Antarctic dry valleys: Microclimate zonation, variable geomorphic processes, and implications for assessing climate change on Mars     

David R. Marchant  James W. Head III 《Icarus》2007,192(1):187-222

The Antarctic Dry Valleys (ADV) are generally classified as a hyper-arid, cold-polar desert. The region has long been considered an important terrestrial analog for Mars because of its generally cold and dry climate and because it contains a suite of landforms at macro-, meso-, and microscales that closely resemble those occurring on the martian surface. The extreme hyperaridity of both Mars and the ADV has focused attention on the importance of salts and brines on soil development, phase transitions from liquid water to water ice, and ultimately, on process geomorphology and landscape evolution at a range of scales on both planets. The ADV can be subdivided into three microclimate zones: a coastal thaw zone, an inland mixed zone, and a stable upland zone; zones are defined on the basis of summertime measurements of atmospheric temperature, soil moisture, and relative humidity. Subtle variations in these climate parameters result in considerable differences in the distribution and morphology of: (1) macroscale features (e.g., slopes and gullies); (2) mesoscale features (e.g., polygons, including ice-wedge, sand-wedge, and sublimation-type polygons, as well as viscous-flow features, including solifluction lobes, gelifluction lobes, and debris-covered glaciers); and (3) microscale features (e.g., rock-weathering processes/features, including salt weathering, wind erosion, and surface pitting). Equilibrium landforms are those features that formed in balance with environmental conditions within fixed microclimate zones. Some equilibrium landforms, such as sublimation polygons, indicate the presence of extensive near-surface ice; identification of similar landforms on Mars may also provide a basis for detecting the location of shallow ice. Landforms that today appear in disequilibrium with local microclimate conditions in the ADV signify past and/or ongoing shifts in climate zonation; understanding these shifts is assisting in the documentation of the climate record for the ADV. A similar type of landform analysis can be applied to the surface of Mars where analogous microclimates and equilibrium landforms occur (1) in a variety of local environments, (2) in different latitudinal bands, and (3) in units of different ages. Documenting the nature and evolution of the ADV microclimate zones and their associated geomorphic processes is helping to provide a quantitative framework for assessing the evolution of climate on Mars.  相似文献   

Hydrocarbon lakes on Titan     

Giuseppe Mitri  Adam P. Showman  Ralph D. Lorenz 《Icarus》2007,186(2):385-394

The Huygens Probe detected dendritic drainage-like features, methane clouds and a high surface relative humidity (∼50%) on Titan in the vicinity of its landing site [Tomasko, M.G., and 39 colleagues, 2005. Nature 438, 765-778; Niemann, H.B., and 17 colleagues, 2005. Nature 438, 779-784], suggesting sources of methane that replenish this gas against photo- and charged-particle chemical loss on short (10-100) million year timescales [Atreya, S.K., Adams, E.Y., Niemann, H.B., Demick-Montelara, J.E., Owen, T.C., Fulchignoni, M., Ferri, F., Wilson, E.H., 2006. Planet. Space Sci. In press]. On the other hand, Cassini Orbiter remote sensing shows dry and even desert-like landscapes with dunes [Lorenz, R.D., and 39 colleagues, 2006a. Science 312, 724-727], some areas worked by fluvial erosion, but no large-scale bodies of liquid [Elachi, C., and 34 colleagues, 2005. Science 308, 970-974]. Either the atmospheric methane relative humidity is declining in a steady fashion over time, or the sources that maintain the relative humidity are geographically restricted, small, or hidden within the crust itself. In this paper we explore the hypothesis that the present-day methane relative humidity is maintained entirely by lakes that cover a small part of the surface area of Titan. We calculate the required minimum surface area coverage of such lakes, assess the stabilizing influence of ethane, and the implications for moist convection in the atmosphere. We show that, under Titan's surface conditions, methane evaporates rapidly enough that shorelines of any existing lakes could potentially migrate by several hundred m to tens of km per year, rates that could be detected by the Cassini orbiter. We furthermore show that the high relative humidity of methane in Titan's lower atmosphere could be maintained by evaporation from lakes covering only 0.002-0.02 of the whole surface.  相似文献   

Microstructural evidence of low‐strain,time‐transgressive subglacial deformation     

N. K. Larsen  J. A. Piotrowski  J. Menzies 《第四纪科学杂志》2007,22(6):593-608

Microstructural analyses were used to investigate the formation of a macroscale‐massive till at Knud Strand in Denmark. More than 100 thin sections were examined and microstructures mapped and counted for quantitative comparison and interpretation. Microstructures indicative of both brittle (grain lineations, edge‐to‐edge crushed grains) and ductile (turbate structures) deformation are evenly distributed in vertical profiles through the till, suggesting that strain contributed to its formation. Discrete shears (grain lineations and plasmic fabric) probably accommodated most deformation, whereas rotational deformation was less prominent. The microshear geometry fits the predicted Coulomb–Mohr failure criterion, indicating that till behaves as a plastic material. Strain estimate of ca. 10¹ from micromorphological proxies is two–three orders of magnitude lower than expected if the till was subjected to pervasive deformation. A hybrid of lodgement and time‐transgressive deformation is envisaged as the till‐forming processes. Our data suggest that even abundant evidence of microscale deformation at continuing high levels of strain may only record the latest process of deposition and deformation and therefore not fully reflect the complexity of till genesis. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.  相似文献   

