ALBERT

Description: Predicting future thaw slump activity requires a sound understanding of the atmospheric drivers and geomorphic controls on mass wasting across a range of time scales. On sub-seasonal time scales, sparse measurements indicate that mass wasting at active slumps is often limited by the energy available for melting ground ice, but other factors such as rainfall or the formation of an insulating veneer may also be relevant. To study the sub-seasonal drivers, we derive topographic changes from single-pass radar interferometric data acquired by the TanDEM-X satellite (12 m resolution). The high vertical precision (around 30 cm), frequent observations (11 days) and large coverage (5000 km2) allow us to track volume losses as drivers such as the available energy change during summer in two study regions. We find that thaw slumps in the Tuktoyaktuk coastlands, Canada, are not energy limited in June, as they undergo limited mass wasting (height loss of around 0 cm/day) despite the ample available energy, indicating the widespread presence of an insulating snow or debris veneer. Later in summer, height losses generally increase (around 3 cm/day), but they do so in distinct ways. For many slumps, mass wasting tracks the available energy, a temporal pattern that is also observed at coastal yedoma cliffs on the Bykovsky Peninsula, Russia. However, the other two common temporal trajectories are asynchronous with the available energy, as they track strong precipitation events or show a sudden speed-up in late August, respectively. The observed temporal patterns are poorly related to slump characteristics like the slump area. The contrasting temporal behaviour of nearby thaw slumps highlights the importance of complex local and temporally varying controls on mass wasting.

Description: A suite of oxygenated volatile organic compounds (OVOCs – acetaldehyde, acetone, propanal, butanal and butanone) were measured concurrently in the surface water and atmosphere of the South China Sea and Sulu Sea in November 2011. A strong correlation was observed between all OVOC concentrations in the surface seawater along the entire cruise track, except for acetaldehyde, suggesting similar sources and sinks in the surface ocean. Additionally, several phytoplankton groups, such as haptophytes or pelagophytes, were also correlated to all OVOCs indicating that phytoplankton may be an important source for marine OVOCs in the South China and Sulu Seas. Humic and protein like fluorescent dissolved organic matter (FDOM) components seemed to be additional precursors for butanone and acetaldehyde. The atmospheric OVOC mixing ratios were relative high compared with literature values, suggesting the coastal region of North Borneo as a local hot spot for atmospheric OVOCs. The flux of atmospheric OVOCs was largely into the ocean for all 5 gases, with a few important exceptions near the coast of Borneo. The calculated amount of OVOCs entrained into the ocean seemed to be an important source of OVOCs to the surface ocean. When the fluxes were out of the ocean, marine OVOCs were found to be enough to control the local measured OVOC distribution in the atmosphere. Based on our model calculations, at least 0.4 ppb of marine derived acetone and butanone can reach the upper troposphere, where they may have an important influence on hydrogen oxide radical formation over the western Pacific Ocean.

Description: Arctic permafrost caps vast amounts of old, geologic methane (CH4) in subsurface reservoirs. Thawing permafrost opens pathways for this CH4 to migrate to the surface. However, the occurrence of geologic emissions and their contribution to the CH4 budget in addition to recent, biogenic CH4 is uncertain. Here we present a high-resolution (100 m × 100 m) regional (10,000 km²) CH4 flux map of the Mackenzie Delta, Canada, based on airborne CH4 flux data from July 2012 and 2013. We identify strong, likely geologic emissions solely where the permafrost is discontinuous. These peaks are 13 times larger than typical biogenic emissions. Whereas microbial CH4 production largely depends on recent air and soil temperature, geologic CH4 was produced over millions of years and can be released year-round provided open pathways exist. Therefore, even though they only occur on about 1% of the area, geologic hotspots contribute 17% to the annual CH4 emission estimate of our study area. We suggest that this share may increase if ongoing permafrost thaw opens new pathways. We conclude that, due to permafrost thaw, hydrocarbon-rich areas, prevalent in the Arctic, may see increased emission of geologic CH4 in the future, in addition to enhanced microbial CH4 production.

Description: The Extrapolar SWIFT model is a fast ozone chemistry scheme for interactive calculation of the extrapolar stratospheric ozone layer in coupled general circulation models (GCMs). In contrast to the widely used prescribed ozone, the SWIFT ozone layer interacts with the model dynamics and can respond to atmospheric variability or climatological trends. The Extrapolar SWIFT model employs a repro-modelling approach, where algebraic functions are used to approximate the numerical output of a full stratospheric chemistry and transport model (ATLAS). The full model solves a coupled chemical differential equations system with 55 initial and boundary conditions (mixing ratio of various chemical species and atmospheric parameters). Hence the rate of change of ozone over 24  h is a function of 55 variables. Using covariances between these variables, we can find linear combinations in order to reduce the parameter space to the following nine basic variables: latitude, pressure altitude, temperature, local ozone column, mixing ratio of ozone and of the ozone depleting families (Cly, Bry, NOy and HOy). We will show that these 9 variables are sufficient to characterize the rate of change of ozone. An automated procedure fits a polynomial function of fourth degree to the rate of change of ozone obtained from several simulations with the ATLAS model. One polynomial function is determined per month which yields the rate of change of ozone over 24 h. A key aspect for the robustness of the Extrapolar SWIFT model is to include a wide range of stratospheric variability in the numerical output of the ATLAS model, also covering atmospheric states that will occur in a future climate (e.g. temperature and meridional circulation changes or reduction of stratospheric chlorine loading). For validation purposes, the Extrapolar SWIFT model has been integrated into the ATLAS model replacing the full stratospheric chemistry scheme. Simulations with SWIFT in ATLAS have proven that the systematic error is small and does not accumulate during the course of a simulation. In the context of a 10 year simulation, the ozone layer, simulated by SWIFT, shows a stable annual cycle, with inter-annual variations comparable to the ATLAS model. The application of Extrapolar SWIFT requires the evaluation of polynomial functions with 30–100 terms. Nowadays, computers can calculate such polynomial functions at thousands of model grid points in seconds. SWIFT provides the desired numerical efficiency and computes the ozone layer 104 times faster than the chemistry scheme in the ATLAS CTM.

Description: Ice retreat in the eastern Eurasian Arctic is a consequence of atmospheric and oceanic processes and regional feedback mechanisms acting on the ice cover, both in winter and summer. A correct representation of these processes in numerical models is important, since it will improve predictions of sea ice anomalies along the Northeast Passage and beyond. In this study, we highlight the importance of winter ice dynamics for local summer sea ice anomalies in thickness, volume and extent. By means of airborne sea ice thickness surveys made over pack ice areas in the south-eastern Laptev Sea, we show that years of offshore-directed sea ice transport have a thinning effect on the late-winter sea ice cover. To confirm the preconditioning effect of enhanced offshore advection in late winter on the summer sea ice cover, we perform a sensitivity study using a numerical model. Results verify that the preconditioning effect plays a bigger role for the regional ice extent. Furthermore, they indicate an increase in volume export from the Laptev Sea as a consequence of enhanced offshore advection, which has far-reaching consequences for the entire Arctic sea ice mass balance. Moreover we show that ice dynamics in winter not only preconditions local summer ice extent, but also accelerate fast-ice decay.

Description: Sponges (Porifera) are abundant and diverse members of benthic filter feeding communities in most marine ecosystems, from the deep sea to tropical reefs. A characteristic feature is the associated dense and diverse prokaryotic community present within the sponge mesohyl. Previous molecular genetic studies revealed the importance of host identity for the community composition of the sponge-associated microbiota. However, little is known whether sponge host-specific prokaryotic community patterns observed at 97% 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity are consistent at high taxonomic ranks (from genus to phylum level). In the present study, we investigated the prokaryotic community structure and variation of 24 sponge specimens (seven taxa) and three seawater samples from Sweden. Results show that the resemblance of prokaryotic communities at different taxonomic ranks is consistent with patterns present at 97% operational taxonomic unit level.

Description: Climate trends in the Antarctic region remain poorly characterized, owing to the brevity and scarcity of direct climate observations and the large magnitude of interannual to decadal-scale climate variability. Here, within the framework of the PAGES Antarctica2k working group, we build an enlarged database of ice core water stable isotope records from Antarctica, consisting of 112 records. We produce both unweighted and weighted isotopic (δ18O) composites and temperature reconstructions since 0 CE, binned at 5- and 10-year resolution, for seven climatically distinct regions covering the Antarctic continent. Following earlier work of the Antarctica2k working group, we also produce composites and reconstructions for the broader regions of East Antarctica, West Antarctica and the whole continent. We use three methods for our temperature reconstructions: (i) a temperature scaling based on the δ18O–temperature relationship output from an ECHAM5-wiso model simulation nudged to ERA-Interim atmospheric reanalyses from 1979 to 2013, and adjusted for the West Antarctic Ice Sheet region to borehole temperature data, (ii) a temperature scaling of the isotopic normalized anomalies to the variance of the regional reanalysis temperature and (iii) a composite-plus-scaling approach used in a previous continent-scale reconstruction of Antarctic temperature since 1 CE but applied to the new Antarctic ice core database. Our new reconstructions confirm a significant cooling trend from 0 to 1900 CE across all Antarctic regions where records extend back into the 1st millennium, with the exception of the Wilkes Land coast and Weddell Sea coast regions. Within this long-term cooling trend from 0 to 1900 CE, we find that the warmest period occurs between 300 and 1000 CE, and the coldest interval occurs from 1200 to 1900 CE. Since 1900 CE, significant warming trends are identified for the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, the Dronning Maud Land coast and the Antarctic Peninsula regions, and these trends are robust across the distribution of records that contribute to the unweighted isotopic composites and also significant in the weighted temperature reconstructions. Only for the Antarctic Peninsula is this most recent century-scale trend unusual in the context of natural variability over the last 2000 years. However, projected warming of the Antarctic continent during the 21st century may soon see significant and unusual warming develop across other parts of the Antarctic continent. The extended Antarctica2k ice core isotope database developed by this working group opens up many avenues for developing a deeper understanding of the response of Antarctic climate to natural and anthropogenic climate forcings. The first long-term quantification of regional climate in Antarctica presented herein is a basis for data–model comparison and assessments of past, present and future driving factors of Antarctic climate.

Description: The Southern Ocean houses a diverse and productive community of organisms. Unicellular eukaryotic diatoms are the main primary producers in this environment, where photosynthesis is limited by low concentrations of dissolved iron and large seasonal fluctuations in light, temperature and the extent of sea ice. How diatoms have adapted to this extreme environment is largely unknown. Here we present insights into the genome evolution of a cold-adapted diatom from the Southern Ocean, Fragilariopsis cylindrus based on a comparison with temperate diatoms. We find that approximately 24.7 per cent of the diploid F. cylindrus genome consists of genetic loci with alleles that are highly divergent from those of temperate diatoms (15.1 megabases of the total genome size of 61.1 megabases). These divergent alleles were differentially expressed across environmental conditions, including darkness, low iron, freezing, elevated temperature and increased CO2. Alleles with the largest ratio of non-synonymous to synonymous nucleotide substitutions also show the most pronounced condition-dependent expression, suggesting a correlation between diversifying selection and allelic differentiation. Divergent alleles may be involved in adaptation to environmental fluctuations in the Southern Ocean.

Description: Warm water of open ocean origin on the continental shelf of the Amundsen and Bellingshausen Seas causes the highest basal melt rates reported for Antarctic ice shelves with severe consequences for the ice shelf/ice sheet dynamics. Ice shelves fringing the broad continental shelf in the Weddell and Ross Seas melt at rates orders ofmagnitude smaller. However, simulations using coupled ice–ocean models forced with the atmospheric output of the HadCM3 SRES-A1B scenario run (CO2 concentration in the atmosphere reaches 700 ppmv by the year 2100 and stays at that level for an additional 100 years) show that the circulation in the southern Weddell Sea changes during the twenty-first century. Derivatives of Circumpolar Deep Water are directed southward underneath the Filchner–Ronne Ice Shelf, warming the cavity and dramatically increasing basal melting. To find out whether the open ocean will always continue to power the melting, the authors extend their simulations, applying twentieth-century atmospheric forcing, both alone and together with prescribed basal mass flux at the end of (or during) the SRES-A1B scenario run. The results identify a tipping point in the southern Weddell Sea: once warm water flushes the ice shelf cavity a positive meltwater feedback enhances the shelf circulation and the onshore transport of open ocean heat. The process is irreversible with a recurrence to twentieth-century atmospheric forcing and can only be halted through prescribing a return to twentieth-century basal melt rates. This finding might have strong implications for the stability of the Antarctic ice sheet.

Description: Reproducible climate reconstructions of the Common Era (1 CE to present) are key to placing industrial-era warming into the context of natural climatic variability. Here we present a community-sourced database of temperature-sensitive proxy records from the PAGES2k initiative. The database gathers 692 records from 648 locations, including all continental regions and major ocean basins. The records are from trees, ice, sediment, corals, speleothems, documentary evidence, and other archives. They range in length from 50 to 2000 years, with a median of 547 years, while temporal resolution ranges from biweekly to centennial. Nearly half of the proxy time series are significantly correlated with HadCRUT4.2 surface temperature over the period 1850–2014. Global temperature composites show a remarkable degree of coherence between high- and low-resolution archives, with broadly similar patterns across archive types, terrestrial versus marine locations, and screening criteria. The database is suited to investigations of global and regional temperature variability over the Common Era, and is shared in the Linked Paleo Data (LiPD) format, including serializations in Matlab, R and Python.

Description: © The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Scientific Reports 7 (2017): 1321, doi:10.1038/s41598-017-01483-z.

Description: We provide a model for the genesis of Holocene coralligenous buildups occurring in the northwestern Adriatic Sea offshore Venice at 17–24 m depth. High-resolution geophysical surveys and underwater SCUBA diving reconnaissance revealed meandering shaped morphologies underneath bio-concretionned rocky buildups. These morphologies are inferred to have been inherited from Pleistocene fluvial systems reactivated as tidal channels during the post- Last Glacial Maximum transgression, when the study area was a lagoon protected by a sandy barrier. The lithification of the sandy fossil channel-levee systems is estimated to have occurred at ca. 7 cal. ka BP, likely due to the interaction between marine and less saline fluids related to onshore freshwater discharge at sea through a sealed water-table. The carbonate-cemented sandy layers served as nucleus for subsequent coralligenous buildups growth.

Description: Funded by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research within the National Research Program 2011–2013.

Description: © The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Scientific Reports 7 (2017): 1772, doi:10.1038/s41598-017-01919-6.

Description: Mississippi River floods rank among the costliest climate-related disasters in the world. Improving flood predictability, preparedness, and response at seasonal to decadal time-scales requires an understanding of the climatic controls that govern flood occurrence. Linking flood occurrence to persistent modes of climate variability like the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) has proven challenging, due in part to the limited number of high-magnitude floods available for study in the instrumental record. To augment the relatively short instrumental record, we use output from the Community Earth System Model (CESM) Last Millennium Ensemble (LME) to investigate the dynamical controls on discharge extremes of the lower Mississippi River. We show that through its regional influence on surface water storage, the warm phase of ENSO preconditions the lower Mississippi River to be vulnerable to flooding. In the 6–12 months preceding a flood, El Niño generates a positive precipitation anomaly over the lower Mississippi basin that gradually builds up soil moisture and reduces the basin’s infiltration capacity, thereby elevating the risk of a major flood during subsequent rainstorms. Our study demonstrates how natural climate variability mediates the formation of extreme floods on one of the world’s principal commercial waterways, adding significant predictive ability to near- and long-term forecasts of flood risk.

Description: This work was funded through the Postdoctoral Scholar Program of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the Voss Environmental Postdoctoral Fellows Program at Brown University.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Climate 30 (2017): 3829-3852, doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0479.1.

