Unconventional extraction technologies including directional well drilling and high-volume hydraulic fracturing have led to a surge in domestic oil and gas production in the US over the past decade. Flaring, or the combustion of petroleum products into the open atmosphere, is a common practice associated with oil and gas development. Flaring is potentially a major source of hazardous air pollutants including carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, toxic heavy metals, and black carbon. Quantifying exposures from flaring is challenging due to the sheer number of drilling sites, irregularity in production, and a lack of regulatory requirements to report flaring activities by the industry. The few datasets reporting oil and gas production are proprietary and do not contain sufficient information to reliably quantify emissions from flaring needed for public health studies. Furthermore, oil and gas operations typically occur in rural regions that are not covered by routine air quality monitoring. Remote sensing provides a unique means of monitoring flaring activities, as multi-spectral satellite instruments collecting data at night are able to detect thermal anomalies. Recent advances to algorithms have resulted in two global, open source products that provide data on heat sources related to flaring: the MODIS fire detection product and the VIIRS Nightfire product. We show that VIIRS Nightfire uniquely provides sub-grid scale (< 750m) identification of flaring sources in the Eagle Ford Shale region of Texas, one of the largest and most active drilling areas in the US. VIIRS Nightfire provides flaring source temperature, area, and radiant heat intensity, along with estimates of methane and carbon dioxide. Using spatiotemporal hierarchical clustering we pinpointed sources of flaring, and by empirically fusing VIIRS radiant heat and source area with oil and gas well permit data, we estimated flared gas volume. These estimates provide a new and novel means of quantifying exposure for the many residents of the region who have been impacted by the surge in oil and gas extraction. While we show an application of these exposures to examine the association of flaring with adverse birth outcomes in Eagle Ford, our data and methods are easily generalizable, having wide-reaching policy and public health applicability.

Geomagnetic disturbance, or perturbations in ground-level magnetic field vectors relative to the quasi-static terrestrial main field, induces geoelectric fields at and below Earth’s surface. This leads to geomagnetically induced currents in high-voltage electric power systems that can interfere with their operations. The sparse geospatial distribution of reliable real time ground magnetometers is not presently adequate for accurate geoelectric field estimation using traditional interpolation techniques, or even more sophisticated inverse models (for example, a spherical elementary current system) alone. To address this shortcoming, we first generate multivariate statistics on a regular grid using state-of-the-art global magneto-hydrodynamics (MHD) simulations. These synthetic data strongly resemble real observations in a statistical sense, although they do not generally reproduce the detailed time evolution of observations due to poorly known MHD boundary conditions. However, these statistics can and are used to regress on sparse observations in order to fill in, or “impute”, the unobserved points on a regular grid over North America.

