Mercury trends and cycling in northern Wisconsin related to atmospheric and hydrologic processes

2019 ◽  
Vol 76 (5) ◽  
pp. 831-846 ◽  
Author(s):  
C.J. Watras ◽  
D. Grande ◽  
A.W. Latzka ◽  
L.S. Tate

Atmospheric deposition is the principal source of mercury (Hg) to remote northern landscapes, but its fate depends on multiple factors and internal feedbacks. Here we document long-term trends and cycles of Hg in the air, precipitation, surface water, and fish of northern Wisconsin that span the past three decades, and we investigate relationships to atmospheric processes and other variables, especially the regional water cycle. Consistent with declining emission inventories, there was evidence of declining trends in these time series, but the time series for Hg in some lakes and most fish were dominated by a near-decadal oscillation that tracked the regional oscillation of water levels. Concentrations of important solutes (SO4, dissolved organic carbon) and the acid–base status of lake water also tracked water levels in ways that cannot be attributed to simple dilution or concentration. The explanatory mechanism is analogous to the “reservoir effect” wherein littoral sediments are periodically exposed and reflooded, altering the internal cycles of sulfur, carbon, and mercury. These climatically driven, near-decadal oscillations confound short or sparse time series and complicate relationships among Hg emissions, deposition, and bioaccumulation.

2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (33) ◽  
pp. 32
Author(s):  
Sabine Jenning ◽  
Hartmut Hein ◽  
Stephan Mai ◽  
Holger Schüttrumpf

The recent influence of climate change and land subsidence on the water levels and tidal characteristics in the German Bight is documented by regional tide gauge observations. However, in any long time series the chance arises that measurement conditions may change over time. Some of these changes occur instantaneously like the change of the sensor or corrections of the zero-point of the gauge. Other changes occur subtly, such as alterations of the regional morphology and therefore the mode of behavior at the measurement site. We present long-term changes of tidal characteristics in the waterways of the southern German Bight, by detecting abrupt breakpoints and resulting homogenized trends. In order to understand processes of the changes of the tidal characteristics significant trends in the time series for measured and calculated tidal parameters are analyzed.


Author(s):  
Ye Yuan ◽  
Stefan Härer ◽  
Tobias Ottenheym ◽  
Gourav Misra ◽  
Alissa Lüpke ◽  
...  

AbstractPhenology serves as a major indicator of ongoing climate change. Long-term phenological observations are critically important for tracking and communicating these changes. The phenological observation network across Germany is operated by the National Meteorological Service with a major contribution from volunteering activities. However, the number of observers has strongly decreased for the last decades, possibly resulting in increasing uncertainties when extracting reliable phenological information from map interpolation. We studied uncertainties in interpolated maps from decreasing phenological records, by comparing long-term trends based on grid-based interpolated and station-wise observed time series, as well as their correlations with temperature. Interpolated maps in spring were characterized by the largest spatial variabilities across Bavaria, Germany, with respective lowest interpolated uncertainties. Long-term phenological trends for both interpolations and observations exhibited mean advances of −0.2 to −0.3 days year−1 for spring and summer, while late autumn and winter showed a delay of around 0.1 days year−1. Throughout the year, temperature sensitivities were consistently stronger for interpolated time series than observations. Such a better representation of regional phenology by interpolation was equally supported by satellite-derived phenological indices. Nevertheless, simulation of observer numbers indicated that a decline to less than 40% leads to a strong decrease in interpolation accuracy. To better understand the risk of declining phenological observations and to motivate volunteer observers, a Shiny app is proposed to visualize spatial and temporal phenological patterns across Bavaria and their links to climate change–induced temperature changes.


2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (5) ◽  
pp. 803-814 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory J. McCabe ◽  
David M. Wolock ◽  
Melissa Valentin

Abstract Winter snowfall and accumulation is an important component of the surface water supply in the western United States. In these areas, increasing winter temperatures T associated with global warming can influence the amount of winter precipitation P that falls as snow S. In this study we examine long-term trends in the fraction of winter P that falls as S (Sfrac) for 175 hydrologic units (HUs) in snow-covered areas of the western United States for the period 1951–2014. Because S is a substantial contributor to runoff R across most of the western United States, we also examine long-term trends in water-year runoff efficiency [computed as water-year R/water-year P (Reff)] for the same 175 HUs. In that most S records are short in length, we use model-simulated S and R from a monthly water balance model. Results for Sfrac indicate long-term negative trends for most of the 175 HUs, with negative trends for 139 (~79%) of the HUs being statistically significant at a 95% confidence level (p = 0.05). Additionally, results indicate that the long-term negative trends in Sfrac have been largely driven by increases in T. In contrast, time series of Reff for the 175 HUs indicate a mix of positive and negative long-term trends, with few trends being statistically significant (at p = 0.05). Although there has been a notable shift in the timing of R to earlier in the year for most HUs, there have not been substantial decreases in water-year R for the 175 HUs.


