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Giant earthquakes with magnitudes above 8.5 occur only in subduction zones. Despite the developments made in observing large subduction zone earthquakes with geophysical instruments, the factors controlling the maximum size of these earthquakes are still poorly understood. Previous studies have suggested the importance of slab shape, roughness of the plate interface contact, state of the strain in the upper plate, thickness of sediments filling the trenches, and subduction rate. Here, we present 2-D cross-scale numerical models of seismic cycles for subduction zones with various geometries, subduction channel friction configurations, and subduction rates. We found that low-angle subduction and thick sediments in the subduction channel are the necessary conditions for generating giant earthquakes, while the subduction rate has a negligible effect. We suggest that these key parameters determine the maximum magnitude of a subduction earthquake by controlling the seismogenic zone width and smoothness of the subduction interface. This interpretation supports previous studies that are based upon observations and scaling laws. Our modeling results also suggest that low static friction in the sediment-filled subduction channel results in neutral or moderate compressive deformation in the overriding plate for low-angle subduction zones hosting giant earthquakes. These modeling results agree well with observations for the largest earthquakes. Based on our models we predict maximum magnitudes of subduction earthquakes worldwide, demonstrating the fit to magnitudes of all giant earthquakes of the 20th and 21st centuries and good agreement with the predictions based on statistical analyses of observations.
The timing and mechanisms of the Cretaceous sea incursions into Central Asia are still poorly constrained. We provide a new chronostratigraphic framework based on biostratigraphy and magnetostratigraphy together with detailed paleoenvironmental analyses of Cretaceous records of the proto-Paratethys Sea fluctuations in the Tajik and Tarim basins. The Early Cretaceous marine incursion in the western Tajik Basin was followed by major marine incursions during the Cenomanian (ca. 100 Ma) and Santonian (ca. 86 Ma) that reached far into the eastern Tajik and Tarim basins. These marine incursions were separated by a Turonian-Coniacian (ca. 92-86 Ma) regression. Basin-wide tectonic subsidence analyses imply that the Early Cretaceous sea incursion into the Tajik Basin was related to increased Pamir tectonism. We find that thrusting along the northern edge of the Pamir at ca. 130-90 Ma resulted in increased subsidence in a retro-arc basin setting. This tectonic event and coeval eustatic highstand resulted in the maximum observed geographic extent of the sea during the Cenomanian (ca. 100 Ma). The following Turonian-Coniacian (ca. 92-86 Ma) major regression, driven by eustasy, coincides with a sharp slowdown in tectonic subsidence during the late orogenic unloading period with limited thrusting. The Santonian (ca. 86 Ma) major sea incursion was likely controlled by eustasy as evidenced by the coeval fluctuations in the west Siberian Basin. An early Maastrichtian cooling (ca. 71-70 Ma), potentially connected to global Late Cretaceous trends, is inferred from the replacement of mollusk-rich limestones by bryozoan- and echinoderm-rich limestones.
The 10th edition of the International Congress on the Application of Raman Spectroscopy in Art and Archaeology (RAA2019) was held in Potsdam (Germany) from 3 to 7 September 2019, with eight keynote lectures, 35 oral presentations and 18 Poster Presentations. The number of active participants was 68 delegates from 20 countries among the 236 authors that presented at least one work.
The intensification of Northern Hemisphere glaciation (iNHG) and uplift of the Tibetan Plateau have been argued to be among the main drivers of climate change in midlatitude Central Asia during the Pliocene/Pleistocene. While most proxy records that support this hypothesis are from regions outside the Tibetan Plateau (such as from the Chinese Loess Plateau), detailed paleoclimatic information for the plateau itself during that time has yet remained elusive. Here we present a temporally highly resolved (similar to 500 years) sedimentological record from the Qaidam Basin situated on the northeastern Tibetan Plateau that shows pronounced glacial-interglacial climate variability during the interval from 2.7 to 2.1 Ma. Glacial (interglacial) intervals are generally characterized by coarser (finer) grain size, minima (maxima) in organic matter content, and maxima (minima) in carbonate content. Comparison of our results with Earth's orbital parameters and proxy records from the Chinese Loess Plateau suggests that the observed climate fluctuations were mainly driven by changes in the Siberian High/East Asian winter monsoon system as a response to the iNHG. They are further proposed to be enhanced by the topography of the Tibetan Plateau and its impact on the position and intensity of the westerlies.
