature / moisture content. The one-year dataset acquired in an Alpine rock wall shows that (i) liquid water content has an important impact on freezing-induced rock damage, (ii) sustained freezing can yield much stronger damage than repeated freeze-thaw cycling, and (iii) that frost cracking occurs over the full range of temperatures measured extending from 0 down to −15 °C. These new measurements yield a slightly different picture than previous field studies where ice segregation appears to play an important role.

Description: Basal melting of floating ice shelves and iceberg calving constitute, the two almost equal paths of freshwater flux between the Antarctic, ice cap and the Southern Ocean. The largest icebergs (〉100km 2 ), transport most of the ice volume but their basal melting is small, compared to their breaking into smaller icebergs that constitute thus, the major vector of freshwater. The archives of nine altimeters have, been processed to create a small icebergs (〈8km 2 ) database, of positions, sizes and volumes spanning the 1992-2014 period. The, inter-calibrated monthly ice volumes from the different altimeters, have been merged in an homogeneous 23 year climatology. The iceberg, size distribution, covering the 0.1-10000 km 2 range, estimated, by combining small and large icebergs size measurements follows well, a power law of slope -1.52±0.32 close to the -3/2 laws observed, and modeled for brittle fragmentation. The global volume of ice and, its distribution between the ocean basins present a very strong inter-annual, variability only partially explained by the number of large icebergs., Indeed, vast zones of the Southern Ocean free of large icebergs are, largely populated by small iceberg drifting over thousands of km., The correlation between the global small and large icebergs volumes, shows that small icebergs are mainly generated by large ones breaking., Drifting and trapping by sea ice can transport small icebergs for, long period and distances. Small icebergs act as an ice diffuse process, along large icebergs trajectories while sea ice trapping acts as a, buffer delaying melting. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Description: Abstract To elucidate the signature of isostatic and eustatic signals during a deglaciation period in pre‐Pleistocene times is made difficult because very little dating can be done, and also because glacial erosion surfaces, subaerial unconformities and subsequent regressive or transgressive marine ravinement surfaces tend to amalgamate or erode the deglacial deposits. How and in what way can the rebound be interpreted from the stratigraphic record? This study proposes to examine deglacial deposits from Late‐Ordovician to Silurian outcrops at the Algeria–Libya border, in order to define the glacio–isostatic rebound and relative sea‐level changes during a deglaciation period. The studied succession developed at the edge and over a positive palaeo‐relief inherited from a prograding proglacial delta that forms a depocentre of glaciogenic deposits. The succession is divided into five subzones, which depend on the topography of this depocentre. Six facies associations were determined: restricted marine (Facies Association 1); tidal channels (Facies Association 2); tidal sand dunes (Facies Association 3); foreshore to upper shoreface (Facies Association 4); lower shoreface (Facies Association 5); and offshore shales (Facies Association 6). Stratigraphic correlations over the subzones support the understanding of the depositional chronology and associated sea‐level changes. Deepest marine domains record a forced regression of 40 m of sea‐level fall resulting from an uplift caused by a glacio‐isostatic rebound that outpaces the early transgression. The rebound is interpreted to result in a multi‐type surface, which is interpreted as a regressive surface of marine erosion in initially marine domains and as a subaerial unconformity surface in an initially subaerial domain. The transgressive deposits have developed above this surface, during the progressive flooding of the palaeo‐relief. Sedimentology and high‐resolution sequence stratigraphy allowed the delineation of a deglacial sequence and associated sea‐level changes curve for the studied succession. Estimates suggest a relatively short (〈10 kyr) duration for the glacio‐isostatic uplift and a subsequent longer duration transgression (4 to 5 Myr).