Description: This study provides an assessment of the uncertainty in ocean surface (OS) freshwater budgets and variability using evaporation E and precipitation P from 10 atmospheric reanalyses, two combined satellite-based E − P products, and two observation-based salinity products. Three issues are examined: the uncertainty level in the OS freshwater budget in atmospheric reanalyses, the uncertainty structure and association with the global ocean wet/dry zones, and the potential of salinity in ascribing the uncertainty in E − P. The products agree on the global mean pattern but differ considerably in magnitude. The OS freshwater budgets are 129 ± 10 (8%) cm yr−1 for E, 118 ± 11 (9%) cm yr−1 for P, and 11 ± 4 (36%) cm yr−1 for E − P, where the mean and error represent the ensemble mean and one standard deviation of the ensemble spread. The E − P uncertainty exceeds the uncertainty in E and P by a factor of 4 or more. The large uncertainty is attributed to P in the tropical wet zone. Most reanalyses tend to produce a wider tropical rainband when compared to satellite products, with the exception of two recent reanalyses that implement an observation-based correction for the model-generated P over land. The disparity in the width and the extent of seasonal migrations of the tropical wet zone causes a large spread in P, implying that the tropical moist physics and the realism of tropical rainfall remain a key challenge. Satellite salinity appears feasible to evaluate the fidelity of E − P variability in three tropical areas, where the uncertainty diagnosis has a global indication.

Description: Primary support for the study is provided by the NOAAModeling, Analysis, Predictions, and Projections (MAPP) Program’s Climate Reanalysis Task Force (CRTF) through Grant NA13OAR4310106.

Description: 2017-11-02

Description: © The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Nature Communications 8 (2017): 15595, doi:10.1038/ncomms15595.

Description: Although increasing atmospheric nitrous oxide (N2O) has been linked to nitrogen loading, predicting emissions remains difficult, in part due to challenges in disentangling diverse N2O production pathways. As coastal ecosystems are especially impacted by elevated nitrogen, we investigated controls on N2O production mechanisms in intertidal sediments using novel isotopic approaches and microsensors in flow-through incubations. Here we show that during incubations with elevated nitrate, increased N2O fluxes are not mediated by direct bacterial activity, but instead are largely catalysed by fungal denitrification and/or abiotic reactions (e.g., chemodenitrification). Results of these incubations shed new light on nitrogen cycling complexity and possible factors underlying variability of N2O fluxes, driven in part by fungal respiration and/or iron redox cycling. As both processes exhibit N2O yields typically far greater than direct bacterial production, these results emphasize their possibly substantial, yet widely overlooked, role in N2O fluxes, especially in redox-dynamic sediments of coastal ecosystems.

Description: D.D.B. acknowledges support from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation grants to W.Z. and S.D.W. (OCE-1260373) and to S.D.W. (EAR-1252161).

Description: © The Author(s), 2016. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in The ISME Journal 11 (2017): 186–200, doi:10.1038/ismej.2016.95.

Description: Reef-building corals are well regarded not only for their obligate association with endosymbiotic algae, but also with prokaryotic symbionts, the specificity of which remains elusive. To identify the central microbial symbionts of corals, their specificity across species and conservation over geographic regions, we sequenced partial SSU ribosomal RNA genes of Bacteria and Archaea from the common corals Stylophora pistillata and Pocillopora verrucosa across 28 reefs within seven major geographical regions. We demonstrate that both corals harbor Endozoicomonas bacteria as their prevalent symbiont. Importantly, catalyzed reporter deposition–fluorescence in situ hybridization (CARD–FISH) with Endozoicomonas-specific probes confirmed their residence as large aggregations deep within coral tissues. Using fine-scale genotyping techniques and single-cell genomics, we demonstrate that P. verrucosa harbors the same Endozoicomonas, whereas S. pistillata associates with geographically distinct genotypes. This specificity may be shaped by the different reproductive strategies of the hosts, potentially uncovering a pattern of symbiont selection that is linked to life history. Spawning corals such as P. verrucosa acquire prokaryotes from the environment. In contrast, brooding corals such as S. pistillata release symbiont-packed planula larvae, which may explain a strong regional signature in their microbiome. Our work contributes to the factors underlying microbiome specificity and adds detail to coral holobiont functioning.

Description: This research was supported by a KAUST-WHOI Post-doctoral Partnership Award to MN and a KAUST-WHOI Special Academic Partnership Funding Reserve Award to CRV and AA. Research in this study was further supported by baseline research funds to CRV by KAUST and NSF award OCE-1233612 to AA. RR was supported by the ct-PIRE Project, Robert Lemelson Fellowship, Graduate Research Award (UCLA), Women Divers Hall of Fame—Sister Fund Conservation Award and a Betty and E. P. Franklin Grant in Tropical Biology and Conservation.

Description: © The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Scientific Reports 7 (2017): 45476, doi:10.1038/srep45476.

Description: The influence of aerosols on climate is highly dependent on the particle size distribution, concentration, and composition. In particular, the latter influences their ability to act as cloud condensation nuclei, whereby they impact cloud coverage and precipitation. Here, we simultaneously measured the concentration of aerosols from sea spray over the North Atlantic on board the exhaust-free solar-powered vessel “PlanetSolar”, and the sea surface physico-chemical parameters. We identified organic-bearing particles based on individual particle fluorescence spectra. Organic-bearing aerosols display specific spatio-temporal distributions as compared to total aerosols. We propose an empirical parameterization of the organic-bearing particle concentration, with a dependence on water salinity and sea-surface temperature only. We also show that a very rich mixture of organic aerosols is emitted from the sea surface. Such data will certainly contribute to providing further insight into the influence of aerosols on cloud formation, and be used as input for the improved modeling of aerosols and their role in global climate processes.

Description: We gratefully acknowledge the financial support by the H. Dudley Wright and the Henri Moser Foundations, the Rector’s Office and the Institute for Environmental Sciences at the University of Geneva, as well as a generous anonymous donator.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Climate 30 (2017): 1233-1243, doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0496.1.

Description: A downscaling approach is applied to future projection simulations from four CMIP5 global climate models to investigate the response of the tropical cyclone (TC) climatology over the North Pacific basin to global warming. Under the influence of the anthropogenic rise in greenhouse gases, TC-track density, power dissipation, and TC genesis exhibit robust increasing trends over the North Pacific, especially over the central subtropical Pacific region. The increase in North Pacific TCs is primarily manifested as increases in the intense and relatively weak TCs. Examination of storm duration also reveals that TCs over the North Pacific have longer lifetimes under global warming. Through a genesis potential index, the mechanistic contributions of various physical climate factors to the simulated change in TC genesis are explored. More frequent TC genesis under global warming is mostly attributable to the smaller vertical wind shear and greater potential intensity (primarily due to higher sea surface temperature). In contrast, the effect of the saturation deficit of the free troposphere tends to suppress TC genesis, and the change in large-scale vorticity plays a negligible role.

Description: The authors acknowledge support from the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP) (RC-2336). SERDP is the environmental science and technology program of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) in partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Description: 2017-08-01

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Climate 30 (2017): 1739-1751, doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0200.1.

Description: The Indian Ocean has sustained robust surface warming in recent decades, but the role of multidecadal variability remains unclear. Using ocean model hindcasts, characteristics of low-frequency Indian Ocean temperature variations are explored. Simulated upper-ocean temperature changes across the Indian Ocean in the hindcast are consistent with those recorded in observational products and ocean reanalyses. Indian Ocean temperatures exhibit strong warming trends since the 1950s limited to the surface and south of 30°S, while extensive subsurface cooling occurs over much of the tropical Indian Ocean. Previous work focused on diagnosing causes of these long-term trends in the Indian Ocean over the second half of the twentieth century. Instead, the temporal evolution of Indian Ocean subsurface heat content is shown here to reveal distinct multidecadal variations associated with the Pacific decadal oscillation, and the long-term trends are thus interpreted to result from aliasing of the low-frequency variability. Transmission of the multidecadal signal occurs via an oceanic pathway through the Indonesian Throughflow and is manifest across the Indian Ocean centered along 12°S as westward-propagating Rossby waves modulating thermocline and subsurface heat content variations. Resulting low-frequency changes in the eastern Indian Ocean thermocline depth are associated with decadal variations in the frequency of Indian Ocean dipole (IOD) events, with positive IOD events unusually common in the 1960s and 1990s with a relatively shallow thermocline. In contrast, the deeper thermocline depth in the 1970s and 1980s is associated with frequent negative IOD and rare positive IOD events. Changes in Pacific wind forcing in recent decades and associated rapid increases in Indian Ocean subsurface heat content can thus affect the basin’s leading mode of variability, with implications for regional climate and vulnerable societies in surrounding countries.

Description: This research was supported by a Research Fellowship by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, as well as the Ocean Climate Change Institute and the Investment in Science Fund at WHOI.

Description: 2017-08-15

Description: © The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Nature Communications 8 (2017): 772, doi:10.1038/s41467-017-00759-2.

Description: In sunlit waters, photochemical alteration of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) impacts the microbial respiration of DOC to CO2. This coupled photochemical and biological degradation of DOC is especially critical for carbon budgets in the Arctic, where thawing permafrost soils increase opportunities for DOC oxidation to CO2 in surface waters, thereby reinforcing global warming. Here we show how and why sunlight exposure impacts microbial respiration of DOC draining permafrost soils. Sunlight significantly increases or decreases microbial respiration of DOC depending on whether photo-alteration produces or removes molecules that native microbial communities used prior to light exposure. Using high-resolution chemical and microbial approaches, we show that rates of DOC processing by microbes are likely governed by a combination of the abundance and lability of DOC exported from land to water and produced by photochemical processes, and the capacity and timescale that microbial communities have to adapt to metabolize photo-altered DOC.

Description: Funding for this work was provided by NSF grants OPP 1023270, 1022876, CAREER 1351745, DEB 1147378, 1347042, 0639790, 1147336, 1026843, PLR 1504006, DOE-JGI-CSP 1782, and the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation Postdoctoral Program in Environmental Chemistry.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 47 (2017): 2251-2265, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-17-0042.1.

Description: The problem of localized dense water formation over a sloping bottom is considered for the general case in which the topography forms a closed contour. This class of problems is motivated by topography around islands or shallow shoals in which convection resulting from brine rejection or surface heat loss reaches the bottom. The focus of this study is on the large-scale circulation that is forced far from the region of surface forcing. The authors find that a cyclonic current is generated around the topography, in the opposite sense to the propagation of the dense water plume. In physical terms, this current results from the propagation of low sea surface height from the region of dense water formation anticyclonically along the topographic contours back to the formation region. This pressure gradient is then balanced by a cyclonic geostrophic flow. This basic structure is well predicted by a linear quasigeostrophic theory, a primitive equation model, and in rotating tank experiments. For sufficiently strong forcing, the anticyclonic circulation of the dense plume meets this cyclonic circulation to produce a sharp front and offshore advection of dense water at the bottom and buoyant water at the surface. This nonlinear limit is demonstrated in both the primitive equation model and in the tank experiments.

Description: MAS was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant OCE-1534618. Support for CC was given by the WHOI Ocean Climate Change Institute Proposal 27071273.

Description: 2018-03-20

Description: © The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Scientific Reports 7 (2017): 7271, doi:10.1038/s41598-017-07400-8.

Description: Although experience-dependent changes in brain inhibitory circuits are thought to play a key role during the “critical period” of brain development, the nature and timing of these changes are poorly understood. We examined the role of sensory experience in sculpting an inhibitory circuit in the primary somatosensory cortex (S1) of mice by using optogenetics to map the connections between parvalbumin (PV) expressing interneurons and layer 2/3 pyramidal cells. Unilateral whisker deprivation decreased the strength and spatial range of inhibitory input provided to pyramidal neurons by PV interneurons in layers 2/3, 4 and 5. By varying the time when sensory input was removed, we determined that the critical period closes around postnatal day 14. This yields the first precise time course of critical period plasticity for an inhibitory circuit.

Description: This work was supported by a fellowship from NUS to SQL, A*STAR intramural funding for the Integrative Neuroscience Programme, Singapore Institute for Clinical Sciences for JCGS, and a Competitive Research Programme (CRP) grant from the National Research Foundation of Singapore (NRF Grant Number 2008 NRF-CRP 002-082).

Description: © The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Scientific Reports 7 (2017): 6040, doi:10.1038/s41598-017-05590-9.

Description: Selection of microorganisms in marine sediment is shaped by energy-yielding electron acceptors for respiration that are depleted in vertical succession. However, some taxa have been reported to reflect past depositional conditions suggesting they have experienced weak selection after burial. In sediments underlying the Arabian Sea oxygen minimum zone (OMZ), we performed the first metagenomic profiling of sedimentary DNA at centennial-scale resolution in the context of a multi-proxy paleoclimate reconstruction. While vertical distributions of sulfate reducing bacteria and methanogens indicate energy-based selection typical of anoxic marine sediments, 5–15% of taxa per sample exhibit depth-independent stratigraphies indicative of paleoenvironmental selection over relatively short geological timescales. Despite being vertically separated, indicator taxa deposited under OMZ conditions were more similar to one another than those deposited in bioturbated intervals under intervening higher oxygen. The genomic potential for denitrification also correlated with palaeo-OMZ proxies, independent of sediment depth and available nitrate and nitrite. However, metagenomes revealed mixed acid and Entner-Dourdoroff fermentation pathways encoded by many of the same denitrifier groups. Fermentation thus may explain the subsistence of these facultatively anaerobic microbes whose stratigraphy follows changing paleoceanographic conditions. At least for certain taxa, our analysis provides evidence of their paleoenvironmental selection over the last glacial-interglacial cycle.

Description: his work was primarily supported by NSF MGG Grant #1357017 to MJLC, VG, and LG, and the KAUST-WHOI Special Academic Partnership Program OCRF-SP-WHOI-2013 (grants 7000000463 to XI and 7000000464 to MJLC). Additional financial support was provided via a C-DEBI grant #OCE-0939564 to WDO.

Description: © The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Nature Communications 8 (2017): 832, doi:10.1038/s41467-017-00890-0.

Description: Colonially-breeding seabirds have long served as indicator species for the health of the oceans on which they depend. Abundance and breeding data are repeatedly collected at fixed study sites in the hopes that changes in abundance and productivity may be useful for adaptive management of marine resources, but their suitability for this purpose is often unknown. To address this, we fit a Bayesian population dynamics model that includes process and observation error to all known Adélie penguin abundance data (1982–2015) in the Antarctic, covering 〉95% of their population globally. We find that process error exceeds observation error in this system, and that continent-wide “year effects” strongly influence population growth rates. Our findings have important implications for the use of Adélie penguins in Southern Ocean feedback management, and suggest that aggregating abundance across space provides the fastest reliable signal of true population change for species whose dynamics are driven by stochastic processes.

Description: H.J.L., C.C.-C., G.H., C.Y., and K.T.S. gratefully acknowledge funding provided by US National Aeronautics and Space Administration Award No. NNX14AC32G and U.S. National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs Award No. NSF/OPP-1255058. S.J., L.L., M.M.H., Y.L., and R.J. gratefully acknowledge funding provided by US National Aeronautics and Space Administration Award No. NNX14AH74G. H.J.L., C.Y., S.J., Y.L., and R.J. gratefully acknowledge funding provided by U.S. National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs Award No. NSF/PLR-1341548. S.J. gratefully acknowledges support from the Dalio Explore Fund.

Description: © The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Scientific Reports 7 (2017): 13460, doi:10.1038/s41598-017-13359-3.

Description: Given new distribution patterns of the endangered North Atlantic right whale (NARW; Eubalaena glacialis) population in recent years, an improved understanding of spatio-temporal movements are imperative for the conservation of this species. While so far visual data have provided most information on NARW movements, passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) was used in this study in order to better capture year-round NARW presence. This project used PAM data from 2004 to 2014 collected by 19 organizations throughout the western North Atlantic Ocean. Overall, data from 324 recorders (35,600 days) were processed and analyzed using a classification and detection system. Results highlight almost year-round habitat use of the western North Atlantic Ocean, with a decrease in detections in waters off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina in summer and fall. Data collected post 2010 showed an increased NARW presence in the mid-Atlantic region and a simultaneous decrease in the northern Gulf of Maine. In addition, NARWs were widely distributed across most regions throughout winter months. This study demonstrates that a large-scale analysis of PAM data provides significant value to understanding and tracking shifts in large whale movements over long time scales.

