[1] Although microorganisms play an important role in biological soil crusts and plant rhizospheres in deserts, it is unclear whether temperature and moisture deep within relatively fast moving hyperarid mobile dunes present a suitable habitat for microbes. To inform this question, we report measurements of temperature and humidity from probes initially sunk below the leeward avalanche face of a mobile barchan dune in the Qatar desert, emerging windward after 15 months of deep burial. Despite large diurnal variations on the surface, temperature within this dune of 5.6 m height is predictable, as long as dune advection is properly considered. It evolves on smaller amplitude and longer timescale than the surface, lagging average seasonal atmospheric conditions by about 2 months. We contrast these deep thermal records with measurements of diurnal variations of the temperature profile just below the surface, which we calculate with a thermal model predicting the relative roles of wind-driven convective heat transfer and net radiation flux on the dune. Observations and analyses also suggest why random precipitation on the leeward face produces a more unpredictable moisture patchwork on the windward slope. By rapidly reaching sheltered depths, small quantities of rain falling on that face escape evaporation and endure within the dune until resurfacing upwind. At depths below 10 cm, we show that moisture, rather than temperature, determines the viability of microbes and we provide initial microscopic and respiration-based evidence of their presence below the windward slope.

Abstract. Observations of atmospheric CO2 mole fraction and the 13C ∕ 12C ratio (expressed as δ13C) in urban airsheds provide constraints on the roles of anthropogenic and natural sources and sinks in local and regional carbon cycles. In this study, we report observations of these quantities in Nanjing at hourly intervals from March 2013 to August 2015, using a laser-based optical instrument. Nanjing is the second largest city located in the highly industrialized Yangtze River Delta (YRD), eastern China. The mean CO2 mole fraction and δ13C were (439.7 ± 7.5) µmol mol−1 and (−8.48 ± 0.56) ‰ over this observational period. The peak monthly mean δ13C (−7.44 ‰, July 2013) was 0.74 ‰ higher than that observed at Mount Waliguan, a WMO (World Meteorological Organization) baseline site on the Tibetan Plateau and upwind of the YRD region. The highly 13C-enriched signal was partly attributed to the influence of cement production in the region. By applying the Miller–Tans method to nighttime and daytime observations to represent signals from the city of Nanjing and the YRD, respectively, we showed that the 13C ∕ 12C ratio of CO2 sources in the Nanjing municipality was (0.21 ± 0.53) ‰ lower than that in the YRD. Flux partitioning calculations revealed that natural ecosystems in the YRD were a negligibly small source of atmospheric CO2.

We explore a mean-field theory of fluid imbibition and drainage through permeable porous solids. In the limit of vanishing inertial and viscous forces, the theory predicts the hysteretic "retention curves" relating the capillary pressure applied across a connected domain to its degree of saturation in wetting fluid in terms of known surface energies and void space geometry. To avoid complicated calculations, we adopt the simplest statistical mechanics, in which a pore interacts with its neighbors through narrow openings called "necks," while being either full or empty of wetting fluid. We show how the main retention curves can be calculated from the statistical distribution of two dimensionless parameters λ and α measuring the specific areas of, respectively, neck cross section and wettable pore surface relative to pore volume. The theory attributes hysteresis of these curves to collective first-order phase transitions. We illustrate predictions with a porous domain consisting of a random packing of spheres, show that hysteresis strength grows with λ and weakens as the distribution of α broadens, and reproduce the behavior of Haines jumps observed in recent experiments on an ordered pore network.

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Toward elucidating how a wavy porous sand bed perturbs a turbulent flow above its surface, we record pressure within a permeable material resembling the region just below desert ripples, contrasting these delicate measurements with earlier studies on similar impermeable surfaces. We run separate tests in a wind tunnel on two sinusoidal porous ripples with aspect ratio of half crest‐to‐trough amplitude to wavelength of 3% and 6%. For the smaller ratio, pore pressure is a function of streamwise distance with a single delayed harmonic decaying exponentially with depth and proportional to wind speed squared. The resulting pressure on the porous surface is nearly identical to that on a similar impermeable wave. Pore pressure variations at the larger aspect ratio are greater and more complicated. Consistent with the regime map of Kuzan et al. (), the flow separates, creating a depression at crests. Unlike flows on impermeable waves, the porous rippled bed diffuses the depression upstream, reduces surface pressure gradients, and gives rise to a slip velocity, thus affecting the turbulent boundary layer. Pressure gradients within the porous material also generate body forces rising with wind speed squared and ripple aspect ratio, partially counteracting gravity around crests, thereby facilitating the onset of erosion, particularly on ripples of high aspect ratio armored with large surface grains. By establishing how pore pressure gradients scale with ripple aspect ratio and wind speed, our measurements quantify the internal seepage flow that draws dust and humidity beneath the porous surface.