Interannual variations in degree-2 Earth's gravity coefficients C-2,C-0, C-2,C-2, and S-2,S-2 reveal large-scale mass transfers of climatic origin

ISI Document Delivery No.: 208EO Times Cited: 0 Cited Reference Count: 24 Cited References: Boening C, 2012, GEOPHYS RES LETT, V39, DOI 10.1029/2012GL053055 CAZENAVE A, 2012, MAR GEOD S1, V35, P82 Chao BF, 2003, GEOCHEM GEOPHY GEOSY, V4, DOI 10.1029/2003GC000589 Chen JL, 2005, J GEODESY, V78, P535, DOI 10.1007/s00190-004-0417-y Cheng M., 2013, J GEOPHYS RES SOLID, V118, P1, DOI 10. 1002/jgrb. 50058 Cheng MK, 2004, J GEOPHYS RES-SOL EA, V109, DOI 10.1029/2004JB003028 Cox CM, 2002, SCIENCE, V297, P831, DOI 10.1126/science.1072188 Desai SD, 2002, J GEOPHYS RES-OCEANS, V107, DOI 10.1029/2001JC001224 Dickey JO, 2002, SCIENCE, V298, P1975, DOI 10.1126/science.1077777 Doll P, 2003, J HYDROL, V270, P105, DOI 10.1016/S0022-1694(02)00283-4 Forste C, 2008, J GEODESY, V82, P331, DOI 10.1007/s00190-007-0183-8 Gu GJ, 2011, J CLIMATE, V24, P2258, DOI 10.1175/2010JCLI3727.1 Ishii M, 2009, J OCEANOGR, V65, P287, DOI 10.1007/s10872-009-0027-7 Levitus S, 2012, GEOPHYS RES LETT, V39, DOI 10.1029/2012GL051106 Llovel W, 2011, GLOBAL PLANET CHANGE, V75, P76, DOI 10.1016/j.gloplacha.2010.10.008 Lyard F, 2006, OCEAN DYNAM, V56, P394, DOI 10.1007/s10236-006-0086-x Marcus SL, 2009, GEOPHYS RES LETT, V36, DOI 10.1029/2009GL041130 Milly PCD, 2002, J HYDROMETEOROL, V3, P283, DOI 10.1175/1525-7541(2002)0032.0.CO;2 Nerem RS, 2011, GEOPHYS RES LETT, V38, DOI 10.1029/2011GL047879 Pavlis NK, 2012, J GEOPHYS RES-SOL EA, V117, DOI 10.1029/2011JB008916 Pearlman MR, 2002, ADV SPACE RES, V30, P135, DOI 10.1016/S0273-1177(02)00277-6 Roy K, 2011, GEOPHYS RES LETT, V38, DOI 10.1029/2011GL047282 Syed TH, 2009, J HYDROMETEOROL, V10, P22, DOI 10.1175/2008JHM993.1 Zhang Y, 1997, J CLIMATE, V10, P1004, DOI 10.1175/1520-0442(1997)0102.0.CO;2 Meyssignac, B. Lemoine, J. M. Cheng, M. Cazenave, A. Gegout, P. Maisongrande, P. Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES); NASA [NNX12AK13G] This work was supported by the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES). The CSR time series was produced by NASA's MEaSUREs program under JPL contract. M. K. Cheng is supported by NASA grant NNX12AK13G. The altimeter products used here were produced by Ssalto/Duacs and distributed by AVISO with support from CNES. 0 AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION WASHINGTON GEOPHYS RES LETTSeveral recent studies have shown evidences for large water transfers in the climate system at interannual to decadal time scales, in particular during El Nino-Southern Oscillation events. In this study, we investigate further these water transfers and their signature in the gravity field. We analyze variations of the low-degree spherical harmonics C-2,C-0 (Earth's oblateness), C-2,C-2, and S-2,S-2 (eccentricity at the Earth's equator) from satellite laser ranging data during the 19 year period 1993-2012. We also estimate the water mass transfers in the climate system using satellite altimetry corrected for the steric effect, atmospheric reanalysis, and land hydrology models. We find a large signal in the water mass redistribution during the 1997/1998 El Nino which is consistent with an increase of the ocean mass in the tropical Pacific, a decrease of water storage in the Amazon Basin, and an increase of water storage in the Congo Basin

