Extending water vapor trend observations over Boulder into the tropopause region: Trend uncertainties and resulting radiative forcing.

Thirty years of balloon-borne measurements over Boulder (40°N, 105°W) are used to investigate the water vapor trend in the tropopause region. This analysis extends previously published trends, usually focusing on altitudes greater than 16 km, to lower altitudes. Two new concepts are applied: (1) Trends are presented in a thermal tropopause (TP) relative coordinate system from -2 km below to 10 km above the TP, and (2) sonde profiles are selected according to TP height. Tropical (TP z > 14 km), extratropical (TP z < 12 km), and transitional air mass types (12 km < TP z < 14 km) reveal three different water vapor reservoirs. The analysis based on these concepts reduces the dynamically induced water vapor variability at the TP and principally favors refined water vapor trend studies in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere. Nonetheless, this study shows how uncertain trends are at altitudes -2 to +4 km around the TP. This uncertainty in turn has an influence on the uncertainty and interpretation of water vapor radiative effects at the TP, which are locally estimated for the 30 year period to be of uncertain sign. The much discussed decrease in water vapor at the beginning of 2001 is not detectable between -2 and 2 km around the TP. On lower stratospheric isentropes, the water vapor change at the beginning of 2001 is more intense for extratropical than for tropical air mass types. This suggests a possible link with changing dynamics above the jet stream such as changes in the shallow branch of the Brewer-Dobson circulation.

On the evolution of density dependent dispersal in a spatially structured population model.

A simple metapopulation lattice model of two competing phenotypes is presented, where one phenotype reacts more sensitively to overcrowding by migrating to neighbouring local habitats. The sensitivity is formulated by means of a threshold density of the subpopulations, above which dispersal is triggered off. If this threshold density is not very far from the local carrying capacity, an increased mobility provides benefits on the metapopulation level. At a surprisingly small difference between migrational triggering thresholds, the phenotype of larger mobility (or lower threshold) squeezes out the less mobile one from the whole system in a wide parameter range. Evolutionary considerations give an optimal threshold level for our model metapopulation.

Bioconvective dynamics: dependence on organism behaviour.

Bioconvection occurs when a macroscopic nonuniformity of the concentration of microbial populations is generated and maintained by the directional swimming of the organisms. This study investigated the properties of the patterns near the onset of the instability and later during its evolution into a fully nonlinear convection regime. In suspensions of the bacteria Bacillus subtilis, which tend to swim upwards in a gradient of oxygen concentration that they create by consumption, we discovered that the dominant wavelength at the onset of the instability is determined primarily by the cell density and is influenced only weakly by the fluid depth. This observation contrasts strongly with previous observations on the gravitactic alga Chlamydomonas nivalis, in which the opposite dependence was found. Considerable differences were also found in the long-term evolution of the convection patterns. These results demonstrate the existence of readily distinguishable types of bioconvection systems, even at early stages of the instability. The observed differences are clearly and causally correlated with disparate reasons for upward swimming by these micro-organisms, leading to different geometric distributions of the density of the suspension.

Modeling elastic properties of microtubule tips and walls.

Electron micrographs of tips of growing and shrinking microtubules are analyzed and interpreted. The many shapes observed are all consistent with a simple mechanical model, a flexible tube with competing intrinsic curvatures. Observations are also consistent with growing and shrinking microtubules having the same intrinsic curvature for protofilaments, the one observed in oligomers peeling off shrinking microtubules. If this is so, the lateral bonds between protofilaments are responsible for the difference between shapes of tips on growing and shrinking microtubules.