Anthropic interventions at catchment level modify the hydrological morphology and fluxes, especially in the last 50-60 years. In the North-Eastern Romania hilly area for various reasons (the dry conditions - 400-500 mm multiannual rainfall amount – and the need for water, for wetland to arable land conversion and for flooding control), especially in the last 60 years, a big number of reservoirs were built (about 1000 in an 8000 km2 area). These reservoirs were mostly shallow (under 5 m depth) and small in volume (under 10 mil m3) and were filled in 10 to 30 years. The decommissioning of these reservoirs was made mainly through dam breaching in the median part in order to recover the filed reservoir bottom for pastures. This intervention created the conditions of channel incision of these flat surfaces and the development of gully system which tend to evolve toward continuous channels. In the present study we present a database of gullies affecting the dry bottom of decommissioned anthropic lakes from Jijia Hills, north-eastern Romania. The gullies were manually extracted from a Digital Terrain Model (DTM) with 0.5 m cell size. The extraction was performed using shading maps, with support from contour lines maps, slope maps and maps with the edge detection of slope. The gully delineation was also verified through 3D perspective view and through topographic sections, in order to obtain good delineation. We delineated more than 500 gullies, which are predominantly found on dry bottom reservoirs of 2d and 3rd Strahler order catchments. The morphometry of the gullies (length, depth, volume) is directly related to the dimension of the filled reservoir. Thus, there are lengths of 1-2 m for newly created gullies, and up to 800-1000 m for the most developed ones, with big variations of the width as a function of the shape of the gully channel and the evolution stage of gully (newly incised, evolving, fully developed). The depth of gullies ranges from 20-30 cm to 4-5 m and depends on the initial size of the reservoir, the depth of sediment fill and on the dam height. The volume of eroded sediments varies from 20 m3 to up to 70 000 m3 for individual gullies, with a total volume of eroded deposits over 1,000,000 m3. Considering the resulted volumes these types of gullies are one of the most important sediment sources in Jijia Hills region. The bottom reservoir gullies inventory and the estimated sediment volumes provide a database of hot-spots of sediment sources in the north-eastern Romania lowland. This aspect has a great practical importance considering that the majority of these gullies are not fully developed, and their further evolution implies the production of important quantities of sediments in the fluvial system. Furthermore, the same study area is defined by the presence of many dry abandoned reservoirs where the studied types of gullies can appear in the near future in the context of climate change that will increase the torrential rainfall. The presented study is a case of anthropic induced morphology and sediments accumulation (the filled reservoirs) which, through further induced anthropic decommissioning, generated gully morphology and produced sediments through erosion.

Fine sediment dynamics is an important issue in alpine rivers since it impacts both dam management (decrease of the reservoir capacity, flushing strategy) and river management (interaction between fine sediment and vegetation, gravel bar stabilisation, flood risk). Suspended Particle Matter (SPM) is generally assumed to be transported as washload although significant exchanges with the river bed have been detected in several cases. As a consequence but also due to the variable SPM sources and differences in the discharge and sediment wave velocities, one can often observe a hysteresis behaviour during hydrological events that evolves spatially along the system. In this study, we will present results from a network of hydro-sedimentary stations (measuring both water discharge and sediment concentration) along a reach of 120 km starting from the Arvan River at its confluence and the Arc and Isère rivers, that is part of the ZABR (or Rhône Basin Long Term Environmental Research Observatory). The SPM dynamics is analysed for different types of events (large flood, spring flood, flushing event, debris flow). In particular, we focus on the potential of erosion or deposition between each station by calculating the total SPM flux during each event at each station as well as the hysteresis behaviour using a hysteresis index. The evolution of these parameters is related to input parameters such as discharge and sources and grain size characteristics of the suspension. Indeed, most observed sediment exchanges (erosion or deposition) occur on the gravel bars when inundated, and depend on settling characteristics of the SPM. Also the experimental site provides some useful data for estimating advection and dispersion characteristics of various SPM events that could be used to validate numerical models.

Coastal risks are increasing due to the warming of the climate, resulting in rising mean sea levels and changes in storminess. Projections of future coastal flooding rely on global climate models based on greenhouse gas scenarios with inherent large uncertainties. The past warm climate of the Last Interglacial (LIG, ~127,000 years ago) is considered a partial analogue of a future warmer world. Therefore, understanding how coastal systems were affected by changes in atmospheric and relative sea levels during the LIG can inform us about possible future changes. In this contribution we will analyze extreme sea levels and coastal flooding during the LIG. The analysis is based on the hydrodynamic Global Tide and Surge Model (GTSM; Muis et al., 2016, doi: 10.1038/ncomms11969). To simulate storm surges during the LIG GTSM will be forced by 6-hourly wind and surface pressure fields from LIG simulations of IPCC-type climate models. Due to non-linear effects, tides and surge levels will be influenced by changes in mean sea level. Therefore, a key input variable is map of regional mean sea levels during LIG. However, there is still considerable uncertainty on sea level high-stands and regional patterns during the LIG. Using output from a Glacial Isostatic Adjustment model (GIA), we will model tides and surges for a set of plausible scenarios of relative sea levels and assess sensitivities.

