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Global and regional climate models, such as those used in IPCC assessments, are the best tools available for climate predictions. Such models typically account for large-scale land-atmosphere feedbacks. However, these models omit local vegetation-environment feedbacks that may be crucial for critical transitions in ecosystems at larger scales. In this viewpoint paper, we propose the hypothesis that, if the balance of feedbacks is positive at all scales, local vegetation-environment feedbacks may trigger a cascade of amplifying effects, propagating from local to large scale, possibly leading to critical transitions in the large-scale climate. We call for linking local ecosystem feedbacks with large-scale land-atmosphere feedbacks in global and regional climate models in order to improve climate predictions. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

We generalize the action found by 't Hooft, which describes the gravitational interaction between ingoing and outgoing particles in the neighbourhood of a black hole. The effect of this back-reaction is that of a shock wave, and it provides a mechanism for recovering information about the momentum of the incoming particles. The new action also describes particles with transverse momenta and takes into account the transverse curvature of the hole, and has the form of a string theory action. Apart from the Polyakov term found by 't Hooft, we also find an antisymmetric tensor, which is here related to the momentum of the particles. At the quantum level, the identification between position and momentum operators leads to four non-commuting coordinates. A certain relation to M(atrix) theory is proposed., Comment: 19 pages, LaTeX. Journal reference corrected

International audience; Marine sediments at ocean margins vent substantial amounts of methane. Microbial oxidation of the methane released can trigger the precipitation of carbonate within sediments and support a broad diversity of seafloor ecosystems. The factors controlling microbial activity and carbonate precipitation associated with the seepage of submarine fluid over geological time remain poorly constrained. Here, we characterize the petrology and geochemistry of rocks sampled from metre-size build-ups of methane-derived carbonate chimneys located at the Amon mud volcano on the Nile deep-sea fan. We find that these carbonates comprise porous structures composed of aggregated spherules of aragonite, and closely resemble microbial carbonate reefs forming at present in the anoxic bottom waters of the Black Sea. Using U-series dating, we show that the Amon carbonate build-ups formed between 12 and 7 thousand years ago, contemporaneous with the deposition of organic-rich sediments in the eastern Mediterranean, the so-called sapropel layer S1. We propose that the onset of deep-water suboxic or anoxic conditions associated with sapropel formation resulted in the development of intense anaerobic microbial activity at the sea floor, and thus the formation of carbonate chimneys.

Confidence in projections of global-mean sea level rise (GMSLR) depends on an ability to account for GMSLR during the twentieth century. There are contributions from ocean thermal expansion, mass loss from glaciers and ice sheets, groundwater extraction, and reservoir impoundment. Progress has been made toward solving the “enigma” of twentieth-century GMSLR, which is that the observed GMSLR has previously been found to exceed the sum of estimated contributions, especially for the earlier decades. The authors propose the following: thermal expansion simulated by climate models may previously have been underestimated because of their not including volcanic forcing in their control state; the rate of glacier mass loss was larger than previously estimated and was not smaller in the first half than in the second half of the century; the Greenland ice sheet could have made a positive contribution throughout the century; and groundwater depletion and reservoir impoundment, which are of opposite sign, may have been approximately equal in magnitude. It is possible to reconstruct the time series of GMSLR from the quantified contributions, apart from a constant residual term, which is small enough to be explained as a long-term contribution from the Antarctic ice sheet. The reconstructions account for the observation that the rate of GMSLR was not much larger during the last 50 years than during the twentieth century as a whole, despite the increasing anthropogenic forcing. Semiempirical methods for projecting GMSLR depend on the existence of a relationship between global climate change and the rate of GMSLR, but the implication of the authors' closure of the budget is that such a relationship is weak or absent during the twentieth century.

The formalism of causal dynamical triangulations (CDT) provides us with a non-perturbatively defined model of quantum gravity, where the sum over histories includes only causal space-time histories. Path integrals of CDT and their continuum limits have been studied in two, three and four dimensions. Here we investigate a generalization of the two-dimensional CDT model, where the causality constraint is partially lifted by introducing weighted branching points, and demonstrate that the system can be solved analytically in the genus-zero sector., 17 pages, 4 figures

The Wadden Sea and its associated barrier island system exhibit highly dynamic behaviour. Of major concern is the movement of water and air and the transport, erosion and deposition of sand and mud. These processes result in an ever-changing morphology (topography/bathymetry) of the islands, tidal channels, inter-tidal shoals and tidal flats. This dynamic development of the shape and nature of the Wadden area forms together with the biotic systems, the present Wadden system. The morphodynamic development of the Wadden Sea is influenced by changing environmental conditions e.g. sea-level rise as well as by human interferences. For the management and protection of the Wadden system knowledge on the morphodynamic development is essential. However, our present knowledge is not sufficient to predict the effects of human interferences under different climate change scenarios in sufficient detail and accuracy. This paper identifies the existing knowledge gaps, based on a review of the state of the art on morphodynamics of the Wadden Sea that is confronted with major requirements from a coastal zone management point of view. The identified knowledge gaps have to inspire and stimulate research in the fields of the large-scale sediment budgets, morphodynamic changes at smaller scales, processes and mechanisms of sediment transport, erosion and deposition and modelling tools.

