Geophysical Research Letters

The leading empirical orthogonal function of the wintertime sea‐level pressure field is more strongly coupled to surface air temperature fluctuations over the Eurasian continent than the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). It resembles the NAO in many respects; but its primary center of action covers more of the Arctic, giving it a more zonally symmetric appearance. Coupled to strong fluctuations at the 50‐hPa level on the intraseasonal, interannual, and interdecadal time scales, this “Arctic Oscillation” (AO) can be interpreted as the surface signature of modulations in the strength of the polar vortex aloft. It is proposed that the zonally asymmetric surface air temperature and mid‐tropospheric circulation anomalies observed in association with the AO may be secondary baroclinic features induced by the land‐sea contrasts. The same modal structure is mirrored in the pronounced trends in winter and springtime surface air temperature, sea‐level pressure, and 50‐hPa height over the past 30 years: parts of Eurasia have warmed by as much as several K, sea‐level pressure over parts of the Arctic has fallen by 4 hPa, and the core of the lower stratospheric polar vortex has cooled by several K. These trends can be interpreted as the development of a systematic bias in one of the atmosphere's dominant, naturally occurring modes of variability.

Recent revisions to the geomagnetic time scale indicate that global plate motion model NUVEL‐1 should be modified for comparison with other rates of motion including those estimated from space geodetic measurements. The optimal recalibration, which is a compromise among slightly different calibrations appropriate for slow, medium, and fast rates of seafloor spreading, is to multiply NUVEL‐1 angular velocities by a constant, α, of 0.9562. We refer to this simply recalibrated plate motion model as NUVEL‐1A, and give correspondingly revised tables of angular velocities and uncertainties. Published work indicates that space geodetic rates are slower on average than those calculated from NUVEL‐1 by 6±1%. This average discrepancy is reduced to less than 2% when space geodetic rates are instead compared with NUVEL‐1A.

Organic aerosol (OA) data acquired by the Aerosol Mass Spectrometer (AMS) in 37 field campaigns were deconvolved into hydrocarbon‐like OA (HOA) and several types of oxygenated OA (OOA) components. HOA has been linked to primary combustion emissions (mainly from fossil fuel) and other primary sources such as meat cooking. OOA is ubiquitous in various atmospheric environments, on average accounting for 64%, 83% and 95% of the total OA in urban, urban downwind, and rural/remote sites, respectively. A case study analysis of a rural site shows that the OOA concentration is much greater than the advected HOA, indicating that HOA oxidation is not an important source of OOA, and that OOA increases are mainly due to SOA. Most global models lack an explicit representation of SOA which may lead to significant biases in the magnitude, spatial and temporal distributions of OA, and in aerosol hygroscopic properties.

From 1953 to 2006, Arctic sea ice extent at the end of the melt season in September has declined sharply. All models participating in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report (IPCC AR4) show declining Arctic ice cover over this period. However, depending on the time window for analysis, none or very few individual model simulations show trends comparable to observations. If the multi‐model ensemble mean time series provides a true representation of forced change by greenhouse gas (GHG) loading, 33–38% of the observed September trend from 1953–2006 is externally forced, growing to 47–57% from 1979–2006. Given evidence that as a group, the models underestimate the GHG response, the externally forced component may be larger. While both observed and modeled Antarctic winter trends are small, comparisons for summer are confounded by generally poor model performance.

The use of SAR interferometry is often impeded by decorrelation from thermal noise, temporal change, and baseline geometry. Power spectra of interferograms are typically the sum of a narrow‐band component combined with broad‐band noise. We describe a new adaptive filtering algorithm that dramatically lowers phase noise, improving both measurement accuracy and phase unwrapping, while demonstrating graceful degradation in regions of pure noise. The performance of the filter is demonstrated with SAR data from the ERS satellites over the Jakobshavns glacier of Greenland.