The Lower Mekong is facing an increasing impact of droughts and at the regional level, the Mekong River Commission (MRC) is mandated to work with government agencies on creating and distributing flood, drought, water resource governance and use to improve policy and practice. The MRC is striving to provide regional, locally calibrated and downscaled information on drought forecasts and real-time monitoring through a portal. The Regional Drought and Crop Yield Information System (RDCYIS) is built on regionally and locally calibrated Regional Hydrologic Extreme Assessment System (RHEAS) framework that integrates the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) and Decision Support System for Agro-technology Transfer (DSSAT) models, allowing both nowcast and forecast of drought. This model is co-developed by NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the SERVIR-Mekong teams. In this work, we outline how the MRC Drought Team’s requirements were met via RHEAS. Driven with earth observation data, the main aim of this service is to improve present regional and national drought monitoring and forecasting services to Lower Mekong countries for their water allocation and drought mitigation information needs. We provide an overview of the model calibration and validation methodology, and we find reasonable reliability of the soil moisture model results with the satellite based observations from the SMAP and SMOS retrievals. Through this support to MRC in integrating new drought assessment, monitoring and warning methodologies using RHEAS, more data and analyses will be available to support them to develop improved advice on drought early warning to the National Mekong Committees across the Mekong countries. MRC’s assistance is envisaged to enable comprehensive, accurate and useful warnings for the decision-makers at local and provincial level to take effective action. Ultimately this service is expected to assist farmers to make preemptive decisions about their water use, cropping and planting patterns and market decisions which should reduce crop loss and support livelihoods from farming, including from appropriate compensation to farmers from the governments, wherever this is in effect.

We report palaeomagnetic and K-Ar geochronologic results of two volcanic sections from Ethiopia. One section, dated around 29-30 Ma and spanning ~1 km in thickness, is related to the Oligocene Afro-Arabian traps. The second ~700-m-thick section was emplaced during the Miocene in two pulses around 10-11 and 14-15 Ma. We sampled 67 flows (550 cores) of predominantly basaltic rocks at the Oligocene section and 59 rhyolitic to trachybasaltic flows (500 cores) at the Miocene section. The Oligocene section was correlated to subchrons C11r to C11n.1n, with an average emplacement rate of 1m/kyr and instantaneous rates increasing with time from ~0.5 m/kyr near the base to ~1.36 m/kyr towards the top. We combined our results to the available paleomagnetic studies for the Early Oligocene (N = 4; 167 sites), Middle Miocene (N = 2; 125 sites) and Plio-Pleistocene (N = 8; 249 sites) to better understand how geomagnetic secular variation changed through time in the Afro-Arabian region. Recentred directional distributions for all three periods are elongated in the meridian plane (e = 2.7 ± 0.4, 1.8 ± 0.6, 2.3 ± 0.4, respectively), in coherence with field models for a dipole-dominated field. The angular dispersion S of the virtual geomagnetic poles, representative of the vigour of the palaeosecular variation, was higher during the Early Oligocene (S=14.2°|13.2°15.4°) and the Middle Miocene (S=15.0°|13.8°16.5°) than during the Plio-Pleistocene (S=9.7°|9.0°10.5°). As the reversal frequency f during the Early Oligocene is half that for the Plio-Pleistocene, it appears that S and f are uncorrelated in this near-equatorial region.

Multi-plume convection schemes based on discretized size densities can be easily made scale-aware by size filtering the parametrized plumes to fit the model resolution. Combined with their capability to smoothly transition from shallow to deep convection while being both numerically robust and computationally viable, these bin macrophysics models are well suited to the needs of high resolution NWP and regional climate modeling. One such approach is the ED(MF)n scheme which has previously been evaluated in a single column model against maritime cumulus LES. In this presentation we will confront the ED(MF)n scheme with long-term Doppler lidar observations of shallow cumulus days from the ARM-SGP site in Oklahoma. To do so the ED(MF)n scheme is implemented and tested in a non-hydrostatic model on a microgrid of 8x8 or 16x16 gridpoints. By using a ~10 km resolution this system behaves as a collection of weakly interacting single column models. We will compare the modeled relationship of vertical velocity to plume size against the relationship found in both the Doppler lidar observations and the LASSO LES run routinely at the ARM-SGP site. Next we examine which effect the assumed cloud-size distribution and entrainment as a function of plume size have on the resulting vertical transport.

