Lake Tennyson's basin and sedimentary record were assessed for multiple branches of paleoenvironmental research. A geophysical investigation of the lake depositional setting was supported by physical and chemical analysis of multiple sediment cores. The basin reaches 60 m depth and several subaerial landforms identified were likely deposited from seismic activity. Deformed sediments and turbidites in gravity cores are attributed to one or more large (pre)historic earthquakes, and episodic grain size changes in sediment cores are related to either seismic and/or climatic/meteorological processes. A hummocky slump deposit located on the western lake bed margin is linked to widespread sediment deformation that was likely caused by movement of the Awatere Fault. Radiocarbon dating constrains the most recent major deformation event between the late thirteenth century CE and mid-twentieth Century. Folded turbidites in the stratigraphy suggest multiple sedimentary deformation episodes occurred during the last millennium. Micro-XRF elemental signatures suggest proxies of past water column mixing (windiness proxy) can be reconstructed via identification of changing redox conditions. Records from Lake Tennyson show potential for several palaeoenvironmental research applications, and combining them with basin morphostratigraphy and land-based palaeoclimate and palaeoseismic evidence can enhance understanding of environmental change in the northern South Island.

© 2023 American Meteorological Society. For information regarding reuse of this content and general copyright information, consult the AMS Copyright Policy (www.ametsoc.org/PUBSReuseLicenses). Corresponding author: Howard J. Diamond / howard.diamond@noaa.gov

Daily weather reconstructions (called “reanalyses”) can help improve our understanding of meteorology and long-term climate changes. Adding undigitized historical weather observations to the datasets that underpin reanalyses is desirable; however, time requirements to capture those data from a range of archives is usually limited. Southern Weather Discovery is a citizen science data rescue project that recovered tabulated handwritten meteorological observations from ship log books and land-based stations spanning New Zealand, the Southern Ocean, and Antarctica. We describe the Zooniverse-hosted Southern Weather Discovery campaign, highlight promotion tactics, and replicate keying levels needed to obtain 100% complete transcribed datasets with minimal type 1 and type 2 transcription errors. Rescued weather observations can augment optical character recognition (OCR) text recognition libraries. Closer links between citizen science data rescue and OCR-based scientific data capture will accelerate weather reconstruction improvements, which can be harnessed to mitigate impacts on communities and infrastructure from weather extremes.

We re-evaluated speleothem isotope series from Aotearoa New Zealand that were recently contributed to the Speleothem Isotopes Synthesis and AnaLysis (SISAL) database. COnstructing Proxy Records from Age Models (COPRA) software was used to produce Bayesian age models for those speleothems. The new age modelling helped us examine Late Quaternary temporal coverage for the national speleothem network, and also supported our exploration of three different isotope master record generation techniques using Holocene δ18O data from Waitomo. We then applied the output from one of the isotope master record techniques to test an application case of how climate transfer functions can be developed using climate model simulated temperatures. Our results suggest Holocene δ18O trends at Waitomo capture air temperature variations weighted toward the primary season of soil moisture (and epikarst) recharge during winter. This interpretation is consistent with the latest monitoring data from the Waitomo region. Holocene δ18O millennial-scale trends and centennial-scale variability at Waitomo likely reflect atmospheric circulation patterns that concomitantly vary with surface water temperature and the isotopic composition of the Tasman Sea. A climate model simulation context for the Holocene millennial-scale trends in the Waitomo δ18O isotope master record suggest that site is sensitive to changes in the subtropical front (STF) and the Tasman Front. Our comparison of isotope master record techniques using Waitomo δ18O data indicate that caution is needed prior to merging δ18O data series from different caves in order to avoid time series artefacts. Future work should incorporate more high-resolution cave monitoring and climate calibration studies, and develop new speleothem data from northern and eastern regions of the country.