Temperature, salinity and velocity data are presented, along with the estimated volume transport, from seven full-length deep sea moorings placed across the narrowest part of the Mozambique Channel, southwest Indian Ocean, during the period November 2003 to December 2009. The dominant water mass in the upper layer is Sub-Tropical Surface Water (STSW) which overlies South Indian Central Water (SICW), and is normally capped by fresher Tropical Surface Water (TSW). Upper ocean salinity increased through 2005 as a result of saline STSW taking up a relatively larger part of the upper layer, at the expense of TSW. Upper waters are on average warmer and lighter in the central Channel than on the sides. Throughout the upper 1.5 km of the water column there is large hydrographic variability, short-term as well as interannual, and in particular at frequencies (four to seven cycles per year) associated with the southward passage of anticyclonic Mozambique Channel eddies. The eddies have a strong T-S signal, in the upper and central waters as well as on the intermediate level, as the eddies usually carry saline Red Sea Water (RSW) in their core. While the interannual frequency band displays an east-west gradient with higher temperature variance on the western side, the eddy frequency band shows highest variance in the centre of the Channel, where the eddy band contains about 40% of the total isopycnal hydrographic variability. Throughout the > 6 years of measurements, the frequency and characteristics of eddies vary between periods, both in terms of strength and vertical structure of eddy T-S signals. These changes contribute to the interannual variability of water mass properties: an increase in central water salinity to a maximum in late 2007 coincided with a period of unusually frequent eddies with strong salinity signals. The warmest and most saline deep water is found within the northward flowing Mozambique Undercurrent, on the western side of the Channel. The Undercurrent has two cores: an intermediate one mainly containing diluted Antarctic Intermediate Water (AAIW), and a deep one consisting of North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW). In the intermediate core, T-S properties are strongly correlated with current velocity, probably because of the strong salinity gradient at the interface between Red Sea Water (RSW) and AAIW. In the deep core, velocity and hydrographic time series do not correlate on a daily basis, but they do at longer time scales.

Stable isotope records of benthic foraminifera from ODP Site 1264 in the southeastern Atlantic Ocean are presented which resolve the latest Oligocene to early Miocene (~24–19 Ma) climate changes at high temporal resolution (

High concentrations of organic matter accumulated in marine sediments during Oceanic Anoxic Events (OAEs) in the Cretaceous. Model studies examining these events invariably make use of global ocean circulation models. In this study, a regional model for the North Atlantic Basin during OAE2 at the Cenomanian-Turonian boundary has been developed. A first order check of the results has been performed by comparison with the results of a recent global Cenomanian CCSM3 run, from which boundary and initial conditions were obtained. The regional model is able to maintain tracer patterns and to produce velocity patterns similar to the global model. The sensitivity of the basin tracer and circulation patterns to changes in the geometry of the connections with the global ocean is examined with three experiments with different bathymetries near the sponges. Different geometries turn out to have little effect on tracer distribution, but do affect circulation and upwelling patterns. The regional model is also used to test the hypothesis that ocean circulation may have been behind the deposition of black shales during OAEs. Three scenarios are tested which are thought to represent pre-OAE, OAE and post-OAE situations. Model results confirm that Pacific intermediate inflow together with coastal upwelling could have enhanced primary production during OAE2. A low sea level in the pre-OAE scenario could have inhibited large scale black shale formation, as could have the opening of the Equatorial Atlantic Seaway in the post-OAE scenario.

Constraints are given for the geometry and time lags of the prominent obliquity-paced glacial stages 100, 98 and 96, which mark a major phase in Northern Hemisphere (NH) glaciations during the late Pliocene (2.56–2.4 Ma ago). For this purpose a high-resolution benthic δ18O record was constructed from the astronomically tuned Mediterranean ODP Site 967 and decomposed into an ice volume and an annual NH (40–80° N) temperature component using an inverse modelling approach. Our results indicate that the dominant 41 ky component in δ18O lags obliquity by 6.5 ± 0.6 ky, which approximates late Pleistocene estimates. Maximum (minimum) ice volume growth occurred in phase with obliquity minima (maxima), which invoked low (high) total summer energy conditions that reduced (increased) ice-sheet ablation. Sea level dropped 60–70 m during full glacial conditions. Similar to late Pleistocene ice core and marine δ18O records, our late Pliocene δ18O record reveals significant power at ∼28 ky, which appear to be bound to the major glacial terminations. We argue that this beat most likely reflects the sum frequency of the 41 ky prime and its multiples of 82 and 123 ky, supporting the theory that the late Neogene glacial cycles are primarily determined by the linear and non-linear response mechanisms of the ice sheets to the obliquity forcing. Evidence for such a scenario may come from the alignment between the Devils Hole δ18O chronology and the sum of the filtered linear and non-linear obliquity-related components of late Pleistocene climate records, suggesting that the ∼28 ky beat is intrinsic to the climate system or at least an important constituent of the annual high-latitude NH temperature changes that have set the stage for the geometry of the glacial–interglacial variability throughout the course of the Pliocene and Pleistocene.

The systematic development of reduced low-dimensional stochastic climate models from observations or comprehensive high-dimensional climate models is an important topic for atmospheric low-frequency variability, climate sensitivity, and improved extended range forecasting. Here techniques from applied mathematics are utilized to systematically derive normal forms for reduced stochastic climate models for low-frequency variables. The use of a few Empirical Orthogonal Functions (EOFs) (also known as Principal Component Analysis, Karhunen–Loéve and Proper Orthogonal Decomposition) depending on observational data to span the low-frequency subspace requires the assessment of dyad interactions besides the more familiar triads in the interaction between the low- and high-frequency subspaces of the dynamics. It is shown below that the dyad and multiplicative triad interactions combine with the climatological linear operator interactions to simultaneously produce both strong nonlinear dissipation and Correlated Additive and Multiplicative (CAM) stochastic noise. For a single low-frequency variable the dyad interactions and climatological linear operator alone produce a normal form with CAM noise from advection of the large scales by the small scales and simultaneously strong cubic damping. These normal forms should prove useful for developing systematic strategies for the estimation of stochastic models from climate data. As an illustrative example the one-dimensional normal form is applied below to low-frequency patterns such as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) in a climate model. The results here also illustrate the short comings of a recent linear scalar CAM noise model proposed elsewhere for low-frequency variability.