Description: Large uncertainties exist on the volume of ice transported by the Southern Ocean large icebergs, a key parameter for climate studies, because of the paucity of information, especially on iceberg thickness. Using icebergs tracks from the National Ice Center (NIC) and Brigham Young University (BYU) databases to select altimeter data over icebergs and a method of analysis of altimeter waveforms, a database of 5366 icebergs freeboard elevation, length and backscatter covering the 2002-2012 period has been created. The database is analyzed in terms of distributions of freeboard, length and backscatter showing differences as a function of the iceberg's quadrant of origin. The database allows to analyze the temporal evolution of icebergs and to estimate a melt rate of 35 to 39 m/yr – 1 (neglecting the firn compaction). The total daily volume of ice, estimated by combining the NIC and altimeter sizes and the altimeter freeboards, regularly decreases from 2.2 10 4 km 3 in 2002 to 0.9 10 4 km 3 in 2012. During this decade, the total loss of ice (~ 1,800km3) is twice as large as than the input (~ 960km 3 ) showing that the system is out of equilibrium after a very large input of ice between 1997 and 2002. Breaking into small icebergs represents 80% (~ 1,500km 3 ) of the total ice loss while basal melting is only 18% (~ 320km 3 ). Small icebergs are thus the major vector of freshwater input in the Southern Ocean. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Description: Owing to the large-scale transport of pollution-derived aerosols from the mid-latitudes to the Arctic, most of the aerosols are coated with acidic sulfate during winter in the Arctic. Recent laboratory experiments have shown that acid coating on dust particles substantially reduces the ability of these particles to nucleate ice crystals. Simulations performed using the Limited Area version of the Global Multiscale Environmental Model (GEM-LAM) are used to assess the potential effect of acid-coated ice nuclei on the Arctic cloud and radiation processes during January and February 2007. Ice nucleation is treated using a new parameterization based on laboratory experiments of ice nucleation on sulphuric acid-coated and uncoated kaolinite particles. Results show that acid coating on dust particles has an important effect on cloud microstructure, atmospheric dehydration, radiation and temperature over the Central Arctic, which is the coldest part of the Arctic. Mid and upper ice clouds are optically thinner while low-level mixed-phase clouds are more frequent and persistent. These changes in the cloud microstructures affect the radiation at the top of the atmosphere with longwave negative cloud forcing values ranging between 0 and − 6 W m −2 over the region covered by the Arctic air mass. Copyright © 2012 Royal Meteorological Society

Description: Question Recent studies revealed by indirect evidence that lichen–spruce woodlands in the closed-crown boreal forest are an alternative stable state of black spruce–feathermoss stands. This paper aims to demonstrate and quantify black spruce forest cover regression following successive wildfire events in the closed-crown forest zone during the 20th century. A case study in north-eastern North American closed-crown forest zone is presented. Location The study area is at the centre of the closed-crown boreal forest zone of eastern Canada (49°59′ N, 71°59′ W). Methods A burned area of 25 ha was selected in which three tree cohorts were visible. The first cohort contains partly buried trunks and stumps of a stand destroyed by a forest fire in 1920, the second contains standing dead trees from a 1995 forest fire and the third contains seedlings established after the 1995 fire. Fires were dated by scar analyses of living trees at the edge of the site. An array of sample plots was established in autumn 1997 to evaluate each cohort in terms of stocking and tree density. Results Black spruce stocking decreased significantly between cohorts, from 43.5% in Cohort 1 (all coniferous trees) to 25.6% in Cohort 2 and 11.5% in Cohort 3 (2011). Jack pine showed an inverse tendency, from 0% in Cohort 1 (not determined) to 0% in Cohort 2 and 3.8% in Cohort 3. Black spruce stems per hectare also dropped significantly from a minimum of 1322 in Cohort 1 to 1088 in Cohort 2 and 976 in Cohort 3. Conclusions This study is the first quantitative demonstration that lichen–spruce woodlands in the closed-crown boreal forest zone are an alternative stable state of black spruce–feathermoss stands. Stocking levels and densities markedly declined after each of the two fires (1920 and 1995) that both occurred after spruce budworm outbreaks (1910 and 1980) and are most likely responsible for the shift from a closed-crown to an open woodland. This paper presents a case study of a natural shift of vegetation communities after compounded disturbances in the closed-crown boreal forest. Due to a combination of short fire interval and insect outbreak, resilience of the spruce forest decreased over the last century. Our case study showed that the transformation of a closed forest into open woodland was fast and naturally irreversible.