Counter- and co-directed swirling-type waves due to orbital excitations of a square-base tank

The analytic technique and numerical experiments are employed to show that the orbital elliptic translational ex citations of a square-base container can, depending on the ratio of the semiaxes of the elliptic orbit, lead, when the forcing frequency is close to the lowest natural sloshing frequency, to both the counter- and co-directed (relative to the orbital forcing direction) stable swirling-type steady-state resonant waves. For a non-zero damping in the hydrodynamic wavy system, the passage to circular orbits makes the stable counter-directed swirling impossible.

East Antarctic Ice Sheet and Southern Ocean Response to Orbital Forcing from Late Miocene to Early Pliocene, Wilkes Land, East Antarctica

<p>Geological and ice sheet models indicate that marine-based sectors of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS) were unstable during periods of moderate climatic warmth in the past. While geological records from the Middle to Late Pliocene indicate a dynamic ice sheet, records of ice sheet variability from the comparatively warmer Late Miocene to Early Pliocene are sparse, and there are few direct records of Antarctic ice sheet variability during this time period. Sediment recovered in Integrated Ocean Drilling Program U1361 drill core from the Wilkes Land margin provides a distal but continuous glacially-influenced record of the behaviour of Antarctic Ice Sheets. This thesis presents marine sedimentological and x-ray fluorescence geochemical datasets in order to assess changes in the dynamic response of the EAIS and Southern Ocean productivity in the Wilkes Land sector during Late Miocene and Early Pliocene to climatic warming and orbital forcing between 6.2 and 4.4 Ma. Two primary lithofacies are identified which can be directly related to glacial–interglacial cycles; enhanced sedimentation during glacials is represented by low-density turbidity flows that occurred in unison with low marine productivity and reduced iceberg rafted debris. Interglacial sediments contain diatomaceous muds with short-lived, large fluxes of iceberg rafted debris preceding a more prolonged phase of enhanced marine productivity. Interglacial sediments coincide with a more mafic source of terrigenous sediment, interfered to be associated with an inland retreat of the ice margin resulting in erosion of lithologies that are currently located beneath the grounded EAIS. Poleward invigoration of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current during glacial–interglacial transitions is proposed to have intensified upwelling, enhancing nutrient availability for marine productivity, and increasing oceanic heat flux at the ice margin acting to erode marine ice sheet grounding lines and triggering retreat. Spectral analysis of the datasets indicated orbital frequencies are present in the iceberg rafted debris mass accumulation rates at all three Milankovitch frequencies, with a dominant 100 kyr eccentricity driven ice discharge. Prolonged intervals of marine productivity correlate to 100 kyr cyclicity occurring at peaks in obliquity. The response of both ice sheet and biological systems to 100 kyr cyclicity may indicate eccentricity-modulated sea ice extent controls the influx of warm water onto the continental shelf.</p>

East Antarctic Ice Sheet and Southern Ocean Response to Orbital Forcing from Late Miocene to Early Pliocene, Wilkes Land, East Antarctica

<p>Geological and ice sheet models indicate that marine-based sectors of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS) were unstable during periods of moderate climatic warmth in the past. While geological records from the Middle to Late Pliocene indicate a dynamic ice sheet, records of ice sheet variability from the comparatively warmer Late Miocene to Early Pliocene are sparse, and there are few direct records of Antarctic ice sheet variability during this time period. Sediment recovered in Integrated Ocean Drilling Program U1361 drill core from the Wilkes Land margin provides a distal but continuous glacially-influenced record of the behaviour of Antarctic Ice Sheets. This thesis presents marine sedimentological and x-ray fluorescence geochemical datasets in order to assess changes in the dynamic response of the EAIS and Southern Ocean productivity in the Wilkes Land sector during Late Miocene and Early Pliocene to climatic warming and orbital forcing between 6.2 and 4.4 Ma. Two primary lithofacies are identified which can be directly related to glacial–interglacial cycles; enhanced sedimentation during glacials is represented by low-density turbidity flows that occurred in unison with low marine productivity and reduced iceberg rafted debris. Interglacial sediments contain diatomaceous muds with short-lived, large fluxes of iceberg rafted debris preceding a more prolonged phase of enhanced marine productivity. Interglacial sediments coincide with a more mafic source of terrigenous sediment, interfered to be associated with an inland retreat of the ice margin resulting in erosion of lithologies that are currently located beneath the grounded EAIS. Poleward invigoration of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current during glacial–interglacial transitions is proposed to have intensified upwelling, enhancing nutrient availability for marine productivity, and increasing oceanic heat flux at the ice margin acting to erode marine ice sheet grounding lines and triggering retreat. Spectral analysis of the datasets indicated orbital frequencies are present in the iceberg rafted debris mass accumulation rates at all three Milankovitch frequencies, with a dominant 100 kyr eccentricity driven ice discharge. Prolonged intervals of marine productivity correlate to 100 kyr cyclicity occurring at peaks in obliquity. The response of both ice sheet and biological systems to 100 kyr cyclicity may indicate eccentricity-modulated sea ice extent controls the influx of warm water onto the continental shelf.</p>

Orbital Insolation Variations, Intrinsic Climate Variability, and Quaternary Glaciations

The relative role of external forcing and of intrinsic variability is a key question of climate variability in general and of our planet’s paleoclimatic past in particular. Over the last 100 years since Milankovitch’s contributions, the role of orbital forcing has been well established for the last 2.6 Myr and their Quaternary glaciation cycles. A convincing case has also been made for the role of several internal mechanisms that are active on time scales both shorter and longer than the orbital ones. Such mechanisms clearly have a causal role in Dansgaard-Oeschger and Heinrich events, as well as in the mid-Pleistocene transition. We introduce herein a unified framework for the understanding of the interplay between internal mechanisms and orbital forcing on time scales from thousands to millions of years. This framework relies on the fairly recent theory of nonautonomous and random dynamical systems and it has been successfully applied so far in the climate sciences for problems like the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, the oceans’ wind-driven circulation, and other problems on interannual to interdecadal time scales. Finally, we provide further examples of climate applications and present preliminary results of interest for the Quaternary glaciation cycles in general and the mid-Pleistocene transition in particular.

The Influence of Orbital Forcing on 10Be Deposition in Greenland Over the Glacial Period

Understanding the transport and deposition of the cosmogenic isotope 10Be is vital for the application of the isotope data to infer past changes of solar activity, to reconstruct past Earth’s magnetic field intensity and climate change. Here, we use data of the cosmogenic isotope 10Be from the Greenland ice cores, namely the NEEM and GRIP ice cores, to identify factors controlling its distribution. After removing the effects of the geomagnetic field on the cosmogenic radionuclide production rate, the results expose imprints of the 20–22 ka precession cycle on the Greenland 10Be records of the last glacial period. This finding can further improve the understanding of 10Be variability in ice sheets and has the prospect of providing better reconstructions of geomagnetic and solar activity based on cosmogenic radionuclide records.