Abstract. The newly-developed cosmic-ray method for measuring area-average soil moisture at the hectometer horizontal scale is being implemented in the COsmic-ray Soil Moisture Observing System (or the COSMOS). The stationary cosmic-ray soil moisture probe measures the neutrons that are generated by cosmic rays within air and soil and other materials, moderated by mainly hydrogen atoms located primarily in soil water, and emitted to the atmosphere where they mix instantaneously at a scale of hundreds of meters and whose density is inversely correlated with soil moisture. The COSMOS has already deployed more than 50 of the eventual 500 cosmic-ray probes, distributed mainly in the USA, each generating a time series of average soil moisture over its horizontal footprint, with similar networks coming into existence around the world. This paper is written to serve a community need to better understand this novel method and the COSMOS project. We describe the cosmic-ray soil moisture measurement method, the instrument and its calibration, the design, data processing and dissemination used in the COS-MOS project, and give example time series of soil moisture obtained from COSMOS probes.
1] We present here a simple and robust framework for quantifying the effective sensor depth of cosmic ray soil moisture neutron probes such that reliable water fluxes may be computed from a time series of cosmic ray soil moisture. In particular, we describe how the neutron signal depends on three near-surface hydrogen sources: surface water, soil moisture, and lattice water (water in minerals present in soil solids) and also their vertical variations. Through a combined modeling study of one-dimensional water flow in soil and neutron transport in the atmosphere and subsurface, we compare average water content between the simulated soil moisture profiles and the universal calibration equation which is used to estimate water content from neutron counts. By using a linear sensitivity weighting function, we find that during evaporation and drainage periods the RMSE of the two average water contents is 0.0070 m 3 m À3 with a maximum deviation of 0.010 m 3 m À3 for a range of soil types. During infiltration, the RMSE is 0.011 m 3 m À3 with a maximum deviation of 0.020 m 3 m À3 , where piston like flow conditions exists for the homogeneous isotropic media. Because piston flow is unlikely during natural conditions at the horizontal scale of hundreds of meters that is measured by the cosmic ray probe, this modeled deviation of 0.020 m 3 m À3 represents the worst case scenario for cosmic ray sensing of soil moisture. Comparison of cosmic ray soil moisture data and a distributed sensor soil moisture network in Southern Arizona indicates an RMSE of 0.011 m 3 m À3 over a 6 month study period. Citation: Franz, T. E., M. Zreda, T. P. A. Ferre, R. Rosolem, C. Zweck, S. Stillman, X. Zeng, and W. J. Shuttleworth (2012), Measurement depth of the cosmic ray soil moisture probe affected by hydrogen from various sources, Water Resour. Res., 48, W08515,
[1] We present a new three-dimensional thermomechanically coupled ice sheet model of the northern hemisphere to reconstruct the Quaternary ice sheets during the last glacial cycle. The model includes basal sliding, internally calculated surface mass balance, glacial isostasy, and a treatment for marine calving. The time dependent forcing consists of temperature and precipitation anomalies from the United Kingdom Meteorological Office (UKMO) General Circulation Model scaled to the Greenland Ice Core Project (GRIP) ice core d18 O record. Model parameters were chosen to best match geomorphological inferences on Last Glacial Maximum extent and global eustatic sea level change. For our standard run we find a maximum ice volume of 57 Â 10 6 km 3 at 18.5 ka cal BP. This corresponds to a eustatic sea level lowering of 110 m after correction for hydro-isostatic displacement and anomalous ice resulting from defects in the specified boundary conditions of the Paleoclimate Model Intercomparison Project (PMIP) for which the UKMO GCM results were generated. Of this 110 m, 82 m was stored in the North American ice sheet and 25 m in the Eurasian ice sheet. We determine the qualitative and quantitative response of the model from a comprehensive sensitivity study in which 11 important parameters were varied over their respective ranges of uncertainty. Model outputs comparable to the observational record were explored in detail as a linear function along the axes of parameter space of the reference model. The method reveals the dominance of climate uncertainty when modeling the Last Glacial Maximum configuration of the northern hemisphere ice sheets, but also highlights the role of ice rheology and basal processes for ice sheet thickness, and glacial isostasy and calving for the timing of maximum ice volume.Citation: Zweck, C., and P. Huybrechts (2005), Modeling of the northern hemisphere ice sheets during the last glacial cycle and glaciological sensitivity,
The Gulf of Alaska (GOA) is highly sensitive to shifts in North Pacific climate variability. Here we present an extended tree-ring record of JanuarySeptember GOA coastal surface air temperatures using tree-ring width data from coniferous trees growing in the mountain ranges along the GOA. The reconstruction , based on living trees, explains 44% of the temperature variance, although, as the number of chronologies decreases back in time, this value decreases to, and remains around~30% before 1840. Verification of the calibrated models is, however, robust. Utilizing sub-fossil wood, we extend the GOA reconstruction back to the early eighth century. The GOA reconstruction correlates significantly (95% CL) with both the Pacific Decadal Oscillation Index (0.53) and North Pacific Index (-0.42) and therefore likely yields important information on past climate variability in the North Pacific region. Intervention analysis on the GOA reconstruction identifies the known twentieth century climate shifts around the 1940s and 1970s, although the mid-1920s shift is only weakly expressed. In the context of the full 1,300 years record, the well studied 1976 shift is not unique. Multi-taper method spectral analysis shows that the spectral properties of the living and sub-fossil data are similar, with both records showing significant (95% CL) spectral peaks at 9-11, 13-14 and 18-19 years. Singular spectrum analysis identifies (in order of importance) significant oscillatory modes at 18.7, 50.4, 38.0, 91.8, 24.4, 15.3 and 14.1 years. The amplitude of these modes varies through time. It has been suggested (Minobe in Geophys Res Lett 26: [855][856][857][858] 1999) that the regime shifts during the twentieth century can be explained by the interaction between pentadecadal (50.4 years) and bidecadal (18.7 years) oscillatory modes. Removal of these two modes of variance from our GOA time series does indeed remove the twentieth century shifts, but many are still identified prior to the twentieth century. Our analysis suggests that climate variability of the GOA is very complex, and that much more work is required to understand the underlying oscillatory behavior that is observed in instrumental and proxy records from the North Pacific region.
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