Search results for "Atmosphere of Earth"

Model, software and database for line-mixing effects in the ν3 and ν4 bands of CH4 and tests using laboratory and planetary measurements-I: N2(and ai…

2006

International audience; Absorption spectra of the infrared ν3 and ν4 bands of CH4 perturbed by N2 over large ranges of pressure and temperature have been measured in the laboratory. A theoretical approach accounting for line mixing is proposed to (successfully) model these experiments. It is similar to that of Pieroni et al. [J Chem Phys 1999;110:7717–32] and is based on state-to-state rotational cross-sections calculated with a semi-classical approach and a few empirical parameters. The latter, which enable switching from the state space to the line space, are deduced from a fit of a single room temperature spectrum of the ν3 band at 50 atm. The comparisons between numerous measured and ca…

Comparison of Radiosonde and Remote Sensing Data to Evaluate Convective Forest Fire Risk: The Haines Index

2018

Haines Index (HI) has been associated with convective forest fires risk. Temperatures and humidities in low atmospheric levels are required to compute HI and usually, atmospheric sounding data are used for this purpose. However, spatial and temporal resolutions of these data are coarse and remote sensing data could improve them. Therefore, the aim of this work is to test remote sensing data from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument on board the EOS Aqua satellite, specifically the Level 2 V6 products (AIRX2RET and AIRS2RET), for this purpose. First, we validated the remote sensing data with radiosonde daytime and nighttime data located in the Iberian Peninsula in 2014. Signifi…

Sky radiation, polarization and twilight radiation in Greenland

1966

A) The measurements of the spectral radiances in the solar almucantar (scattering function) and the degree of polarization of the skylight in Greenland indicate the following: 1) The air near the surface of the ice cap of Northern Greenland is very pure. 2) The sky radiance however is different from the pure molecular (Rayleigh) atmosphere, the measured scattering function does not followRayleigh's law. 3) On the other hand the measured scattering functions cannot be explained satisfactoryly by scattering on the aerosols which have been measured near the surface. 4) Therefore the presence of a few particles per cm3 with radii in the range 0.10≤r≤1μ in heigher atmospheric layers has to be po…

A Fast Solar Radiation Transfer Code for Application in Climate Models

1983

A method is presented for the calculation of solar heating rates in turbid and cloudy atmospheres. In contrast to other typical two-stream procedures, the system of differential equations describing the radiative transfer is decoupled through the application of a series expansion of the flux densities resulting in a single analytical expression for each flux. The present method (PM) yields a solution for the entire atmosphere instead of individual atmospheric layers. This procedure avoids as part of the solution scheme the inversion of a rather complex matrix thus resulting in high numerical efficiency. The model includes the absorption by atmospheric gases such as water vapor, CO2, O3 and …

First muography of Stromboli volcano

2019

AbstractMuography consists in observing the differential absorption of muons – elementary particles produced through cosmic-ray interactions in the Earth atmosphere – going through the volcano and can attain a spatial resolution of tens of meters. We present here the first experiment of nuclear emulsion muography at the Stromboli volcano. Muons have been recorded during a period of five months by a detector of 0.96 m2 area. The emulsion films were prepared at the Gran Sasso underground laboratory and were analyzed at Napoli, Salerno and Tokyo scanning laboratories. Our results highlight a significant low-density zone at the summit of the volcano with density contrast of 30–40% with respect …

The relative role of EUV radiation and X-rays in the heating of hydrogen-rich exoplanet atmospheres

2009

Aims. We study the relative role of EUV and X-ray radiation in the heating of hydrogen-rich planet atmospheres with different composition and electron content. Methods. An accurate photo-ionization model has been used to follow the primary photo-electron energy deposition throughout the atmosphere. Results. Heating rates and efficiencies have been computed, together with column density cut-offs at which photons of given energies stop their heating production inside the atmosphere. Assuming 100 eV as the energy borderline between the extreme ultraviolet spectral range and X-rays we find that when the absorbing hydrogen column density is higher than 10 20 cm −2 only X-rays can heat the gas. E…

The EUSO Data Simulation and Analysis Tree

2004

The "Extreme Universe Space Observatory - EUSO" is the first Space mission devoted to the exploration of the outermost bounds of the Universe through the investigation of the Extremely-High Energy Cosmic Rays, EECR, using the Earth atmosphere as a giant detector. The objective is to obtain a detailed description of the Cosmic Ray spectrum beyond 5×1019 eV together with a map of the arrival directions. EUSO will detect EECR looking at the streak of fluorescence light produced when such a particle interacts with the atmosphere. The signal will be detected after its propagation upward from the dark Earth atmosphere to the EUSO telescope accommodated, as external payload, on the International S…

Rapid oxidation of mercury (Hg) at volcanic vents: Insights from high temperature thermodynamic models of Mt Etna's emissions

2011

A major uncertainty regarding the environmental impacts of volcanic Hg is the extent to which Hg is deposited locally or transported globally. An important control on dispersion and deposition is the oxidation state of Hg compounds: Hg(0) is an inert, insoluble gas, while Hg(II) occurs as reactive gases or in particles, which deposit rapidly and proximally, near the volcanic vent. Using a new high temperature thermodynamic model, we show that although Hg in Etna's magmatic gases is almost entirely Hg(0) (i.e., gaseous elemental mercury), significant quantities of Hg(II) are likely formed at Etna's vents as gaseous HgCl2, when magmatic gases are cooled and oxidised by atmospheric gases. Thes…

2013

Abstract. It has become possible to retrieve the global, long-term trends of trace gases that are important to atmospheric chemistry, climate, and air quality from satellite data records that span more than a decade. However, many of the satellite remote sensing techniques produce measurements that have variable sensitivity to the vertical profiles of atmospheric gases. In the case of constrained retrievals like optimal estimation, this leads to a varying amount of a priori information in the retrieval and is represented by an averaging kernel (AK). In this study, we investigate to what extent the estimation of trends from retrieved data can be biased by temporal changes of averaging kernel…

Fundamental properties and atmospheric structure of the red supergiant VY CMa based on VLTI/AMBER spectro-interferometry

2012

We investigate the atmospheric structure and fundamental properties of the red supergiant VY CMa. We obtained near-infrared spectro-interferometric observations of VY CMa with spectral resolutions of 35 and 1500 using the AMBER instrument at the VLTI. The visibility data indicate the presence of molecular layers of water vapor and CO in the extended atmosphere with an asymmetric morphology. The uniform disk diameter in the water band around 2.0 mu is increased by \sim20% compared to the near-continuum bandpass at 2.20-2.25 mu and in the CO band at 2.3-2.5 mu it is increased by up to \sim50%. The closure phases indicate relatively small deviations from point symmetry close to the photospheri…