Search results for "Atmosphere of Earth"

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 …

Description of atmospheric conditions at the Pierre Auger Observatory using the Global Data Assimilation System (GDAS)

2012

Atmospheric conditions at the site of a cosmic ray observatory must be known for reconstructing observed extensive air showers. The Global Data Assimilation System (GDAS) is a global atmospheric model predicated on meteorological measurements and numerical weather predictions. GDAS provides altitude-dependent profiles of the main state variables of the atmosphere like temperature, pressure, and humidity. The original data and their application to the air shower reconstruction of the Pierre Auger Observatory are described. By comparisons with radiosonde and weather station measurements obtained on-site in Malargüe and averaged monthly models, the utility of the GDAS data is shown.

Column-integrated aerosol optical properties from ground-based spectroradiometer measurements at Barrax (Spain) during the Digital Airborne Spectrome…

2003

[1] The Digital Airborne Imaging Spectrometer Experiment (DAISEX) was carried out for the European Space Agency (ESA) in order to develop the potential of spaceborne imaging spectroscopy for a range of different scientific applications. DAISEX involved simultaneous data acquisitions using different airborne imaging spectrometers over test sites in southeast Spain (Barrax) and the Upper Rhine valley (Colmar, France, and Hartheim, Germany). This paper presents the results corresponding to the columnintegrated aerosol optical properties from ground-based spectroradiometer measurements over the Barrax area during the DAISEX campaign days in the years 1998, 1999, and 2000. The instruments used f…

2016

Abstract. Aerosols have important impacts on air quality and climate, but the processes affecting their removal from the atmosphere are not fully understood and are poorly constrained by observations. This makes modelled aerosol lifetimes uncertain. In this study, we make use of an observational constraint on aerosol lifetimes provided by radionuclide measurements and investigate the causes of differences within a set of global models. During the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant accident of March 2011, the radioactive isotopes cesium-137 (137Cs) and xenon-133 (133Xe) were released in large quantities. Cesium attached to particles in the ambient air, approximately according to their av…

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…

Evidence of small-scale magnetic concentrations dragged by vortex motion of solar photospheric plasma

2010

Vortex-type motions have been measured by tracking bright points in high-resolution observations of the solar photosphere. These small-scale motions are thought to be determinant in the evolution of magnetic footpoints and their interaction with plasma and therefore likely to play a role in heating the upper solar atmosphere by twisting magnetic flux tubes. We report the observation of magnetic concentrations being dragged towards the center of a convective vortex motion in the solar photosphere from high-resolution ground-based and space-borne data. We describe this event by analyzing a series of images at different solar atmospheric layers. By computing horizontal proper motions, we detec…

Atmospheric components determination from ground-level measurements during the spectra Barax Campaigns (SPARC) field campaigns

2007

The Surface Processes and Ecosystem Changes Through Response Analysis (SPECTRA) Barrax Campaigns were validation campaigns developed in the framework of the SPECTRA mission in order to verify that the geophysical data products provided by satellite imagery are consistent with the measurements made by independent means. Two campaigns took place in Barrax, Spain, during the summers of 2003 and 2004. This paper presents the results of the characterization of the atmospheric composition from solar radiation, radiosoundings, and lidar measurements. Several potentially interesting situations involving atmospheric layers with different types of aerosols and water content are discussed. The presenc…

Climatology of the stability and humidity terms in the Haines Index to improve the estimate of forest fire risk in the Western Mediterranean Basin (V…

2014

The stability and moisture content of the different atmospheric levels are commonly used to assess the risk index in the propagation and evolution of a hypothetical forest fire. The Haines Index (HI) combines these terms to determine the environmental potential for wildfire growth. In this paper the environmental stability and humidity associated with the lower atmospheric layers in the Western Mediterranean Basin are investigated by analysing HI calculations over a 29-year period. The HI climatology can be applied to the study of plume-dominated forest fires. These fires tend to present very erratic propagation behaviour and create highly dangerous situations for fire brigades. Thus the kn…

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 …

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…