Updated Expressions for Determining Temperatures and Emission Measures from Goes Soft X-Ray Measurements

{We investigate the conversion of the 0.5–4 and 1–8 Å soft X-ray flux measurements made by detectors on the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) into temperature and emission measures of coronal plasma using modern spectral models and modern understanding of coronal abundances. In particular, the original analysis by Thomas, Starr and Crannell (1985) is updated to take into account the realization that coronal abundances may be quite different from photospheric abundances. An important result of this analysis is that the derived temperatures and emission measures depend strongly on the assumed abundances even at high temperatures where continuum rather than spectral lines dominates the Sun’s X-ray spectrum. This occurs because the higher coronal abundances mean that most of the continuum is due to free–bound emission processes, not free–free emission, and thus is abundance-dependent. We find significant differences between modern calculations of the temperature response of the flux measurements and the versions currently in use: for a typical flare, emission measures may be up to a factor of 4 smaller than the current software suggests. Derived temperatures are similar for both photospheric and coronal abundances for cool flares (e.g., 15 MK), but for hot flares (e.g., 35 MK) coronal abundances can lead to significantly (~25%) lower temperatures being derived.     

Will coastal wetlands continue to sequester carbon in response to an increase in global sea level?: a case study of the rapidly subsiding Mississippi river deltaic plain

The highly visible coastal phenomenon of wetland loss in coastal Louisiana (LA) was examined through the prism of carbon accumulation and loss. Carbon storage or sequestration in rapidly subsiding LA coastal marsh soils was based on vertical marsh accretion and aerial change data. Marshes sequester significant amount of carbon through vertical accretion however, large amounts of carbon previously sequestration in the soil profile is lost through annual deterioration of these coastal marshes. Hurricanes, such as Katrina and Rita, have triggered instantaneous large carbon losses of sequestered soil carbon through the destruction of large areas of marsh. This analysis shows proposed coastal restoration efforts will not be sufficient to restore carbon losses by storms and marsh deterioration. Further, we have estimated the economic benefit of carbon sequestration for coastal wetland restoration efforts. Results show that LA coastal marshes may not serve as a net sink of carbon. These results may serve as a predictor of the impact of future predictions of increasing global sea level rise on carbon sequestration for other coastal regions.     

Modeled seasonality of glacial abrupt climate events

Greenland ice cores, as well as many other paleo-archives from the northern hemisphere, recorded a series of 25 warm interstadial events, the so-called Dansgaard-Oeschger (D-O) events, during the last glacial period. We use the three-dimensional coupled global ocean–atmosphere–sea ice model ECBILT-CLIO and force it with freshwater input into the North Atlantic to simulate abrupt glacial climate events, which we use as analogues for D-O events. We focus our analysis on the Northern Hemisphere. The simulated events show large differences in the regional and seasonal distribution of the temperature and precipitation changes. While the temperature changes in high northern latitudes and in the North Atlantic region are dominated by winter changes, the largest temperature increases in most other land regions are seen in spring. Smallest changes over land are found during the summer months. Our model simulations also demonstrate that the temperature and precipitation change patterns for different intensifications of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation are not linear. The extent of the transitions varies, and local non-linearities influence the amplitude of the annual mean response as well as the response in different seasons. Implications for the interpretation of paleo-records are discussed.     

Halo masses for optically selected and for radio-loud AGN from clustering and galaxy–galaxy lensing

We compute two-point correlation functions and measure the shear signal due to galaxy–galaxy lensing for 80 000 optically identified and 5700 radio-loud active galactic nuclei (AGN) from Data Release 4 of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Halo occupation models are used to estimate halo masses and satellite fractions for these two types of AGN. The large sample size allows us to separate AGN according to the stellar mass of their host galaxies. We study how the halo masses of optical and radio AGN differ from those of the parent population at fixed   M _*  . Halo masses deduced from clustering and from lensing agree satisfactorily. Radio AGN are found in more massive haloes than optical AGN: in our samples, their mean halo masses are  1.6 × 10¹³  and  8 × 10¹¹  h ⁻¹ M_⊙  , respectively. Optical AGN follow the same relation between stellar mass and halo mass as galaxies selected without regard to nuclear properties, but radio-loud AGN deviate significantly from this relation. The dark matter haloes of radio-loud AGN are about twice as massive as those of control galaxies of the same stellar mass. This boost is independent of radio luminosity, and persists even when our analysis is restricted to field galaxies. The large-scale gaseous environment of the galaxy clearly plays a crucial role in producing observable radio emission. The dark matter halo masses that we derive for the AGN in our two samples are in good agreement with recent models in which feedback from radio AGN becomes dominant in haloes where gas cools quasi-statically.     