An exocentric pointing task was used to compare the indicated pointing directions under exchange of target and pointer. Such a pair of pointing directions, together with the pointer and target locations, specifies a unique cubic arc. Such an arc may assume one of two qualitatively different shapes, namely a ‘‘C-arc’’ (constant sign of curvature) or an ‘‘S-arc’’ (containing a point of inflection between the endpoints). We show that human observers most often produce S-curves. This is of fundamental importance, since—in case one interprets the curve as an empirically determined ‘‘pregeodesic’’ (‘‘shortest connection’’, or ‘‘straight’’ connection in visual space)—it would imply that ‘‘visual space’’ in the strict geometrical sense is a non-entity. The experiments were performed in the outside environment, under normal daylight conditions, for distances ranging from one to over thirty meters. The implications of these data are discussed and possible ways to extend the restricted notion of ‘‘visual space’’ (e.g., as advocated by Luneburg) such as to allow one to account for the present results are suggested. Such extensions of the visual space concept include the local adjustment of geometrical structure in regions adjacent to the fixation direction.

A series of experiments was carried out to examine the effect of curvature on haptic judgments of extent in sighted and blind individuals. Experiment 1 showed that diameters connecting the endpoints of semicircular lines were underestimated with respect to straight lines, but failed to show an effect of visual experience on length judgments. In experiment 2 we tested arc lengths. The effects of curvature on perceived path length were weaker, but were still present in this experiment. Visual experience had no effect on path length judgments. Another experiment was performed to examine the effect of repeated tracing (1, 5, 9, or unlimited number of traces) on judgments of the lengths of straight lines and diameters of semicircles. Judgments of extent were more accurate when subjects engaged in larger numbers of traces. There was no effect of number of traces on curve-height judgments, suggesting that subjects were not using height estimates to judge diameters of semicircles. In a further experiment we tested the effect of number of traces on curves that varied in height. Restricting subjects to a single trace magnified the effect of path length on judgments of the distance between the endpoints of curves. Additional experiments showed that curvature effects on diameter judgments were not eliminated when stimuli were in the frontal plane or when the curves were explored with the use of two hands. Arm support had no effect on judged length in experiment 7. A final experiment showed a robust horizontal – vertical illusion in haptic perception of convex curves, with overestimation of the heights of the curves compared with their widths. The practical and theoretical implications of the results are discussed.

We propose a novel way of investigating the universal properties of spin systems by coupling them to an ensemble of causal dynamically triangulated lattices, instead of studying them on a fixed regular or random lattice. Somewhat surprisingly, graph-counting methods to extract high- or low-temperature series expansions can be adapted to this case. For the two-dimensional Ising model, we present evidence that this ameliorates the singularity structure of thermodynamic functions in the complex plane, and improves the convergence of the power series., Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures; final, slightly amended version, to appear in Physica A

In this study, we are interested in the following two questions: (1) how does perceived roughness correlate with physical roughness, and (2) how do visually and haptically perceived roughness compare? We used 96 samples of everyday materials, such as wood, paper, glass, sandpaper, ceramics, foams, textiles, etc. The samples were characterized by various different physical roughness measures, all determined from accurately measured roughness profiles. These measures consisted of spectral densities measured at different spatial scales and industrial roughness standards (Ra, Rq and Rz). In separate haptic and visual conditions, 12 nai¨ve subjects were instructed to order the 96 samples according to perceived roughness. The rank orders of both conditions were correlated with the various physical roughness measures. With most physical roughness measures, haptic and visual correspondence with the physical ordering was about equal. With others, haptic correspondence was slightly better. It turned out that different subjects ordered the samples using different criteria; for some subjects the correlation was better with roughness measures that were based on higher spatial frequencies, while others seemed to be paying more attention to the lower spatial frequencies. Also, physical roughness was not found to be the same as perceived roughness.

In this research, we set out to investigate haptically perceived space. Large deviations with respect to physical space have already been shown to exist. Here, research on haptic space is continued by investigating straight lines constructed by touch. In four experiments, subjects were asked to produce straight lines between two reference markers that were in the horizontal plane at a fixed distance from each other. Each experiment corresponded to a different task: two different interpolation tasks, an intersection task, and a pointing task. Straight lines had an orientation that was approximately frontoparallel. Subjects used both hands; manipulation was unrestricted. Although we found considerable differences between observers, the overall pattern of results showed that haptically straight lines were generally curved away from the observer. However, in one of the interpolation tasks they corresponded to physically straight lines. In addition, the pointing task generally produced larger deviations than the other three tasks. Taken together, the results show that there is no unique definition of the straight line, a conclusion that questions the viability of the concept of haptic space.

Human observers are sensitive to the ‘(physical) light field’ in the sense that they have expectations of how a given object would appear if it were introduced in the scene in front of them at some arbitrary location. Thus the ‘visual light field’ is defined even in the ‘empty space’ between objects. In that sense the light field is akin to visual space considered as a ‘container’. The visual light field at any given point can be measured in psychophysical experiments through the introduction of a suitable ‘gauge object’ at that position and letting the observer adjust the appearance of that gauge object (eg through suitable computer rendering) so as to produce a ‘visual fit’ into the scene. The parameters of the rendering will then be considered as the measurement result. We introduced white spheres as gauge objects at various locations in stereoscopically presented photographic scenes. We measured the direction (‘direction of the light’), diffuseness (‘quality of the light’ as used by photographers and interior decorators), and intensity of the light field. We used three very different scenes, with very different physical light fields. The images were geometrically and photometrically calibrated, so we were in a position to correlate the observations with the physical ‘ground truth’. We report that human observers are quite sensitive to various parameters of the physical light field and generally arrive at close to veridical settings, although a number of comparatively minor systematic deviations from veridicality can be noted. We conclude that the visual light field is an entity whose existence is at least as well defined as that of visual space, despite the fact that the visual light field hardly appears as prominently in vision science as it does in the visual arts.