Fit for what?: towards explaining Battlegroup inaction

The thrust of this paper concerns the case of the European Battlegroup (BG) non-deployment in late 2008, when the United Nations requested European military support for the United Nations Organisation Mission peacekeeping force in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The argument is built on the fact that when, in official documents, the EU approaches the European security and ESDP/CSDP's military crisis management policy and interventions, it makes strong references to the United Nations and the UN Charter Chapter VII's mandate of restoring international peace and security. Such references make it seem that supporting the UN when it deals with threats and crises is a primary concern of the EU and the member states. These allusions lead to the main contention of this paper, that there is much ambivalence in these indications. The paper develops its argument from one key hypothesis; namely, that the non-deployment of a European BG in the DRC, at the end of 2008, constitutes a useful case study for detecting a number of ambiguities of the EU in respect of its declarations in the official documents establishing the European military crisis management intervention structure

Ellenberg-type indicator values for European vascular plant species

Aims: Ellenberg-type indicator values are expert-based rankings of plant species according to their ecological optima on main environmental gradients. Here we extend the indicator-value system proposed by Heinz Ellenberg and co-authors for Central Europe by incorporating other systems of Ellenberg-type indicator values (i.e., those using scales compatible with Ellenberg values) developed for other European regions. Our aim is to create a harmonized data set of Ellenberg-type indicator values applicable at the European scale. Methods: We collected European data sets of indicator values for vascular plants and selected 13 data sets that used the nine-, ten- or twelve-degree scales defined by Ellenberg for light, temperature, moisture, reaction, nutrients and salinity. We compared these values with the original Ellenberg values and used those that showed consistent trends in regression slope and coefficient of determination. We calculated the average value for each combination of species and indicator values from these data sets. Based on species’ co-occurrences in European vegetation plots, we also calculated new values for species that were not assigned an indicator value. Results: We provide a new data set of Ellenberg-type indicator values for 8908 European vascular plant species (8168 for light, 7400 for temperature, 8030 for moisture, 7282 for reaction, 7193 for nutrients, and 7507 for salinity), of which 398 species have been newly assigned to at least one indicator value. Conclusions: The newly introduced indicator values are compatible with the original Ellenberg values. They can be used for large-scale studies of the European flora and vegetation or for gap-filling in regional data sets. The European indicator values and the original and taxonomically harmonized regional data sets of Ellenberg-type indicator values are available in the Supporting Information and the Zenodo repository

Premiers résultats paléoclimatiques fournis par l'analyse de l'oxygène 18 dans la matière organique des tourbes.

The oxygen isotopic composition of organic matter from peats appears to be a good indicator of the paleoclimatic variations on the mainland. Analyses performed on two peat cores yield results which are in a quite good agreement with the informations provided by the pollinic spectra. Depending mainly upon physical processes the oxygen-18 contents of organic matter keep on recording paleoclimatic changes even when forests had begun to be degraded by men.La composition isotopique de l'oxygène de la matière organique des tourbes apparaît comme un bon marqueur des variations paléoclimatiques sur les continents. Deux courbes δ¹⁸O établies sur les carottes de deux tourbières montrent une étroite corrélation avec les analyses polliniques. Les données isotopiques, fondées sur des processus essentiellement physiques continuent à être utilisables même après les modifications d'origine anthropique du couvert végétal.Ferhi A., Gegout P., Rognon Pierre. Premiers résultats paléoclimatiques fournis par l'analyse de l'oxygène 18 dans la matière organique des tourbes.. In: Bulletin de l'Association française pour l'étude du quaternaire, vol. 19, n°1, 1982. pp. 47-51

SIMD Monte-Carlo Numerical Simulations Accelerated on GPU and Xeon Phi

International audienceThe efficiency of a pleasingly parallel application is studied for several computing platforms. A real world problem, i.e., Monte-Carlo numerical simulations of stratospheric balloon envelope drift descent is considered. We detail the optimization of the SIMD parallel codes on the K40 and K80 GPUs as well as on the Intel Xeon Phi. We emphasize on loop and task parallelism, multi-threading and vectorization, respectively. The experiments show that GPU and MIC permit one to decrease computing time by non negligeable factors, as compared to a parallel code implemented on a two sockets CPU (E5-2680-v2) which finally allows us to use these devices in operational condition