2005 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 343-372 ◽  
Author(s):  
Björn Trolldal

The research question addressed in the present study, with ARIMA time-series analyses, was the extent to which changes in economic and physical availability had an effect on sales of alcohol in four Canadian provinces during the second half of the 20th century. The annual sales, by type of beverage (spirits, wine and beer) as well as total sales, measured in pure alcohol per inhabitant age 15 and above in each province, were used as dependent variables in the analyses. The inhabitants' real disposable income, the real price of alcohol, and the number of on- and off-premise outlets per 100,000 inhabitants were used as independent variables. All the time-series were differenced to remove long-term trends. The main study period was 1951–2000. In some of the analyses the study periods were shorter, primarily due to lack of data. Changes in economic availability in general, and in price in particular, had larger effects on sales than physical availability. Among the beverages analyzed in the study, the demand for spirits was most sensitive to changes in availability. Economic availability had a greater effect on sales than the number of outlets. However, one might question to what extent the number of outlets really is a feasible measure of transaction costs associated with purchases of alcohol.


Water ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 538 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gaohua Ji ◽  
Karl Havens

We recently documented that during times of extreme shallow depth, there are severe effects on the water quality of one of the largest shallow lakes in the southeastern USA—Lake Apopka. During those times, total phosphorus (TP), total nitrogen (TN), chlorophyll-a (Chl-a) and toxic cyanobacteria blooms increase, and Secchi transparency (SD) declines. The lake recovers when water levels rise in subsequent years. In this paper, we determined whether extreme shallow depth events, particularly when they re-occur frequently, can stop the long-term recovery of a shallow eutrophic lake undergoing nutrient reduction programs. Apopka is an ideal location for this case study because the State of Florida has spent over 200 million USD in order to reduce the inputs of P to the lake, to build large filter marshes to treat the water, and to remove large quantities of benthivorous fish that contribute to internal P loading. We obtained data from 1985 to 2018, a period that had relatively stable water levels for nearly 15 years, and then three successive periods of extreme shallow depth, and we examined the long-term trends in TP, TN, Chl-a, and SD. There were significant decreasing trends in all of these water quality variables, and even though water quality deteriorated during periods of extreme shallow depth, and reduced the slope of the long-term trends, it did not stop the recovery. However, in the future, if climate change leads to more frequent shallow depth events, which in lakes such as Apopka, result in the concentration of water and nutrients, it is unclear whether the resilience we document here will continue, vs. the lake not responding to further nutrient input reductions.


2006 ◽  
Vol 16 (12) ◽  
pp. 3581-3603 ◽  
Author(s):  
TOMOMICHI NAKAMURA ◽  
MICHAEL SMALL

Recently, a new surrogate method, the Small–Shuffle (SS) surrogate method, has been proposed to investigate whether there is some kind of dynamics in irregular fluctuations, even if they are modulated by long term trends or periodicities. This situation is theoretically incompatible with the assumption underlying previously proposed surrogate methods. We apply the SS surrogate method to a variety of simulated data with known dynamics and actual time series with unknown dynamics.


Oecologia ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 153 (4) ◽  
pp. 997-1008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanne Rolinski ◽  
Heidemarie Horn ◽  
Thomas Petzoldt ◽  
Lothar Paul
Keyword(s):  

MAUSAM ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-46
Author(s):  
D. V. BHASKAR RAO ◽  
C. V. NAIDU ◽  
B. R. SRINIVASA RAO

The data of the monthly cyclone frequencies over North Indian Ocean for the period 1877-1998 has been analysed to study the long-term trends and fluctuations. Analysis has been made separately for depressions and cyclones for the pre-monsoon, monsoon and post-monsoon seasons along with the annual frequencies. The data was subjected to 11-year moving averages and the epochs of increasing and decreasing trends have been identified. A consistent decreasing trend after 1950s is a notable feature.   The time series of the monthly cyclone frequency were passed through a high-pass filter to eliminate periods greater than 21 years and then subjected to spectrum analysis using Maximum Entropy Method to obtain dominant periodicities. Three significant periodicities at 2.2-2.8; 3.5-6.5 and 10-15 years have been identified which could be attributed to QBO, ENSO and decadal frequencies.


2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (5) ◽  
pp. 2593-2608 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin M. Kraemer ◽  
Anton Seimon ◽  
Rita Adrian ◽  
Peter B. McIntyre

Abstract. Lakes provide many important benefits to society, including drinking water, flood attenuation, nutrition, and recreation. Anthropogenic environmental changes may affect these benefits by altering lake water levels. However, background climate oscillations such as the El Niño–Southern Oscillation and the North Atlantic Oscillation can obscure long-term trends in water levels, creating uncertainty over the strength and ubiquity of anthropogenic effects on lakes. Here we account for the effects of background climate variation and test for long-term (1992–2019) trends in water levels in 200 globally distributed large lakes using satellite altimetry data. The median percentage of water level variation associated with background climate variation was 58 %, with an additional 10 % explained by seasonal variation and 25 % by the long-term trend. The relative influence of specific axes of background climate variation on water levels varied substantially across and within regions. After removing the effects of background climate variation on water levels, long-term water level trend estimates were lower (median: +0.8 cm yr−1) than calculated from raw water level data (median: +1.2 cm yr−1). However, the trends became more statistically significant in 86 % of lakes after removing the effects of background climate variation (the median p value of trends changed from 0.16 to 0.02). Thus, robust tests for long-term trends in lake water levels which may or may not be anthropogenic will require prior isolation and removal of the effects of background climate variation. Our findings suggest that background climate variation often masks long-term trends in environmental variables but can be accounted for through more comprehensive statistical analyses.


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