Heterotrophic Nanoflagellates in the Pelagic Zone and Sediments of the Eastern Laptev Sea

Oceanology - For the first time, the species composition of heterotrophic nanoflagellates, their quantitative characteristics, and abundance and biomass of their main food objects—bacteria...     

Impact of Salt Finger Convection on the Structure of the Oceanic Thermohalocline

Oceanology - One of the key problems of physical oceanology is the search for effective global mechanisms that can result in formation and sustainability of the oceanic thermohalocline, which...     

On Methods of Short-Term Earthquake Prediction Based on Monitoring the Hydrogeodeformation Field

Izvestiya, Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics - The permanent analysis of the hydrogeodeformation (HGD) field is one promising direction in the field of predicting strong earthquakes. As a result of...     

Anthropogenic Meso-Meteorological Feedbacks: A Review of a Recent Research

Izvestiya, Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics - The anthropogenic impact on the Earth’s climate system is currently one of the main factors determining climate change over all spatial scales,...     

Helicopter Crash on the Spitsbergen Archipelago: Infrasound and Seismic Signals Decryption

Izvestiya, Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics - A Convers Avia Airline Mi-8 helicopter crashed near the Russian settlement of Barentsburg on October 26, 2017. The moment of impact was recorded by the...     

Discrimination of spurious self-correlation in nondimensionalized analyses of fluid dynamical data

Nondimensionalization of variables enables us to treat experiment data much more simply and efficiently by decreasing the number of variables. In some cases, trivial conclusions (which Kenney, 1982, called spurious self-correlation) result from a formal application of dimensional analyses. In contrast, in some cases fully significant conclusions can be derived. We first discuss how to construct nondimensional variables retaining the physical meanings of variables. We then propose simple and efficient methods, especially the use of “spurious triangle (SpT)”, to discriminate between significant conclusions and spurious self-correlations in the analysis of nondimensionalized variables.     

Intense turbulent convection in a horizontal plane liquid layer

Direct numerical simulation of turbulent convection in a horizontal liquid layer heated from below is performed within the framework of the nonstationary Navier—Stokes equations with the use of the Bubnov—Galerkin method. The main attention is given to calculations for superhigh supercriticalities. Computational burden is reduced by the use of the splitting method at each step of integration. Previously, the smallness of the residual arising from substitution of simulated results into the initial system of equations is demonstrated and the residual’s dependence on the number of reference functions and supercriticality is considered. A good agreement of the results obtained with the use of different numerical implementations of the Bubnov—Galerkin procedure is shown, in particular, for the stochastic processes corresponding to a low supercriticality and appearing with the formation of strange attractors close to a Mobius strip. The calculations were carried out for a wide range of supercriticality (from 1 to 34000). It is shown that simulations and experiment are in good qualitative agreement.     

Hydrophysical state of the Large Aral Sea in the autumn of 2013: Thermal structure,currents, and internal waves

This paper is focused on the hydrophysical state of the western basin of the Large Aral Sea in its present conditions of ecological crisis. The investigation is based on the direct observations carried out during a field survey in the Aral Sea in October of 2013. The analysis of the distribution of the temperature values across the western basin is given. Time series of the water currents variability were recorded at four mooring stations. The pattern of the basin-scale circulation response to the wind forcing was described. Based on the in situ measurements of the time variability of the temperature fields, the principal characteristics of the internal waves were specified for the present-day Aral Sea for the first time.     

Transformation of a strongly nonlinear wave in a shallow-water basin

The transformation of a nonlinear wave in shallow water is investigated analytically and numerically within the framework of long-wave theory. It is shown that the nonlinearity parameter (the Mach number), which is defined as the ratio of the particle velocity in the wave to the propagation velocity, can be well above unity in a deep trough and that a jump appears initially in the trough. It is demonstrated that shockwave amplitudes at large times change in accordance with the prediction of weakly nonlinear theory. The shock front generates a reflected wave, which, in turn, transforms into a shock wave if the initial amplitude is large enough. The amplitude of the reflected wave is proportional to the cube of the initial amplitude (as predicted by weakly nonlinear theory) over a wide range of amplitudes except for the case of anomalously strong nonlinearity. When there is a sign-variable sufficiently intense initial perturbation, the basic wave transforms into a positive shock pulse (crest) and the reflected wave turns into a negative pulse (trough).