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No description available.

This thesis describes the construction of a sea surface temperature (SST) dataset from Along-Track Scanning Radiometer (ATSR) observations suitable for climate applications. The algorithms presented here are now used at ESA for reprocessing of historical ATSR data and will be the basis of the retrieval used on the forthcoming SLSTR instrument on ESA’s Sentinel-3 satellite. In order to ensure independence of ATSR SSTs from in situ measurements, the retrieval uses physics-based methods through the use of radiative transfer (RT) simulations. The RT simulations are based on the Reference ForwardModel line-by-line model linked to a new sea surface emissivity model which accounts for surface temperature, wind speed, viewing angle and salinity, and to a discrete ordinates scattering (DISORT) model to account for aerosol. An atmospheric profile dataset, based on full resolution ERA-40 numerical weather prediction (NWP) data, is defined and used as input to the RTmodel. Five atmospheric trace gases (N2O, CH4, HNO3, and CFC-11 and CFC-12) are identified as having temporal and geographical variability which have a significant (∼0.1K) impact on RT simulations. Several additional trace gases neglected in previous studies are included using fixed profiles contributing ∼0.04K to RT simulations. Comparison against ATSR-2 and AATSR observations indicates that RT model biases are reduced from 0.2–0.5K for previous studies to ∼0.1K. A new coefficient-based SST retrieval scheme is developed from the RT simulations. Coefficients are banded by total column water vapour (TCWV) from NWP analyses reducing simulated regional biases to <0.1K compared to ∼0.2K for global coefficients. An improved treatment of the instrument viewing geometry decreases simulated view-angle related biases from ∼0.1K to <0.005K for the day-time dual-view retrieval. To eliminate inter-algorithmbiases due to remaining RT model biases and uncertainty in the characterisation of the ATSR instruments the offset coefficient for each TCWV band is adjusted to match the results from a reference channel combination. As infrared radiometers are sensitive to the skin SST while in situ buoys measure SST at some depth below the surface an adjustment for the skin effect and diurnal stratification is included. The samemodel allows adjustment for the differing time of observation between ATSR-2 and AATSR to prevent the diurnal cycle being aliased into the final record. The RT simulations are harmonised between sensors using a double-difference technique eliminating discontinuities in the final SST record. Comparison against in situ drifting and tropical moored buoys shows the new SST dataset is of high quality. Systematic differences between ATSR retrieved SST and in situ drifters show zonal, regional, TCWV, and wind speed biases are less than 0.1K except for themost extreme cases (TCWV <5 kgm−2). The precision of ATSR retrieved SSTs is ∼0.15 K, lower than the precision ofmeasurement of the global ensemble of in situ drifting buoys. From 1995 onwards the ARC SSTs are stable with instability of less than 5mK year−1 to 95% confidence (demonstrated for tropical regions).

The late Neogene represents an exceptionally dynamic period in Earth history during which the Northern Hemisphere has transitioned from a warmer, more equable climate to a cooler, more transient state characterized by waxing and waning continental ice sheets. While geographical distal, the tropical ocean has played a significant role in shaping the evolution of the climate system, as the opening and closing of low latitude (LL) ocean gateways and reorganization of oceanic and atmospheric circulation structure have helped shape the climate system into its present form. This study provides a reconstruction of sea surface temperature (SST), ocean circulation, and thermal structure of the LL eastern Pacific and North Atlantic based upon the compilation of proxy data derived from planktic foraminifer assemblages and geochemical techniques. This research begins with a paleoceanographic reconstruction of the eastern tropical Pacific (ETP) and subtropical Northwest Atlantic (NWA) during the early stages of uplift of the Central American Isthmus and associated shoaling of the Central American Seaway (CAS). In the subtropical NWA (DSDP 103 and ODP 1006), the 5.2 to 5.1 Ma interval is characterized by an increase in SST and sea surface salinity, indicating a strengthening of the Florida Current (FC) and Gulf Stream (GS). Sea surface temperature in the ETP Warm Pool (DSDP Site 84) remained relatively stable between 6.9 and 5.1 Ma, during which El Niño-like conditions persisted. A slight cooling is observed after this interval (with synchronous warming in the NWA), followed by the onset of major cooling at ~3.2 Ma, both of which are preceded by a shallowing of the thermocline. Stepwise cooling is attributed to enhanced Atlantic meridional overturn circulation (AMOC), which caused a shoaling of the main tropical thermocline, thereby strengthening the Walker Circulation and