RainNet v1.0
(2020)
In this study, we present RainNet, a deep convolutional neural network for radar-based precipitation nowcasting. Its design was inspired by the U-Net and SegNet families of deep learning models, which were originally designed for binary segmentation tasks. RainNet was trained to predict continuous precipitation intensities at a lead time of 5min, using several years of quality-controlled weather radar composites provided by the German Weather Service (DWD). That data set covers Germany with a spatial domain of 900km × 900km and has a resolution of 1km in space and 5min in time. Independent verification experiments were carried out on 11 summer precipitation events from 2016 to 2017. In order to achieve a lead time of 1h, a recursive approach was implemented by using RainNet predictions at 5min lead times as model inputs for longer lead times. In the verification experiments, trivial Eulerian persistence and a conventional model based on optical flow served as benchmarks. The latter is available in the rainymotion library and had previously been shown to outperform DWD's operational nowcasting model for the same set of verification events.
RainNet significantly outperforms the benchmark models at all lead times up to 60min for the routine verification metrics mean absolute error (MAE) and the critical success index (CSI) at intensity thresholds of 0.125, 1, and 5mm h⁻¹. However, rainymotion turned out to be superior in predicting the exceedance of higher intensity thresholds (here 10 and 15mm h⁻¹). The limited ability of RainNet to predict heavy rainfall intensities is an undesirable property which we attribute to a high level of spatial smoothing introduced by the model. At a lead time of 5min, an analysis of power spectral density confirmed a significant loss of spectral power at length scales of 16km and below. Obviously, RainNet had learned an optimal level of smoothing to produce a nowcast at 5min lead time. In that sense, the loss of spectral power at small scales is informative, too, as it reflects the limits of predictability as a function of spatial scale. Beyond the lead time of 5min, however, the increasing level of smoothing is a mere artifact – an analogue to numerical diffusion – that is not a property of RainNet itself but of its recursive application. In the context of early warning, the smoothing is particularly unfavorable since pronounced features of intense precipitation tend to get lost over longer lead times. Hence, we propose several options to address this issue in prospective research, including an adjustment of the loss function for model training, model training for longer lead times, and the prediction of threshold exceedance in terms of a binary segmentation task. Furthermore, we suggest additional input data that could help to better identify situations with imminent precipitation dynamics. The model code, pretrained weights, and training data are provided in open repositories as an input for such future studies.
Over the past few decades, azimuthal seismic anisotropy measurements have been widely used proxy to study past and present-day deformation of the lithosphere and to characterize convection in the mantle. Beneath continental regions, distinguishing between shallow and deep sources of anisotropy remains difficult due to poor depth constraints of measurements and a lack of regional-scale geodynamic modeling. Here, we constrain the sources of seismic anisotropy beneath Madagascar where a complex pattern cannot be explained by a single process such as absolute plate motion, global mantle flow, or geology. We test the hypotheses that either Edge-Driven Convection (EDC) or mantle flow derived from mantle wind interactions with lithospheric topography is the dominant source of anisotropy beneath Madagascar. We, therefore, simulate two sets of mantle convection models using regional-scale 3-D computational modeling. We then calculate Lattice Preferred Orientation that develops along pathlines of the mantle flow models and use them to calculate synthetic splitting parameters. Comparison of predicted with observed seismic anisotropy shows a good fit in northern and southern Madagascar for the EDC model, but the mantle wind case only fits well in northern Madagascar. This result suggests the dominant control of the measured anisotropy may be from EDC, but the role of localized fossil anisotropy in narrow shear zones cannot be ruled out in southern Madagascar. Our results suggest that the asthenosphere beneath northern and southern Madagascar is dominated by dislocation creep. Dislocation creep rheology may be dominant in the upper asthenosphere beneath other regions of continental lithosphere.
AM(W)= 5.1 earthquake on January 21st, 2016 marked the beginning of a significant seismic sequence in the southern Alboran Sea, culminating in aM(W)= 6.3 earthquake on January 25th, and continuing with further moderate magnitude earthquakes until March. We use data from 35 seismic broadband stations in Spain, Morocco and Portugal to relocate the seismicity, estimate seismic moment tensors, and isolate regional apparent source time functions for the main earthquake. Relocation and regional moment tensor inversion consistently yield very shallow depths for the majority of events. We obtain 50 moment tensors for the sequence, showing a mixture of strike-slip faulting for the foreshock and the main event and reverse faulting for the major aftershocks. The leading role of reverse focal mechanisms among the aftershocks may be explained by the geometry of the fault network. The mainshock nucleates at a bend along the left-lateral Al-Idrisi fault, introducing local transpression within the transtensional Alboran Basin. The shallow depths of the 2016 Alboran Sea earthquakes may favor slip-partitioning on the involved faults. Apparent source durations for the main event suggest a similar to 21 km long, asymmetric rupture that propagates primarily toward NE into the restraining fault segment, with fast rupture speed of similar to 3.0 km/s. Consistently, the inversion for laterally variable fault displacement situates the main slip in the restraining segment. The partitioning into strike-slip rupture and dip-slip aftershocks confirms a non-optimal orientation of this segment, and suggests that the 2016 event settled a slip deficit from previous ruptures that could not propagate into the stronger restraining segment.