Description: This research was funded and supported by many organizations, specified by projects as follows: Data recordings from region 1 were provided by K. Stafford and this research effort was funded by the National Science Foundation #NSF-ARC 0532611. Region 2 data were provided by D. K. Mellinger and S. Nieukirk, funded by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) and the Office of Naval Research (ONR) #N00014–03–1–0099, NOAA #NA06OAR4600100, US Navy #N00244-08-1-0029, N00244-09-1-0079, and N00244-10-1-0047.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology 34 (2017): 355-373, doi:10.1175/JTECH-D-15-0226.1.

Description: Passive longwave infrared radiometric satellite–based retrievals of sea surface temperature (SST) at instrument nadir are investigated for cold bias caused by unscreened optically thin cirrus (OTC) clouds [cloud optical depth (COD) ≤ 0.3]. Level 2 nonlinear SST (NLSST) retrievals over tropical oceans (30°S–30°N) from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) radiances collected aboard the NASA Aqua satellite (Aqua-MODIS) are collocated with cloud profiles from the Cloud–Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP) instrument. OTC clouds are present in approximately 25% of tropical quality-assured (QA) Aqua-MODIS Level 2 data, representing over 99% of all contaminating cirrus found. Cold-biased NLSST (MODIS, AVHRR, and VIIRS) and triple-window (AVHRR and VIIRS only) SST retrievals are modeled based on operational algorithms using radiative transfer model simulations conducted with a hypothetical 1.5-km-thick OTC cloud placed incrementally from 10.0 to 18.0 km above mean sea level for cloud optical depths between 0.0 and 0.3. Corresponding cold bias estimates for each sensor are estimated using relative Aqua-MODIS cloud contamination frequencies as a function of cloud-top height and COD (assuming they are consistent across each platform) integrated within each corresponding modeled cold bias matrix. NLSST relative OTC cold biases, for any single observation, range from 0.33° to 0.55°C for the three sensors, with an absolute (bulk mean) bias between 0.09° and 0.14°C. Triple-window retrievals are more resilient, ranging from 0.08° to 0.14°C relative and from 0.02° to 0.04°C absolute. Cold biases are constant across the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Absolute bias is lower over the Atlantic but relative bias is higher, indicating that this issue persists globally.

Description: Authors JWM, NJS, and JZ acknowledge the support of NASA Project NNX14AJ13G andNSF Project IIA-1355466.Author JZ also acknowledges the support of ONR N00014-16-1-2040 (Grant 11843919). Author JWM further recognizes the Naval Research Enterprise Internship Program (NREIP). Support for his NREIP fellowship came from NASA Interagency Agreement NNG15JA17P on behalf of theMicro-Pulse LidarNetwork (E. J. Welton). Authors JRC, JAC and DLW acknowledge the support of Office of Naval Research Code 322 (PE0602435). Author JRC also acknowledges the support of NASA Interagency Agreement RPO201522 on behalf of the CALIPSO Science Team (C. R. Trepte).

Description: 2017-08-06

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 47 (2017): 339-351, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-16-0165.1.

Description: A novel multi-iteration statistical method for studying tracer spreading using drifter data is introduced. The approach allows for the best use of the available drifter data by making use of a simple iterative procedure, which results in the statistically probable map showing the likelihood that a tracer released at some source location would visit different geographical regions, along with the associated arrival travel times. The technique is tested using real drifter data in the North Atlantic. Two examples are considered corresponding to sources in the western and eastern North Atlantic Ocean, that is, Massachusetts Bay–like and Irish Sea–like sources, respectively. In both examples, the method worked well in estimating the statistics of the tracer transport pathways and travel times throughout the entire North Atlantic. The role of eddies versus mean flow is quantified using the same technique, and eddies are shown to significantly broaden the spread of a tracer. The sensitivity of the results to the size of the source domain is investigated and causes for this sensitivity are discussed.

Description: This work was supported by the Grant OCE-1356630 from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Rypina also acknowledges NSF Grant OCE-1154641 and NASA Grant NNX14AH29G.

Description: 2017-07-31

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology 34 (2017): 269-275, doi:10.1175/JTECH-D-11-00196.1.

Description: A data telemetry technique for communicating over standard oceanographic sea cables that achieves a nearly 100-fold increase in bandwidth as compared to traditional systems has been recently developed and successfully used at sea on board two Research Vessel (R/V) Atlantis cruises with an 8.5-km, 0.322-in.-diameter three-conductor sea cable. The system uses commercially available modules to provide Ethernet connectivity through existing sea cables, linking serial and video underwater instrumentation to the shipboard user. The new method applies Synchronous Digital Subscriber Line (SDSL) communications technology to undersea applications, greatly increasing the opportunities to use scientific instrumentation from existing ships and sea cables at minimal cost and without modification.

Description: This development program has been supported, in part, through research grants from the National Science Foundation (OCE 0447395), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s ASTEP program (NNX09AB76G), and a WHOI Green and Hiam Innovative Technology Award.

Description: 2017-07-23

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology 34 (2017): 309-333, doi:10.1175/JTECH-D-16-0156.1.

Description: Doppler current profilers on autonomous underwater gliders measure water velocity relative to the moving glider over vertical ranges of O(10) m. Measurements obtained with 1-MHz Nortek acoustic Doppler dual current profilers (AD2CPs) on Spray gliders deployed off Southern California, west of the Galápagos Archipelago, and in the Gulf Stream are used to demonstrate methods of estimating absolute horizontal velocities in the upper 1000 m of the ocean. Relative velocity measurements nearest to a glider are used to infer dive-dependent flight parameters, which are then used to correct estimates of absolute vertically averaged currents to account for the accumulation of biofouling during months-long glider missions. The inverse method for combining Doppler profiler measurements of relative velocity with absolute references to estimate profiles of absolute horizontal velocity is reviewed and expanded to include additional constraints on the velocity solutions. Errors arising from both instrumental bias and decreased abundance of acoustic scatterers at depth are considered. Though demonstrated with measurements from a particular combination of platform and instrument, these techniques should be applicable to other combinations of gliders and Doppler current profilers.

Description: Spray glider missions were supported by the National Science Foundation (OCE-1232971, OCE-1233282), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NA10OAR4320156, NA15OAR4320071), Eastman Chemical Company, the Oceans and Climate Change Institute at WHOI, and the W. Van Alan Clark Jr. Chair for Excellence in Oceanography at WHOI. RET acknowledges additional support for analysis and publication from the National Science Foundation (OCE-1633911).

Description: 2017-07-31

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 47 (2017): 633-647, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-16-0089.1.

Description: Interannual variability in the volumetric water mass distribution within the North Atlantic Subtropical Gyre is described in relation to variability in the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation. The relative roles of diabatic and adiabatic processes in the volume and heat budgets of the subtropical gyre are investigated by projecting data into temperature coordinates as volumes of water using an Argo-based climatology and an ocean state estimate (ECCO version 4). This highlights that variations in the subtropical gyre volume budget are predominantly set by transport divergence in the gyre. A strong correlation between the volume anomaly due to transport divergence and the variability of both thermocline depth and Ekman pumping over the gyre suggests that wind-driven heave drives transport anomalies at the gyre boundaries. This wind-driven heaving contributes significantly to variations in the heat content of the gyre, as do anomalies in the air–sea fluxes. The analysis presented suggests that wind forcing plays an important role in driving interannual variability in the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation and that this variability can be unraveled from spatially distributed hydrographic observations using the framework presented here.

Description: DGE was supported by a Natural Environment Research Council studentship award at the University of Southampton. JMT’s contribution was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (Grant OCE-1332667). GF’s contribution was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation through Grant OCE-0961713 and by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration through Grant NA10OAR4310135. The contributions of JDZ and AJGN were supported by the NERC Grant ‘‘Climate scale analysis of air and water masses’’ (NE/ K012932/1). ACNG gratefully acknowledges support from the Leverhulme Trust, the Royal Society, and the Wolfson Foundation. LY was supported by NASA Ocean Vector Wind Science Team (OVWST) activities under Grant NNA10AO86G.

Description: © The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Scientific Reports 7 (2017): 1267, doi:10.1038/s41598-017-01260-y.

Description: Changes in plant phenology affect the carbon flux of terrestrial forest ecosystems due to the link between the growing season length and vegetation productivity. Digital camera imagery, which can be acquired frequently, has been used to monitor seasonal and annual changes in forest canopy phenology and track critical phenological events. However, quantitative assessment of the structural and biochemical controls of the phenological patterns in camera images has rarely been done. In this study, we used an NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) camera to monitor daily variations of vegetation reflectance at visible and near-infrared (NIR) bands with high spatial and temporal resolutions, and found that the infrared camera based NDVI (camera-NDVI) agreed well with the leaf expansion process that was measured by independent manual observations at Harvard Forest, Massachusetts, USA. We also measured the seasonality of canopy structural (leaf area index, LAI) and biochemical properties (leaf chlorophyll and nitrogen content). We found significant linear relationships between camera-NDVI and leaf chlorophyll concentration, and between camera-NDVI and leaf nitrogen content, though weaker relationships between camera-NDVI and LAI. Therefore, we recommend ground-based camera-NDVI as a powerful tool for long-term, near surface observations to monitor canopy development and to estimate leaf chlorophyll, nitrogen status, and LAI.

Description: This research was supported by US Department of Energy Office of Biological and Environmental Research Grant DE-SC0006951, National Science Foundation Grants DBI-959333 and AGS-1005663, and the University of Chicago and the MBL Lillie Research Innovation Award to J.T. and China Scholarship Council (CSC) to H.Y.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 47 (2017): 1291-1305, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-16-0160.1.

Description: Along-stream variations in the dynamics of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) impact heat and tracer transport, regulate interbasin exchange, and influence closure of the overturning circulation. Topography is primarily responsible for generating deviations from zonal-mean properties, mainly through standing meanders associated with regions of high eddy kinetic energy. Here, an idealized channel model is used to explore the spatial distribution of energy exchange and its relationship to eddy geometry, as characterized by both eddy momentum and eddy buoyancy fluxes. Variations in energy exchange properties occur not only between standing meander and quasi-zonal jet regions, but throughout the meander itself. Both barotropic and baroclinic stability properties, as well as the magnitude of energy exchange terms, undergo abrupt changes along the path of the ACC. These transitions are captured by diagnosing eddy fluxes of energy and by adopting the eddy geometry framework. The latter, typically applied to barotropic stability properties, is applied here in the depth–along-stream plane to include information about both barotropic and baroclinic stability properties of the flow. These simulations reveal that eddy momentum fluxes, and thus barotropic instability, play a leading role in the energy budget within a standing meander. This result suggests that baroclinic instability alone cannot capture the dynamics of ACC standing meanders, a challenge for models where eddy fluxes are parameterized.

Description: The authors all acknowledge support from NSF OCE-1235488. MKY also acknowledges support from the AMS Graduate Student Fellowship.

Description: 2017-10-12

Description: © The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Nature Communications 8 (2017): 172, doi:10.1038/s41467-017-00197-0.

Description: Upwelling of global deep waters to the sea surface in the Southern Ocean closes the global overturning circulation and is fundamentally important for oceanic uptake of carbon and heat, nutrient resupply for sustaining oceanic biological production, and the melt rate of ice shelves. However, the exact pathways and role of topography in Southern Ocean upwelling remain largely unknown. Here we show detailed upwelling pathways in three dimensions, using hydrographic observations and particle tracking in high-resolution models. The analysis reveals that the northern-sourced deep waters enter the Antarctic Circumpolar Current via southward flow along the boundaries of the three ocean basins, before spiraling southeastward and upward through the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. Upwelling is greatly enhanced at five major topographic features, associated with vigorous mesoscale eddy activity. Deep water reaches the upper ocean predominantly south of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, with a spatially nonuniform distribution. The timescale for half of the deep water to upwell from 30° S to the mixed layer is ~60–90 years.

Description: V.T., L.D.T., and M.R.M. were supported by NSF OCE-1357072. A.K.M., H.F.D., and W.W. were supported by the RGCM program of the US Department of Energy under Contract DE-SC0012457. J.L.S. acknowledges NSF’s Southern Ocean Carbon and Climate Observations and Modeling project under NSF PLR-1425989, which partially supported L.D.T. and M.R.M. as well. C.O.D was supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) under Award NNX14AL40G and by the Princeton Environmental Institute Grand Challenge initiative. A.R.G. was supported by a Climate and Global Change Postdoctoral Fellowship from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). S.M.G. acknowledges the ongoing support of NOAA/GFDL for high-end ocean and climate-modeling activities. J.W. acknowledges support from NSF OCE-1234473.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology 34 (2017): 415-427, doi:10.1175/JTECH-D-16-0069.1.

Description: Sensors and instruments for basic oceanographic properties are becoming increasingly sophisticated, which both simplifies and complicates their use in field studies. This increased sophistication disproportionately affects smaller-scale observational efforts that are less likely to be well supported technically but which need to integrate instruments, sensors, and commonly needed peripheral devices in ways not envisioned by their manufacturers. A general-purpose hardware and software framework was developed around a widely used family of low-power microcontrollers to lessen the technical expertise and customization required to integrate sensors, instruments, and peripherals, and thus simplify such integration scenarios. Both the hardware and associated firmware development tools provide a range of features often required in such scenarios: serial data interfaces, analog inputs and outputs, logic lines and power-switching capability, nonvolatile storage of data and parameters for sampling or configuration, and serial communication interfaces to supervisory or telemetry systems. The microcontroller and additional components needed to implement this integration framework are small enough to encapsulate in standard cable splices, creating a small form factor “smart cable” that can be readily wired and programmed for a range of integration needs. An application programming library developed for this hardware provides skeleton code for functions commonly desired when integrating sensors, instruments, and peripherals. This minimizes the firmware programming expertise needed to apply this framework in many integration scenarios and thus streamlines the development of firmware for different field applications. Envisioned applications are in field programs where significant technical instrumentation expertise is unavailable or not cost effective.

Description: Link Foundation Ocean Engineering graduate fellowship to SRL. Subsequent development effort was supported by a NASA New Investigator Award to SRL (NNX10AQ83G) and by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution through its Assistant Scientist Endowed Support, a Cecil H. and Ida M. Green Technology Innovation Award, and the Investment in Science Program.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2016. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology 33 (2016): 2373-2384, doi:10.1175/JTECH-D-16-0024.1.

Description: A long-path methane (CH4) sensor was developed and field deployed using an 8-μm quantum cascade laser. The high optical power (40 mW) of the laser allowed for path-integrated measurements of ambient CH4 at total pathlengths from 100 to 1200 m with the use of a retroreflector. Wavelength modulation spectroscopy was used to make high-precision measurements of atmospheric pressure–broadened CH4 absorption over these long distances. An in-line reference cell with higher harmonic detection provided metrics of system stability in rapidly changing and harsh environments. The system consumed less than 100 W of power and required no consumables. The measurements intercompared favorably (typically less than 5% difference) with a commercial in situ methane sensor when accounting for the different spatiotemporal scales of the measurements. The sensor was field deployed for 2 weeks at an arctic lake to examine the robustness of the approach in harsh field environments. Short-term precision over a 458-m pathlength was 10 ppbv at 1 Hz, equivalent to a signal from a methane enhancement above background of 5 ppmv in a 1-m length. The sensor performed well in a range of harsh environmental conditions, including snow, rain, wind, and changing temperatures. These field measurements demonstrate the capabilities of the approach for use in detecting large but highly variable emissions in arctic environments.

Description: The authors gratefully acknowledge funding for this work by MIRTHE through NSF-ERC Grant EEC-0540832. D. J. Miller acknowledges support by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under Grant DGE-0646086. K. Sun acknowledges support by the NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship IIP-1263579.

Description: 2017-05-01

Description: © The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Scientific Reports 7 (2017): 1030, doi:10.1038/s41598-017-01224-2.