weakening the Pacific North Equatorial Counter Current. During the mid-Piacenzian warm period (MPWP; ~3.3-3.0 Ma), SST in the Panama Basin was ~0.8°C cooler than today, while the subtropical NWA was only ~1.1°C warmer. This corroborates evidence for reduced meridional SST gradients during the mid-Pliocene as well as the hypothesis that more vigorous ocean circulation--particularly in the NWA--was critical during this period. The timing of SST changes in the ETP and NWA (~5.1 Ma) suggest that the termination of permanent El Niño and enhanced AMOC did not contribute significantly to the onset of major Northern Hemisphere glaciation (NHG), as both of these events occur well before the beginning of the glacial cycles. However, these processes may have contributed to the development of the small ice sheets of the late Miocene and early Pliocene, but were most likely only preconditioning factors for the onset of major NHG. In contrast, changes in SST and relative thermocline position suggest that high latitude (HL) processes and global cooling may have influenced thermal structure in the ETP. The SST estimates provided indicate that even in its early stages, the shoaling of the CAS had significant implications for low-latitude ocean circulation and thermal structure, as well as for some of the most significant global climate events of the late Neogene, including the MPWP. During the MPWP, mean global surface temperatures were similar to those predicted for the next century (2-3˚ C warmer) while atmospheric CO2 concentrations, paleogeography, and paleobiology were similar to today. As such, the MPWP has been studied in detail as a potential (albeit imperfect) analog for future climate change and has provided a natural and unique test-bed for the integration of proxy data and general circulation models. Central to this research effort is the Pliocene Research, Interpretation, and Synoptic Mapping (PRISM) project, an iterative paleoenvironmental reconstruction of the MP focused on increasing our understanding of warm-period climate forcings, dynamics, and feedbacks by providing three-dimensional data sets for general circulation models. A mainstay of the PRISM project has been the development of a global sea surface temperature (SST) data set based primarily upon quantitative analyses of planktic foraminifer assemblages, supplemented with geochemical SST estimates wherever possible. In order to improve spatial coverage of the PRISM faunal and SST data sets in the LL North Atlantic, this study provides a description of the MP planktic foraminifer assemblage and multiproxy SST estimates from five Ocean Drilling Program sites (951, 958, 1006, 1062, and 1063) in the North Atlantic subtropical gyre (NASG), a region critical to Atlantic Ocean circulation and tropical heat advection. Assemblages from each core provide evidence for a temperature- and circulation-driven 5-10° northward displacement of MP faunal provinces, as well as regional shifts in planktic foraminifer populations linked to species ecology and interactions. General biogeographic trends also indicate that, relative to modern conditions, gyre circulation was stronger (particularly the Gulf Stream, North Atlantic Current, and North Equatorial Current) and meridionally broader. Overall, SST estimates suggest that surface waters in this region were not significantly warmer (1-2˚ C) than today and that mean annual SSTs along LL western boundary currents were indistinguishable from modern. Multiproxy SST data also provide evidence for enhanced northward transport of warm, salty, oligotrophic surface waters via a vigorous western boundary current system with warmer (cooler) cold-season (warm-season) temperatures. Collectively, this reconstruction of SST and ocean circulation provides support for a model of an enhanced Atlantic meridional overturn circulation (AMOC) system, with particularly vigorous LL western boundary currents and thus, more efficient northward heat transport. These trends therefore suggest that more vigorous thermohaline circulation, in conjunction with elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations, played a significant role in shaping the global surface temperature distribution during the MPWP. A strengthening of the AMOC under warmer-than-modern conditions has significant implications for future climate change. The current generation of climate models suggests that HL warming and associated ice-sheet melting will induce a freshening of the North Atlantic and thus, to a reduction in the strength of the AMOC, thereby buffering surface temperature increases in the Northern Hemisphere. However, if after this transient period of climate system adjustment, Earth returns to a more Pliocene-like climate state the AMOC system may strengthen, thereby exacerbating the HL warmth caused by elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Thus, through the reconstruction of warm-period SST and ocean circulation, this research provides insight into the potential operation of the LL North Atlantic and its associated impact on broad-scale Northern Hemisphere climate.

