Radiation fluxes in a business district of Shanghai, China

Radiative fluxes are key drivers of surface-atmosphere heat exchanges in cities. Here the first year-long (December 2012 – November 2013) measurements of the full radiation balance for a dense urban site in Shanghai are presented, collected with a net radiometer CNR4 mounted 80 m above ground. Clear sky incoming shortwave radiation (K↓) (median daytime maxima) ranges from 575 W m-2 in winter to 875 W m-2 in spring, with cloud cover reducing the daily maxima by about 160 W m-2. The median incoming longwave radiation daytime maxima is 305 and 468 W m-2 in winter and summer, respectively, with increases of 30 and 15 W m-2 for cloudy conditions. The effect of air quality is evident: ‘haze’ conditions decrease hourly median K↓ by 11.3%. The midday (11:00 -13:00 LST) clear sky surface albedo (α) is 0.128, 0.141, 0.143 and 0.129 for winter, spring, summer and autumn, respectively. α varies with solar elevation and azimuth angle due to heterogeneity of the urban surface. In winter, shadows play an important role in decreasing α in the late afternoon. For the site, the bulk α is 0.14. The NARP/SUEWS land surface model reproduces the radiation components at this site well, a promising result for applications elsewhere. These observations help to fill the gap of long-term radiation measurements in East Asian and low-latitude cities quantifying the effects of season, cloud cover and air quality

Efficient Approach to Carbinol Derivatives through Palladium-Catalyzed Base-Free Addition of Aryltriolborates to Aldehydes

Palladium-catalyzed base-free addition of aryltriolborates to aldehydes has been developed, leading to a wide range of carbinol derivatives in good to excellent yields. The efficiency of this transformation was demonstrated by compatibility with a wide range of functional groups. The present synthetic route to carbinol derivatives could be readily scaled up to gram quantity without difficulty. Thus, this method represents a simple and practical procedure to access carbinol derivatives

Stable foraminifer isotope composition and age of ODP Sites 184-1147 and 184-1148, South China Sea

Sites 1147 (18°50.11'N, 116°33.28'E; water depth = 3246 m) and 1148 (18°50.17'N, 116°33.94'E; water depth = 3294 m) are located on the lowermost continental slope off southern China near the continent/ocean crust boundary of the South China Sea Basin. Site 1147 is located upslope ~0.45 nmi west of Site 1148. Three advanced piston corer holes at Site 1147 and two extended core barrel holes at Site 1148 were cored and combined into a composite (spliced) stratigraphic section, which provided a relatively continuous profile for the lower Oligocene to Holocene (Wang, Prell, Blum, et al., 2000, doi:10.2973/odp.proc.ir.184.2000; Jian, et al., 2001, doi:10.1007/BF02907088) for studying stratigraphy and paleoceanography. A total of 1047 planktonic foraminifers stable isotope measurements were performed on 975 samples covering the upper 409.58 meters composite depth (mcd) at ~42-cm intervals (Tables T1, T2), and a total of 1864 benthic foraminifers measurements were performed on 1650 samples in the upper 837.11 mcd at ~51-cm intervals (Tables T3, T4). We significantly improved the time resolution of the benthic stable isotope record in the upper 476.68 mcd by reducing the average sample spacing to ~29 cm. This translates into an average sampling resolution of ~16 k.y. for the Miocene sequence and ~8 k.y. for the Pliocene-Holocene interval, assuming a change in sedimentation rates from ~1.8 to ~3.5 cm/k.y., as suggested by shipboard stratigraphy. These data sets provide the basis for upcoming studies to establish an oxygen isotope stratigraphy and examine the Neogene evolution of deep and surface water signatures (temperature, salinity, and nutrients) in the South China Sea