2,136 research outputs found
Global warming will affect the maximum potential abundance of boreal plant species
Forecasting the impact of future global warming on biodiversity requires understanding how temperature limits the distribution of species. Here we rely on Liebig's Law of Minimum to estimate the effect of temperature on the maximum potential abundance that a species can attain at a certain location. We develop 95%âquantile regressions to model the influence of effective temperature sum on the maximum potential abundance of 25 common understory plant species of Finland, along 868 nationwide plots sampled in 1985. Fifteen of these species showed a significant response to temperature sum that was consistent in temperatureâonly models and in allâpredictors models, which also included cumulative precipitation, soil texture, soil fertility, tree species and stand maturity as predictors. For species with significant and consistent responses to temperature, we forecasted potential shifts in abundance for the period 2041â2070 under the IPCC A1B emission scenario using temperatureâonly models. We predict major potential changes in abundance and average northward distribution shifts of 6â8âkmâyrâ1. Our results emphasize interâspecific differences in the impact of global warming on the understory layer of boreal forests. Species in all functional groups from dwarf shrubs, herbs and grasses to bryophytes and lichens showed significant responses to temperature, while temperature did not limit the abundance of 10 species. We discuss the interest of modelling the âmaximum potential abundanceâ to deal with the uncertainty in the predictions of realized abundances associated to the effect of environmental factors not accounted for and to dispersal limitations of species, among others. We believe this concept has a promising and unexplored potential to forecast the impact of specific drivers of global change under future scenarios.202
Corrigendum to "High-resolution interpolar difference of atmospheric methane around the Last Glacial Maximum" published in Biogeosciences, 9, 3961–3977, 2012
No abstract available
Recent results on strangeness production from NA49
We present a summary of measurements of strange particles performed by the
experiment NA49 in inelastic p+p interactions, as well as semi-central C+C and
Si+Si, central Pb+Pb, and minimum bias Pb+Pb collisions in the energy range
= 6.3 - 17.3 GeV. New results on , and
production in minimum bias Pb+Pb collisions at = 8.7 and 17.3
are shown. Furthermore the strangeness enhancement factor at =
17.3 GeV is presented and compared to the results from NA57 and STAR. Energy
dependence of strange particle yields normalized to pion yields is presented.
New data on production are shown at = 17.3
GeV. Furthermore we present the energy dependence of and
fluctuations. The data are compared with model predictions.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures, Submitted to J. Phys. G (Proceedings of the
International Conference on Strangeness in Quark Matter, Buzios, Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil, September 27 - October 2, 2009
Destabilization of the thermohaline circulation by transient perturbations to the hydrological cycle
We reconsider the problem of the stability of the thermohaline circulation as
described by a two-dimensional Boussinesq model with mixed boundary conditions.
We determine how the stability properties of the system depend on the intensity
of the hydrological cycle. We define a two-dimensional parameters' space
descriptive of the hydrology of the system and determine, by considering
suitable quasi-static perturbations, a bounded region where multiple equilibria
of the system are realized. We then focus on how the response of the system to
finite-amplitude surface freshwater forcings depends on their rate of increase.
We show that it is possible to define a robust separation between slow and fast
regimes of forcing. Such separation is obtained by singling out an estimate of
the critical growth rate for the anomalous forcing, which can be related to the
characteristic advective time scale of the system.Comment: 37 pages, 8 figures, submitted to Clim. Dy
Thermo-mechanical behavior of surface acoustic waves in ordered arrays of nanodisks studied by near infrared pump-probe diffraction experiments
The ultrafast thermal and mechanical dynamics of a two-dimensional lattice of
metallic nano-disks has been studied by near infrared pump-probe diffraction
measurements, over a temporal range spanning from 100 fs to several
nanoseconds. The experiments demonstrate that, in these systems, a
two-dimensional surface acoustic wave (2DSAW), with a wavevector given by the
reciprocal periodicity of the array, can be excited by ~120 fs Ti:sapphire
laser pulses. In order to clarify the interaction between the nanodisks and the
substrate, numerical calculations of the elastic eigenmodes and simulations of
the thermodynamics of the system are developed through finite-element analysis.