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A comprehensive theory explaining the relationship between periodic variations in the Earths orbital parameters and the response of the climate system remains elusive. One of the key challenges is that of the Mid-Pleistocene Transition (MPT), during which the dominant mode of glacial/interglacial climatic variability shifted without any corresponding change in the mode of orbital forcing. Subtropical climate on orbital time-scales is sensitive to variability in both the low-latitude ocean/atmosphere circulation regime and the global carbon-cycle (through its effect on atmospheric greenhouse gas levels), both of which may have played a role in the shift in mode of global climate response to orbital forcing during the MPT. This thesis presents a series of multi-proxy (foraminiferal stable isotope and trace-metal) paleoceanographic reconstructions from the subtropical southwest Pacific, as seen in marine sediment core MD06-3018, from 2470m water depth and 23ºS in the New Caledonia Trough, southern Coral Sea. The core age-model, based upon magnetic stratigraphy and orbital tuning, yields a mean sedimentation rate at the site of 20mm/ka and a core-bottom age of 1600ka. The MD06-3018 reconstruction of New Caledonia Trough deep water chemistry, based on benthic 13C measurements, shows that the spatial chemistry gradient within the Southern Ocean between deep waters entering the Tasman Sea and the open Pacific was greater during glacial (relative to interglacial) stages over at least the past 1100ka. This gradient was, however, generally reduced on the >100kyr time-scale across the MPT, consistent with it being a period of reduced deep water ventilation in both hemispheres. The MD06-3018 Mg/Ca-derived reconstruction of subtropical southwest Pacific Sea Surface Temperature (SST) shows glacial/interglacial variability of 2-3ºC but no significant trends on the >100kyr time-scale over the duration of the record. An estimate of the uncertainty associated with the SST reconstruction demonstrates that no significant changes in reconstructed southern Coral Sea mean-annual SST can be identified between interglacial stages across the MPT. It is, therefore, unlikely that regional climatic change constituted the main cause for the observed middle Pleistocene expansion of coral reef systems. The >100kyr time-scale stability of southern Coral Sea SST means that the position of the southern boundary of the Pacific warm pool has also been stable over at least the past 1500ka. Comparison with other low-latitude Pacific reconstructions shows that the early Pleistocene warm pool was consequently more hemispherically asymmetric than its present configuration, with the latter being established by ~1000ka and implying significant changes in meridional atmospheric heat and moisture fluxes prior to the MPT. On orbital time-scales, the SST reconstruction shows a clear shift from dominant 40kyr to 100kyr modes of variability over the MPT, although significant 40kyr structure is also retained into the middle/late Pleistocene. In contrast, reconstructed hydrological cycle variability (based on coupled 18O-Mg/Ca measurements) shows only limited coherence with the obliquity cycle and a stronger relationship with the precession cycle. The decoupling of the reconstructed subtropical SST and hydrological cycle responses places constraints on the extent of orbitally paced fluctuations in the low-latitude ocean/atmosphere system. Instead, comparison of the MD06-3018 SST reconstruction with others from across the lowlatitude Pacific supports a dominant role for greenhouse gas forcing in low-latitude western Pacific glacial/interglacial SST variability across the Pleistocene. The subtropical multi-proxy climate reconstructions presented here show that the timing and sense of long-term (>100kyr time-scale) changes in the low-latitude