Description: Mangrove wetlands provide ecosystem services for millions of people, most prominently by providing storm protection, food and fodder. Mangrove wetlands are also valuable ecosystems for promoting carbon (C) sequestration and storage. However, loss of mangrove wetlands and these ecosystem services are a global concern, prompting the restoration and creation of mangrove wetlands as a potential solution. Here, we investigate soil surface elevation change, and its components, in created mangrove wetlands over a 25 year developmental gradient. All created mangrove wetlands were exceeding current relative sea-level rise rates (2.6 mm yr−1), with surface elevation change of 4.2–11.0 mm yr−1 compared with 1.5–7.2 mm yr−1 for nearby reference mangroves. While mangrove wetlands store C persistently in roots/soils, storage capacity is most valuable if maintained with future sea-level rise. Through empirical modeling, we discovered that properly designed creation projects may not only yield enhanced C storage, but also can facilitate wetland persistence perennially under current rates of sea-level rise and, for most sites, for over a century with projected medium accelerations in sea-level rise (IPCC RCP 6.0). Only the fastest projected accelerations in sea-level rise (IPCC RCP 8.5) led to widespread submergence and potential loss of stored C for created mangrove wetlands before 2100.

Description: Funding for this research was provided by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Gulf Ecology Division; U.S. Geological Survey, Climate and Land Use Change R&D Program; and U.S. Geological Survey, Environments Program.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 98 (2017): 737-752, doi:10.1175/BAMS-D-16-0057.1.

Description: For decades oceanographers have understood the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) to be primarily driven by changes in the production of deep-water formation in the subpolar and subarctic North Atlantic. Indeed, current Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projections of an AMOC slowdown in the twenty-first century based on climate models are attributed to the inhibition of deep convection in the North Atlantic. However, observational evidence for this linkage has been elusive: there has been no clear demonstration of AMOC variability in response to changes in deep-water formation. The motivation for understanding this linkage is compelling, since the overturning circulation has been shown to sequester heat and anthropogenic carbon in the deep ocean. Furthermore, AMOC variability is expected to impact this sequestration as well as have consequences for regional and global climates through its effect on the poleward transport of warm water. Motivated by the need for a mechanistic understanding of the AMOC, an international community has assembled an observing system, Overturning in the Subpolar North Atlantic Program (OSNAP), to provide a continuous record of the transbasin fluxes of heat, mass, and freshwater, and to link that record to convective activity and water mass transformation at high latitudes. OSNAP, in conjunction with the Rapid Climate Change–Meridional Overturning Circulation and Heatflux Array (RAPID–MOCHA) at 26°N and other observational elements, will provide a comprehensive measure of the three-dimensional AMOC and an understanding of what drives its variability. The OSNAP observing system was fully deployed in the summer of 2014, and the first OSNAP data products are expected in the fall of 2017.

Description: The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF; OCE-1259102, OCE-1259103, OCE-1259618, OCE-1258823, OCE-1259210, OCE-1259398, OCE-0136215, and OCE-1005697); the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA); the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA); the WHOI Ocean and Climate Change Institute (OCCI), the WHOI Independent Research and Development (IRD) Program, and the WHOI Postdoctoral Scholar Program; the U.K. Natural Environment Research Council (NERC; NE/K010875/1, NE/K010700/1, R8-H12-85, FASTNEt NE/I030224/1, NE/K010972/1, NE/K012932/1, and NE/M018024/1); the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (NACLIM project, 308299 and 610055); the German Federal Ministry and Education German Research RACE Program; the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC; RGPIN 227438-09, RGPIN 04357, and RG-PCC 433898); Fisheries and Oceans Canada; the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC; 41521091, U1406401); the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China; the French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea (IFREMER); the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS); the French National Institute for Earth Sciences and Astronomy (INSU); the French national program LEFE; and the French Oceanographic Fleet (TGIR FOF).

Description: 2017-10-24

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 47 (2017): 485-498, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-16-0175.1.

Description: Dense oceanic overflows descend over the rough topography of the continental slope entraining and mixing with surrounding waters. The associated dilution dictates the fate of these currents and thus is of fundamental importance to the formation of deep water masses. The entrainment in a dense current flowing down a sloping bottom in a rotating homogeneous fluid is investigated using laboratory experiments, focusing on the influence of the bottom roughness on the flow dynamics. The roughness is idealized by an array of vertical rigid cylinders and both their spacing and height are varied as well as the inclination of the sloping bottom. The presence of the roughness is generally observed to decelerate the dense current, with a consequent reduction of the Froude number, when compared to the smooth bottom configuration. However, the dilution of the dense current due to mixing with the ambient fluid is enhanced by the roughness elements, especially for low Froude numbers. When the entrainment due to shear instability at the interface between the dense current and the ambient fluid is low, the additional turbulence and mixing arising at the bottom of the dense current due to the roughness elements strongly affects the dilution of the current. Finally, a strong dependence of the entrainment parameter on the Reynolds number is observed.

Description: Support to C. C. was given by the National Science Foundation Project OCE- 1333174. Support to L. O. during her internship at WHOI was provided by the Lions Club ‘‘Napoli Megaride’’ and the Zoological Station Anton Dohrn through the Paolo Brancaccio fellowship (2012).

Description: 2017-08-20

Description: © The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in ISME Journal 11 (2017): 2090–2101, doi:10.1038/ismej.2017.74.

Description: Trichodesmium is a genus of marine diazotrophic colonial cyanobacteria that exerts a profound influence on global biogeochemistry, by injecting ‘new’ nitrogen into the low nutrient systems where it occurs. Colonies of Trichodesmium ubiquitously contain a diverse assemblage of epibiotic microorganisms, constituting a microbiome on the Trichodesmium host. Metagenome sequences from Trichodesmium colonies were analyzed along a resource gradient in the western North Atlantic to examine microbiome community structure, functional diversity and metabolic contributions to the holobiont. Here we demonstrate the presence of a core Trichodesmium microbiome that is modulated to suit different ocean regions, and contributes over 10 times the metabolic potential of Trichodesmium to the holobiont. Given the ubiquitous nature of epibionts on colonies, the substantial functional diversity within the microbiome is likely an integral facet of Trichodesmium physiological ecology across the oligotrophic oceans where this biogeochemically significant diazotroph thrives.

Description: This research was funded by grants from the National Science Foundation to STD (OCE-1332912) and BASVM (OCE-1332898).

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Climate 30 (2017): 6757-6769, doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0461.1.

Description: Arctic sea ice area (SIA) during late summer and early fall decreased substantially over the last four decades, and its decline accelerated beginning in the early 2000s. Statistical analyses of observations show that enhanced poleward moisture transport from the North Pacific to the Arctic Ocean contributed to the accelerated SIA decrease during the most recent period. As a consequence, specific humidity in the Arctic Pacific sector significantly increased along with an increase of downward longwave radiation beginning in 2002, which led to a significant acceleration in the decline of SIA in the Arctic Pacific sector. The resulting sea ice loss led to increased evaporation in the Arctic Ocean, resulting in a further increase of the specific humidity in mid-to-late fall, thus acting as a positive feedback to the sea ice loss. The overall set of processes is also found in a long control simulation of a coupled climate model.

Description: This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea Grant NRF-2009-C1AAA001-0093, funded by the Korean government (MEST), to HJL, YHK, and MOK. S-WY is supported by the Korea Meteorological Administration Research and Development Program under Grant KMIPA2015-1042. Y-OK is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DE-SC0014433) and National Science Foundation (OCE-1242989). WP acknowledges support from the BMBF project CLIMPRE InterDec (FKZ: 01LP1609B).

Description: 2018-01-26

Description: © The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Scientific Reports 7 (2017): 5476, doi:10.1038/s41598-017-05745-8.

Description: The lost Saraswati River mentioned in the ancient Indian tradition is postulated to have flown independently of the Indus River into the Arabian Sea, perhaps along courses of now defunct rivers such as Ghaggar, Hakra and Nara. The persistence of such a river during the Harappan Bronze Age and the Iron Age Vedic period is strongly debated. We drilled in the Great Rann of Kachchh (Kutch), an infilled gulf of the Arabian Sea, which must have received input from the Saraswati, if active. Nd and Sr isotopic measurements suggest that a distinct source may have been present before 10 ka. Later in Holocene, under a drying climate, sediments from the Thar Desert probably choked the signature of an independent Saraswati-like river. Alternatively, without excluding a Saraswati-like secondary source, the Indus and the Thar were the dominant sources throughout the post-glacial history of the GRK. Indus-derived sediment accelerated the infilling of GRK after ~6 ka when the Indus delta started to grow. Until its complete infilling few centuries ago, freshwater input from the Indus, and perhaps from the Ghaggar-Hakra-Nara, probably sustained a productive marine environment as well as navigability toward old coastal Harappan and historic towns in the region.

Description: The drilling effort and subsequent study of the cores was funded by Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India sponsored research project to DMM (Project No. SR/S4/ES-21/Kachchh Window/P1) under the science of Shallow Subsurface Programme (SSS). N. Khonde gratefully acknowledges Indo-US Post-doctoral Fellowship sponsored by SERB-IUSSTF for research work at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Description: © The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Nature Communications 8 (2017): 844, doi:10.1038/s41467-017-00853-5.

Description: Authigenic clay minerals formed on or in the seafloor occur in every type of marine sediment. They are recognized to be a major sink of many elements in the ocean but are difficult to study directly due to dilution by detrital clay minerals. The extremely low dust fluxes and marine sedimentation rates in the South Pacific Gyre (SPG) provide a unique opportunity to examine relatively undiluted authigenic clay. Here, using Mg isotopes and element concentrations combined with multivariate statistical modeling, we fingerprint and quantify the abundance of authigenic clay within SPG sediment. Key reactants include volcanic ash (source of reactive aluminium) and reactive biogenic silica on or shallowly buried within the seafloor. Our results, together with previous studies, suggest that global reorganizations of biogenic silica burial over the Cenozoic reduced marine authigenic clay formation, contributing to the rise in seawater Mg/Ca and decline in atmospheric CO2 over the past 50 million years.

Description: Funding for this research was provided by the U.S. National Science Foundation to R.W.M. (OCE1130531) and to J.A.H. (OCE1654571).

Description: © The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Scientific Reports 7 (2017): 12942, doi:10.1038/s41598-017-13380-6.

Description: Penguin guano provides favorable conditions for production and emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs). Many studies have been conducted to determine the GHG fluxes from penguin colonies, however, at regional scale, there is still no accurate estimation of total GHG emissions. We used object-based image analysis (OBIA) method to estimate the Adélie penguin (Pygoscelis adeliae) population based on aerial photography data. A model was developed to estimate total GHG emission potential from Adélie penguin colonies during breeding seasons in 1983 and 2012, respectively. Results indicated that OBIA method was effective for extracting penguin information from aerial photographs. There were 17,120 and 21,183 Adélie penguin breeding pairs on Inexpressible Island in 1983 and 2012, respectively, with overall accuracy of the estimation of 76.8%. The main reasons for the increase in Adélie penguin populations were attributed to increase in temperature, sea ice and phytoplankton. The average estimated CH4 and N2O emissions tended to be increasing during the period from 1983 to 2012 and CH4 was the main GHG emitted from penguin colonies. Total global warming potential (GWP) of CH4 and N2O emissions was 5303 kg CO2-eq in 1983 and 6561 kg CO2-eq in 2012, respectively.

Description: This work was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant No. 312231103), the Chinese Arctic and Antarctic Administration, National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos 41676176 and 41676182), the Chinese Polar Environment Comprehensive Investigation, Assessment Program.

Description: © The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Nature Communications 8 (2017): 1114, doi:10.1038/s41467-017-01228-6.

Description: Little is known about evolutionary drivers of microbial populations in the warm subseafloor of deep-sea hydrothermal vents. Here we reconstruct 73 metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) from two geochemically distinct vent fields in the Mid-Cayman Rise to investigate patterns of genomic variation within subseafloor populations. Low-abundance populations with high intra-population diversity coexist alongside high-abundance populations with low genomic diversity, with taxonomic differences in patterns of genomic variation between the mafic Piccard and ultramafic Von Damm vent fields. Populations from Piccard are significantly enriched in nonsynonymous mutations, suggesting stronger purifying selection in Von Damm relative to Piccard. Comparison of nine Sulfurovum MAGs reveals two high-coverage, low-diversity MAGs from Piccard enriched in unique genes related to the cellular membrane, suggesting these populations were subject to distinct evolutionary pressures that may correlate with genes related to nutrient uptake, biofilm formation, or viral invasion. These results are consistent with distinct evolutionary histories between geochemically different vent fields, with implications for understanding evolutionary processes in subseafloor microbial populations.

Description: R.E.A. was supported by a NASA Postdoctoral Fellowship with the NASA Astrobiology Institute. This work was supported by a NASA Astrobiology Science and Technology for Exploring Planets (ASTEP) grant NNX-327 09AB75G and a grant from Deep Carbon Observatory's Deep Life Initiative to J.A.H. and J.S.S., and the NSF Science and Technology Center for Dark Energy Biosphere Investigations (C-DEBI). Ship and vehicle time in 2012 was supported by the NSF-OCE grant OCE-1061863 to J.S.S.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Weather and Forecasting 32 (2017): 1659-1666, doi:10.1175/WAF-D-17-0076.1.

Description: Although rip currents are a major hazard for beachgoers, the relationship between the danger to swimmers and the physical properties of rip current circulation is not well understood. Here, the relationship between statistical model estimates of hazardous rip current likelihood and in situ velocity observations is assessed. The statistical model is part of a forecasting system that is being made operational by the National Weather Service to predict rip current hazard likelihood as a function of wave conditions and water level. The temporal variability of rip current speeds (offshore-directed currents) observed on an energetic sandy beach is correlated with the hindcasted hazard likelihood for a wide range of conditions. High likelihoods and rip current speeds occurred for low water levels, nearly shore-normal wave angles, and moderate or larger wave heights. The relationship between modeled hazard likelihood and the frequency with which rip current speeds exceeded a threshold was assessed for a range of threshold speeds. The frequency of occurrence of high (threshold exceeding) rip current speeds is consistent with the modeled probability of hazard, with a maximum Brier skill score of 0.65 for a threshold speed of 0.23 m s−1, and skill scores greater than 0.60 for threshold speeds between 0.15 and 0.30 m s−1. The results suggest that rip current speed may be an effective proxy for hazard level and that speeds greater than ~0.2 m s−1 may be hazardous to swimmers.

Description: Funding was provided by the National Science Foundation (1232910, 1332705, and 1536365), and by National Security Science and Engineering and Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowships funded by the assistant secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering.

Description: 2018-02-28

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 47 (2017): 1061-1075, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-16-0248.1.

Description: A major challenge in modeling the circulation over coral reefs is uncertainty in the drag coefficient because existing estimates span two orders of magnitude. Current and pressure measurements from five coral reefs are used to estimate drag coefficients based on depth-average flow, assuming a balance between the cross-reef pressure gradient and the bottom stress. At two sites wind stress is a significant term in the cross-reef momentum balance and is included in estimating the drag coefficient. For the five coral reef sites and a previous laboratory study, estimated drag coefficients increase as the water depth decreases consistent with open channel flow theory. For example, for a typical coral reef hydrodynamic roughness of 5 cm, observational estimates, and the theory indicate that the drag coefficient decreases from 0.4 in 20 cm of water to 0.005 in 10 m of water. Synthesis of results from the new field observations with estimates from previous field and laboratory studies indicate that coral reef drag coefficients range from 0.2 to 0.005 and hydrodynamic roughnesses generally range from 2 to 8 cm. While coral reef drag coefficients depend on factors such as physical roughness and surface waves, a substantial fraction of the scatter in estimates of coral reef drag coefficients is due to variations in water depth.

Description: The Red Sea field program was supported by Awards USA 00002 and KSA 00011 made by KAUST to S. Lentz and J. Churchill. The Palau field program was funded by NSF Award OCE-1220529.

Description: © The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Nature Communications 8 (2017): 16107, doi:10.1038/ncomms16107.

Description: The hydrothermal alteration of mantle rocks (referred to as serpentinization) occurs in submarine environments extending from mid-ocean ridges to subduction zones. Serpentinization affects the physical and chemical properties of oceanic lithosphere, represents one of the major mechanisms driving mass exchange between the mantle and the Earth’s surface, and is central to current origin of life hypotheses as well as the search for microbial life on the icy moons of Jupiter and Saturn. In spite of increasing interest in the serpentinization process by researchers in diverse fields, the rates of serpentinization and the controlling factors are poorly understood. Here we use a novel in situ experimental method involving olivine micro-reactors and show that the rate of serpentinization is strongly controlled by the salinity (water activity) of the reacting fluid and demonstrate that the rate of serpentinization of olivine slows down as salinity increases and H2O activity decreases.