Catastrophic Hurricane Dorian slowed to a crawl over Grand Bahama Island overnight and into Labor Day.On Monday, September 2, 2019, GOES East captured a view of the Category 5 storm over Grand Bahama.This GeoColor-enhanced imagery was created by NOAA's partners at the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere.The GOES East geostationary satellite, also known as GOES-16, provides coverage of the Western Hemisphere, including the United States, the Atlantic Ocean

New Zealand swamp kauri (Agathis australis) are relic trees that have been buried and preserved in anoxic bog environments of northern New Zealand for centuries through to hundreds of millennia. Kauri are massive in proportion to other native New Zealand trees and they can attain ages greater than 1000 years. The export market for swamp (subfossil) kauri has recently been driven by demand for a high-value workable timber, but there are concerns about the sustainability of the remaining resource, a situation exacerbated in recent years by the rapid extraction of wood. Economic exploitation of swamp kauri presents several unique opportunities for Quaternary science, however the scientific value of this wood is not well understood by the wider research community and public. Here, we summarise the history of scientific research on swamp kauri, and explore the considerable potential of this unique resource. Swamp kauri tree-ring chronologies are temporally unique, and secondary analyses (such as radiocarbon and isotopic analyses) have value for improving our understanding of Earth's recent geologic history and pre-instrumental climate history. Swamp kauri deposits that span the last interglacial-glacial cycle show potential to yield “ultra-long” multi-millennia tree-ring chronologies, and composite records spanning large parts of MIS3 (and most of the Holocene) may be possible. High-precision radiocarbon dating of swamp kauri chronologies can improve the resolution of the global radiocarbon calibration curve, while testing age modelling and chronologic alignment of other independent long-term high-resolution proxy records. Swamp kauri also has the potential to facilitate absolute dating and verification of cosmogenic events found in long Northern Hemisphere tree-ring chronologies. Future efforts to conserve these identified values requires scientists to work closely with swamp kauri industry operators, resource consent authorities, and export regulators to mitigate potential losses to science as this precious material is progressively extracted from the ground and utilized.

Te Otukapuarangi (the Pink Terrace), Te Tarata (the White Terrace) and Te Ngāwhā a Te Tuhi (the Black Terrace) were massive siliceous sinter formations at Lake Rotomahana, New Zealand, that were ostensibly lost in the catastrophic 1886 Tarawera eruption. Previous work using an unpublished watercolour map and notes by Ferdinand von Hochstetter (1829-1884) have recently supported claims that the former Pink and White Terraces survived the 1886 eruption, and that they may be located under tephra adjacent to the modern lake margin. Divergent perspectives about the fate of Lake Rotomahana’s former sinter terraces suggest the reconstruction of New Zealand’s largest historic volcanic eruption is incomplete. We harnessed a wider amount of unique historic data recorded during Hochstetter’s 1859 survey than previously reported to hone the locations of the former Rotomahana sinter terraces. Volcanic landforms, the physical geography of the countryside, and former settlements are tied together via common sightings between sequential survey datums. Light detection and ranging (LIDAR) data supported the reconstruction of Hochstetter’s former survey and datum locations. Of significance, shared landmarks between the survey stations increased the confidence for resecting the 1859 datum position on the southern margin of former Lake Rotomahana. Hochstetter’s survey watercolour maps are part of a series drafted prior to a final version being professionally printed, and they do not portray a spatially accurate depiction of how sinter terraces and geothermal features around former Lake Rotomahana were arranged. As such, assertions of their superior cartographic nature are not well-founded, and application of them to provide former Terrace locations is compromised. The published pre-eruption map of Lake Rotomahana validates well against Hochstetter’s field diary measurements. When Hochstetter’s published map is orientated using reconstructed positions for survey datums at Lake Rotomahana, the former locations of the White and Pink Terraces lie entirely within the modern boundaries of the lake and not on land. The Black Terrace may have been destroyed and/or converted to an eruption crater, but may still exist on land (intact or in-part) west of Lake Rotomahana’s modern shoreline. This study demonstrates the value of historic cartography to improve understanding of volcanic processes.