Sedimentary basins strongly affect earthquake ground motions of both body and surface waves that propagate through them. Yet to characterize seismic hazards at a specific site, it is common practice to consider only the effects of near-surface geology on vertically propagating body waves despite surface waves often causing strong damage. Recently, Bowden & Tsai (2017) proposed an semi-analytical method to predict surface-wave basin amplification and noticed that certain large regional earthquake ground motions are under-predicted if surface waves are not properly accounted for. Since the theory is based on a 1-D approximation of the near-surface geologic structure and does not account for path effects, it is of interest to know how significantly such additional complexity affects the 1-D predictions. When considering deep basins, several other basin parameters play a role in the amplification of surface waves: transmission and conversion at the basin edge, basin shape, lateral resonance and focusing effects. As surface waves propagate back and forth in a highly dispersive medium, the amplification also varies strongly from the edge to the center of the basin. These effects are not always accounted for because of the cost of geophysical surveys that would accurately constrain the structure, the lack of earthquake data for empirical predictions, the poor understanding of what main factors are responsible for basin amplification, and the absence of quantitative estimates of their contribution to the overall amplification. The current study aims to provide quantitative estimates of the importance of these various path effects on surface waves amplification and also extend the current 1-D theory to more complex multi-dimensional basin structures.

In the SIP ““Next-generation Ocean Resource Exploration Techniques” project, various types of geophysical surveys, such as time-domain electromagnetic (TDEM), DC resistivity, self-potential, magnetic and gravity, were carried out other than seismic survey in Izena Hole, Okinawa Trough. These multimodal geophysical data give us the information of physical properties and it is required to integrate these results with seismic section to estimate seafloor massive sulfide deposits. We have developed an appropriate workflow for the quantitative interpretation as well as the 3D inversion technique for multimodal geophysical data, which incorporates known geological/geophysical constraints. Although geophysical inverse problem is generally ill-posed and unstable, a priori information can help reducing non-uniqueness and increasing stability. In the framework of our quantitative interpretation approach, the 3D inversion itself is data driven, but a priori geophysical/geological model, which is constructed using seismic and well-log data, is used as the initial and reference model during the iterative inversion process. We also have carried out rock-sampling and drilling to study the petrophysical/mineralogical characteristics. The mineralogical analysis of rock samples was performed using the quantitative evaluation of minerals by scanning electron microscopy (QEMSCAN) system. The results show that the rocks from the survey area include a large amount of sulfides. The complex resistivity measurements were performed in order to clarify the electrical properties of rocks. As expected, strong induced polarization (IP) effect was observed, mainly caused by the large amount of sulfide minerals. We have compiled these multimodal geophysical inversion results and petrophysical/mineralogical analysis to estimate the SMS deposit. There are good correlations between multimodal geophysical data and the hydrothermal deposit (e.g.. conductivity anomaly, magnetic anomaly and chargeability anomaly). Therefore, multimodal geophysical methods can be effectively used for exploration and delineation of the seafloor massive sulfide deposits.