Description: This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant OCE-1459433 to R.J.B. and E.M.S. Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACyT), the Virginia Tech Department of Geosciences and Virginia Tech Graduate School provided partial funding to HML during this study. F.K. was supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Endowed Fund for Innovative Research.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 47 (2017): 1789-1797, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-16-0240.1.

Description: Internal solitary waves are commonly observed in the coastal ocean where they are known to contribute to mass transport and turbulent mixing. While these waves are often generated by cross-isobath barotropic tidal currents, novel observations are presented suggesting that internal solitary waves result from along-isobath tidal flows over channel-shoal bathymetry. Mooring and ship-based velocity, temperature, and salinity data were collected over a cross-channel section in a stratified estuary. The data show that Ekman forcing on along-channel tidal currents drives lateral circulation, which interacts with the stratified water over the deep channel to generate a supercritical mode-2 internal lee wave. This lee wave propagates onto the shallow shoal and evolves into a group of internal solitary waves of elevation due to nonlinear steepening. These observations highlight the potential importance of three-dimensionality on the conversion of tidal flow to internal waves in the rotating ocean.

Description: National Science Foundation (OCE-1061609)

Description: 2018-01-03

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Climate 30 (2017): 8061-8080, doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0834.1.

Description: During the southwest monsoons, the Arabian Sea (AS) develops highly energetic mesoscale variability associated with the Somali Current (SC), Great Whirl (GW), and cold filaments (CF). The resultant high-amplitude anomalies and gradients of sea surface temperature (SST) and surface currents modify the wind stress, triggering the so-called mesoscale coupled feedbacks. This study uses a high-resolution regional coupled model with a novel coupling procedure that separates spatial scales of the air–sea coupling to show that SST and surface currents are coupled to the atmosphere at distinct spatial scales, exerting distinct dynamic influences. The effect of mesoscale SST–wind interaction is manifested most strongly in wind work and Ekman pumping over the GW, primarily affecting the position of GW and the separation latitude of the SC. If this effect is suppressed, enhanced wind work and a weakened Ekman pumping dipole cause the GW to extend northeastward, delaying the SC separation by 1°. Current–wind interaction, in contrast, is related to the amount of wind energy input. When it is suppressed, especially as a result of background-scale currents, depth-integrated kinetic energy, both the mean and eddy, is significantly enhanced. Ekman pumping velocity over the GW is overly negative because of a lack of vorticity that offsets the wind stress curl, further invigorating the GW. Moreover, significant changes in time-mean SST and evaporation are generated in response to the current–wind interaction, accompanied by a noticeable southward shift in the Findlater Jet. The significant increase in moisture transport in the central AS implies that air–sea interaction mediated by the surface current is a potentially important process for simulation and prediction of the monsoon rainfall.

Description: This work is supported by ONR (N00014-15-1-2588 and N00014-17-1-2398), NSF (OCE- 1419235), and NOAA (NA15OAR4310176).

Description: 2018-03-08

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Climate 30 (2017): 6611-6627, doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0291.1.

Description: The interannual fluctuations of the equatorial thermocline are usually associated with El Niño activity, but the linkage between the thermocline modes and El Niño is still under debate. In the present study, a mode function decomposition method is applied to the equatorial Pacific thermocline, and the results show that the first two dominant modes (M1 and M2) identify two distinct characteristics of the equatorial Pacific thermocline. The M1 reflects a basinwide zonally tilted thermocline related to the eastern Pacific (EP) El Niño, with shoaling (deepening) in the western (eastern) equatorial Pacific. The M2 represents the central Pacific (CP) El Niño, characterized by a V-shaped equatorial Pacific thermocline (i.e., deep in the central equatorial Pacific and shallow on both the western and eastern boundaries). Furthermore, both modes are stable and significant on the interannual time scale, and manifest as the major feature of the thermocline fluctuations associated with the two types of El Niño events. As good proxies of EP and CP El Niño events, thermocline-based indices clearly reveal the inherent characteristics of subsurface ocean responses during the evolution of El Niño events, which are characterized by the remarkable zonal eastward propagation of equatorial subsurface ocean temperature anomalies, particularly during the CP El Niño. Further analysis of the mixed layer heat budget suggests that the air–sea interactions determine the establishment and development stages of the CP El Niño, while the thermocline feedback is vital for its further development. These results highlight the key influence of equatorial Pacific thermocline fluctuations in conjunction with the air–sea interactions, on the CP El Niño.

Description: This work is jointly supported by the Funds for Creative Research Groups of China (Grant 41521005), the Special Fund for Public Welfare Industry (GYHY201506013), the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant XDA11010301), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants 41406033, 41475057, 41376024, 41676013) and the CAS/SAFEA International Partnership Program for Creative Research Teams.

Description: 2018-01-21

Description: © The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Scientific Reports 7 (2017): 8350, doi:10.1038/s41598-017-07676-w.

Description: Although it is known that seals can use their whiskers (vibrissae) to extract relevant information from complex underwater flow fields, the underlying functioning of the system and the signals received by the sensors are poorly understood. Here we show that the vibrations of seal whiskers may provide information about hydrodynamic events and enable the sophisticated wake-tracking abilities of these animals. We developed a miniature accelerometer tag to study seal whisker movement in situ. We tested the ability of the tag to measure vibration in excised whiskers in a flume in response to laminar flow and disturbed flow. We then trained a seal to wear the tag and follow an underwater hydrodynamic trail to measure the whisker signals available to the seal. The results showed that whiskers vibrated at frequencies of 100–300 Hz, with a dynamic response. These measurements are the first to capture the incoming signals received by the vibrissae of a live seal and show that there are prominent signals at frequencies where the seal tactogram shows good sensitivity. Tapping into the mechanoreceptive interface between the animal and the environment may help to decipher the functional basis of this extraordinary hydrodynamic detection ability.

Description: Funding was provided by the NSF GRFP and NISE section 219 to C. Murphy and by the Office of Naval Research (N000141910468) to B. Calhoun.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2016. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 46 (2016): 3549-3562, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-16-0140.1.

Description: The equatorial deep jets (EDJs) are a ubiquitous feature of the equatorial oceans; in the Atlantic Ocean, they are the dominant mode of interannual variability of the zonal flow at intermediate depth. On the basis of more than 10 years of moored observations of zonal velocity at 23°W, the vertically propagating EDJs are best described as superimposed oscillations of the 13th to the 23rd baroclinic modes with a dominant oscillation period for all modes of 1650 days. This period is close to the resonance period of the respective gravest equatorial basin mode for the dominant vertical modes 16 and 17. It is argued that since the equatorial basin mode is composed of linear equatorial waves, a linear reduced-gravity model can be employed for each baroclinic mode, driven by spatially homogeneous zonal forcing oscillating with the EDJ period. The fit of the model solutions to observations at 23°W yields a basinwide reconstruction of the EDJs and the associated vertical structure of their forcing. From the resulting vertical profile of mean power input and vertical energy flux on the equator, it follows that the EDJs are locally maintained over a considerable depth range, from 500 to 2500 m, with the maximum power input and vertical energy flux at 1300 m. The strong dissipation closely ties the apparent vertical propagation of energy to the vertical distribution of power input and, together with the EDJs’ prevailing downward phase propagation, requires the phase of the forcing of the EDJs to propagate downward.

Description: MC is grateful for support from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) Miklip project through the MODINI project. RJG and PB are grateful for continuing support from the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel. This study has also been supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft as part of the Sonderforschungsbereich 754 “Climate-Biogeochemistry Interactions in the Tropical Ocean,” through several research cruises with R/V Meteor and R/V Maria S. Merian by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research as part of the cooperative projects “RACE” and “SACUS” and by European Union 7th Framework Programme (FP7 2007–2013) under Grant Agreement 603521 PREFACE project. Additional support for the observations and JMT’s contributions were provided by the U.S. National Science Foundation (OCE-0850175).

Description: © The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Scientific Reports 7 (2017): 38, doi:10.1038/s41598-017-00074-2.

Description: The Gulf of Aqaba transform plate boundary is a source of destructive teleseismic earthquakes. Seismicity is concentrated in the central sub-basin and decreases to both the north and south. Although principally a strike-slip plate boundary, the faulted margins of the Gulf display largely dip-slip extensional movement and accompanying footwall uplift. We have constrained rates of this uplift by measurements of elevated Pleistocene coral terraces. In particular the terrace that formed during the last interglacial (~125 ka) is found discontinuously along the length of the Gulf at elevations of 3 to 26 m. Global sea level was ~7 m higher than today at 125 ka indicating net maximum tectonic uplift of ~19 m with an average rate of ~0.015 cm/yr. Uplift has been greatest adjacent to the central sub-basin and like the seismicity decreases to the north and south. We suggest that the present pattern of a seismically active central region linked to more aseismic areas in the north and south has therefore persisted for at least the past 125 kyr. Consequently the potential for future destructive earthquakes in the central Gulf is greater than in the sub-basins to the north and south.

Description: © The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Scientific Reports 7 (2017): 41095, doi:10.1038/srep41095.

Description: Adenosine-to-inosine RNA editing in transcripts encoding the voltage-gated potassium channel Kv1.1 converts an isoleucine to valine codon for amino acid 400, speeding channel recovery from inactivation. Numerous Kv1.1 mutations have been associated with the human disorder Episodic Ataxia Type-1 (EA1), characterized by stress-induced ataxia, myokymia, and increased prevalence of seizures. Three EA1 mutations, V404I, I407M, and V408A, are located within the RNA duplex structure required for RNA editing. Each mutation decreased RNA editing both in vitro and using an in vivo mouse model bearing the V408A allele. Editing of transcripts encoding mutant channels affects numerous biophysical properties including channel opening, closing, and inactivation. Thus EA1 symptoms could be influenced not only by the direct effects of the mutations on channel properties, but also by their influence on RNA editing. These studies provide the first evidence that mutations associated with human genetic disorders can affect cis-regulatory elements to alter RNA editing.

Description: This work was supported by the Vanderbilt Molecular Endocrinology Training Program (T32DK007563; E.A.F.K.), a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (F31NS087911; E.A.F.K), a Vanderbilt Dissertation Enhancement Grant (E.A.F.K.), and the Vanderbilt Joel G. Hardman Chair in Pharmacology (R.B.E). Additional support for J.J.C.R. included NINDS (R0111223855, R01NS64259) and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Therapeutics (Rosent14XXO). Infrastructural support for J.J.C.R. was provided by NIGMS (P20GM103642), NIMH (G12-MD007600), and NSF (DBI 0115825, DBI 1337284).

Description: © The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Nature Communications 8 (2017): 14197, doi:10.1038/ncomms14197.

Description: It is an open question whether turbulent mixing across density surfaces is sufficiently large to play a dominant role in closing the deep branch of the ocean meridional overturning circulation. The diapycnal and isopycnal mixing experiment in the Southern Ocean found the turbulent diffusivity inferred from the vertical spreading of a tracer to be an order of magnitude larger than that inferred from the microstructure profiles at the mean tracer depth of 1,500 m in the Drake Passage. Using a high-resolution ocean model, it is shown that the fast vertical spreading of tracer occurs when it comes in contact with mixing hotspots over rough topography. The sparsity of such hotspots is made up for by enhanced tracer residence time in their vicinity due to diffusion toward weak bottom flows. The increased tracer residence time may explain the large vertical fluxes of heat and salt required to close the abyssal circulation.

Description: Financial support for A.M. and R.F. under the US National Science Foundation grant OCE-1233832 is gratefully acknowledged. A.M. also acknowledges support from an NSERC PDF award.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 47 (2017): 1205-1220, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-16-0258.1.

Description: The linkage among total exchange flow, entrainment, and diffusive salt flux in estuaries is derived analytically using salinity coordinates, revealing the simple but important relationship between total exchange flow and mixing. Mixing is defined and quantified in this paper as the dissipation of salinity variance. The method uses the conservation of volume and salt to quantify and distinguish the diahaline transport of volume (i.e., entrainment) and diahaline diffusive salt flux. A numerical model of the Hudson estuary is used as an example of the application of the method in a realistic estuary with a persistent but temporally variable exchange flow. A notable finding of this analysis is that the total exchange flow and diahaline salt flux are out of phase with respect to the spring–neap cycle. Total exchange flow reaches its maximum near minimum neap tide, but diahaline salt transport reaches its maximum during the maximum spring tide. This phase shift explains the strong temporal variation of stratification and estuarine salt content through the spring–neap cycle. In addition to quantifying temporal variation, the method reveals the spatial variation of total exchange flow, entrainment, and diffusive salt flux through the estuary. For instance, the analysis of the Hudson estuary indicates that diffusive salt flux is intensified in the wider cross sections. The method also provides a simple means of quantifying numerical mixing in ocean models because it provides an estimate of the total dissipation of salinity variance, which is the sum of mixing due to the turbulence closure and numerical mixing.

Description: T. Wang was supported by the Open Research Fund of State Key Laboratory of Estuarine and Coastal Research (Grant SKLEC-KF201509), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant 2017B03514), and the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant XDA11010203). W. R. Geyer was supported by NSF Grant OCE 0926427 and ONR Grant N00014-16-1-2948. P. MacCready was supported by NSF Grant OCE-1634148.

Description: 2017-09-14

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Climate 30 (2017): 4965-4981, doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0228.1.

Description: To improve the understanding of storm tracks and western boundary current (WBC) interactions, surface storm tracks in 12 CMIP5 models are examined against ERA-Interim. All models capture an equatorward displacement toward the WBCs in the locations of the surface storm tracks’ maxima relative to those at 850 hPa. An estimated storm-track metric is developed to analyze the location of the surface storm track. It shows that the equatorward shift is influenced by both the lower-tropospheric instability and the baroclinicity. Basin-scale spatial correlations between models and ERA-Interim for the storm tracks, near-surface stability, SST gradient, and baroclinicity are calculated to test the ability of the GCMs’ match reanalysis. An intermodel comparison of the spatial correlations suggests that differences (relative to ERA-Interim) in the position of the storm track aloft have the strongest influence on differences in the surface storm-track position. However, in the North Atlantic, biases in the surface storm track north of the Gulf Stream are related to biases in the SST. An analysis of the strength of the storm tracks shows that most models generate a weaker storm track at the surface than 850 hPa, consistent with observations, although some outliers are found. A linear relationship exists among the models between storm-track amplitudes at 500 and 850 hPa, but not between 850 hPa and the surface. In total, the work reveals a dual role in forcing the surface storm track from aloft and from the ocean surface in CMIP5 models, with the atmosphere having the larger relative influence.

Description: JFB was partially supported by the NOAA Climate Program Office’s Modeling, Analysis, Predictions, and Projections program (Grant NA15OAR4310094). Y-OK was supported by NSF Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Science Climate and Large-scale Dynamics Program (AGS-1355339), NASA Physical Oceanography Program (NNX13AM59G), and DOE Office of Biological and Environmental Research Regional and Global Climate Modeling Program (DE-SC0014433). RJS was supported by DOE Office of Biological and Environmental Research (DE-SC0006743) and NSF Directorate for Geosciences Division of Ocean Sciences (1419584),

Description: 2017-10-03

Description: © The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Scientific Reports 7 (2017): 10129, doi:10.1038/s41598-017-10974-y.

Description: Transports of suspended particulate (POCsusp) and dissolved (DOC) organic carbon are inferred from a box-model covering the eastern boundary of the North Atlantic subtropical gyre. Corresponding net respiration rates (R) are obtained from a net organic carbon budget that is based on the transport estimates, and includes both vertical and lateral fluxes. The overall R in the mesopelagic layer (100–1500 m) is 1.6 ± 0.4 mmol C m−2 d−1. DOC accounts for up to 53% of R as a result of drawdown of organic carbon within Eastern North Atlantic Central Water (ENACW) that is entrained into sinking Mediterranean Overflow Water (MOW) that leads to formation of Mediterranean water (MW) at intermediate depths (~900 m). DOC represents 90% of the respired non-sinking organic carbon. When converted into oxygen units, the computed net respiration rate represents less than half the oxygen utilization rates (OUR) reported for the mesopelagic waters of the subtropical North Atlantic. Mesoscale processes in the area, not quantified with our approach, could account in part for the OUR differences observed between our carbon budget and other published studies from the North Atlantic, although seasonal or interannual variability could also be responsible for the difference in the estimates.

