Search results for "Planetary Science"
showing 10 items of 4367 documents
Pore-space characterization of an altered tonalite by X-ray computed microtomography and the14C-labeled-polymethylmethacrylate method
2012
[1] The structure of geological materials strongly affects migration processes that take place in them and are also important in their weathering and alteration processes. Further information of that structure will also be important for many applications that involve geological materials. The emphasis of this study was thus to characterize the pore structure and porosity of altered tonalite by combining different measuring techniques: X-ray tomography, the14C-polymethylmethacrylate method, electron microscopy, and argon pycnometry. Intragranular porosities were determined using chemical staining of rock surfaces. Three-dimensional distributions of minerals and porosities were evaluated with…
Influence of ice crystal shape on retrieval of cirrus optical thickness and effective radius: A case study
2009
Airborne measurements of spectral upwelling radiances (350A¢Â�Â�2200 nm) reflected by cirrus using the Spectral Modular Airborne Radiation measurement sysTem (SMART)-Albedometer were made over land and water surfaces. Based on these data, cloud optical thickness tau and effective radius Reff of the observed cirrus were retrieved. By using different crystal shape assumptions (hexagonal plates, solid and hollow columns, rough aggregates, planar and spatial rosettes, ice spheres, and a mixture of particle habits) in the retrieval, the influence of crystal shape on the retrieved tau and Reff was evaluated. With relative differences of up to 70%, the influence of particle habit on t is larger th…
Operational forecasting of daily summer maximum and minimum temperatures in the Valencia Region
2013
Extreme-temperature events have a great impact on human society. Thus, knowledge of summer temperatures can be very useful both for the general public and for organizations whose workers operate in the open. An accurate forecasting of summer maximum and minimum temperatures could help to predict heatwave conditions and permit the implementation of strategies aimed at minimizing the negative effects that high temperatures have on human health. The objective of this work is to evaluate the skill of the regional atmospheric and modelling system (RAMS) model in determining daily summer maximum and minimum temperatures in the Valencia Region. For this, we have used the real-time configuration of…
Approaches to partitioning the global UVER irradiance into its direct and diffuse components in Valencia, Spain
2012
[1] The paper explores methods of partitioning the hourly average UV erythemal flux into its direct and diffuse components for Valencia, Spain. It is shown that the cloud modification factor, the ratio of measured to cloudless erythemal flux relates linearly to the fraction of the measured irradiance that is diffuse. This relationship was developed further into two simple models- a linear and nonlinear one. The models are characterized by an effective cloud cover to partition the global erythemal flux. The diffuse fraction increases linearly with cloud cover in the linear model, but exponentially in the nonlinear one. The models may be used to partition the direct and diffuse irradiance wit…
Intercomparison of spectroradiometers and Sun photometers for the determination of the aerosol optical depth during the VELETA-2002 field campaign
2006
In July 2002 the VELETA-2002 field campaign was held in Sierra Nevada (Granada) in the south of Spain. The main objectives of this field campaign were the study of the influence of elevation and atmospheric aerosols on measured UV radiation. In the first stage of the field campaign, a common calibration and intercomparison between Licor-1800 spectroradiometers and Cimel-318 Sun photometers was performed in order to assess the quality of the measurements from the whole campaign. The intercomparison of the Licor spectroradiometers showed, for both direct and global irradiances, that when the comparisons were restricted to the visible part of the spectrum the deviations were within the instrum…
On the direct and semidirect effects of Saharan dust over Europe: A modeling study
2007
[1] On the basis of a new regional dust model system, the sensitivity of radiative forcing to dust aerosol properties and the impact on atmospheric dynamics were investigated. Uncertainties in optical properties were related to uncertainties in the complex spectral refractive index of mineral dust. The climatological-based distribution of desert-type aerosol in the radiation scheme of the nonhydrostatic regional model LM was replaced by dust optical properties from spectral refractive indices, derived from in situ measurements, remote sensing, bulk measurements, and laboratory experiments, employing Mie theory. The model computes changes in the solar and terrestrial irradiance from a spatia…
The surface shortwave net flux from the scanner for radiation budget (SCARAB)
2002
Abstract Shortwave surface net radiation is usually determined by combining the measurement of insolation with an independent estimate of surface albedo. However, uncertainties associated with each of these quantities may lead to large errors in the value of net surface solar radiation. An alternative approach is to deduce the net solar flux (the term flux is used here as the radiometric quantity flux density) at the surface directly from the budget at the top of the atmosphere, without explicit knowledge of surface albedo. The Satellite Application Facility on Climate Monitoring is a joint project of the German Meteorological Service and other European Meteorological Services dedicated to …
Stratosphere-troposphere exchange: A review, and what we have learned from STACCATO
2003
[1] This paper provides a review of stratosphere-troposphere exchange (STE), with a focus on processes in the extratropics. It also addresses the relevance of STE for tropospheric chemistry, particularly its influence on the oxidative capacity of the troposphere. After summarizing the current state of knowledge, the objectives of the project Influence of Stratosphere-Troposphere Exchange in a Changing Climate on Atmospheric Transport and Oxidation Capacity (STACCATO), recently funded by the European Union, are outlined. Several papers in this Journal of Geophysical Research– Atmospheres special section present the results of this project, of which this paper gives an overview. STACCATO deve…
Comparison of ERA40 cloud top phase with POLDER-1 observations
2008
[1] A detailed grid-point-based comparison of the cloud top phase derived from the 40-year reanalyses (ERA40) of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) with satellite measurements is presented. For this purpose an algorithm is implemented to extract a two-dimensional “satellite-like” field of the cloud top phase from ERA40 data. This field is compared with cloud top phase data from the Polarization and Directionality of the Earth Reflectances (POLDER-1) instrument which was in orbit from November 1996 to June 1997. The thermodynamic cloud phase in ERA40 data is parameterized as a function of temperature with pure liquid clouds above 0°C, pure ice clouds below −23°C a…
Identification of Tropical‐Extratropical Interactions and Extreme Precipitation Events in the Middle East Based On Potential Vorticity and Moisture T…
2018
The authors wish to thank CRED, ECMWF, NASA, JAXA, and APHRODITE for providing their data sets, which are available under the following links; EM-DAT (http://www.emdat.be/), ERA-Interim (https://www.ecmwf.int/en/research/climate-reanalysis/era-interim), TRMM (https://pmm.nasa.gov/data-access/downloads/trmm), and Aphrodite (http://www.chikyu.ac.jp/precip/english/). We acknowledge the Israeli Atmospheric and Climatic Data Centre (IACDC), supported by the Israeli Ministry of Science, Technology and Space, for providing the Israel Meteorological Service (IMS) daily rainfall records as well as the Ministry of Environment, Water and Agriculture (MEWA) in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for providing …