We show that the Hamiltonian of four-dimensional Lorentzian gravity, defined on a space of real, SU(2)-valued connections, in spite of its non-polynomiality possesses a natural quantum analogue in a lattice-discretized formulation of the theory. This opens the way for a systematic investigation of its spectrum. The unambiguous and well-defined scalar product is that of the SU(2)-gauge theory. We also comment on various aspects of the continuum theory., 11 pages, plain TeX, Feb 96

We review and systematize recent attempts to canonically quantize general relativity in 2+1 dimensions, defined on space-times $\R\times\Sigma^g$, where $\Sigma^g$ is a compact Riemann surface of genus $g$. The emphasis is on quantizations of the classical connection formulation, which use Wilson loops as their basic observables, but also results from the ADM formulation are summarized. We evaluate the progress and discuss the possible quantum (in)equivalence of the various approaches., Comment: 24 pages, TeX, Mar 95; contribution to the JMP special issue on "Quantum geometry and diffeomorphism invariant quantum field theory"

We present a simple coupled glacier-sediment model to simulate the evolution of a tidewater glacier. The model is based on a consideration of the total mass budget of a glacier, whereas ice mechanics are fully parameterized. The calving rate at the glacier terminus is assumed to be proportional to the water depth. We show that the formation of a morainic shoal has a profound influence on the response of a tidewater glacier to climatic forcing. For a slow periodic forcing of the equilibrium-line altitude, the model glacier advances steadily into the estuary, builds up a submarine terminal moraine, and then retreats rapidly when a critical point is hit. For a slowly increasing equilibrium-line altitude, at a rate as low as 1 m per 5 years, we find terminus retreat rates of up to 10 km in 50 years. Our model suggests that, although the response of tidewater glaciers to external forcing is strongly nonlinear, the onset of retreat is controlled by climate change.

We wanted to find out whether the presence of specular highlights on the otherwise matte objects would make a difference to the perceived surface relief. Six different, globally convex objects were displayed on a computer screen. The depicted objects were either matte or glossy and were illuminated from one of the two different directions. Shape-from-shading was evaluated with two different paradigms. In Experiment 1 observers were asked to set a number of local surface attitude probes such that the probes looked as if they were tangent to the objects' surfaces. In Experiment 2, observers were instructed to make traces of the contours of the depicted objects in the horizontal and vertical planes. Although the two tasks target different aspects of the perceived surface, they give essentially similar results here. In both tasks we found differences that were induced by changing the illumination direction. Surprisingly, no systematic difference was found between the results for matte and glossy objects. We must, therefore, conclude that there is no evidence from the current study that glossiness influences shape perception although to the observer matte and glossy objects look quite different.

This letter discusses the orientifold projection of the quantum corrections to type IIA strings compactified on rigid Calabi-Yau threefolds. It is shown that N=2 membrane instanton effects give a holomorphic contribution to the superpotential, while the perturbative corrections enter into the Kahler potential. At the level of the scalar potential the corrections to the Kahler potential give rise to a positive energy contribution similar to adding anti-D3-branes in the KKLT scenario. This provides a natural mechanism to lift an AdS vacuum to a meta-stable dS vacuum., 5 pages, no figures, minor changes, references added

Most research on visual space has been done under restricted viewing conditions and in reduced environments. In our experiments, observers performed an exocentric pointing task, a collinearity task, and a parallelity task in a entirely visible room. We varied the relative distances between the objects and the observer and the separation angle between the two objects. We were able to compare our data directly with data from experiments in an environment with less monocular depth information present. We expected that in a richer environment and under less restrictive viewing conditions, the settings would deviate less from the veridical settings. However, large systematic deviations from veridical settings were found for all three tasks. The structure of these deviations was task dependent, and the structure and the deviations themselves were comparable to those obtained under more restricted circumstances. Thus, the additional information was not used effectively by the observers.

In this paper, we report on an approach to estimate the contribution of Arctic glaciers to sea-level change. In our calculation we assume that a static approach is feasible. We only calculate changes in the surface balance from modelled sensitivities. These sensitivities, summarized in the seasonal sensitivity characteristic, can be used to calculate the change in the surface mass budget for given anomalies of monthly temperature and precipitation. We have based our calculations on a subdivision of all Arctic ice into 13 regions: four sectors of the Greenland ice sheet; the Canadian Arctic >74˚N; the Canadian Arctic 60˚N. As forcing for the calculations, we have used the output from five climate models, for the period 2000–2100. These models were forced by the same greenhouse-gas scenario (IPCC-B2). The calculated contributions to sea-level rise in the year 2100 vary from almost zero to about 6 cm. The differences among the models stem first of all from differences in the precipitation. The largest contribution to sea-level change comes from the Greenland ice sheet. The glaciers in Alaska also make a large contribution, not because of the area they cover, but because they are more sensitive than other glaciers in the Arctic. The climate models do not agree on regional patterns. The runoff from Svalbard glaciers, for instance, increases for two models and decreases for the three other models. We conclude that the uncertainty due to a simple representation of the glaciological processes is probably smaller than the uncertainty induced by the differences in the climate-change scenarios produced by the models.