Description: This research was supported by projects ORCA (CTM2005-04701-CO2-01), Malaspina (CSD2008-00077), HOTMIX (CTM2011-30010-C02) and FLUXES (CTM2015-69392-C3), financed by the Spanish “Plan Nacional de I + D”. YSF was supported by a Spanish fellowship from the Agencia Canaria de Investigación, Innovación y Sociedad de la Información (ACIISI). EM has been partially supported by the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS) MedSUB project, and a post-doctoral grant from the Conselleria d’Educació, Cultura i Universitats del Govern de les Illes Balears (Mallorca, Spain) and the European Social Fund.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 47 (2017): 1921-1939, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-16-0146.1.

Description: The role of surface gravity waves in structuring the air–sea momentum flux is examined in the middle reaches of Chesapeake Bay. Observed wave spectra showed that wave direction in Chesapeake Bay is strongly correlated with basin geometry. Waves preferentially developed in the direction of maximum fetch, suggesting that dominant wave frequencies may be commonly and persistently misaligned with local wind forcing. Direct observations from an ultrasonic anemometer and vertical array of ADVs show that the magnitude and direction of stress changed across the air–sea interface, suggesting that a stress divergence occurred at or near the water surface. Using a numerical wave model in combination with direct flux measurements, the air–sea momentum flux was partitioned between the surface wave field and the mean flow. Results indicate that the surface wave field can store or release a significant fraction of the total momentum flux depending on the direction of the wind. When wind blew across dominant fetch axes, the generation of short gravity waves stored as much as 40% of the total wind stress. Accounting for the storage of momentum in the surface wave field closed the air–sea momentum budget. Agreement between the direction of Lagrangian shear and the direction of the stress vector in the mixed surface layer suggests that the observed directional difference was due to the combined effect of breaking waves producing downward sweeps of momentum in the direction of wave propagation and the straining of that vorticity field in a manner similar to Langmuir turbulence.

Description: This work was supported by National Science Foundation Grants OCE-1061609 and OCE-1339032.

Description: 2018-01-13

Description: © The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Scientific Reports 7 (2017): 11914, doi::10.1038/s41598-017-12138-4.

Description: Coastal wetlands are sites of rapid carbon (C) sequestration and contain large soil C stocks. Thus, there is increasing interest in those ecosystems as sites for anthropogenic greenhouse gas emission offset projects (sometimes referred to as “Blue Carbon”), through preservation of existing C stocks or creation of new wetlands to increase future sequestration. Here we show that in the globallywidespread occurrence of diked, impounded, drained and tidally-restricted salt marshes, substantial methane (CH4) and CO2 emission reductions can be achieved through restoration of disconnected saline tidal flows. Modeled climatic forcing indicates that tidal restoration to reduce emissions has a much greater impact per unit area than wetland creation or conservation to enhance sequestration. Given that GHG emissions in tidally-restricted, degraded wetlands are caused by human activity, they are anthropogenic emissions, and reducing them will have an effect on climate that is equivalent to reduced emission of an equal quantity of fossil fuel GHG. Thus, as a landuse-based climate change intervention, reducing CH4 emissions is an entirely distinct concept from biological C sequestration projects to enhance C storage in forest or wetland biomass or soil, and will not suffer from the non-permanence risk that stored C will be returned to the atmosphere.

Description: Research supported by the USGS Coastal & Marine Geology Program, USGS Land Carbon Program, and NOAA Science Collaborative grant #NA09NOS4190153.

Description: © The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Nature Communications 8 (2017): 1452, doi:10.1038/s41467-017-01250-8.

Description: Light-sheet fluorescence microscopy (LSFM) enables high-speed, high-resolution, and gentle imaging of live specimens over extended periods. Here we describe a technique that improves the spatiotemporal resolution and collection efficiency of LSFM without modifying the underlying microscope. By imaging samples on reflective coverslips, we enable simultaneous collection of four complementary views in 250 ms, doubling speed and improving information content relative to symmetric dual-view LSFM. We also report a modified deconvolution algorithm that removes associated epifluorescence contamination and fuses all views for resolution recovery. Furthermore, we enhance spatial resolution (to 〈300 nm in all three dimensions) by applying our method to single-view LSFM, permitting simultaneous acquisition of two high-resolution views otherwise difficult to obtain due to steric constraints at high numerical aperture. We demonstrate the broad applicability of our method in a variety of samples, studying mitochondrial, membrane, Golgi, and microtubule dynamics in cells and calcium activity in nematode embryos.

Description: This work was supported by the Intramural Research Program of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering at the National Institutes of Health. P.L. and H.S. acknowledge summer support from the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, through the Whitman- and Fellows- program. P.L. acknowledges support from NIH National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) under grant number R01EB017293. C.S. acknowledges funding from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of NIH under Award Number R25GM109439 (Project Title: University of Chicago Initiative for Maximizing Student Development [IMSD]) and NIBIB under grant number T32 EB002103. Partial funding for the computation in this work was provided by NIH grant numbers S10 RRO21039 and P30 CA14599. A.U. and I.R.-S. were supported by the NSF grant number 1607645.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 47 (2017): 2611-2630, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-16-0259.1.

Description: This study reports the results of large-eddy simulations of an axisymmetric turbulent buoyant plume in a stratified fluid. The configuration used is an idealized model of the plume generated by a subglacial discharge at the base of a tidewater glacier with an ambient stratification typical of Greenland fjords. The plume is discharged from a round source of various diameters and characteristic stratifications for summer and winter are considered. The classical theory for the integral parameters of a turbulent plume in a homogeneous fluid gives accurate predictions in the weakly stratified lower layer up to the pycnocline, and the plume dynamics are not sensitive to changes in the source diameter. In winter, when the stratification is similar to an idealized two-layer case, turbulent entrainment and generation of internal waves by the plume top are in agreement with the theoretical and numerical results obtained for turbulent jets in a two-layer stratification. In summer, instead, the stratification is more complex and turbulent entrainment by the plume top is significantly reduced. The subsurface layer in summer is characterized by a strong density gradient and the oscillating plume generates internal waves that might serve as an indicator of submerged plumes not penetrating to the surface.

Description: This work was supported by Linné FLOW Centre at KTH and the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence program (Grant 307331) (E. E.) and VR Swedish Research Council, Outstanding Young Researcher Award, Grant VR 2014-5001 (L. B.). Support to C. C. was given by the NSF Project OCE-1434041.

Description: 2018-04-26

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 47 (2017): 2479-2498, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-16-0167.1.

Description: The generation of trapped and radiating internal tides around Izu‐Oshima Island located off Sagami Bay, Japan, is investigated using the three-dimensional Stanford Unstructured Nonhydrostatic Terrain-following Adaptive Navier–Stokes Simulator (SUNTANS) that is validated with observations of isotherm displacements in shallow water. The model is forced by barotropic tides, which generate strong baroclinic internal tides in the study region. Model results showed that when diurnal K1 barotropic tides dominate, resonance of a trapped internal Kelvin wave leads to large-amplitude internal tides in shallow waters on the coast. This resonance produces diurnal motions that are much stronger than the semidiurnal motions. The weaker, freely propagating, semidiurnal internal tides are generated on the western side of the island, where the M2 internal tide beam angle matches the topographic slope. The internal wave energy flux due to the diurnal internal tides is much higher than that of the semidiurnal tides in the study region. Although the diurnal internal tide energy is trapped, this study shows that steepening of the Kelvin waves produces high-frequency internal tides that radiate from the island, thus acting as a mechanism to extract energy from the diurnal motions.

Description: This study was supported by JST CREST Grant Number JPRMJCR12A6.

Description: 2018-04-12

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 98 (2017): 2429-2454, doi:10.1175/BAMS-D-16-0030.1.

Description: Diapycnal mixing plays a primary role in the thermodynamic balance of the ocean and, consequently, in oceanic heat and carbon uptake and storage. Though observed mixing rates are on average consistent with values required by inverse models, recent attention has focused on the dramatic spatial variability, spanning several orders of magnitude, of mixing rates in both the upper and deep ocean. Away from ocean boundaries, the spatiotemporal patterns of mixing are largely driven by the geography of generation, propagation, and dissipation of internal waves, which supply much of the power for turbulent mixing. Over the last 5 years and under the auspices of U.S. Climate Variability and Predictability Program (CLIVAR), a National Science Foundation (NSF)- and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)-supported Climate Process Team has been engaged in developing, implementing, and testing dynamics-based parameterizations for internal wave–driven turbulent mixing in global ocean models. The work has primarily focused on turbulence 1) near sites of internal tide generation, 2) in the upper ocean related to wind-generated near inertial motions, 3) due to internal lee waves generated by low-frequency mesoscale flows over topography, and 4) at ocean margins. Here, we review recent progress, describe the tools developed, and discuss future directions.

Description: We are grateful to U.S. CLIVAR for their leadership in instigating and facilitating the Climate Process Team program. We are indebted to NSF and NOAA for sponsoring the CPT series.

Description: 2018-06-01

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 47 (2017): 1873-1896, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-16-0264.1.

Description: Midocean ridge fracture zones channel bottom waters in the eastern Brazil Basin in regions of intensified deep mixing. The mechanisms responsible for the deep turbulent mixing inside the numerous midocean fracture zones, whether affected by the local or the nonlocal canyon topography, are still subject to debate. To discriminate those mechanisms and to discern the canyon mean flow, two moorings sampled a deep canyon over and away from a sill/contraction. A 2-layer exchange flow, accelerated at the sill, transports 0.04–0.10-Sv (1 Sv ≡ 106 m3 s−1) up canyon in the deep layer. At the sill, the dissipation rate of turbulent kinetic energy ε increases as measured from microstructure profilers and as inferred from a parameterization of vertical kinetic energy. Cross-sill density and microstructure transects reveal an overflow potentially hydraulically controlled and modulated by fortnightly tides. During spring to neap tides, ε varies from O(10−9) to O(10−10) W kg−1 below 3500 m around the 2-layer interface. The detection of temperature overturns during tidal flow reversal, which almost fully opposes the deep up-canyon mean flow, confirms the canyon middepth enhancement of ε. The internal tide energy flux, particularly enhanced at the sill, compares with the lower-layer energy loss across the sill. Throughout the canyon away from the sill, near-inertial waves with downward-propagating energy dominate the internal wave field. The present study underlines the intricate pattern of the deep turbulent mixing affected by the mean flow, internal tides, and near-inertial waves.

Description: The DoMORE project was supported by NSF under the Grant OCE-1235094.

Description: 2018-01-13

Description: © The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Nature Communications 8 (2017): 520, doi:10.1038/s41467-017-00577-6.

Description: Contrasting Greenland and Antarctic temperatures during the last glacial period (115,000 to 11,650 years ago) are thought to have been driven by imbalances in the rates of formation of North Atlantic and Antarctic Deep Water (the ‘bipolar seesaw’). Here we exploit a bidecadally resolved 14C data set obtained from New Zealand kauri (Agathis australis) to undertake high-precision alignment of key climate data sets spanning iceberg-rafted debris event Heinrich 3 and Greenland Interstadial (GI) 5.1 in the North Atlantic (~30,400 to 28,400 years ago). We observe no divergence between the kauri and Atlantic marine sediment 14C data sets, implying limited changes in deep water formation. However, a Southern Ocean (Atlantic-sector) iceberg rafted debris event appears to have occurred synchronously with GI-5.1 warming and decreased precipitation over the western equatorial Pacific and Atlantic. An ensemble of transient meltwater simulations shows that Antarctic-sourced salinity anomalies can generate climate changes that are propagated globally via an atmospheric Rossby wave train.

Description: This work was funded by the Australian Research Council (FL100100195, DP170104665 and SR140300001) and the Natural Environment Research Council (NE/H009922/1 and NE/H007865/1).

Description: © The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Scientific Reports 7 (2017): 14131, doi:10.1038/s41598-017-13301-7.

Description: Bisphenol A (BPA) is widely used in the manufacture of plastics and epoxy resins and is prevalent in the aquatic environment. BPA disrupts endocrine pathways in fish, but the long-term developmental implications are unknown. We demonstrate that BPA deposition in the eggs of rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss), an ecologically and economically important species of fish, reprograms liver metabolism in the offspring and alters the developmental growth trajectory in two generations. Specifically, BPA reduces growth during early development, followed by a catch-up growth post-juveniles. More importantly, we observed a developmental shift in the liver transcriptome, including an increased propensity for protein breakdown during early life stages to lipid and cholesterol synthesis post- juveniles. The liver molecular responses corresponded with the transient growth phenotypes observed in the F1 generation, and this was also evident in the F2 generation. Altogether, maternal and/or ancestral embryonic exposure to BPA affects liver metabolism leading to development-distinct effects on growth, underscoring the need for novel risk assessment strategies for this chemical in the aquatic environment. This is particularly applicable to migratory species, such as salmon, where distinct temporal changes in growth and physiology during development are critical for their spawning success.

Description: This study was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery and Strategic Project Grants to MMV. Drs. Neel Aluru and Oana Birceanu received a NSERC post-doctoral fellowship and Canada Graduate Scholarship.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 47 (2017): 2531-2543, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-17-0051.1.

Description: Argo floats are used to investigate Labrador Sea overturning and its variability on seasonal time scales. This is the first application of Argo floats to estimate overturning in a deep-water formation region in the North Atlantic. Unlike hydrographic measurements, which are typically confined to the summer season, floats offer the advantage of collecting data in all seasons. Seasonal composite potential density and absolute geostrophic velocity sections across the mouth of the Labrador Sea assembled from float profiles and trajectories at 1000 m are used to calculate the horizontal and overturning circulations. The overturning exhibits a pronounced seasonal cycle; in depth space the overturning doubles throughout the course of the year, and in density space it triples. The largest overturning [1.2 Sv (1 Sv ≡ 106 m3 s−1) in depth space and 3.9 Sv in density space] occurs in spring and corresponds to the outflow of recently formed Labrador Sea Water. The overturning decreases through summer and reaches a minimum in winter (0.6 Sv in depth space and 1.2 Sv in density space). The robustness of the Argo seasonal overturning is supported by a comparison to an overturning estimate based on hydrographic data from the AR7W line.

Description: NSF OCE-1459474 supported this work.

Description: 2018-04-17

Description: © The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Nature Communications 8 (2017): 1342, doi:10.1038/s41467-017-01229-5.

Description: Geochemical analyses of sedimentary barites (barium sulfates) in the geological record have yielded fundamental insights into the chemistry of the Archean environment and evolutionary origin of microbial metabolisms. However, the question of how barites were able to precipitate from a contemporary ocean that contained only trace amounts of sulfate remains controversial. Here we report dissolved and particulate multi-element and barium-isotopic data from Lake Superior that evidence pelagic barite precipitation at micromolar ambient sulfate. These pelagic barites likely precipitate within particle-associated microenvironments supplied with additional barium and sulfate ions derived from heterotrophic remineralization of organic matter. If active during the Archean, pelagic precipitation and subsequent sedimentation may account for the genesis of enigmatic barite deposits. Indeed, barium-isotopic analyses of barites from the Paleoarchean Dresser Formation are consistent with a pelagic mechanism of precipitation, which altogether offers a new paradigm for interpreting the temporal occurrence of barites in the geological record.

Description: This research was made possible with support from the National Science Foundation Division of Ocean Sciences (OCE-PRF 1421196, OCE-1430015, and OCE-1443577), The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Endowed Fund for Innovative Research, and the Agouron Institute Geobiology Postdoctoral Fellowship Program.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 47 (2017): 2631-2646, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-17-0062.1.

