Search results for "Latitude"
showing 10 items of 210 documents
Physiological advantages of dwarfing in surviving extinctions in high-CO2 oceans
2015
Excessive CO2 in the present-day ocean-atmosphere system is causing ocean acidification, and is likely to cause a severe biodiversity decline in the future, mirroring effects in many past mass extinctions. Fossil records demonstrate that organisms surviving such events were often smaller than those before, a phenomenon called the Lilliput effect. Here, we show that two gastropod species adapted to acidified seawater at shallow-water CO2 seeps were smaller than those found in normal pH conditions and had higher mass-specific energy consumption but significantly lower whole-animal metabolic energy demand. These physiological changes allowed the animals to maintain calcification and to partial…
Could the acid-base status of Antarctic sea urchins indicate a better-than-expected resilience to near-future ocean acidification?
2015
Increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration alters the chemistry of the oceans towards more acidic conditions. Polar oceans are particularly affected due to their low temperature, low carbonate content and mixing patterns, for instance upwellings. Calcifying organisms are expected to be highly impacted by the decrease in the oceans' pH and carbonate ions concentration. In particular, sea urchins, members of the phylum Echinodermata, are hypothesized to be at risk due to their high-magnesium calcite skeleton. However, tolerance to ocean acidification in metazoans is first linked to acid-base regulation capacities of the extracellular fluids. No information on this is available to dat…
Ocean acidification impairs vermetid reef recruitment
2014
Vermetids form reefs in sub-tropical and warm-temperate waters that protect coasts from erosion, regulate sediment transport and accumulation, serve as carbon sinks and provide habitat for other species. The gastropods that form these reefs brood encapsulated larvae; they are threatened by rapid environmental changes since their ability to disperse is very limited. We used transplant experiments along a natural CO2 gradient to assess ocean acidification effects on the reef-building gastropod Dendropoma petraeum. We found that although D. petraeum were able to reproduce and brood at elevated levels of CO2, recruitment success was adversely affected. Long-term exposure to acidified conditions…
Shallow water marine sediment bacterial community shifts along a natural CO2 gradient in the Mediterranean Sea Off vulcano, Italy
2014
The effects of increasing atmospheric CO(2) on ocean ecosystems are a major environmental concern, as rapid shoaling of the carbonate saturation horizon is exposing vast areas of marine sediments to corrosive waters worldwide. Natural CO(2) gradients off Vulcano, Italy, have revealed profound ecosystem changes along rocky shore habitats as carbonate saturation levels decrease, but no investigations have yet been made of the sedimentary habitat. Here, we sampled the upper 2 cm of volcanic sand in three zones, ambient (median pCO(2) 419 µatm, minimum Omega (arag) 3.77), moderately CO(2)-enriched (median pCO(2) 592 µatm, minimum Omega (arag) 2.96), and highly CO(2)-enriched (median pCO(2) 1611…
PERANAN GELOMBANG PANJANG TERHADAP SIRKULASI ARUS GLOBAL
2008
The global surface current system forms a large scala current circulation pattern known as gyra, which occurs in the Pasific, Hindia, and Atlantic oceans. At the nothern equator, the gyra circulation is counterclockwise, while it is anti counterclockwise at the southern equator. The trade wind crossing the Equatorial ocean causes a different slope and influences the slope form. The response of the sea level slope can be only described by the sea level pertubation concept that the disturbance moves as pulse wave which travel alongside equatorial ocean. The effects of the Rossby and Kelvin waves propagation on the ocean circulation depend on the lattitude. At the middle and high lattitudes, t…
A composite study on the structure and formation of ozone miniholes and minihighs over central Europe
2005
[1] Two different mechanisms have been proposed to be important for the formation of extreme total ozone events in mid-latitudes, so-called miniholes: (A) far-range meridional transport of air masses from regions with different climatological ozone mixing ratios, and (B) (local) adiabatic vertical displacement of isentropes. Here, the relative importance of these two mechanisms is studied using two different ozone profile reconstruction techniques for all miniholes and minihighs (events with anomalously high ozone) during the time period 1980–1989 over Switzerland. Composites for the two types of events of their vertical potential vorticity (PV) reveal a vertical dipole structure of PV anom…
Geographical variation in egg size of the Great Tit Parus major: a new perspective
2002
A recent study on geographical variation in egg size of Great Tits Parus major concluded that: (1) mean egg size tended to increase with increasing latitude; and (2) mean egg size was positively correlated with mean clutch size. Including new data on both egg and clutch size, we reanalysed the relationships between egg size, clutch size and latitude, and investigated the possible effects of habitat type, female body size and egg shape on these relationships. We found that (1) egg volume showed minimum values around 51 ° N, increasing both north and southwards; (2) female body size increased linearly with increasing latitude; (3) female body size was positively correlated with egg breadth, b…
Waveguidability of idealized midlatitude jets and the limitations of ray tracing theory
2020
Abstract. Ray paths of stationary Rossby waves emanating from a local midlatitude source are usually refracted equatorward. However, this general tendency for equatorward propagation is mitigated by the presence of a midlatitude jet that acts as a zonal waveguide. This opens up the possibility of circum-global teleconnections and quasi-resonance, which suggests that the ability to guide a wave in the zonal direction is an important jet property. This paper investigates waveguidability of idealized midlatitude jets in a barotropic model on the sphere. A forced-dissipative model configuration with a local source for Rossby waves is used in order to quantify waveguidability by diagnosing the l…
Diagnosing the Horizontal Propagation of Rossby Wave Packets along the Midlatitude Waveguide
2017
AbstractIt has been suggested that upper-tropospheric Rossby wave packets propagating along the midlatitude waveguide may play a role for triggering severe weather. This motivates the search for robust methods to detect and track Rossby wave packets and to diagnose their properties. In the framework of several observed cases, this paper compares different methods that have been proposed for these tasks, with an emphasis on horizontal propagation and on a particular formulation of a wave activity flux previously suggested by Takaya and Nakamura. The utility of this flux is compromised by the semigeostrophic nature of upper-tropospheric Rossby waves, but this problem can partly be overcome by…
The Static Stability of the Tropopause Region in Adiabatic Baroclinic Life Cycle Experiments
2011
Abstract The tropopause inversion layer (TIL) is a region of enhanced static stability just above the WMO-defined thermal tropopause. It is a ubiquitous feature in midlatitudes and is well characterized by observations. However, it is still lacking a satisfactory theoretical explanation. This study utilizes adiabatic baroclinic life cycle experiments to investigate dynamical mechanisms that lead to TIL formation. As the baroclinic wave grows, a strong TIL forms above anticyclonic anomalies, while no TIL is found above cyclonic anomalies; this is consistent with previous results. However, during the early growth phase there is no TIL in the global or zonal average: positive and negative anom…