We construct the most general non-extremal spherically symmetric instanton solution of a gravity-dilaton-axion system with $SL(2,R)$ symmetry, for arbitrary euclidean spacetime dimension $D\geq 3$. A subclass of these solutions describe completely regular wormhole geometries, whose size is determined by an invariant combination of the $SL(2,R)$ charges. Our results can be applied to four-dimensional effective actions of type II strings compactified on a Calabi-Yau manifold, and in particular to the universal hypermultiplet coupled to gravity. We show that these models contain regular wormhole solutions, supported by regular dilaton and RR scalar fields of the universal hypermultiplet., Comment: 10 pages, to appear in the proceedings of the RTN2004 workshop, Kolymbari, Crete, 5-10 September, Greece

This paper explores the potential of using satellite-derived albedos to estimate the surface mass balance of the Kangerlussuaq transect (K-transect; Greenland ice sheet). We first retrieved surface albedos from Advanced Very High Resolution Radar data by using, among other techniques, a new cloud detection algorithm based on the relation between brightness temperature and surface elevation. We then computed the ‘satellite-derived mass balance’ (bsat) from the mean albedo for the transect, by taking fixed values for atmospheric transmissivity and the longwave and turbulent fluxes. We found that bsat explains 7 1% of the variance in 13 years of stake mass-balance measurements (bm). Our method also provides good estimates of the magnitude of the interannual variability in bm. The performance of the method degrades considerably without correction for anisotropic reflection at the surface and recalibration of the satellite sensors with dry snow at the top of the ice sheet. Sensitivity tests indicate that the method’s performance is hardly sensitive to uncertainties in parameters. Therefore, we expect that the method could be successfully applied on other glaciers and parts of ice sheets and ice caps, especially where accumulation rates are relatively small. We show that the investigated method performs best just below the mean equilibrium-line altitude.

Precise airborne laser surveys were conducted during spring in 1996 and 2002 on 17 ice caps and glaciers in the Svalbard archipelago covering the islands of Spitsbergen and Nordaustlandet. We present the derived elevation changes. Lower-elevation glaciers in south Spitsbergen show the largest thinning rates of ∼ 0.5 m a-1, while some of the higher, more northerly ice caps appear to be close to balance. The pattern of elevation change is complex, however, due to several factors including glacier aspect, microclimatological influences and the high natural annual variability in local accumulation and ablation rates. Anomalous changes were observed on Fridtjovbreen, which started surging in 1996, at the start of the measurement period. On this glacier, thinning (of > 0.6 m a-1) was observed in the accumulation area, coincident with thickening at lower elevations. Asymmetric thinning was found on two ice caps on Nordaustlandet, with the largest values on the eastern side of Vestfonna but the western slopes of Vegafonna. The mean elevation change for all ice masses was -0.19 m a-1 w.e., which is 1.6 times the net mass-balance value determined for the last 30 years. Using mass-balance sensitivity estimates for Svalbard suggests that the implied increase in negative balance is linked to warmer air temperatures in the late 1990s. Multiple linear regression suggests that mass balance is most closely correlated with latitude, rather than mean altitude or longitude.

The influence of egocentric and allocentric reference frames on performance in haptic spatial tasks, was tested in three conditions. Blindfolded subjects had to make two bars haptically parallel, perpendicular or mirrored in the midsagittal plane. The hypothesis is that the contributions of egocentric and allocentric reference frames are combined, resulting in settings that lie in between the allo-representation and the ego-representation. This leads to different predictions for the outcome of different conditions. All findings were consistent with the hypothesis. In addition, for subjects with large deviations a reversal of the oblique effect was found once again, which provides extra support for the hypothesis.

A planar converter containing quantum dots as wavelength-shifting moieties on top of a solar cell was studied. The highly efficient quantum dots are to shift the wavelengths where the spectral response of the solar cell is low to wavelengths where the spectral response is high in order to improve the conversion efficiency of the solar cell. It was calculated that quantum dots with an emission at 603 nm increase the multicrystalline solar cell short-circuit current by nearly 10%. Simulation results for planar converters on hydrogenated amorphous silicon solar cells show no beneficial effects, due to the high spectral response at low wavelength.

We expand our previous analysis on fivebrane and membrane instanton solutions in the universal hypermultiplet, including near-extremal multi-centered solutions and mixed fivebrane-membrane charged instantons. The results are most conveniently described in terms of a double-tensor multiplet., Comment: Minor changes, clarification added. Contribution to the proceedings of the 36th International Symposium Ahrenshoop, August 2003

Most existing computational models of the visual perception of three-dimensional shape from texture are based on assumed constraints about how texture is distributed on visible surfaces. The research described in the present article was designed to investigate how violations of these assumptions influence human perception. Observers were presented with images of smoothly curved surfaces depicted with different types of texture, whose distribution of surface markings could be both anisotropic and inhomogeneous. Observers judged the pattern of ordinal depth on each object by marking local maxima and minima along designated scan lines. They also judged the apparent magnitudes of relative depth between designated probe points on the surface. The results revealed a high degree of accuracy and reliability in all conditions, except for a systematic underestimation of the overall magnitude of surface relief. These findings suggest that human perception of three-dimensional shape from texture is much more robust than would be reasonable to expect based on current computational models of this phenomenon.

A simple quasi-analytical model is used to study the sensitivity of the Antarctic ice sheet to climate change. The model is axisymmetrical and has a profile that only depends on the ice-sheet radius. The climatic conditions are represented by three parameters: the altitude of the runoff line, the accumulation rate above the runoff line, and the balance gradient below the runoff line. The ice sheet may extend into the sea. At the grounding line the ice velocity is assumed to be proportional to the water depth. For this set-up, an explicit algebraic expression for the total mass budget of the ice sheet can be derived. After calibration of the model with respect to the present-day ice sheet, equilibrium states are studied for a wide range of temperatures. The model predicts a maximum ice volume (+3.4%) for a temperature that is 2.5 K above the present value. For a temperature increase of 7 K, mass loss by runoff and calving are about the same. In this case the ice volume is about 82% of the current value. The ice-sheet model is used to correct the Cenozoic deep-sea temperature record (δ18O record from benthic foraminifera in ocean sediments) for Antarctic ice volume. The model is forced with the oxygen isotope record, which is then corrected for the calculated ice volume. Therefore, the resulting deep-sea temperature and Antarctic ice-volume curves are mutually consistent. It is concluded that for the last 35×106 years the δ18O record truly is a mixed temperature/ice-volume record, in which the contributions from these parameters have the same order of magnitude.