Description: Data from a mooring array deployed north of Denmark Strait from September 2011 to August 2012 are used to investigate the structure and variability of the shelfbreak East Greenland Current (EGC). The shelfbreak EGC is a surface-intensified current situated just offshore of the east Greenland shelf break flowing southward through Denmark Strait. This study identified two dominant spatial modes of variability within the current: a pulsing mode and a meandering mode, both of which were most pronounced in fall and winter. A particularly energetic event in November 2011 was related to a reversal of the current for nearly a month. In addition to the seasonal signal, the current was associated with periods of enhanced eddy kinetic energy and increased variability on shorter time scales. The data indicate that the current is, for the most part, barotropically stable but subject to baroclinic instability from September to March. By contrast, in summer the current is mainly confined to the shelf break with decreased eddy kinetic energy and minimal baroclinic conversion. No other region of the Nordic Seas displays higher levels of eddy kinetic energy than the shelfbreak EGC north of Denmark Strait during fall. This appears to be due to the large velocity variability on mesoscale time scales generated by the instabilities. The mesoscale variability documented here may be a source of the variability observed at the Denmark Strait sill.

Description: Support for this work was provided by the Norwegian Research Council under Grant Agreement 231647 (LH and KV) and the Bergen Research Foundation under Grant BFS2016REK01 (KV). Additional funding was provided by the National Science Foundation under Grants OCE-0959381 and OCE-1558742 (RP).

Description: © The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Nature Communications 8 (2017): 1835, doi:10.1038/s41467-017-01776-x.

Description: Subterranean estuaries extend inland into density-stratified coastal carbonate aquifers containing a surprising diversity of endemic animals (mostly crustaceans) within a highly oligotrophic habitat. How complex ecosystems (termed anchialine) thrive in this globally distributed, cryptic environment is poorly understood. Here, we demonstrate that a microbial loop shuttles methane and dissolved organic carbon (DOC) to higher trophic levels of the anchialine food web in the Yucatan Peninsula (Mexico). Methane and DOC production and consumption within the coastal groundwater correspond with a microbial community capable of methanotrophy, heterotrophy, and chemoautotrophy, based on characterization by 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing and respiratory quinone composition. Fatty acid and bulk stable carbon isotope values of cave-adapted shrimp suggest that carbon from methanotrophic bacteria comprises 21% of their diet, on average. These findings reveal a heretofore unrecognized subterranean methane sink and contribute to our understanding of the carbon cycle and ecosystem function of karst subterranean estuaries.

Description: Funding for T.M.I. and D.B. was provided by TAMU-CONACYT (project no: 2015-049). D.B. was supported by Research-in-Residence program (NSF award #1137336, Inter-University Training in Continental-scale Ecology), Cave Research Foundation Graduate Student Grant, Cave Conservancy Foundation PhD Fellowship, Ralph W. Stone Fellowship (National Speleological Society), Grants-in-Aid of Graduate Student Research Award (Texas Sea Grant College Program), and Boost Fellowship (Texas A&M University at Galveston). Additional financial support was provided by NSF DEB-1257424 (M.B.L. and M.C.L.), the Postdoctoral Program at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and U.S. Geological Survey (K.W.B.).

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2016. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 46 (2016): 3661-3679, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-16-0018.1.

Description: A hydrostatic, coupled-mode, shallow-water model (CSW) is described and used to diagnose and simulate tidal dynamics in the greater Mid-Atlantic Bight region. The reduced-physics model incorporates realistic stratification and topography, internal tide forcing from a priori estimates of the surface tide, and advection terms that describe first-order interactions of internal tides with slowly varying mean flow and mean buoyancy fields and their respective shear. The model is validated via comparisons with semianalytic models and nonlinear primitive equation models in several idealized and realistic simulations that include internal tide interactions with topography and mean flows. Then, 24 simulations of internal tide generation and propagation in the greater Mid-Atlantic Bight region are used to diagnose significant internal tide interactions with the Gulf Stream. The simulations indicate that locally generated mode-one internal tides refract and/or reflect at the Gulf Stream. The redirected internal tides often reappear at the shelf break, where their onshore energy fluxes are intermittent (i.e., noncoherent with surface tide) because meanders in the Gulf Stream alter their precise location, phase, and amplitude. These results provide an explanation for anomalous onshore energy fluxes that were previously observed at the New Jersey shelf break and linked to the irregular generation of nonlinear internal waves.

Description: We thank the National Science Foundation for support under Grant OCE-1061160 (ShelfIT) to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and under Grant OCE-1060430 to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. PFJL and PJH also thank the Office of Naval Research for research support under Grants N00014-11-1-0701 (MURI-IODA), N00014-12-1-0944 (ONR6.2), and N00014-13-1-0518 (Multi-DA) to MIT.

Description: 2017-06-14

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 47 (2017): 85-100, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-15-0234.1.

Description: Observations and analyses of two tidally recurring, oblique, internal hydraulic jumps at a stratified estuary mouth (Columbia River, Oregon/Washington) are presented. These hydraulic features have not previously been studied due to the challenges of both horizontally resolving the sharp gradients and temporally resolving their evolution in numerical models and traditional observation platforms. The jumps, both of which recurred during ebb, formed adjacent to two engineered lateral channel constrictions and were identified in marine radar image time series. Jump occurrence was corroborated by (i) a collocated sharp gradient in the surface currents measured via airborne along-track interferometric synthetic aperture radar and (ii) the transition from supercritical to subcritical flow in the cross-jump direction via shipborne velocity and density measurements. Using a two-layer approximation, observed jump angles at both lateral constrictions are shown to lie within the theoretical bounds given by the critical internal long-wave (Froude) angle and the arrested maximum-amplitude internal bore angle, respectively. Also, intratidal and intertidal variability of the jump angles are shown to be consistent with that expected from the two-layer model, applied to varying stratification and current speed over a range of tidal and river discharge conditions. Intratidal variability of the upchannel jump angle is similar under all observed conditions, whereas the downchannel jump angle shows an additional association with stratification and ebb velocity during the low discharge periods. The observations additionally indicate that the upchannel jump achieves a stable position that is collocated with a similarly oblique bathymetric slope.

Description: We acknowledge the financial support of the Office of Naval Research under Awards N00014-10-1-0932 and N00014-13-1-0364.

Description: 2017-07-04

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 97 (2016): 2305-2327, doi:10.1175/BAMS-D-15-00274.1.

Description: Well-known problems trouble coupled general circulation models of the eastern Atlantic and Pacific Ocean basins. Model climates are significantly more symmetric about the equator than is observed. Model sea surface temperatures are biased warm south and southeast of the equator, and the atmosphere is too rainy within a band south of the equator. Near-coastal eastern equatorial SSTs are too warm, producing a zonal SST gradient in the Atlantic opposite in sign to that observed. The U.S. Climate Variability and Predictability Program (CLIVAR) Eastern Tropical Ocean Synthesis Working Group (WG) has pursued an updated assessment of coupled model SST biases, focusing on the surface energy balance components, on regional error sources from clouds, deep convection, winds, and ocean eddies; on the sensitivity to model resolution; and on remote impacts. Motivated by the assessment, the WG makes the following recommendations: 1) encourage identification of the specific parameterizations contributing to the biases in individual models, as these can be model dependent; 2) restrict multimodel intercomparisons to specific processes; 3) encourage development of high-resolution coupled models with a concurrent emphasis on parameterization development of finer-scale ocean and atmosphere features, including low clouds; 4) encourage further availability of all surface flux components from buoys, for longer continuous time periods, in persistently cloudy regions; and 5) focus on the eastern basin coastal oceanic upwelling regions, where further opportunities for observational–modeling synergism exist.

Description: PZ, BK, and RM acknowledge support from NOAA Grant NA14OAR4310278, and PZ acknowledges support from NSF AGS-1233874. BM acknowledges support from the Regional and Global Climate Modeling Program of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science, Cooperative Agreement DE-FC02-97ER62402. PC acknowledges support from U.S. NSF Grants OCE-1334707 and AGS-1462127, and NOAA Grant NA11OAR4310154. PC also acknowledges support from China’s National Basic Research Priorities Programme (2013CB956204) and the Natural Science Foundation of China (41222037 and 41221063). TF acknowledges support from NSF Grant OCE-0745508 and NASA Grant NNX14AM71G. PB acknowledges support from the BMBF SACUS (03G0837A) project. TT and PB acknowledge support from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7 20072013) under Grant Agreement 603521 for the PREFACE Project. ES and ZW acknowledge support from NSF AGS-1338427, NOAA NA14OAR4310160, and NASA NNX14AM19G; and ES is grateful for further support from the National Monsoon Mission, Ministry of Earth Sciences, India.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2016. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology 33 (2016): 2185-2203, doi:10.1175/JTECH-D-16-0095.1.

Description: This study presents amended procedures to process and map data collected by pressure-sensor-equipped inverted echo sounders (PIESs) in western boundary current regions. The modifications to the existing methodology, applied to observations of the Kuroshio from a PIES array deployed northeast of Luzon, Philippines, consist of substituting a hydrography-based mean travel time field for the PIES-based mean field and using two distinct gravest empirical mode (GEM) lookup tables across the front that separate water masses of South China Sea and North Pacific origin. In addition, this study presents a method to use time-mean velocities from acoustic Doppler current profilers (ADCPs) to reference (or “level”) the PIES-recorded pressures in order to obtain time series of absolute geostrophic velocity. Results derived from the PIES observations processed with the hydrography-based mean field and two GEMs are compared with hydrographic profiles sampled by Seagliders during the PIES observation period and with current velocity measured concurrently by a collocated ADCP array. The updated processing scheme leads to a 41% error decrease in the determination of the thermocline depth across the current, a 22% error decrease in baroclinic current velocity shear, and a 61% error decrease in baroclinic volume transports. The absolute volume transport time series derived from the leveled PIES array compares well with that obtained directly from the ADCPs with a root-mean-square difference of 3.0 Sv (1 Sv ≡ 106 m3 s–1), which is mainly attributed to the influence of ageostrophic processes on the ADCP-measured velocities that cannot be calculated from the PIES observations.

Description: The authors are supported by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) Departmental Research Initiative entitled Origins of the Kuroshio and Mindanao Currents (ONR Grant N00014-10-1-0397). MA was supported by ONR Grants N00014-15-12593 and N00014-16-1-2668. CL was supported by ONR Grant N00014-10-0308. SJ was supported by MOST Grants NSC 101-2611-M-002-018-MY3, MOST 103-2611-M-002-011, and MOST 105-2119-M-002-042.

Description: 2017-04-05

Description: © The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Scientific Reports 7 (2017): 44586, doi:10.1038/srep44586.

Description: A 2°C increase in global temperature above pre-industrial levels is considered a reasonable target for avoiding the most devastating impacts of anthropogenic climate change. In June 2015, sea surface temperature (SST) of the South China Sea (SCS) increased by 2 °C in response to the developing Pacific El Niño. On its own, this moderate, short-lived warming was unlikely to cause widespread damage to coral reefs in the region, and the coral reef “Bleaching Alert” alarm was not raised. However, on Dongsha Atoll, in the northern SCS, unusually weak winds created low-flow conditions that amplified the 2°C basin-scale anomaly. Water temperatures on the reef flat, normally indistinguishable from open-ocean SST, exceeded 6°C above normal summertime levels. Mass coral bleaching quickly ensued, killing 40% of the resident coral community in an event unprecedented in at least the past 40 years. Our findings highlight the risks of 2°C ocean warming to coral reef ecosystems when global and local processes align to drive intense heating, with devastating consequences.

Description: This research was funded by the National Science Foundation (OCE-1031971 and OCE-1605365 to A.L.C), the Sustainability Science Research Program of the Academia Sinica (G.T.F.W. and A.L.C), a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Coastal Ocean Institute award to T.M.D., and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship awarded to T.M.D.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology 34 (2017): 1713-1721, doi:10.1175/JTECH-D-16-0258.1.

Description: Data collected with acoustic Doppler current profilers installed on CTD rosettes and lowered through the water column [lowered ADCP (LADCP) systems] are routinely used to derive full-depth profiles of ocean velocity. In addition to the uncertainties arising from random noise in the along-beam velocity measurements, LADCP-derived velocities are commonly contaminated by bias errors due to imperfectly measured instrument attitude (heading, pitch, and roll). Of particular concern are the heading measurements, because it is not usually feasible to calibrate the internal ADCP compasses with the instruments installed on a CTD rosette, away from the magnetic disturbances of the ship. Heading data from dual-headed LADCP systems, which consist of upward- and downward-pointing ADCPs installed on the same rosette, commonly indicate heading-dependent compass errors with amplitudes exceeding 10°. In an attempt to reduce LADCP velocity errors, several dozen profiles of simultaneous LADCP and magnetometer/accelerometer data were collected in the Gulf of Mexico. Agreement between the LADCP profiles and simultaneous shipboard velocity measurements improves significantly when the former are processed with external attitude measurements. Another set of LADCP profiles with external attitude data was collected in a region of the Arctic Ocean where the horizontal geomagnetic field is too weak for the ADCP compasses to work reliably. Good agreement between shipboard velocity measurements and Arctic LADCP profiles collected at magnetic dip angles exceeding and processed with external attitude measurements indicate that high-quality velocity profiles can be obtained close to the magnetic poles.

Description: Part of this research was made possible by a grant from the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative to support the Ecosystem Impacts of Oil and Gas Inputs to the Gulf (ECOGIG-2) research consortium. Funding for acquisition of the 2015 Arctic data was provided by NSF (1203473 and 1249133) and NOAA (NA15OAR4310155) under the NABOS-II program.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology 34 (2017): 1679-1691, doi:10.1175/JTECH-D-16-0162.1.

Description: For direction-finding high-frequency (HF) radar systems, the correct separation of backscattered spectral energy due to Bragg resonant waves from that due to more complex double-scattering represents a critical first step toward attaining accurate estimates of surface currents from the range-dependent radar backscatter. Existing methods to identify this “first order” region of the spectra, generally sufficient for lower-frequency radars and low-velocity or low-surface gravity wave conditions, are more likely to fail in higher-frequency systems or locations with more variable current, wave, or noise regimes, leading to elevated velocity errors. An alternative methodology is presented that uses a single and globally relevant smoothing length scale, careful pretreatment of the spectra, and marker-controlled watershed segmentation, an image processing technique, to separate areas of spectral energy due to surface currents from areas of spectral energy due to more complex scattering by the wave field or background noise present. Applied to a number of HF radar datasets with a range of operating frequencies and characteristic issues, the new methodology attains a higher percentage of successful first-order identification, particularly during complex current and wave conditions. As operational radar systems continue to expand to more systematically cover areas of high marine traffic, close approaches to ports and harbors, or offshore energy installations, use of this type of updated methodology will become increasingly important to attain accurate current estimates that serve both research and operational interests.

Description: This analysis was supported by internal funds from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Description: 2018-02-11

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2016. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 46 (2016): 3599-3621, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-16-0085.1.

Description: At continental margins, energetic deep-ocean eddies can transport shelf water offshore in filaments that wrap around the eddy. One example is that of Gulf Stream warm-core rings interacting with the Mid-Atlantic Bight shelf. The rate at which shelf water is exported in these filaments is a major unknown in regional budgets of volume, heat, and salt. This unknown transport is constrained using a series of idealized primitive equation numerical experiments wherein a surface-intensified anticyclonic eddy interacts with idealized shelf–slope topography. There is no shelfbreak front in these experiments, and shelf water is tracked using a passive tracer. When anticyclones interact with shelf–slope topography, they suffer apparent intrusions of shelf–slope water, resulting in a subsurface maximum in offshore transport. The simulations help construct an approximate model for the filament of exported water that originates inshore of any given isobath. This model is then used to derive an expression for the total volume of shelf–slope water transported by the eddy across that isobath. The transport scales with water depth, radius, and azimuthal velocity scale of the eddy. The resulting expression can be used with satellite-derived eddy properties to estimate approximate real-world transports ignoring the presence of a shelfbreak front. The expression assumes that the eddy’s edge is at the shelf break, a condition not always satisfied by real eddies.

Description: The research presented here was funded by NSF Grants OCE-1059632 and OCE-1433953. Funding support from the Academic Programs Office, and WHOI is also gratefully acknowledged.

Description: 2017-06-08

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2016. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Climate 29 (2016): 8317-8331, doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0109.1.

