Abstract: Daily Weather Regimes Are Defined Around The Kerguelen Islands (Southern Ocean) On The Basis Of Daily 500-hpa Geopotential Height Anomalies Derived From The Era5 Ensemble Reanalysis Over The Period 1979–2018. Ten Regimes Are Retained As Significant. Their Occurrences Are Highly Consistent Across Reanalysis Ensemble Members. Regimes Show Weak Seasonality And Nonsignificant Long-term Trends In Their Occurrences. Their Sequences Are Usually Short (1–3 Days), With Extreme Persistence Values Above 10 Days. Seasonal Regime Frequency Is Mostly Driven By The Phase Of The Southern Annular Mode Over Antarctica, Midlatitude Dynamics Over The Southern Ocean Such As The Pacific–south American Mode, And, To A Lesser Extent, Tropical Variability, With Significant But Weaker Relationships With El Niño–southern Oscillation. At The Local Scale Over The Kerguelen Islands, Regimes Have A Strong Influence On Measured Atmospheric And Oceanic Variables, Including Minimum And Maximum Air Temperature, Mostly Driven By Horizontal Advections, Seawater Temperature Recorded 5 M Below The Surface, Wind Speed, And Sea Level Pressure. Relationships Are Weaker For Precipitation Amounts. Regimes Also Modify Regional Contrasts Between Observational Sites In Kerguelen, Highlighting Strong Exposure Contrasts. The Regimes Allow Us To Improve Our Understanding Of Weather And Climate Variability And Interactions In This Region; They Will Be Used In Future Work To Assess Past And Projected Long-term Circulation Changes In The Southern Midlatitudes.

Abstract: Aim Biogeographical studies on the entire ranges of widely distributed species can change our perception of species’ range dynamics. We studied the effects of Pleistocene glacial cycles on current butterfly species distributions, aiming to uncover complex biogeographic patterns in the Holarctic, a region dramatically affected by Cenozoic climate change. Location Eurasia and North America. Taxon Boloria chariclea, Agriades optilete, Carterocephalus palaemon, Oeneis jutta. Methods We reconstructed the biogeographic history of four butterfly species differing in habitat preferences (B. chariclea – tundra, A. optilete – bogs, C. palaemon – temperate grasslands, O. jutta – taiga), using one mitochondrial and two nuclear DNA markers and species distribution modelling. Results Except for B. chariclea, all species originated in Eurasia. The open habitat species A. optilete and C. palaemon formed widely distributed east-west genetic clusters in continental Asia and clusters separated from them in Europe. Genetic clusters of the taiga species O. jutta were not geographically separated in Eurasia, suggesting Pleistocene fragmentation and recent reconnection. The glaciated North America was recolonized from Beringian and southerly situated refugia by all four species. Main conclusions The Pleistocene mammoth steppe allowed a widespread continuous distribution of open habitat butterflies, while in contrast the distribution of a taiga-specialist species was more limited. In the mostly flat and continental North Asia, the butterflies of various types of open habitats survived ice age in widely distributed east-west belts. In the mountainous and oceanic regions of Europe, Beringia and west North America, all four species persisted in contracted areas during the glacials. After deglaciation, they expanded their ranges and formed contact zones among populations. To conclude, the harsh climate of the glacials did not represent an obstacle for butterflies. Instead, different habitat specialists selected their own ways to thrive in the dynamic conditions of Quaternary glacial periods.

Abstract: The atmospheric cosmic-ray environment is composed of secondary particles produced when primary cosmic rays interact with the nucleus of atmospheric atoms. Modeling of atmospheric radiations is essential for investigating their impacts on human activities such as radiation risks in aviation or scientific fields such as cosmogenic dating. The nuclear transport codes are a common and accurate way to model the cosmic ray interaction in the atmosphere with minimal approximations. However, tracking all produced secondary particles in each event in the whole depth of the atmosphere and sampling many events to obtain the statistically meaningful results would be a computational challenge and disadvantageous from the point of view of time consumption. This paper presents a computational platform names ATMOS CORE based on pre-calculated databases coupled to physical models and computational methods. The fields of application concern the atmospheric cosmic-rays characterization as well as their effects on electronics systems, on the ambient dose for aircrews or the cosmogenic nuclide production for dating activities. Some comparisons between simulations and measurements are also presented and discussed.

Abstract: Satellite altimetry and gravimetry are used to determine the mean seasonal cycle in relative sea level, a quantity relevant to coastal flooding and related applications. The main harmonics (annual, semiannual, terannual) are estimated from 25 years of gridded altimetry, while several conventional altimeter “corrections” (gravitational tide, pole tide, and inverted barometer) are restored. To transform from absolute to relative sea levels, a model of vertical land motion is developed from a high-resolution seasonal mass inversion estimated from satellite gravimetry. An adjustment for annual geocenter motion accounts for use of a center-of-mass reference frame in satellite orbit determination. A set of 544 test tide gauges, from which seasonal harmonics have been estimated from hourly measurements, is used to assess how accurately each adjustment to the altimeter data helps converge the results to true relative sea levels. At these gauges, the median annual and semiannual amplitudes are 7.1 cm and 2.2 cm, respectively. The root-mean-square differences with altimetry are 3.24 and 1.17 cm, respectively, which are reduced to 1.93 and 0.86 cm after restoration of corrections and adjustment for land motion. Example outliers highlight some limitations of present-day coastal altimetry owing to inadequate spatial resolution: upwelling and currents off Oregon and wave setup at Minamitori Island.

Abstract: To fully decipher the role of nitrate photolysis on the atmospheric oxidative capacity in snow-covered regions, NOx flux must be determined with more precision than existing estimates. Here, we introduce a method based on dynamic flux chamber measurements for evaluating the NOx production by photolysis of snowpack nitrate in Antarctica. Flux chamber experiments were conducted for the first time in Antarctica, at the French-Italian station Concordia, Dome C (75°06'S, 123°20’E, 3233 m a.s.l) during the 2019–2020 summer campaign. Measurements were gathered with several snow samples of different ages ranging from newly formed drifted snow to 6-year-old firn. Contrary to existing literature expectations, the daily average photolysis rate coefficient, , did not significantly vary between differently aged snow samples, suggesting that the photolabile nitrate in snow behaves as a single-family source with common photochemical properties, where a = (2.37 0.35) × 10−8 s−1 (1) has been calculated from December 10th 2019 to January 7th 2020. At Dome C summer daily average NOx flux, , based on measured NOx production rates was estimated to be (4.3 1.2) × 108 molecules cm−2 s−1, which is 1.5–7 times less than the net NOx flux observed previously above snow at Dome C using the gradient flux method. Using these results, we extrapolated an annual continental snow sourced NOx budget of 0.017 0.003 TgN y−1, 2 times the nitrogen budget, (N-budget), of the stratospheric denitrification previously estimated for Antarctica. These quantifications of nitrate photolysis using flux chamber experiments provide a road-map toward a new parameterization of the product that can improve future global and regional models of atmospheric chemistry.