Geomagnetic effects of the Earth's ellipticity

We analyse the external field generated by a uniform distribution of magnetic susceptibility contained in an oblate spheroidal shell when it is magnetized by an internal magnetic field of arbitrary complexity. The situation is more relevant to the Earth than that of a spherical shell considered by Runcorn (1975a ) (in the context of lunar magnetism), because of the larger flattening of the Earth than that of the Moon. We find that, to first order in the susceptibility, each internal harmonic in a spheroidal harmonic expansion of the magnetic potential generates just one non-vanishing external field coefficient, unlike in the spherical case when all harmonics vanish identically. The field generated is proportional to the susceptibility, thickness of the shell and square of the Earth's eccentricity, and hence it appears that this field amplification mechanism will be very ineffective for the Earth.     

Geophysical model of the dynamical flattening of the Earth in agreement with the precession constant

The dynamical flattening of the Earth, as observed by geodetic techniques, is different by about 1 per cent from the value associated with the PREM density profile with hydrostatic equilibrium. In this paper, we compute a new dynamical flattening H induced by PREM mean density with hydrostatic equilibrium, to which we add lateral heterogeneities associated with (1) seismic velocity variations observed by tomography and (2) internal boundary topographies. First, we compute mantle circulation associated with the density anomalies derived from a tomography model. The flow-induced boundary deformations are then converted into additional mass anomalies which are added to the tomography model for computing the associated perturbation to the Earth's inertia tensor. Finally, we show that it is possible to obtain a dynamical flattening from the total inertia tensor (i.e. the sum of the PREM inertia tensor and of the perturbation) in agreement with that observed.     

评再版的《集水区经营》论丛

对再版的《集水区经营》论丛进行较详尽的评介。认为该论丛作者为水土保持研究和水土保持工作者提供了较为完整的、行之有效的集水区经营理念和借鉴模式,具有较高的指导性和可借鉴性。     

地理学科中《地球、地图、地球运动》的复习

当前高考改革,对地理教学提出了新的具体的能力要求,如读图、分析图、绘图、用图、地理计算、逻辑推理能力、实践能力等.本文通过<地球、地图、地球运动>知识点的复习为例,提出了复习过程对学生进行地理能力和创新思维培养的4个要点.     

Seismic rays in an ellipsoidal earth model: theoretical analysis and estimation of deviations due to the ellipticity

Summary. A first-order form of the Euler's equations for rays in an ellipsoidal model of the Earth is obtained. The conditions affecting the velocity law for a monotonic increase, with respect to the arc length, in the angular distance to the epicentre, and in the angle of incidence, are the same in the ellipsoidal and spherical models. It is therefore possible to trace rays and to compute travel times directly in an ellipsoidal earth as in the spherical model. Thus comparison with the rays of the same coordinates in a spherical earth provides an estimate of the various deviations of these rays due to the Earth's flattening, and the corresponding travel-time differences, for mantle P -waves and for shallow earthquakes. All these deviations are functions both of the latitude and of the epicentral distance. The difference in the distance to the Earth's centre at points with the same geocentric latitude on rays in the ellipsoidal and in the spherical model may reach several kilometres. Directly related to the deformation of the isovelocity surfaces, this difference is the only cause of significant perturbation in travel times. Other differences, such as that corresponding to the ray torsion, are of the first order in ellipticity, and may exceed 1 km. They induce only small differences in travel time, less than 0.01s. Thus, we show that the ellipticity correction obtained by Jeffreys (1935) and Bullen (1937) by a perturbational method can be recovered by a direct evaluation of the travel times in an ellipsoidal model of the Earth. Moreover, as stated by Dziewonski & Gilbert (1976), we verify the non-dependence of this correction on the choice of the velocity law.