Urban population in sub Saharan Africa (SSA) is rapidly growing. While only 30% of its population lived in urban centers in 2000, this figure will reach 60% by year 2050. Urban energy demand is closely tied to forest degradation. Charcoal is the main source of cooking fuel for eighty percent of African urban households and its overall consumption is expected to rise by 2040. Charcoal production is already the main driver of forest degradation in SSA. REDD+ guidelines encourage countries to identify and describe individual activities and drivers causing forest degradation as an initial step to define suitable methods for measuring and monitoring and formulate appropriate strategies and policies. Yet, forest degradation associated to charcoal production remains largely under reported. Charcoal production results in partial removals of forest cover that do not necessarily involve significant variations of the spectral signal. As a consequence, efforts to monitor forest degradation associated to charcoal production with medium resolution data has proved elusive. We present initial results of our effort to monitor and quantify carbon emissions from forest degradation due to charcoal production in SSA. Our work combines time series of multi sensor medium (20 – 30m), high (2m) and very high (0.5m) spatial resolution sensors with field data to characterize the spatial and temporal dynamics of charcoal production in charcoal production sites across SSA. The integration of these datasets provides the means to map, monitor and measure charcoal kilns, and subsequently quantify the magnitude and intensity of aboveground biomass removals associated to charcoal production at a level of detail and precision not reported previously. Our initial results reveal that charcoal production accounts for a larger share of greenhouse gas emission than previously reported, highlight its negative impacts on the ecosystem, and question the long-term sustainability of charcoal production under current and future urban energy demands. This work is a first step towards the development of a monitoring, reporting and verification system specific to forest degradation in the SSA context.

Cities are the most sensitive and vulnerable places to climate variability and change and weather-related extreme events given high population density, with the aggravating factor that urban climate also suffers modifications due to the widespread replacement of the natural surface altering the local thermal conditions. The Aburrá Valley is a narrow valley located at the tropical Andes in northern South America with urban areas between 1300 and 2000 m.a.s.l, a population of approximate 3.9 million people, and a comfortable climate relative to standard indoor conditions. In this work, we examine observed weather patterns in the local scale and the urban canopy layer (UCL) using data from weather stations at sites with different surface features regarding vegetation/non-impervious fractions and urban structure (Sky View Factor SVF). UCL data is available from two data sources, the first one from a field campaign using all-in-one weather sensors at the valley´s bottom, and the second one from a low-cost sensor network with robust temperature and humidity data as part of a local citizen science project with measurements in a diverse altitude range. Results suggest that at the local scale there exist different climate mean conditions due to altitude, with significant weather variability depending on radiation levels and rainfall occurrence, but at the same time, the urban effects are evident since the lowest altitude stations do not necessarily register the highest temperatures depending on the local characteristics. UCL measurements show that, while the altitude defines a background state, there are notable differences between places mainly influenced by insolation changes due to vegetation around and above sensors. Currently, the local population does not perceive thermal stress as a risk factor because it is not difficult to find places with appropriate thermal conditions when thermal discomfort arises. However, this research is relevant considering the projected local surface temperature increase due to climate change and the inexistence of baseline studies assessing the thermal comfort in outdoors to support local adaptation actions. The results of this study are useful for urban planning and building design to improve thermal conditions, especially in open spaces.

Local ecological knowledge (LEK) is the experiential knowledge of local people gained through day-to-day interactions with the environment. LEK can provide detailed, real-time information about target species, ecological resources, and rapid state shifts in ecosystems. LEK is becoming more important as a source of data for conservation research and management. LEK can supplement conventional ecological surveys and data by providing rich context and detail on the state of local ecosystems by the people who work on these ecosystems every day as part of their livelihoods (Burbidge et al., 1988, Turvey et al., 2010b). Many communities in the Coastal Bend region of Texas have citizens whose livelihoods depend entirely on ecosystems as well as economies largely dependent on ecotourism. Ecotourism important to Coastal Bend economies includes recreational fishing, coastal parks, birding, and other forms of wildlife tourism. These same communities were majorly impacted by Hurricane Harvey and are continuing to slowly recover one year after the storm. Ecotourism stakeholders possess detailed knowledge on 1) changes to the ecosystem post Harvey across scales, 2) the needs for prioritized ecosystem restoration and conservation initiatives that may quicken ecotourism recovery post-Harvey, and 2) possible blind spots for conservation and resource management of which decision-makers may be unaware. Given the urgency and heavy financial burden of hurricane recovery, LEK can be pathway to resilience. Resilience in the Coastal Bend post-Harvey would see communities, ecosystems, and economies not only recovering quickly to their pre-storm states, but also harnessing the ability to absorb similar shocks in the future. LEK can act as a pathway to resilience during hurricane recovery as it is inexpensive, first-hand, detailed knowledge of changes to ecosystem functions linked to economic development. These changes may be addressed by decision-makers and resource managers looking to enable post-storm recovery. This presentation discusses how ecotourism-dependent communities in the Texas Coastal Bend use LEK to recover from Hurricane Harvey and build resilience to future extreme events as a model framework for how LEK can be used more widely to enhance resilience, respond to hazards, and facilitate adaptation.

