Spectrum of mesoscale sea level oscillations in the northern Black Sea: Tides,seiches, and inertial oscillations

Long-term data from 23 tide gauges were used to analyze the spectrum of mesoscale sea level variability of the Black Sea. The tides have sharp spectral peaks, and they are detected at diurnal and semidiurnal frequencies for all stations. A local wide spectral peak associated with inertial oscillations is located between the diurnal and semidiurnal tidal peaks. This peak is well known in the spectra of the current velocity variations of the Black Sea, but in the sea level spectrum it has been identified for the first time. At frequencies of >3 cpd, sea level spectra of the Black Sea have (1) wide maxima in the continuous spectrum, which correspond to the main eigenmodes of the sea with periods of 5.6, 4.8, 4.1, and 3.1 h, and (2) sharp peaks of radiational harmonics S₃, S₄, S₅, and S₆. The periods of seiches calculated in this study are close to the periods of eigenmodes of the Black Sea, obtained by the numerical modeling of other authors. The main factors influencing the formation of radiational tides in the Black Sea are presumably breezes and runoff from large rivers. The significant predominance of a harmonic with frequency of 5 cpd (S₅) over other radiational harmonics is caused by the influence of an eigenmode, with a frequency of about 5 cpd. The proximity of the periods of these oscillations leads to resonant amplification and to a corresponding increase in amplitude of the radiational harmonic S₅.     

Determination of the orbits of near-Earth asteroids from observations at the first opposition

Observations at the first opposition are used to determine the orbits of 16 near-Earth asteroids with two or more observed oppositions. The orbits are improved by the differential method. This paper considers two modifications of the improvement technique, which are compared to the classical method based on the principle of the least square method (LSM). The first modification uses the principle of least absolute deviations (LAD). In the second modification, the differences O - C (between the observed and calculated positions) are transformed to fit into a new coordinate system whereby the axes go parallel and perpendicular to the asteroid’s apparent path (the modified differential method (MDM)). The orbits determined from one opposition by the classical LSM, LAD, and MDM are compared to a more accurate orbit calculated by the LSM from all the available oppositions. The calculations show that in 13 cases out of 16, the asteroid orbits calculated by LAD are more accurate than those calculated by the classical LSM. The improvement by the modified differential method, which includes the O - C transformation, does not produce any perceptible increase in accuracy when compared to the orbits calculated by the classical method.     

Indentation of a continent with a built-in thickness change: experiment and nature

Orogens oblique to the direction of plate convergence are currently attributed to obliquity between the margins of one or both of the sutured continents to their direction convergence. We use a single analogue experiment and natural examples to illustrate a potential additional factor: variations in strength of the indented continent at a high angle to the convergence direction. The wavelengths of structures in laterally shortened lithosphere depend on the strength of the most competent layers. Lateral variations in crustal thickness must therefore lead to structures oblique to any applied lateral compression.

An analogue experiment was performed to explore this phenomenon. A two-layer ‘indented continent’ was modelled by a brittle upper crust of sand above a lower crust of high-viscosity polymer floating on a single layer of low-viscosity syrup representing the mantle. The well-known strike-slip structures allowing lateral escape to distant weak boundaries were hindered by lateral boundaries in front of the indenter. This allowed us to focus on the effects of a thickness change built into the ‘indented continent’ along a zone parallel to the direction in which a vertical rigid wall advancing at a steady rate represented the indenter. Vertical escape led to an ‘orogenic belt’ oblique to the advancing wall; this obliquity influences subsequent lateral escape. Model scaling and interpretations are based on Extended Thin Sheet Approximation (ETSA) and standard theories of faulting.

Four sectors of the Alpine–Himalayan orogen (Iran, Tunisia, the Eastern Alps and the Himalaya) are oblique to the continental convergence direction, and we point to thickness changes at high angles to the suture that may account for this geometry. As crustal thicknesses north of oblique sectors of the Himalayas are not yet known, we speculate on them.

We infer from the main difference between our experiment and all our examples chosen from nature that vertical orogenic escape was oblique to our model suture but can be parallel to natural sutures.     

Effect of a Starting Model on the Solution of a Travel Time Seismic Tomography Problem

In the problems of three-dimensional (3D) travel time seismic tomography where the data are travel times of diving waves and the starting model is a system of plane layers where the velocity is a function of depth alone, the solution turns out to strongly depend on the selection of the starting model. This is due to the fact that in the different starting models, the rays between the same points can intersect different layers, which makes the tomography problem fundamentally nonlinear. This effect is demonstrated by the model example. Based on the same example, it is shown how the starting model should be selected to ensure a solution close to the true velocity distribution. The starting model (the average dependence of the seismic velocity on depth) should be determined by the method of successive iterations at each step of which the horizontal velocity variations in the layers are determined by solving the two-dimensional tomography problem. An example illustrating the application of this technique to the P-wave travel time data in the region of the Black Sea basin is presented.     

Optical Identification of Candidates for Active Galactic Nuclei Detected by the Mikhail Pavlinsky ART-XC Telescope Onboard the SRG Observatory during an All-Sky X-ray Survey

Astronomy Letters - We present the results of our identification of eight objects from the preliminary catalogue of X-ray sources detected in the 4–12 keV energy band by the Mikhail Pavlinsky...     

Dynamics of Slope Processes in the Geysernaya River Valley (Kamchatka) According to the Interpretation Data of Multi-Temporal Space Images

Doklady Earth Sciences - The interpretation of high-resolution satellite images (0.5–3 m) of three time slices (1964, 2009, and 2017) allowed us to identify the areas of activation of modern...