A Simple Model of Soil-Gas Concentrations Sparged into an Unlined Unsaturated Zone

We derive an analytical model of soil-gas contamination sparged into an imlined unsaturated zone. A nonaqueous phase liquid (NAPL) source lies in the capillary fringe, with an exponential sparge constant within the radius of influence and a constant ambient evaporation rate beyond. Advection, diffusion, and dispersion govern the conservative soil-gas response, expressed as a quasi-steady series solution with radial Bessel and hyperbolic vertical dependence. Simulations suggest that sparged contamination initially spreads beyond the radius of influence down a negative gradient. This gradient eventually reverses, leading to a subsequent influx of ambient contamination. Soil-gas concentrations accordingly reflect slowly varying source conditions as well as slowly varying diffusive transport through the radius of influence. The two time scales are independent: One depends on NAPL, airflow, and capillary fringe characteristics, the other on soil moisture, gaseous diffusivity, and unsaturated zone thickness. The influx of ambient contamination generates an asymptotic soil-gas concentration much less than the initial source concentration. The simple model is applied to a pilot-scale sparging study at Plattsburgh Air Force Base in upstate New York, with physically plausible results.     

Jupiter's White Oval turns red

Jupiter's remaining White Oval changed color in late 2005 and became noticeably red in early 2006, as reported by amateur observers. We present wind and color analyses from high spatial resolution images taken with the Hubble Space Telescope Advanced Camera for Surveys in April 2006. These images suggest that the recent color change was tied to a strengthening of this storm, as implied by increased vorticity, causing it to become more like the Great Red Spot. From a historical perspective, the current activity may be consistent with the generation of new anticyclones at this latitude in the coming months and years.     

Saturn's vertical and latitudinal cloud structure 1991-2004 from HST imaging in 30 filters

We analyzed 134 images of Saturn taken by the Hubble Space Telescope between 1991 and 2004. The images cover wavelengths between 231 and 2370 nm in 30 filters. We combined some 10 million calibrated reflectivity measurements into 18,000 center-to-limb curves. We used the method of principal component analysis to find the main latitudinal and temporal variations in Saturn's atmosphere and their spectral characteristics. The first principal variation is a strong latitudinal variation of the aerosol optical depth in the upper troposphere. This structure shifts with Saturn's seasons, but the structure on small scales of latitude stays constant. The second principal variation is a variable optical depth of stratospheric aerosols. The optical depth is large at the poles and small at mid- and low latitudes with a steep gradient in-between. This structure remains essentially constant in time. The third principal variation is a variation in the tropospheric aerosol size, which has only shallow gradients with latitude, but large seasonal variations. Thus, aerosol sizes and their phase functions inferred at a particular season are not representative of Saturn's atmosphere at other seasons. Aerosols are largest in the summer and smallest in the winter. The fourth principal variation is a feature of the tropospheric aerosols with irregular latitudinal structure and fast variability, on the time scale of months. Spherical aerosols do not display the spectral characteristic of that feature. We suspect that variations in the shape of aerosols may play a role. We found a spectral feature of the imaginary index of aerosols, which darkens them near 400 nm wavelength. While we can describe Saturn's variations quite accurately, our presented model of Saturn's average atmosphere is still uncertain due to possible systematic offsets in methane absorption data and limitations of the knowledge about the shape of aerosols. In order to compare our results with those from comparable investigations, which used less than 30 filters, we fit models to spectral subsets of our data. We found very different best-fitting models, depending on the subset of filters, indicating a high sensitivity of results on the spectral sampling.     

A simple hypoplastic constitutive model for sand

The paper presents a hypoplastic constitutive model for the three-dimensional non-linear stress–strain and dilatant volume change behaviour of sand. The model is developed without recourse to the concept in elastoplasticity theory such as yield surface, plastic potential and decomposition into elastic and plastic parts. Benefited from the non-linear tensorial functions available from the representation theorem the model possesses simple mathematical formulation and contains only four material parameters, which can be easily identified with triaxial compression tests. Comparison of the predictions with the experimental results shows that the model is capable of capturing the salient behaviour of sand under monotonic loading and is applicable to both drained and undrained conditions.     

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Spawning and egg development ofPerca fluviatilis in Lake Zürich

Egg survival and development rate of perch eggs were investigated in Lake Zürich, Switzerland. A transplant experiment was carried out to examine whether individual females choose different depths for spawning because of an expected advantage for the development of their eggs. Egg masses which had been deposited on fir branches stuck into the ground of the lake were either left untouched or transplanted horizontally or vertically at depths of 3 and 6 m. Spawning occurred between 28 April and 9 June 1987. Egg survival to the eye pigment stage (EPS) was high in all treatments ( , minimum 92%). There was no significant difference in egg survival between treatments, suggesting that females do not choose the spawning site because of individual fitness differences related to the depth of spawning. Early egg masses which were exposed to lower temperatures developed more slowly (120–140 day degrees to the EPS) than late egg masses which were exposed to higher temperatures (80–100 day degrees). The observed differences are in agreement with the hypothesis of a constant sum of day degrees necessary for egg development using the corrected formula derived by Guma'a (1978) which deducts an estimated threshold temperature of 5°C below which development of perch eggs effectively stops, from the actual temperature.     