There have always been some challenges within the remote sensing community related to the processing of contiguous spectral bands contained in hyperspectral datasets. Most approaches would resort to using averaged spectral information over wide bandwidths resulting in loss of crucial information available in those contiguous bands. The loss of information could mean a drop in the discriminative power when it comes to land cover classes with comparable spectral responses, as in the case of cultivated fields versus fallow lands. In this study, we proposed and tested three optimized novel algorithms based on Moment Distance Index (MDI) that characterizes the whole shape of the spectral curve. The image classification tests conducted on two publicly available hyperspectral data sets (AVIRIS 1992 Indian Pine and HYDICE Washington DC Mall images) showed the robustness of the optimized MDI algorithms in terms of classification accuracy. We achieved an overall accuracy of 98% and 99% for AVIRIS and HYDICE, respectively using the optimized MDI algorithms. The optimized indices were also time efficient as it avoided the process of band dimension reduction, such as those implemented by several well-known classifiers. Our results showed the potential of the optimized shape indices to discriminate between grass/pasture and grass/trees, tree and grass, and between types of tillage (corn-min and corn-notill) under object-based random forest approach. The results highlight the importance of MDI that completely utilizes the contiguous spectral bands to define the gradient of the curve and improve image classification accuracy.

Farmers in the indigenous Andean community of Cañar, Ecuador rely on an abundant wet season each growing year and are concerned that their wet seasons are becoming less rainy. The normal seasonal rainfall pattern in this region, the Andes of southern Ecuador, is driven primarily by the seasonal migration of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). Existing scientific literature suggests that the ITCZ’s seasonal migration pattern could be affected by anthropogenic climate change, thereby impacting the seasonal precipitation in the region. This study explores the possibility that the ITCZ’s migration pattern has already changed, which would validate the concerns of the Cañari people. This is accomplished by tracking the movement of the ITCZ over the past few decades using Outgoing Longwave Radiation (OLR) data. No obvious trend in the seasonal mean position of the ITCZ has been detected. However, OLR maps indicate an abnormal ITCZ signature during strong warm phases of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), consistent with previous studies. The interannual variability in the region’s seasonal precipitation is also associated with varying phases of ENSO. An additional component of this study is the development of a statistical model using ENSO indices as input, among other atmospheric indices, to provide seasonal precipitation forecasts for the tropical Andean wet season each year. Besides ENSO, another potentially useful index for seasonal prediction is the phase of the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation, which has been linked to precipitation variability in the tropics. The seasonal forecasting model is expected to help Ecuadorian highland farmers decide which of their crops to plant each year, based on the water needs of each crop.

