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For the purpose of detecting the effects of human activities on climate change, it is important to document natural change in past climate. In this context, it has proved particularly difficult to study the variability in the occurrence of extreme climate events, such as storms with exceptional rainfall. Previous investigations have established storm chronologies using sediment cores from single lakes, but such studies can be susceptible to local environmental bias. Here we date terrigenous inwash layers in cores from 13 lakes, which show that the frequency of storm-related floods in the northeastern United States has varied in regular cycles during the past 13,000 years (13 kyr), with a characteristic period of about 3 kyr. Our data show four peaks in storminess during the past 14 kyr, approximately 2.6, 5.8, 9.1 and 11.9 kyr ago. This pattern is consistent with long-term changes in the average sign of the Arctic Oscillation, suggesting that modulation of this dominant atmospheric mode may account for a significant fraction of Holocene climate variability in North America and Europe.

1. The sources of nitrogen for phytoplankton were determined for a bloom-prone lake as a means of assessing the hypothesis that cyanobacteria dominate in eutrophic lakes because of their ability to fix nitrogen when the nitrogen : phosphorous (N : P) supply ratio is low and nitrogen a limiting resource. 2. Nitrogen fixation rates, estimated through acetylene reduction with 15 N calibration, were compared with 15 N-tracer estimates of ammonium and nitrate uptake monthly during the ice-free season of 1999. In addition, the natural N stable isotope composition of phytoplankton, nitrate and ammonium were measured biweekly and the contribution of N 2 to the phytoplankton signature estimated with a mixing model. 3. Although cyanobacteria made up 81-98% of phytoplankton biomass during summer and autumn, both assays suggested minimal N acquisition through fixation (<9% for the in-situ incubations; <2% for stable isotope analysis). Phytoplankton acquired N primarily as ammonium (82-98%), and secondarily as nitrate (15-18% in spring and autumn, but <5% in summer). Heterocyst densities of <3 per 100 fixer cells confirmed low reliance on fixation. 4. The lake showed symptoms of both light and nitrogen limitation. Cyanobacteria may have dominated by monopolizing benthic sources of ammonium, or by forming surface scums that shaded other algae.

Lower Cretaceous pelagic carbonates outcropping along the Southern Alps of northern Italy provide a record of Tethyan palaeoceanography as well as of low frequency fluctuations in the global carbon cycle. The carbonate C‐isotope stratigraphy established at five selected localities in the Southern Alps allows an accurate picture to be drawn of the duration and amplitude of the Valanginian C‐isotope event. δ13C values near 1.25–1.50% determined in Berriasian and lower Valanginian sediments are replaced by more pdsitive δ13C values near 3% in the late Valanginian. The carbonate C‐isotope excursion ends in the early Hauterivian with values fluctuating between 1.5% and 2%. The carbonate C‐isotope excursion is accompanied by a positive excursion in the total organic carbon C‐isotope curve. The Valanginian C‐isotope excursion identified in Tethyan sediments correlates with a C‐isotope excursion recorded in the western North Atlantic, in the Gulf of Mexico, and in the Central Pacific (DSDP Sites 534,391,535 and 167). By analogy with the Aptian stage, also marked by a significant positive C‐isotope excursion, the time of positive δ13C values is regarded as a time of accelerated carbon cycling coupled with increased burial rates of organic carbon and detrital material in oceanic sediments. A warm and humid climate, possiblycoupled with a high atmospheric CO2 content and a high global sea‐level, may have triggered the acceleration of the global carbon cycling. In this case the Valanginian C‐isotope event would reflect a first episode of Greenhouse Earth conditions during the Cretaceous.

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