Satellite data reveal unusually low Arctic sea ice coverage during the summer of 2007, caused in part by anomalously high temperatures and southerly winds. The extent and area of the ice cover reached minima on 14 September 2007 at 4.1 × 10⁶ km² and 3.6 × 10⁶ km², respectively. These are 24% and 27% lower than the previous record lows, both reached on 21 September 2005, and 37% and 38% less than the climatological averages. Acceleration in the decline is evident as the extent and area trends of the entire ice cover (seasonal and perennial ice) have shifted from about −2.2 and −3.0% per decade in 1979–1996 to about −10.1 and −10.7% per decade in the last 10 years. The latter trends are now comparable to the high negative trends of −10.2 and −11.4% per decade for the perennial ice extent and area, 1979–2007.

The Cloud‐Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP, pronounced the same as “calliope”) is a spaceborne two‐wavelength polarization lidar that has been acquiring global data since June 2006. CALIOP provides high resolution vertical profiles of clouds and aerosols, and has been designed with a very large linear dynamic range to encompass the full range of signal returns from aerosols and clouds. CALIOP is the primary instrument carried by the Cloud‐Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) satellite, which was launched on April 28, 2006. CALIPSO was developed within the framework of a collaboration between NASA and the French space agency, CNES. Initial data analysis and validation intercomparisons indicate the quality of data from CALIOP meets or exceeds expectations. This paper presents a description of the CALIPSO mission, the CALIOP instrument, and an initial assessment of on‐orbit measurement performance.

We demonstrate that the coherent information about the Earth structure can be extracted from the ambient seismic noise. We compute cross‐correlations of vertical component records of several days of seismic noise at different pairs of stations separated by distances from about one hundred to more than two thousand kilometers. Coherent broadband dispersive wavetrains clearly emerge with group velocities similar to those predicted from the global Rayleigh‐wave tomographic maps that have been constrained using ballistic surface waves. Those results show that coherent Rayleigh waves can be extracted from the ambient seismic noise and that their dispersion characteristics can be measured in a broad range of periods. This provides a source for new types of surface‐wave measurements that can be obtained for numerous paths that could not be sampled with the ballistic waves and, therefore, can significantly improve the resolution of seismic images.

Accurate estimation of spatially distributed chlorophyll content (Chl) in crops is of great importance for regional and global studies of carbon balance and responses to fertilizer (e.g., nitrogen) application. In this paper a recently developed conceptual model was applied for remotely estimating Chl in maize and soybean canopies. We tuned the spectral regions to be included in the model, according to the optical characteristics of the crops studied, and showed that the developed technique allowed accurate estimation of total Chl in both crops, explaining more than 92% of Chl variation. This new technique shows great potential for remotely tracking the physiological status of crops, with contrasting canopy architectures, and their responses to environmental changes.

The decay of ¹⁴⁷Sm to ¹⁴³Nd allows ¹⁴³Nd/¹⁴⁴Nd to be used to trace Sm/Nd fractionation in long time‐scale geologic processes. ¹⁴³Nd/¹⁴⁴Nd has been measured in terrestrial rock samples of different ages to establish the characteristics of Nd isotopic evolution in the crust and mantle. The evolution of ¹⁴³Nd/¹⁴⁴Nd in the mantle indicates Sm/Nd essentially equal to that of chondrites, and implies a chondritic REE distribution for the earth. Variations in ¹⁴³Nd/¹⁴⁴Nd do exist in the mantle, however, indicating Sm/Nd heterogeneity and the existence of distinct mantle reservoirs with characteristic ¹⁴³Nd/¹⁴⁴Nd. ¹⁴³Nd/¹⁴⁴Nd in average crustal rocks today is much lower than found in recent mantle samples and reflects their age and low Sm/Nd. Oceanic tholeiites and alkali basalt are derived from sources with Sm/Nd which has been 5‐10% greater than chondritic over the age of the earth. Alkali basalt can not be derived from mantle reservoirs which have been light REE‐enriched for long times.