Synthetic glacier length records are generated for the Holocene epoch using a process-based glacier model coupled to the intermediate-complexity climate model ECBilt. The glacier model consists of a mass-balance component and an ice-flow component. The climate model is forced by the insolation change due to variations in the Earth's orbital parameters. We consider three glaciers, ranging from maritime to continental. At Nigardsbreen (southern Norway), the simulated long-term trend in the annual mass-balance is primarily determined by summer temperature, with a smaller contribution from winter precipitation. In the early Holocene, summers were warmer and winters wetter than today in the ECBilt simulation. Both signals seems consistent with proxy data. The simulated glacier length shows a phase of rapid expansion during the mid-Holocene, followed by more gradual growth. At Rhonegletscher (the Swiss Alps), ECBilt simulates warmer and wetter summers in the early Holocene. The temperature signal seemns realistic, but proxy data and earlier modelling results are not conclusive with respect to the precipitation signal. The implied glacier length shows a maximum extent at 3-5 kyr BP, which seems unlikely. This suggests that the simulated precipitation response is not realistic. The simulated early-Holocene climate at Abramov glacier (Kirghizia) is characterized by high summer precipitation, associated with a northward extension of the Asian monsoon. The precipitation signal reaches its maximum around 6 kyr BP, which is consistent with the timing of the maximum in lake-level data. The simulated glacier length shows a pronounced postglacial maximum at the time of maximum monsoon intensity. There is considerable centennial-timescale variability in the simulated glacier length records. These length variations are generated by internal climatic variability. They are typically asynchronous among the three different glaciers. ECBilt has reasonable skill in simulating the relative importance of temperature and precipitation as well as the seasonality of the forcing, although the overall level of variability is underestimated. Length variations are shown to behave as a lagged moving-average process, with a glacier-specific memory.

We present a Seasonal Sensitivity Characteristic (SSC) of Vatnajökull (Iceland), which consists of the sensitivity of the mean specific mass balance to monthly perturbations in temperature and precipitation. The climate in Iceland is predominantly maritime (high precipitation) although often the polar air mass influences the area. This results in temperature sensitivities that are high in summer and nearly zero during the winter months. In contrast, precipitation sensitivities are high in winter and low in summer. We use the SSC of Vatnajökull as a reduced mass balance model, with which we reconstruct the mass balance of Vatnajökull since 1825. The reduced model shows that changes in temperature and precipitation like the ones observed both have a significant impact upon the mass balance. The reconstructed mass balance records for two Icelandic glaciers correlate very well with mass balance records that are extracted from length records with a linear inverse model. This places confidence in both the reduced (forward) mass balance model and in the inverse model, although the forward method produces larger mass balance variations than the inverse method. For the south of Vatnajökull we find that after 1900, the length record is well explained by temperature variations alone, while another Icelandic glacier (Sólheimajökull) was also influenced by precipitation variations.

This investigation uses Landsat images from 12 days in 1999 and 2000 to study the spatial and temporal variation in surface albedo of a glacier with a rugged topography: Morteratschgletscher, Switzerland. Our retrieval method considers all processes that substantially influence the relationship between the satellite signal and the surface albedo. The correction for the anisotropy of the reflected radiation field of ice and snow ranges up to 0.10, depending on wavelength band, solar zenith angle and surface type. We analyzed the uncertainties in the retrieval method and mainly expect errors in satellite-derived albedos for areas with large variation in topography and high albedos. The latter is due to application of bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) parameterizations for the anisotropic correction to albedos outside the parameterizations’ validity. On average, satellite-derived albedos exceed the measured surface albedo by 0.03. The glacier tongue is characterized by bands of low and high albedo, relating to ice with higher and lower concentrations of debris. The ice albedo shows no dependence on altitude, except at 2000–2200 m a.s.l. It increases during summer, which is likely associated with rainfall, as concluded from a comparison between summer rainfall and measured albedos.

We describe and analyze a complete 1-yr data set from an automatic weather station (AWS) located on the snout of the Morteratschgletscher, Switzerland. The AWS stands freely on the glacier surface and measures pressure, windspeed, wind direction, air temperature and humidity, incoming and reflected solar radiation, incoming and outgoing longwave radiation, snow temperature, and change in surface height (giving melt rates and snow accumulation). The wind is downglacier most of the time. As expected for a flow of katabatic origin, for air temperatures above the melting point we find a correlation between windspeed and temperature. We evaluate all significant components of the surface energy flux. For a (constant) turbulent exchange coefficient of 0.00153 (reference height 3.5 m) we obtain a perfect match between calculated, and measured ice melt. The sensible heat flux is positive (towards the glacier surface) all the time with the largest values on fine summer days (daily mean values are typically 100 W M-2 on the warmest days). The latent heat flux is small and negative in winter. In summer it is mainly positive (condensation), but negative values also occur. Altogether about 75% of the melt energy is supplied by radiation (shortwave and longwave), and 25% by the turbulent fluxes.

the sea ice extent is studied with a regional atmospheric climate model (RACMO) using a horizontal grid spacing of 55 km. The model is driven at its lateral boundaries by the reanalyses from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. Sea ice extent and sea surface temperature are prescribed from observations. A control integration is performed for the 5-yr period 1980–84. In a 5-yr sensitivity run, the model is forced by a 2-K increase in temperature at the sea surface and at the lateral boundaries of the model domain, and a reduction in the sea ice extent. The relative humidity at the lateral boundaries is kept constant. The calculated surface mass balance of the grounded Antarctic ice is found to increase by 30% due to the 2- K warming and the retreat of the sea ice. This value is two to three times as large as previous estimates, which were based on simplified atmospheric models and on statistical relations between the surface temperature and the surface mass balance. Additional sensitivity runs show that applying the forcing throughout the atmosphere in the lateral boundary zone has a more significant effect than applying the forcing at the sea surface, especially for the interior of the ice sheet. If only an increase in the sea surface temperature or a retreat of the sea ice is prescribed, the increase in temperature and specific humidity is restricted to the lowest 2 km of the atmosphere above the ocean. Sensitivity runs with forcings in the range of 25 to 110 K indicate that the commonly used assumption stating that the surface mass balance responds in proportion to the change in continental saturation specific humidity at the inversion height is an oversimplification.