ocean/atmosphere circulation regime are consistent with that system having been important in the expansion of northern hemisphere ice-volume during the early part of the MPT. However, the subtropical reconstructions also suggest that neither the low-latitude ocean/atmosphere circulation system nor the global carbon-cycle underwent a fundamental change in mode of response to orbital forcing during the transition. Instead, the origin of the 100kyr glacial/interglacial mode was most likely related to thresholds in the dynamics of the expanding northern hemisphere icesheets, leading in turn to the existence of significant inter-hemispheric asymmetry in the orbital time-scale climate response over the middle/late Pleistocene. Summary for Non-Specialists. Over the past five million years of its history, the Earths climate has undergone a series of regular, or nearly regular, fluctuations between warmer and colder states. These fluctuations take tens to hundreds of thousands of years to occur and are known as the ‘glacial/interglacial cycles’ on account of the associated changes in ice-sheet extent in the high-latitudes. The origin of these cycles is widely held to be the regular variations in form of the Earths orbit around the sun. In spite of decades of research, however, no complete ‘orbital theory of climate’ exists, mainly because the patterns of past climate variability, as reconstructed using ‘proxies’ for variables such as surface temperature, is much more complex than that of the orbital variations themselves. It follows that processes within the Earth system, especially those associated with large ice-sheets, the carbon-cycle and the ocean circulation system, act to substantially modify the climate response to the orbital variations. Over the past ten years, new observations from both ice-cores and low-latitude marine sediment cores have suggested that the dominant system(s) involved in setting the Earths response to the orbital variations may potentially be the carboncycle and/or the low-latitude ocean/atmosphere circulation regime rather than highlatitude ice-sheet dynamics, as was generally supposed previously. If this new view is correct, it has profound implications for the general sensitivity of the climate to the carbon-cycle on a range of time-scales - making its evaluation a scientific objective of considerable current importance. This thesis presents a series of reconstructions of aspects of climate and carbon-cycle variability for the subtropical southwest Pacific, as based on proxy measurements in a marine sediment core than spans the past 1,600,000 years at around 5000 year resolution. The key focus is on an interval called the ‘Mid- Pleistocene Transition’, during which time the mode of glacial/interglacial variability changed, indicating a fundamental change in one or more aspects of the response to the orbital forcing. The study site is well placed to investigate variability in both the carbon-cycle and low-latitude ocean circulation over the climatic transition as it lies between the Southern Ocean, a key source of carbon-cycle variability and the equatorial Pacific, where the modern El-Niño system arises. By characterizing variability in these systems, the potential role played by both systems in causing the change in mode of glacial/interglacial variability can be evaluated. The key findings of the thesis are that; firstly, changes in the long-term state of the low-latitude ocean circulation system may well have been important for the expansion of northern hemisphere ice-sheets during the early part of the Mid- Pleistocene Transition. Secondly, it provides further support for a close connection between variability in the carbon-cycle and low-latitude climate on orbital timescales but suggests that there is no clear evidence for either system undergoing a fundamental change in sensitivity to the orbital forcing during the transition.