The Brazilian Earth System Model (BESM-OA2.5), while simulating the historical period proposed by the fifth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5), detects an increasing trend in the sea surface height (SSH) on the southern hemisphere oceans relative to that of the pre-industrial era. The increasing trend is accentuated in the CMIP5 RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 future scenarios with higher concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. This study sheds light on the sources of such trends in these regions. The results suggest an association with the thermal expansion of the oceans in the upper 700 m due to a gradual warming inflicted by those future scenarios. BESM-OA2.5 presents a surface height increase of 0.11 m in the historical period of 1850-2005. Concerning future projections, BESM-OA2.5 projects SSH increases of 0.14 and 0.23 m (relative to the historical 2005 value) for RCP4.5 and RCP8.5, respectively, by the end of 2100. These increases are predominantly in a band of latitude within 35-60 degrees S in the Atlantic and Indian oceans. The reproducibility of the trend signal detected in the BESM-OA2.5 simulations is confirmed by the results of three other CMIP5 models.
Reported magnitudes ranging between 7.8 and 8.7 highlight a confusion about the true size of the 1920 Haiyuan earthquake, the largest earthquake recorded in the northeast Tibetan Plateau. We compiled a global data set of previously unlooked-at historical seismograms and performed modern computational analyses on the digitized seismic records. We found the epicenter to be near Haiyuan town and obtained a moment magnitude of M-W=7.90.2. Following traditional approaches, we obtained m(B)=7.90.3 with data from 21 stations and M-S(20)=8.10.2 with data from three stations. Geomorphologically, we mapped the surface rupture and horizontal offsets on high-resolution Pleiades satellite and drone imagery that covered the entire western and middle sections of the 1920 Haiyuan earthquake rupture and compiled offsets reported on the eastern section from field measurements in the 1980s. Careful discrimination between single-event and cumulative offsets suggests average horizontal slips of 3.01.0m on the western section, 4.51.5m on the middle section, and 3.5 +/- 0.5m on the eastern section, indicating a total moment magnitude of M-W=7.8 +/- 0.1. Thus, the seismological and geomorphological results agree within the uncertainties, a weighted average giving a moment magnitude of M-W=7.9 +/- 0.2 for the 1920 Haiyuan earthquake. It is likely that earthquake magnitudes based on the historical M were systematically overestimated. <br /> Plain Language Summary Earthquakes are the main mechanism by which elastic energy accumulating due to tectonic motion is released. As the earthquake magnitude scale is logarithmic, major earthquakes control the bulk of this energy budget and are often the most destructive, like the 1920 Haiyuan earthquake with similar to 230,000 casualties. However, major earthquakes tend to have recurrence periods of several hundred years, longer than our instrumental records. To obtain knowledge of historic major earthquakes, paleoseismologists measure geomorphic offsets and map surface ruptures left by past events and estimate the shaking intensity from historical writings. However, in the case of the Haiyuan earthquake, which happened in the late historic, early instrumental period, the magnitudes reported from these two communities differed significantly. In order to constrain the magnitude of this earthquake for seismic hazard assessment and to reconcile the differences between published magnitudes, we reestimated its magnitude from both newly compiled and digitized seismological records and modern satellite and drone imagery. The results show that the early seismological magnitudes were overestimated, which may affect historical magnitudes systematically. The 1920 Haiyuan earthquake was of a similar magnitude to the 2001 Kokoxili and 2008 Wenchuan earthquakes that also occurred in and around the Tibetan Plateau, instead of more than half a magnitude larger.
Temperature changes and variations in pore fluid salinity may negatively affect the permeability of clay-bearing sandstones with implications for natural fluid flow and geotechnical applications alike. In this study these factors are investigated for a sandstone dominated by illite as the clay phase. Systematic long-term flow-through experiments were conducted and complemented with comprehensive microstructural investigations and the application of Derjaguin-Landau-Verwey-Overbeek (DLVO) theory to explain mechanistically the observed permeability changes. Initially, sample permeability was not affected by low pore fluid salinity indicating strong attraction of the illite particles to the pore walls as supported by electron microprobe analysis (EMPA). Increasing temperature up to 145 degrees C resulted in an irreversible permeability decrease by 1.5 orders of magnitude regardless of the pore fluid composition (i.e., deionized water and 2 M NaCl solution). Subsequently diluting the high salinity pore fluid to below 0.5 M yielded an additional permeability decline by 1.5 orders of magnitude, both at 145 degrees C and after cooling to room temperature. By applying scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and mercury intrusion porosimetry (MIP) thermo-mechanical pore throat closure and illite particle migration were identified as independently operating mechanisms responsible for observed permeability changes during heating and dilution, respectively. These observations indicate that permeability of illite-bearing sandstones will be impaired by heating and exposure to low salinity pore fluids. In addition, chemically induced permeability variations proved to be path dependent with respect to the applied succession of fluid salinity changes.