In previous research, we have shown that detection thresholds for Gaussian shapes increase with a power of 1.3 of spatial width. In the present three experiments, we generalized this finding to more complex shapes and to discrimination tasks. In Experiment 1, we found that the slope of the psychometric function for detection (i.e., distinguishing curved from flat surfaces) was independent of surface shape. In Experiment 3, we found the same result for discrimination of two different curved shapes. In Experiment 2, we found that detection and discrimination functions had the same dependence on spatial width, except that discrimination thresholds were two to four times larger. Possible neural mechanisms underlying these results are discussed.

There is no doubt that orography plays a crucial role in the initiation of ice sheets. Mass balance observations on glaciers in high-mountain and polar climates show that the specific balance varies first of all with altitude. The height–mass balance feedback (HMB-feedback) is the most effective process to turn local ice caps into big ice sheets. Here, a study is presented on the processes that determine the strength of the HMB-feedback. This is done by carrying out a set of integrations with a numerical ice-sheet model for a bounded domain and a sinusoidally varying bed shape. Results are analysed for different wavenumbers and amplitudes. It turns out that the relative importance of the geometric effect (higher mountains allow earlier glacierisation) and the ice-mechanical effect (dependence of ice flow on the bed slope) varies significantly with wavenumber and amplitude. With regard to full glaciation of the domain, this implies that for a given wavenumber there is a preferred amplitude (that is, the drop in the equilibrium-line altitude needed to initiate full glaciation has a minimum).

This article presents albedo measurements of snow and glacier ice at Vatnajökull (Iceland) and the Kangerlussuaq transect (Greenland). Radiative fluxes were measured in the broadband and in four narrowbands, namely, Thematic Mapper (TM) Bands 2 and 4, and Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) Bands 1 and 2. The incoming fluxes were measured near the ground and the outgoing fluxes from a helicopter. Extracts of the data collected over snow, ice, supraglacial moraines, supraglacial lakes, and tundra are discussed. Using the data sets from Iceland and Greenland, and data sets with entirely ground-based albedo measurements from the Morteratschgletscher (Switzerland) and Scharffenbergbotnen (Antarctica), new equations for narrowband-to-broadband (NTB) conversion were developed. They have a residual standard deviation of 0.011 for TM and 0.008 for AVHRR and can be applied without having to classify the surface. The helicopter data are also used to develop criteria for distinguishing different types of surfaces, which are needed for the application of Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Functions (BRDFs). Snow can be distinguished from ice by defining a threshold for a single narrowband albedo. The ratio of the albedos in TM4 and TM2, and to a lesser extent, the ratio of the albedos in AVHRR2 and AVHRR1, may serve as a proxy for the surface characteristics of glacier ice in terms of concentrations of water, debris, and dust.

Line gratings were used to investigate the tactual discrimination thresholds for line frequency. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to discriminate between two gratings, each with a different line frequency. We used four standard frequencies in the eightfold range from 0.5 to 4 lines/cm. Thresholds were found to be constant at about 10.6%. In this experiment, we also measured hand speed and contact force. Hand speed was roughly in the range between 0.12 and 0.44 m/sec; contact force ranged from 0.62 to 2.76 N. In Experiment 2, we determined discrimination thresholds for line frequency transitions within a single grating. We used two frequencies and three transition lengths. The transition length had no effect on the threshold. In a third experiment, line frequency was modulated periodically. Varying the standard frequency and the size of the modulation period was found to have no effect on the discrimination thresholds. We conclude three things. First, Weber fractions for line frequency discrimination decrease as a function of line frequency within the experimental range. Second, discrimination thresholds are not altered by the length of the transition between two adjacent gratings with different line frequencies. And finally, the size of a modulation period in periodically modulated gratings is of no influence on the modulation detection threshold.

Optical space differs from physical space. The structure of optical space has generally been assumed to be metrical. In contradistinction, we do not assume any metric, but only incidence relations (i.e., we assume that optical points and lines exist and that two points define a unique line, and two lines a unique point). (The incidence relations have generally been assumed implicitly by earlier authors.) The condition that makes such an incidence structure into a projective space is the Pappus condition. The Pappus condition describes a projective relation between three collinear triples of points, whose validity can--in principle--be verified empirically. The Pappus condition is a necessary condition for optical space to be a homogeneous space (Lobatchevski hyperbolic or Riemann elliptic space) as assumed by, for example, the well-known Luneburg theory. We test the Pappus condition in a full-cue situation (open field, broad daylight, distances of up to 20 m, visual fields of up to 160 degrees diameter). We found that although optical space is definitely not veridical, even under full-cue conditions, violations of the Pappus condition are the exception. Apparently optical space is not totally different from a homogeneous space, although it is in no way close to Euclidean.

We determined the curvature of apparent frontoparallels in a natural scene (a large lawn in broad daylight). Data on frontoparallels in these conditions are very sparse and reveal idiosyncratic curvatures of frontoparallels and irregular variation with distance. We used a method of bisection of linear segments indicated through pairs of stakes at angular separations (from the vantage point) of up to 120 deg. Distances of 2 m and 10 m (in the forward direction) were used. The bisection was carried out by the observer through maneuvering a radio-controlled vehicle carrying a third stake. Four observers participated in the experiment; they had no problems with the task and yielded mutually consistent results. We found that the frontoparallels are significantly curved and are concave towards the observer. Surprisingly, the sign of the curvature is opposite to that found when the frontoparallels are defined through an exocentric pointing task. Available theory (Luneburg's) does not predict this, but the theory is hardly applicable to the case of vision in natural scenes. This interesting discrepancy has not been reported before.