Spatial scale effect on seasonal streamflows in permafrost catchments on the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau     

Genxu Wang  Guangsheng Liu  Lin'an Liu 《水文研究》2012,26(7):973-984

The scale issue is of central concern in hydrological processes to understand the potential upscaling or downscaling methodologies, and to develop models for scaling the dominant processes at different scales and in different environments. In this study, a typical permafrost watershed in the Qinghai‐Tibet Plateau was selected. Its hydrological processes were monitored for 4 years from 2004 to 2008, measuring the effects of freezing and thawing depth of active soil layers on runoff processes. To identify the nature and cause of variation in the runoff response in different size catchments, catchments ranging from 1·07 to 112 km² were identified in the watershed. The results indicated that the variation of runoff coefficients showed a ‘V’ shape with increasing catchment size during the spring and autumn seasons, when the active soil was subjected to thawing or freezing processes. A two‐stage method was proposed to create runoff scaling models to indicate the effects of scale on runoff processes. In summer, the scaling transition model followed an exponential function for mean daily discharge, whereas the scaling model for flood flow exhibited a linear function. In autumn, the runoff process transition across multiple scales followed an exponential function with air temperature as the driving factor. These scaling models demonstrate relatively high simulation efficiency and precision, and provide a practical way for upscaling or downscaling runoff processes in a medium‐size permafrost watershed. For permafrost catchments of this scale, the results show that the synergistic effect of scale and vegetation cover is an important driving factor in the runoff response. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.  相似文献   

Using archaeological data and sediment parameters to review the formation of the Gravettian layers at Krems-Wachtberg     

Marc Händel  Roswitha Thomas  Tobias Sprafke  Philipp Schulte  Michael Brandl  Ulrich Simon  Thomas Einwögerer 《第四纪科学杂志》2021,36(8):1397-1413

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Experimental and theoretical transition probabilities in singly ionized gold     

É. Biémont  K. Blagoev  V. Fivet  G. Malcheva  R. Mayo  M. Ortiz  P. Quinet 《Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society》2007,380(4):1581-1588

Absolute transition probabilities have been measured for lines originating from the 5d⁹6d and 5d⁹7s electronic configurations in the spectrum of singly ionized gold (Au  ii ). The laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy has been applied to free gold atoms and ions produced by laser ablation. Absolute transition probabilities have been determined using the branching fraction and the Boltzmann plot methods. Theoretical branching fractions as well as radiative lifetime values have also been obtained by a relativistic Hartree–Fock method taking core polarization and configuration interaction effects into account. The new results are compared with previous results when available.  相似文献   

OPserver: interactive online computations of opacities and radiative accelerations     

C. Mendoza  M. J. Seaton  P. Buerger  A. Bellorín  M. Meléndez †  J. González  L. S. Rodríguez  F. Delahaye  E. Palacios  A. K. Pradhan  C. J. Zeippen 《Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society》2007,378(3):1031-1035

Codes to compute mean opacities and radiative accelerations for arbitrary chemical mixtures using the Opacity Project recently revised data have been restructured in a client–server architecture and transcribed as a subroutine library. This implementation increases efficiency in stellar modelling where element stratification due to diffusion processes is depth dependent, and thus requires repeated fast opacity re-estimates. Three user modes are provided to fit different computing environments, namely, a web browser, a local workstation and a distributed grid.  相似文献   

He Conductivity in Cool White Dwarf Atmospheres     

S. Mazevet  M. Challacombe  P. M. Kowalski  D. Saumon 《Astrophysics and Space Science》2007,307(1-3):273-277

We investigate the conductivity of warm dense helium under conditions found in the atmospheres of cool white dwarfs using ab initio simulations. The calculations performed consist of quantum molecular dynamics simulations where the electronic wavefunction at each time step is obtained using density functional theory, while the ion trajectories are calculated using the resulting quantum mechanical forces. We use both conventional DFT (PW91) and hybrid (PBE0) functionals to calculate the conductivities that provide an estimate of the ionization fraction. While the calculations are in good agreement with the measurements for the equation of state, a significant discrepancy exists with the recently measured conductivity.  相似文献   

What is the origin of the soft excess in active galactic nuclei?   总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1  

Ma&#;gorzata A. Sobolewska  Chris Done 《Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society》2007,374(1):150-158

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Quantum peculiarities of the primordial hydrogen recombination     

V. K. Dubrovich 《Astronomy Letters》2007,33(10):645-648

Some problems of the two-photon decay of highly excited atomic hydrogen and helium levels are considered. The necessary accuracy of calculating the transition probabilities is shown to require abandoning the purely dipole approximation in the theory of atomic hydrogen radiation. The range of applicability of the perturbation theory to this process is discussed. We suggest a new mechanism of the Lyman photon redistribution due to very close locations of the 20P and 19P levels in the hydrogen and deuterium atoms, respectively (hydrogen-deuterium resonance).  相似文献