The Hawaiian Islands experienced record-high sea levels during 2017, which caused nuisance flooding in vulnerable coastal communities and exacerbate beach erosion, especially when positive sea level anomalies coincided with high tides. To build toward solutions for mitigating inundation risk, the predictability of daily-averaged sea level anomalies is investigated. Background sea level around the Hawaiian Islands was elevated during most of 2017 due to an oceanic Rossby-type planetary wave, which propagated slowly westward across the tropical North Pacific over the course of a year. The investigation focused on leveraging observed westward propagation that sea level anomalies exhibit over a range of timescales to make subseasonal predictions. Daily near-real-time gridded altimetry (CMEMS/AVISO) was used to specify upstream sea level at each site with propagation speeds based on mode-one baroclinic Rossby wave speeds. The skill of the predictions exceeds persistence at most locations around the archipelago out to a month or more lead time, but the skill is highly dependent on location even over the short distances spanned by the Hawaiian Ridge. Here, hindcast results are presented that establish where skillful subseasonal predictions can be made in Hawaii, as well as the barriers to predictability in locations where they cannot. These results inform the oceanographic and modelling communities about what processes need to be resolved in order to provide island communities with useful short-term sea level forecasts as the frequency of flooding events increases.

Changes in the geometry of ocean basins have been influential in driving climate change throughout Earth’s history. Here we focus on the appearance of the Greenland-Scotland Ridge (GSR) and try to understand its impact on the ocean state, including global circulation, heat transport, T and S properties and ventilation timescales, which will be useful for interpreting paleoproxies. To this end, we use a coupled atmosphere-ocean-sea ice model with idealized geometry and consider two geometrical configurations. The reference configuration (noridge) comprises two wide strips of land set 90° apart extending from the North Pole to 40°S, separating the Northern Hemisphere ocean into a small and a large basin. In the ridge configuration a zonally symmetric oceanic ridge, that extends across the Atlantic-like basin at 60°N, mimicking the GSR, is added. In addition, we consider two climatic limits of noridge: a warm case where the northern high latitudes are seasonally ice-free and a cold case where a perennial sea ice cover is present. In both cases of noridge deep-water formation occurs at the North Pole in the Atlantic-like basin. When the ridge is introduced, the flow of warm Atlantic water to the high latitudes is hampered and the ocean heat transport across 70°N decreases by ~60% which causes cooling and freshening north of the ridge. Downwelling shifts south of the ridge, thereby altering the structure of the upper overturning cell dramatically. Despite these changes, the Northern Hemisphere surface climate response is surprisingly small for the warm climate case. This is because the subpolar gyre circulation continues to transport warm water across the ridge, keeping the northern North Atlantic relatively warm and ice-free. In the colder climate case, however, the presence of sea ice provides a strong non-linear feedback, which amplifies the cooling induced by the ridge, and causes sea ice to expand. Our results highlight the possible disconnect between changes in the localization of deep-water formation, the structure of the AMOC and the properties of water masses and changes in Northern Hemisphere climate. Implications for the interpretation of paleoproxy records from the North Atlantic region will be discussed.

The EarthCube Technology & Architecture Committee formed a Resource Registry Working Group (WG) to develop a framework for a registry of EarthCube (EC) resources, enabling users to discover scientific and technical resources (software, tools, vocabularies, etc.) that are relevant to their research. The registry will promote EC investments, reduce time to science, help enable interdisciplinary research, more clearly define what is EC, and provide a vehicle for tool and software producers to notify the community about new products, increase visibility, and gain recognition. A primary requirement is to enable systematic description of EarthCube computational resources in terms of their functionality and interfaces for utilization, to enable users to identify components that can work together in integrated workflows. This requires understanding the specifics of how a software component communicates—both the messaging protocol, and the syntax and semantics of information formats getting data into and out of a component. This registry would work in conjunction with schema.org dataset descriptions being developed by the community to streamline linkage of data and software components for research workflows. The WG created definitions for a set of resources to include in a first iteration of the registry, and a set of properties that should be specified for all resources, as well as properties specific to particular resource types. The suggested resource types are: Software, Interface/API, Interchange format, Dataset, Repository, Service, Platform, Vocabulary/ontology/Information model, Specification, Catalog/registry, and Use Case. Dataset and Use Case resources registration is out of scope for the WG project, to be handled separately. Elaboration of this registry is in the workplan for EarthCube, with the goal maximum reuse of existing vocabularies and technology and compatibility with related registry activities.