Approved for public release, distribution is unlimited / An analysis of in-situ aircraft observations collected in the parent cloud of a waterspout is presented. Previous waterspout studies were confined mainly to photometric and model simulated data, no in-situ observations were made internal to the parent cloud. On 27 June 2002 the Cooperative Institute for Remotely Piloted Aircraft Studies (CIRPAS) UV-18A Twin Otter aircraft collected observations in a cloud that had developed in a cloud line, located approximately 15km south of Key West, and that formed a waterspout. This study attempts to analyze the waterspout formation process using these data and through a series of scale interactions, from the synoptic scale down to the individual cloud scale. Based upon the analyzed data a hypothetical formation process is developed. The background synoptic scale flow is shown to establish the necessary ambient shear as a key factor in the waterspout formation. The orientation of mesoscale convergent boundaries and thermodynamic processes, internal to the cloud, proved to be an essential factor in developing the vertical motion patterns necessary for formation of an organized circulation in the shear region and to provide the tipping and stretching of the resultant vortex necessary to account for the waterspout formation. This is consistent with conclusions derived from previous studies. / Captain, United States Air Force

Cassin’s auklet (Ptychoramphus aleuticus) reproductive success has been monitored on Southeast Farallon Island (SEFI) for the past 45 years. Their productivity has varied with oceanic conditions. The purpose of this study is to connect how oceanic conditions affect Cassin’s auklet foraging behaviors. The California Current System (CCS) can normally maintain high plankton productivity, and thus high seabird productivity, because of coastal upwelling. I hypothesized that lower upwelling and/or higher sea surface temperatures (SSTs) lead Cassin’s auklets to spend more time on intensive foraging behaviors such as flying and diving, and have less time to spend resting. I also hypothesized that they would dive more, dive deeper, and spend more time underwater in years of high SST and/or low upwelling. We deployed time depth recorders (TDRs) on 85 Cassin’s auklets on SEFI from 2008-2017 for a total of 268 foraging trips. We programmed the TDRs to record temperature and pressure every 5 seconds, and every 0.5 seconds when diving. I used the Pacific Fisheries Environmental Laboratory derived upwelling index (UI) from three months prior to the early chick-rearing season, and SST measured from SEFI during the days the TDRs were deployed. UI from three months prior and SST were not correlated. I found that in years with higher SSTs and in years with less upwelling, the Cassin’s auklets made deeper dives and stayed underwater longer. Neither higher SSTs nor lower UIs significantly affected the amount of time the auklets spent flying, diving, or resting. These results show that the physical conditions that drive the development of the California current food web influence they diving behavior of top predators.

Hydrologic and climate models predict variables through a simplification of the underlying complex natural processes. Model development involves minimising predictive uncertainty. Predictive uncertainty arises from three broad sources which are measurement error in observed responses, uncertainty of input variables and model structural error. This thesis introduces ways to improve predictive accuracy of hydroclimatic models by considering input and structural uncertainties. The specific methods developed to reduce the uncertainty because of erroneous inputs and model structural errors are outlined below. The uncertainty in hydrological model inputs, if ignored, introduces systematic biases in the parameters estimated. This thesis presents a method, known as simulation extrapolation (SIMEX), to ascertain the extent of parameter bias. SIMEX starts by generating a series of alternate inputs by artificially adding white noise in increasing multiples of the known input error variance. The resulting alternate parameter sets allow formulation of an empirical relationship between their values and the level of noise present. SIMEX is based on the theory that the trend in alternate parameters can be extrapolated back to the notional error free zone. The case study relates to erroneous sea surface temperature anomaly (SSTA) records used as input variables of a linear model to predict the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI). SIMEX achieves a reduction in residual errors from the SOI prediction. Besides, a hydrologic application of SIMEX is demonstrated by a synthetic simulation within a three-parameter conceptual rainfall runoff model. This thesis next advocates reductions of structural uncertainty of any single model by combining multiple alternative model responses. Current approaches for combining hydroclimatic forecasts are generally limited to using combination weights that remain static over time. This research develops a methodology for combining forecasts from multiple models in a dynamic setting as an improvement of over static weight combination. The model responses are mixed on a pair wise basis using mixing weights that vary in time reflecting the persistence of individual model skills. The concept is referred here as the pair wise dynamic weight combination. Two approaches for forecasting the dynamic weights are developed. The first of the two approaches uses a mixture of two basis distributions which are three category ordered logistic regression model and a generalised linear autoregressive model. The second approach uses a modified nearest neighbour approach to forecast the future weights. These alternatives are used to first combine a univariate response forecast, the NINO3.4 SSTA index. This is followed by a similar combination, but for the entire global gridded SSTA forecast field. Results from these applications show significant improvements being achieved due to the dynamic model combination approach. The last application demonstrating the dynamic combination logic, uses the dynamically combined multivariate SSTA forecast field as the basis of developing multi-site flow forecasts in the Namoi River catchment in eastern Australia. To further reduce structural uncertainty in the flow forecasts, three forecast models are formulated and the dynamic combination approach applied again. The study demonstrates that improved SSTA forecast (due to dynamic combination) in turn improves all three flow forecasts, while the dynamic combination of the three flow forecasts results in further improvements.