We studied active haptic discrimination of the geometrical features of an object. The geometrical parameters under investigation were the amplitude and width of a gaussian-shaped surface. Haptic discrimination thresholds were measured with regard to three values of these geometrical parameters. We found that humans discriminate up to about 300 shapes when both amplitude and width are extrapolated to the range between 1 μm and 1 m. Over this range, which covers the span of the arms, the number of discriminations is small compared to the number across the full range of chromaticities in vision. Roughly speaking, humans are far better at discriminating sharp (extensive amplitude and little width) gaussian surfaces from smooth (small amplitude and extensive width) ones than they are at discriminating small (small amplitude and width) surfaces from large (extensive amplitude and width) ones. Our main conclusion is that discrimination in the geometrical domain is poorest when the proportion between amplitude and width is roughly the same for both shapes. Our results are in close agreement with results of earlier experiments on detection thresholds. This indicates that similar, or even the same, neural mechanisms were used for detection and discrimination of the geometrical parameters under investigation.

Marine sediment records from the Oligocene and Miocene reveal clear 400,000-year climate cycles related to variations in orbital eccentricity. These cycles are also observed in the Plio-Pleistocene records of the global carbon cycle. However, they are absent from the Late Pleistocene ice-age record over the past 1.5 million years. Here we present a simulation of global ice volume over the past 5 million years with a coupled system of four three-dimensional ice-sheet models. Our simulation shows that the 400,000-year long eccentricity cycles of Antarctica vary coherently with δ 13 C data during the Pleistocene, suggesting that they drove the long-term carbon cycle changes throughout the past 35 million years. The 400,000-year response of Antarctica was eventually suppressed by the dominant 100,000-year glacial cycles of the large ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere.© 2014 Macmillan Publishers Limited.

I present power spectra of penumbral and granular intensity variations from a speckle-restored G -band image sequence of sunspot NOAA 9407 taken on April 1, 2001 with the Dutch Open Telescope on La Palma. I compare spatial power spectra of the sunspot penumbra with spatial power spectra from granulation with and without filigree. Relative to the granular power distribution, the penumbral power spectrum is enhanced over a wide range in spatial frequency peaking at 0$\farcs$35. For smaller scales, the penumbral power distribution closely resembles that of the granular intensity variations. In contrast, the power spectrum of granulation with filigree exhibits increased power down to the resolution limit of 0$\farcs$22, indicating the presence of unresolved magnetic elements.

We describe a charge-stabilized colloidal suspension within a Poisson-Boltzmann cell model and calculate the free energy as well as the compressibility as a function of colloidal density. The same quantities are also calculated from the linearized Poisson-Boltzmann equation. Comparing nonlinear with linear theory, we test the quality of different linearization schemes. For concentrated suspensions, linearization about the Donnan potential is shown to be preferable to standard Debye-H¨uckel linearization. We also show that the volume term theory proposed earlier follows from a linearization about the Donnan potential. Using this linearization scheme, we find a gas-liquid phase coexistence in linear, but not in nonlinear theory. This result may imply that predictions of a spinodal instability in highly de-ionized colloidal suspensions are spurious.

Starting from the space of Lorentzian metrics, we examine the full gravitational path integral in 3 and 4 space-time dimensions. Inspired by recent results obtained in a regularized, dynamically triangulated formulation of Lorentzian gravity, we gauge-fix to proper-time coordinates and perform a non-perturbative ``Wick rotation'' on the physical configuration space. Under certain assumptions about the behaviour of the partition function under renormalization, we find that the divergence due to the conformal modes of the metric is cancelled non-perturbatively by a Faddeev-Popov determinant contributing to the effective measure. We illustrate some of our claims by a 3d perturbative calculation., 25 pages, 1 postscript figure; version to appear in Nucl. Phys. B with an added reference and a comment

We study topological gauge theories with N=(2,0) supersymmetry based on stable bundles on general Kahler 3-folds. In order to have a theory that is well defined and well behaved, we consider a model based on an extension of the usual holomorphic bundle by including a holomorphic 3-form. The correlation functions of the model describe complex 3-dimensional generalizations of Donaldson-Witten type invariants. We show that the path integral can be written as a sum of contributions from stable bundles and a complex 3-dimensional version of Seiberg-Witten monopoles. We study certain deformations of the theory, which allow us to consider the situation of reducible connections. We shortly discuss situations of reduced holonomy. Afterdimensional reduction to a Kahler 2-fold, the theory reduces to Vafa-Wittentheory. On a Calabi-Yau 3-fold, the supersymmetry is enhanced to N=(2,2). This model may be used to describe classical limits of certain compactifications of(matrix) string theory., Comment: 32 pages, LaTeX

We develop a systematic method for renormalizing the AdS/CFT prescription for computing correlation functions. This involves regularizing the bulk on-shell supergravity action in a covariant way, computing all divergences, adding counterterms to cancel them and then removing the regulator. We explicitly work out the case of pure gravity up to six dimensions and of gravity coupled to scalars. The method can also be viewed as providing a holographic reconstruction of the bulk spacetime metric and of bulk fields on this spacetime, out of conformal field theory data. Knowing which sources are turned on is sufficient in order to obtain an asymptotic expansion of the bulk metric and of bulk fields near the boundary to high enough order so that all infrared divergences of the on-shell action are obtained. To continue the holographic reconstruction of the bulk fields one needs new CFT data: the expectation value of the dual operator. In particular, in order to obtain the bulk metric one needs to know the expectation value of stress-energy tensor of the boundary theory. We provide completely explicit formulae for the holographic stress-energy tensors up to six dimensions. We show that both the gravitational and matter conformal anomalies of the boundary theory are correctly reproduced. We also obtain the conformal transformation properties of the boundary stress-energy tensors., Comment: 27 pages,v2: typos corrected, two references added, to appear in CMP