At this light, we unambiguously show that the observed 2DSAW velocity shift
originates from the mechanical interaction between the 2DSAWs and the
nano-disks, while the correlated 2DSAW damping is due to the energy radiation
into the substrate.Comment: 13 pages, 10 figure
An examination of the precipitation delivery mechanisms for Dolleman Island, eastern Antarctic Peninsula
Copyright @ 2004 Wiley-BlackwellThe variability of size and source of significant precipitation events were studied at an Antarctic ice core drilling site: Dolleman Island (DI), located on the eastern coast of the Antarctic Peninsula. Significant precipitation events that occur at DI were temporally located in the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF) reanalysis data set, ERA-40. The annual and summer precipitation totals from ERA-40 at DI both show significant increases over the reanalysis period. Three-dimensional backwards air parcel trajectories were then run for 5 d using the ECMWF ERA-15 wind fields. Cluster analyses were performed on two sets of these backwards trajectories: all days in the range 1979â1992 (the climatological time-scale) and a subset of days when a significant precipitation event occurred. The principal air mass sources and delivery mechanisms were found to be the Weddell Sea via lee cyclogenesis, the South Atlantic when there was a weak circumpolar trough (CPT) and the South Pacific when the CPT was deep. The occurrence of precipitation bearing air masses arriving via a strong CPT was found to have a significant correlation with the southern annular mode (SAM); however, the arrival of air masses from the same region over the climatological time-scale showed no such correlation. Despite the dominance in both groups of back trajectories of the westerly circulation around Antarctica, some other key patterns were identified. Most notably there was a higher frequency of lee cyclogenesis events in the significant precipitation trajectories compared to the climatological time-scale. There was also a tendency for precipitation trajectories to come from more northerly latitudes, mostly from 50â70°S. The El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) was found to have a strong influence on the mechanism by which the precipitation was delivered; the frequency of occurrence of precipitation from the east (west) of DI increased during El Niño (La Niña) events
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Identification of deficiencies in seasonal rainfall simulated by CMIP5 climate models
An objective technique for analysing seasonality, in terms of regime, progression and timing of the wet seasons, is applied in the evaluation of CMIP5 simulations across continental Africa. Atmosphere-only and coupled integrations capture the gross observed patterns of seasonal progression and give mean onset/cessation dates within 18 days of the observational dates for 11 of the 13 regions considered. Accurate representation of seasonality over central-southern Africa and West Africa (excluding southern coastline) adds credence for future projected changes in seasonality here. However, coupled simulations exhibit timing biases over the Horn of Africa, with the long rains 20 days late on average. Although both sets of simulations detect biannual rainfall seasonal cycles for East and Central Africa, coupled simulations fail to capture the biannual regime over the southern West African coastline. This is linked with errors in the Gulf of Guinea sea surface temperature (SST) and deficient representation of the SST/rainfall relationship
A Comment on Conical Flow Induced by Heavy-Quark Jets
The suppression of high transverse momentum particles, recently discovered at
RHIC, is commonly interpreted as due to parton energy loss. In high energy
nuclear collisions, QCD jets would deposit a large fraction of their energy and
into the produced matter. The question of how this energy is degraded and
whether we can use this phenomenon to probe the properties of the produced
matter is now under active discussion. It has been proposed that if this
matter, which is now being referred to as a {\em strongly coupled Quark-Gluon
Plasma} (sQGP), may behave as a liquid with a very small viscosity.
In this case, a very specific collective excitation should be produced,
called the ``conical flow'', similar e.g. to the sonic booms generated by the
shock waves produced by supersonic planes. The RHIC experiments seem indeed to
be obtaining some indication that the production of particles emitted opposite
to a high- jet may actually be peaked away from the quenched jet
direction, at an angle roughly consistent with the direction expected in case a
shock wave is produced (i.e. orthogonal to the Mach cone). In this note we
speculate that for tagged heavy-quark jets one may observe a shrinkage of the
Mach cone at moderate . The experimental observation of such an effect
would be a very good test for the validity of the whole picture currently
emerging from the study of partonic matter in nuclear collisions
Colour-singlet strangelets at finite temperature
Considering massless and quarks, and massive (150 MeV) quarks in
a bag with the bag pressure constant MeV, a colour-singlet
grand canonical partition function is constructed for temperatures
MeV. Then the stability of finite size strangelets is studied minimizing the
free energy as a function of the radius of the bag. The colour-singlet
restriction has several profound effects when compared to colour unprojected
case: (1) Now bulk energy per baryon is increased by about MeV making the
strange quark matter unbound. (2) The shell structures are more pronounced
(deeper). (3) Positions of the shell closure are shifted to lower -values,
the first deepest one occuring at , famous -particle ! (4) The shell
structure at vanishes only at MeV, though for higher
-values it happens so at MeV.Comment: Revtex file(8 pages)+6 figures(ps files) available on request from
first Autho
Electrical properties of a-antimony selenide
This paper reports conduction mechanism in a-\sbse over a wide range of
temperature (238K to 338K) and frequency (5Hz to 100kHz). The d.c. conductivity
measured as a function of temperature shows semiconducting behaviour with
activation energy E= 0.42 eV. Thermally induced changes in the
electrical and dielectric properties of a-\sbse have been examined. The a.c.
conductivity in the material has been explained using modified CBH model. The
band conduction and single polaron hopping is dominant above room temperature.
However, in the lower temperature range the bipolaron hopping dominates.Comment: 9 pages (RevTeX, LaTeX2e), 9 psfigures, also at
http://pu.chd.nic.in/ftp/pub/san16 e-mail: gautam%[email protected]
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