GHOST – A Novel Airborne Gas Chromatograph for In Situ Measurements of Long-Lived Tracers in the Lower Stratosphere: Method and Applications

A novel fully-automated airborne gas chromatograph for in situmeasurements of long-lived stratospheric tracers hasbeen developed, combining the high selectivity of a megabore PLOTcapillary column with recently developed sampling and separationtechniques. The Gas cHromatograph for theObservation of Stratospheric Tracers (GHOST)has been successfully operated during three STREAM campaigns(Stratosphere TRoposphere Experiment byAirborne Measurement) onboard a Cessna Citation IIaircraft in two different modes: Either N₂O andCF₂Cl₂(CFC-12) or CFC-12 and CFCl₃ (CFC-11) have been measuredsimultaneously, with a time resolution of 2 min for both modes.Under flight conditions the instrument precision (1) forthese species is better than 0.9%, and the accuracy(1) is better than 2.0% of the tropospheric values ofall measured compounds. The detection limits (3) arebelow 28 ppb for N₂O, 14 ppt for CFC-12, and 8 ppt forCFC-11, respectively, i.e., well below 10 % of the troposphericvalues of all measured compounds. Post-mission optimization of thechromatographic separation showed a possible enhancement of thetime resolution by up to a factor of 2, associated with acomparable increase in precision and detection limit. As test ofactual performance of GHOST results from an in-flight N₂Ointercomparison with a tunable diode laser absorptionspectrometer (TDLAS) are presented. They yield an excellentagreement between both instruments. Furthermore, on the basis ofthe hitherto most extensive set of upper tropospheric and lowerstratospheric data, the relative stratospheric N₂2O lifetime isre-assessed. When referenced to the WMO reference CFC-11 lifetimeof 45 ± 7 years an N₂O lifetime of 91 ± 15 yearsis derived, a value substantially smaller than the WMO referencelifetime of 120 years. Moreover, this value implies astratospheric N₂O sink strength of 16.3 ± 2.7 Tg (N)yr^–1 which is 30% larger than previous estimates.     

MJO change with A1B global warming estimated by the 40-km ECHAM5

This study estimates MJO change under the A1B greenhouse gas emission scenario using the ECHAM5 AGCM whose coupled version (ECHAM5/MPI-OM) has simulated best MJO variance among fourteen CGCMs. The model has a horizontal resolution at T319 (about 40 km) and is forced by the monthly evolving SST derived from the ECHAM5/MPI-OM at a lower resolution of T63 (about 200 km). Two runs are carried out covering the last 21 years of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis products and observed precipitation are used to validate the simulated MJO during the twentieth century, based on which the twenty-first century MJO change is compared and predicted. The validation indicates that the previously reported MJO variances in the T63 coupled version are reproduced by the 40-km ECHAM5. More aspects of MJO, such as the eastward propagation, structure, and dominant frequency and zonal wavenumber in power spectrum, are simulated reasonably well. The magnitude in power, however, is still low so that the signal is marginally detectable and embedded in the over-reddened background. Under the A1B scenario, the T63 ECHAM5/MPI-OM projected an over 3 K warmer tropical sea surface that forces the 40-km ECHAM to produce wetter tropics. The enhanced precipitation variance shows more spectral enhancement in background than in most wavebands. The zonal winds associated with MJO, however, are strengthened in the lower troposphere but weakened in the upper. On the one hand, the 850-hPa zonal wind has power nearly doubled in 30–60-days bands, demonstrating relatively clearer enhancement than the precipitation in MJO with the warming. A 1-tailed Student’s t test suggests that most of the MJO changes in variance and power spectra are statically significant. Subject to a 20–100-days band-pass filtering of that wind, an EOF analysis indicates that the two leading components in the twentieth-century run have a close structure to but smaller percentage of explained-to-total variance than those in observations; the A1B warming slightly increases the explained percentage and alters the structure. An MJO index formed by the two leading principal components discloses nearly doubling in the number of prominent MJO events with a peak phase occurring in February and March. A composite MJO life cycle of these events favors the frictional moisture convergence mechanism in maintaining the MJO and the nonlinear wind-induced surface heat exchange (WISHE) mechanism also appears in the A1B warming case. On the other hand, the Slingo index based on the 300-hPa zonal wind discloses that the upper-level MJO tends to be suppressed by the A1B warming, although the loose relationship with ENSO remains unchanged. Possible cause for the different change of MJO in the lower and upper troposphere is discussed.