Description: A simple analytic model is developed to represent the offshore decay of cold sea surface temperature (SST) signals that originate from wind-driven upwelling at a coastal boundary. The model couples an oceanic mixed layer to an atmospheric boundary layer through wind stress and air–sea heat exchange. The primary mechanism that controls SST is a balance between Ekman advection and air–sea exchange. The offshore penetration of the cold SST signal decays exponentially with a length scale that is the product of the ocean Ekman velocity and a time scale derived from the air–sea heat flux and the radiative balance in the atmospheric boundary layer. This cold SST signal imprints on the atmosphere in terms of both the boundary layer temperature and surface wind. Nonlinearities due to the feedback between SST and atmospheric wind, baroclinic instability, and thermal wind in the atmospheric boundary layer all slightly modify this linear theory. The decay scales diagnosed from two-dimensional and three-dimensional eddy-resolving numerical ocean models are in close agreement with the theory, demonstrating that the basic physics represented by the theory remain dominant even in these more complete systems. Analysis of climatological SST off the west coast of the United States also shows a decay of the cold SST anomaly with scale roughly in agreement with the theory.

Description: MASwas supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Endowed Fund for Innovative Research and the National Science Foundation under Grant OCE-1433170 and PLR-1415489. NS was supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under Grant NNX14AL83G, the Department of Energy, Office of Science Grant DE-SC0006766, and the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology as part of the JAMSTEC-IPRC Joint Investigations.

Description: 2017-05-03

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2016. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 97 (2016): 1859–1884, doi:10.1175/BAMS-D-14-00197.1.

Description: Air–Sea Interactions in the Northern Indian Ocean (ASIRI) is an international research effort (2013–17) aimed at understanding and quantifying coupled atmosphere–ocean dynamics of the Bay of Bengal (BoB) with relevance to Indian Ocean monsoons. Working collaboratively, more than 20 research institutions are acquiring field observations coupled with operational and high-resolution models to address scientific issues that have stymied the monsoon predictability. ASIRI combines new and mature observational technologies to resolve submesoscale to regional-scale currents and hydrophysical fields. These data reveal BoB’s sharp frontal features, submesoscale variability, low-salinity lenses and filaments, and shallow mixed layers, with relatively weak turbulent mixing. Observed physical features include energetic high-frequency internal waves in the southern BoB, energetic mesoscale and submesoscale features including an intrathermocline eddy in the central BoB, and a high-resolution view of the exchange along the periphery of Sri Lanka, which includes the 100-km-wide East India Coastal Current (EICC) carrying low-salinity water out of the BoB and an adjacent, broad northward flow (∼300 km wide) that carries high-salinity water into BoB during the northeast monsoon. Atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) observations during the decaying phase of the Madden–Julian oscillation (MJO) permit the study of multiscale atmospheric processes associated with non-MJO phenomena and their impacts on the marine boundary layer. Underway analyses that integrate observations and numerical simulations shed light on how air–sea interactions control the ABL and upper-ocean processes.

Description: This work was sponsored by the U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR) in an ONR Departmental Research Initiative (DRI), Air–Sea Interactions in Northern Indian Ocean (ASIRI), and in a Naval Research Laboratory project, Effects of Bay of Bengal Freshwater Flux on Indian Ocean Monsoon (EBOB). ASIRI–RAWI was funded under the NASCar DRI of the ONR. The Indian component of the program, Ocean Mixing and Monsoons (OMM), was supported by the Ministry of Earth Sciences of India.

Description: 2017-04-22

Description: © The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Nature Communications 8 (2017): 1870, doi:10.1038/s41467-017-01610-4.

Description: Peridotite carbonation represents a critical step within the long-term carbon cycle by sequestering volatile CO2 in solid carbonate. This has been proposed as one potential pathway to mitigate the effects of greenhouse gas release. Most of our current understanding of reaction mechanisms is based on hand specimen and laboratory-scale analyses. Linking laboratory-scale observations to field scale processes remains challenging. Here we present the first geophysical characterization of serpentinite carbonation across scales ranging from km to sub-mm by combining aeromagnetic observations, outcrop- and thin section-scale magnetic mapping. At all scales, magnetic anomalies coherently change across reaction fronts separating assemblages indicative of incipient, intermittent, and final reaction progress. The abundance of magnetic minerals correlates with reaction progress, causing amplitude and wavelength variations in associated magnetic anomalies. This correlation represents a foundation for characterizing the extent and degree of in situ ultramafic rock carbonation in space and time.

Description: This project was supported by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Independent Study Award (Tivey and Tominaga) and by NASA Astrobiology Institute NNA15BB02A (Tominaga). M.T. and A.B. are grateful to B. Jamtveit and H. Austrheim (University of Oslo) for their support during the 2011 and 2013 field campaigns. B.W. and E.A.L. thank the National Science Foundation grant DMS-1521765 and Thomas F. Peterson, Jr for generous support.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Climate 30 (2017): 9679-9702, doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0707.1.

Description: The North Atlantic atmospheric circulation response to the meridional shifts of the Gulf Stream (GS) path is examined using a large ensemble of high-resolution hemispheric-scale Weather Research and Forecasting Model simulations. The model is forced with a broad range of wintertime sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies derived from a lag regression on a GS index. The primary result of the model experiments, supported in part by an independent analysis of a reanalysis dataset, is that the large-scale quasi-steady North Atlantic circulation response is remarkably nonlinear about the sign and amplitude of the SST anomaly chosen over a wide range of GS shift scenarios. The nonlinear response prevails over the weak linear response and resembles the negative North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), the leading intrinsic mode of variability in the model and the observations. Further analysis of the associated dynamics reveals that the nonlinear responses are accompanied by the shift of the North Atlantic eddy-driven jet, which is reinforced, with nearly equal importance, by the high-frequency transient eddy feedback and the low-frequency wave-breaking events. Additional sensitivity simulations confirm that the nonlinearity of the circulation response is a robust feature found over the broad parameter space encompassing not only the varied SST but also the absence/presence of tropical influence, the varying lateral boundary conditions, and the initialization scheme. The result highlights the fundamental importance of the intrinsically nonlinear transient eddy dynamics and the eddy–mean flow interactions in generating the nonlinear downstream response to the meridional shifts in the Gulf Stream.

Description: The authors are grateful for the support from NASA (NNX13AM59G) and the NSF (AGS-1355339, OCE-1419235).

Description: 2018-05-07

Description: © The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Nature Communications 8 (2017): 1602, doi:10.1038/s41467-017-01774-z.

Description: Land-atmosphere exchanges influence atmospheric CO2. Emphasis has been on describing photosynthetic CO2 uptake, but less on respiration losses. New global datasets describe upper canopy dark respiration (Rd) and temperature dependencies. This allows characterisation of baseline Rd, instantaneous temperature responses and longer-term thermal acclimation effects. Here we show the global implications of these parameterisations with a global gridded land model. This model aggregates Rd to whole-plant respiration Rp, driven with meteorological forcings spanning uncertainty across climate change models. For pre-industrial estimates, new baseline Rd increases Rp and especially in the tropics. Compared to new baseline, revised instantaneous response decreases Rp for mid-latitudes, while acclimation lowers this for the tropics with increases elsewhere. Under global warming, new Rd estimates amplify modelled respiration increases, although partially lowered by acclimation. Future measurements will refine how Rd aggregates to whole-plant respiration. Our analysis suggests Rp could be around 30% higher than existing estimates.

Description: C.H. acknowledges the NERC CEH National Capability fund. The support of the Australian Research Council to O.K.A. and P.M. (DP130101252, CE140100008, FT0991448, FT110100457) is acknowledged, as are awards DE-FG02-07ER64456 from the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research and DEB-1234162 from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Long-Term Ecological Research Program (to P.B.R.); and National Science Foundation International Polar Year Grant (to K.L.G.). L.M.M. acknowledges the support of the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) South American Biomass Burning Analysis (SAMBBA) project grant code NE/J010057/1.

Description: © The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Nature Communications 8 (2017): 2047, doi:10.1038/s41467-017-01848-y.

Description: Integrin αβ heterodimer cell surface receptors mediate adhesive interactions that provide traction for cell migration. Here, we test whether the integrin, when engaged to an extracellular ligand and the cytoskeleton, adopts a specific orientation dictated by the direction of actin flow on the surface of migrating cells. We insert GFP into the rigid, ligand-binding head of the integrin, model with Rosetta the orientation of GFP and its transition dipole relative to the integrin head, and measure orientation with fluorescence polarization microscopy. Cytoskeleton and ligand-bound integrins orient in the same direction as retrograde actin flow with their cytoskeleton-binding β-subunits tilted by applied force. The measurements demonstrate that intracellular forces can orient cell surface integrins and support a molecular model of integrin activation by cytoskeletal force. Our results place atomic, Å-scale structures of cell surface receptors in the context of functional and cellular, μm-scale measurements.

Description: Supported by the Lillie Research award from Marine Biological Laboratory and the University of Chicago (C.M.W., T.A.S., S.M., T.T.), NIH 5R13GM085967 grant to the Physiology Course at Marine Biological Laboratory, HHMI Summer Institute at Marine Biological Laboratory (S.M.), NIH CA31798 (T.A.S., P.N., T.I.M.), NIH GM100160 (T.T., S.M.), NIH GM092802 (D.B., N.K.), NIH GM114274 (R.O., S.M.) National Center for Biological Sciences-Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (S.M., J.M.K.), J.C. Bose Fellowship and HFSP Grant RGP0027/2012 (S.M.), NHLBI Division of Intramural Research (C.M.W., V.S.), Swedish Research Council VR 524-2011-891 Fellowship (P.N.), Swedish Society for Medical Research SSMF Fellowship (P.N.), Crafoord Foundation (P.N.).

Description: In situ observations of cloud properties made by airborne probes play a critical role in ice cloud research through their role in process studies, parameterization development, and evaluation of simulations and remote sensing retrievals. To determine how cloud properties vary with environmental conditions, in situ data collected during different field projects processed by different groups must be used. However, because of the diverse algorithms and codes that are used to process measurements, it can be challenging to compare the results. Therefore it is vital to understand both the limitations of specific probes and uncertainties introduced by processing algorithms. Since there is currently no universally accepted framework regarding how in situ measurements should be processed, there is a need for a general reference that describes the most commonly applied algorithms along with their strengths and weaknesses. Methods used to process data from bulk water probes, single-particle light-scattering spectrometers and cloud-imaging probes are reviewed herein, with emphasis on measurements of the ice phase. Particular attention is paid to how uncertainties, caveats, and assumptions in processing algorithms affect derived products since there is currently no consensus on the optimal way of analyzing data. Recommendations for improving the analysis and interpretation of in situ data include the following: establishment of a common reference library of individual processing algorithms, better documentation of assumptions used in these algorithms, development and maintenance of sustainable community software for processing in situ observations, and more studies that compare different algorithms with the same benchmark datasets.

Description: It has been known that aerosol particles act as nuclei for ice formation for over a century and a half (see Dufour). Initial attempts to understand the nature of these ice nucleating particles were optical and electron microscope inspection of inclusions at the center of a crystal (see Isono; Kumai). Only within the last few decades has instrumentation to extract ice crystals from clouds and analyze the residual material after sublimation of condensed-phase water been available (see Cziczo and Froyd). Techniques to ascertain the ice nucleating potential of atmospheric aerosols have only been in place for a similar amount of time (see DeMott et al.). In this chapter the history of measurements of ice nucleating particles, both in the field and complementary studies in the laboratory, are reviewed. Remaining uncertainties and artifacts associated with measurements are described and suggestions for future areas of improvement are made.

Description: The life cycle of individual (initially line shaped) contrails behind aircraft and of contrail cirrus (aged contrails mixed with other ice clouds) is described. The full contrail life cycle is covered, from ice formation for given water, heat, and particulate emissions; to changes in the jet, wake, and dispersion phases; through final sublimation or sedimentation. Contrail properties are deduced from various in situ, remote sensing, and model studies. Aerodynamically induced contrails and distrails are explained briefly. Contrails form both in clear air and inside cirrus. Young contrails consume most of the ambient ice supersaturation. Optical properties of contrails are age and humidity dependent. Contrail occurrence and radiative forcing depends on the ambient Earth–atmosphere conditions. Contrail cirrus seems to be optically thicker than assessed previously and may not only increase cirrus coverage but also thicken existing cirrus. Some observational constraints for contrail cirrus occurrence and radiative forcing are derived. Key parameters controlling contrail properties—besides aircraft and fuel properties, ambient pressure, temperature, and humidity—are the number of ice particles per flight distance surviving the wake vortex phase, the contrail depth, and particle sedimentation, wind shear, turbulence, and vertical motions controlling contrail dispersion. The climate impact of contrails depends among other things on the ratio of shortwave to longwave radiative forcing (RF) and on the efficacy with which contrail RF contributes to surface warming. Several open issues are identified, including renucleation from residuals of sublimated contrail ice particles.

Description: Ice-phase precipitation occurs at Earth’s surface and may include various types of pristine crystals, rimed crystals, freezing droplets, secondary crystals, aggregates, graupel, hail, or combinations of any of these. Formation of ice-phase precipitation is directly related to environmental and cloud meteorological parameters that include available moisture, temperature, and three-dimensional wind speed and turbulence, as well as processes related to nucleation, cooling rate, and microphysics. Cloud microphysical parameters in the numerical models are resolved based on various processes such as nucleation, mixing, collision and coalescence, accretion, riming, secondary ice particle generation, turbulence, and cooling processes. These processes are usually parameterized based on assumed particle size distributions and ice crystal microphysical parameters such as mass, size, and number and mass density. Microphysical algorithms in the numerical models are developed based on their need for applications. Observations of ice-phase precipitation are performed using in situ and remote sensing platforms, including radars and satellite-based systems. Because of the low density of snow particles with small ice water content, their measurements and predictions at the surface can include large uncertainties. Wind and turbulence affecting collection efficiency of the sensors, calibration issues, and sensitivity of ground-based in situ observations of snow are important challenges to assessing the snow precipitation. This chapter’s goals are to provide an overview for accurately measuring and predicting ice-phase precipitation. The processes within and below cloud that affect falling snow, as well as the known sources of error that affect understanding and prediction of these processes, are discussed.

Description: Ice fog is a natural, outdoor cloud laboratory that provides an excellent opportunity to study ice microphysical processes. Ice crystals in fog are formed through similar pathways as those in elevated clouds; that is, cloud condensation or ice nuclei are activated in an atmosphere supersaturated with respect to liquid water or ice. The primary differences between surface and elevated ice clouds are related to the sources of water vapor, the cooling mechanisms and dynamical processes leading to supersaturation, and the microphysical characteristics of the nuclei that affect ice fog crystal physical properties. As with any fog, its presence can be a hazard for ground or airborne traffic because of poor visibility and icing. In addition, ice fog plays a role in climate change by modulating the heat and moisture budgets. Ice fog wintertime occurrence in many parts of the world can have a significant impact on the environment. Global climate models need to accurately account for the temporal and spatial microphysical and optical properties of ice fog, as do weather forecast models. The primary handicap is the lack of adequate information on nucleation processes and microphysical algorithms that accurately represent glaciation of supercooled water fog. This chapter summarizes the current understanding of ice fog formation and evolution; discusses operating principles, limitations, and uncertainties associated with the instruments used to measure ice fog microphysical properties; describes the prediction of ice fog by the numerical forecast models and physical parameterizations used in climate models; identifies the outstanding questions to be resolved; and lists recommended actions to address and solve these questions.

Description: State-of-the-art remote sensing techniques applicable to the investigation of ice formation and evolution are described. Ground-based and spaceborne measurements with lidar, radar, and radiometric techniques are discussed together with a global view on past and ongoing remote sensing measurement campaigns concerned with the study of ice formation and evolution. This chapter has the intention of a literature study and should illustrate the major efforts that are currently taken in the field of remote sensing of atmospheric ice. Since other chapters of this monograph mainly focus on aircraft in situ measurements, special emphasis is put on active remote sensing instruments and synergies between aircraft in situ measurements and passive remote sensing methods. The chapter concentrates on homogeneous and heterogeneous ice formation in the troposphere because this is a major topic of this monograph. Furthermore, methods that deliver direct, process-level information about ice formation are elaborated with a special emphasis on active remote sensing methods. Passive remote sensing methods are also dealt with but only in the context of synergy with aircraft in situ measurements.