Testing cosmological structure formation using redshift-space distortions

Observations of redshift-space distortions in spectroscopic galaxy surveys offer an attractive method for observing the build-up of cosmological structure. In this paper, we develop and test a new statistic based on anisotropies in the measured galaxy power spectrum, which is independent of galaxy bias and matches the matter power spectrum shape on large scales. The amplitude provides a constraint on the derivative of the linear growth rate through   f σ₈(mass)  . This demonstrates that spectroscopic galaxy surveys offer many of the same advantages as weak lensing surveys, in that they both use galaxies as test particles to probe all matter in the Universe. They are complementary as redshift-space distortions probe non-relativistic velocities and therefore the temporal metric perturbations, while weak lensing tests the sum of the temporal and spatial metric perturbations. The degree to which our estimator can be pushed into the non-linear regime is considered and we show that a simple Gaussian damping model, similar to that previously used to model the behaviour of the power spectrum on very small scales, can also model the quasi-linear behaviour of our estimator. This enhances the information that can be extracted from surveys for Λ cold dark matter (ΛCDM) models.     

Are mergers responsible for universal halo properties?

N -body simulations of cold dark matter (CDM) have shown that, in this hierarchical structure formation model, dark matter halo properties, such as the density profile, the phase-space density profile, the distribution of axial ratio, the distribution of spin parameter and the distribution of internal specific angular momentum, follow 'universal' laws or distributions. Here, we study the properties of the first generation of haloes in a hot dark matter (HDM) dominated universe, as an example of halo formation through monolithic collapse. We find all these universalities to be present in this case also. Halo density profiles are very well fit by the Navarro, Frenk & White profile over two orders of magnitude in mass. The concentration parameter depends on mass as   c ∝ M ^0.2  , reversing the dependence found in a hierarchical CDM universe. However, the concentration–formation time relation is similar in the two cases: earlier forming haloes tend to be more concentrated than their later forming counterparts. Halo formation histories are also characterized by two phases in the HDM case: an early phase of rapid accretion followed by slower growth. Furthermore, there is no significant difference between the HDM and CDM cases concerning the statistics of other halo properties: the phase-space density profile; the velocity anisotropy profile; the distribution of shape parameters; the distribution of spin parameter and the distribution of internal specific angular momentum are all similar in the two cases. Only substructure content differs dramatically. These results indicate that mergers do not play a pivotal role in establishing the universalities, thus contradicting models which explain them as consequences of mergers.     

The formation and survival of discs in a ΛCDM universe

We study the formation of galaxies in a Λ cold dark matter (ΛCDM) universe using high-resolution hydrodynamical simulations with a multiphase treatment of gas, cooling and feedback, focusing on the formation of discs. Our simulations follow eight isolated haloes similar in mass to the Milky Way and extracted from a large cosmological simulation without restriction on spin parameter or merger history. This allows us to investigate how the final properties of the simulated galaxies correlate with the formation histories of their haloes. We find that, at   z = 0  , none of our galaxies contains a disc with more than 20 per cent of its total stellar mass. Four of the eight galaxies nevertheless have well-formed disc components, three have dominant spheroids and very small discs, and one is a spheroidal galaxy with no disc at all. The   z = 0  spheroids are made of old stars, while discs are younger and formed from the inside-out. Neither the existence of a disc at   z = 0  nor the final disc-to-total mass ratio seems to depend on the spin parameter of the halo. Discs are formed in haloes with spin parameters as low as 0.01 and as high as 0.05; galaxies with little or no disc component span the same range in spin parameter. Except for one of the simulated galaxies, all have significant discs at   z ≳ 2  , regardless of their   z = 0  morphologies. Major mergers and instabilities which arise when accreting cold gas is misaligned with the stellar disc trigger a transfer of mass from the discs to the spheroids. In some cases, discs are destroyed, while in others, they survive or reform. This suggests that the survival probability of discs depends on the particular formation history of each galaxy. A realistic ΛCDM model will clearly require weaker star formation at high redshift and later disc assembly than occurs in our models.