Water temperature and salinity data from southern elephant seals from Marion Island

Over the last decade, several hundred seals have been equipped with conductivity-temperature-depth sensors in the Southern Ocean for both biological and physical oceanographic studies. A calibrated collection of seal-derived hydrographic data is now available, consisting of more than 165,000 profiles. The value of these hydrographic data within the existing Southern Ocean observing system is demonstrated herein by conducting two state estimation experiments, differing only in the use or not of seal data to constrain the system. Including seal-derived data substantially modifies the estimated surface mixedlayer properties and circulation patterns within and south of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. Agreement with independent satellite observations of sea ice concentration is improved, especially along the East Antarctic shelf. Instrumented animals efficiently reduce a critical observational gap, and their contribution to monitoring polar climate variability will continue to grow as data accuracy and spatial coverage increase.

Climatological observations from ship logbooks between 1750 and 1854 (release 2.1)

The Climatological Database for the World's Oceans: 1750-1854 (CLIWOC) project, which concluded in 2004, abstracted more than 280,000 daily weather observations from ships' logbooks from British, Dutch, French, and Spanish naval vessels engaged in imperial business in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These data, now compiled into a database, provide valuable information for the reconstruction of oceanic wind field patterns for this key period that precedes the time in which anthropogenic influences on climate became evident. These reconstructions, in turn, provide evidence for such phenomena as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation and the North Atlantic Oscillation. Of equal importance is the finding that the CLIWOC database the first coordinated attempt to harness the scientific potential of this resource represents less than 10 percent of the volume of data currently known to reside in this important but hitherto neglected source.

Structural features in ODP Holes 128-794D and 128-799B

Numerous structural features occur in the Leg 128 cores from the Japan Sea. They include (1) gravity-induced structures such as slump folds, (2) dewatering structures comprising several sets of veins, and (3) larger faults and veins developed in the volcanic basement of the Yamato Basin as well as in the sedimentary rocks of the Oki Ridge and Kita-Yamato Trough. Gravity-induced structures, mainly slumps and associated faults, suggest the existence of paleoslopes and the dominance of gravitational tectonics during the early and middle Miocene, at the Pliocene/Pleistocene boundary, and during the Quaternary. Several types of mud-filled veins having various shapes were observed. These are especially abundant in the middle Miocene siliceous claystones and porcellanites from the Kita-Yamato Trough. They have been interpreted as dewatering conduits that formed preferentially in highly porous, water-saturated diatomaceous muds on a slope, because of episodic loss of sediment strength, collapse of the sediment framework, and consequent fluid migration. The central part of the vein serves once as a fluid conduit, whereas the transition between conduit-controlled and intergranular flow occurs at the branching extremities, with concentration of fines. The likely trigger responsible for the strength loss is seismic activity. Development of these veins, spatially and chronologically linked to small normal microfaults, implies an extensional regime having layer-parallel extension and a local bedding-parallel shear couple, probably the result of gravitational gliding. The brittle fractures found in Yamato Basin basement Hole 794D cores comprise joints, faults, and veins filled with chlorite-saponite, saponite, and calcite. They suggest a likely transpressive to transtensional regime around the early Miocene/ middle Miocene boundary, with a north-northeast-south-southwest compression alternating with a west-northwest-eastsoutheast extension. The faults from Site 799 cores on the Yamato Rise exhibit a prominent early Miocene-middle Miocene extensional environment, a late Miocene-early Pliocene phase of normal and strike-slip faulting, and a final phase that began during the latest Pliocene. Site 798, on the Oki Ridge, reveals faults that recorded a consistent extensional tectonic regime from Pliocene to the Holocene. These data support the pull-apart kinematic model for early Miocene-middle Miocene time, as regarding the stress regime deduced from the Yamato Basin basement fractures. The recent compression known in the eastern margin of the Japan Sea was not documented by compressive structures at any site. The late Miocene-early Pliocene faulting phase corresponds to a major and general reorganization of the stress distribution in the arc area. Evidence for rapid and main subsidence and synsedimentary extension of the Yamato Basin and Yamato Rise areas between 20 and 15 Ma, and the concomitant rotation of southwest Japan, raise the question of links between this opening and the Shimanto Belt collision in southwest Japan, between the arc and the Philippine Sea Plate.