Planet Four: Craters—Optimizing task workflow to improve volunteer engagement and crater counting performance

Virtual citizen science platforms allow nonscientists to take part in scientific research across a range of disciplines, including planetary science. What is required of the volunteer can vary considerably in terms of task type, variety, judgment required, and autonomy—even when the overall goal is unchanged. Through analysis of our live Zooniverse Planet Four: Craters citizen science platform, the effects of task workflow design factors including volunteer autonomy, task variety, task type, and judgment required on volunteer engagement and crater marking performance were investigated. Website analytics showed volunteers using the Full interface (most autonomy and variety) were more likely to return to the platform, although the amount of time spent per visit was unaffected by the interface used. However, analysis of performance suggested that how this time was used did differ. The interface involving the least complex task resulted in the greatest amount of data and rate of collection, although this also coincided with a greater number of false positives when compared with the expert. Performance in terms of agreement, both between participants and with the expert judgment, was significantly improved when using the Stepped interface for crater position and the Ramped (Mark) when measuring diameter—interfaces that both directly measured the metric with a specific, delineated task. The implications for planetary scientists considering the citizen science route is that there is a balancing act to perform, weighing the importance of volunteer engagement with scientists' data needs and the resources that can be committed to data validation.     

New observations on high‐pressure phases in a shock melt vein in the Villalbeto de la Peña meteorite: Insights into the shock behavior of diopside

The petrology and mineralogy of shock melt veins in the L6 ordinary chondrite host of Villalbeto de la Peña, a highly shocked, L chondrite polymict breccia, have been investigated in detail using scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, Raman spectroscopy, and electron probe microanalysis. Entrained olivine, enstatite, diopside, and plagioclase are transformed into ringwoodite, low‐Ca majorite, high‐Ca majorite, and an assemblage of jadeite‐lingunite, respectively, in several shock melt veins and pockets. We have focused on the shock behavior of diopside in a particularly large shock melt vein (10 mm long and up to 4 mm wide) in order to provide additional insights into its high‐pressure polymorphic phase transformation mechanisms. We report the first evidence of diopside undergoing shock‐induced melting, and the occurrence of natural Ca‐majorite formed by solid‐state transformation from diopside. Magnesiowüstite has also been found as veins injected into diopside in the form of nanocrystalline grains that crystallized from a melt and also occurs interstitially between majorite‐pyrope grains in the melt‐vein matrix. In addition, we have observed compositional zoning in majorite‐pyrope grains in the matrix of the shock‐melt vein, which has not been described previously in any shocked meteorite. Collectively, all these different lines of evidence are suggestive of a major shock event with high cooling rates. The minimum peak shock conditions are difficult to constrain, because of the uncertainties in applying experimentally determined high‐pressure phase equilibria to complex natural systems. However, our results suggest that conditions between 16 and 28 GPa and 2000–2200 °C were reached.     

Late pleistocene (Devensian) glaciofluvial outwash at Banc-y-Warren,near Cardigan (west Wales)

On the southwest-facing slopes of a bedrock ridge lying between Cardigan Bay to the north and the Afon Teifi to the south stands a group of hills in which 30-35 m of cross-laminated and parallel-laminated sands with lenticular upward-fining gravel sequences are overlain by 10-12 m of gravel in a single foreset bed. The sediments mantle a surface of till sloping gently toward the southwest, were transported toward the southwest (across one margin of the Afon Teifi valley), and were cut by a system of densely arranged conjugate normal faults striking northwest-southeast. The lenticular gravels and fault system suggest that the deposits accumulated as a glaciofluvial outwash spread, and on top of an ice-lobe that became isolated in the Teifi valley during the downwasting of a glacier which had occupied Cardigan Bay and much of the country to the south. The large gravel foresets capping the succession are the only indication at Banc-y-Warren of the former existence of a lake, but neither a large nor deep body of water need be envisaged.     

Mach–poincaré gravodynamics and condensation phenomena in an expanding universe

We discuss the condensation phenomena in a very simple model, which allows for transparent calculations. We compare the condensation times of subsystems decoupled from the cosmological expansion in different approaches to Mach-Poincaré gravodynamics with Newtonian mechanics. In all cases contracting subsystems without inner rotation collapse, only the time-scales differ.     

Seasonality and duration in extreme value distributions of significant wave height

This paper presents a statistical model to characterize the long-term extreme value distribution of significant wave height, conditioning to the duration of the storm and accounting for seasonality. A time-dependent version of the peak over threshold (POT) approach is used to build the model, which is then applied to specific reanalysis time series and NOAA buoy records. The model considers the annual and semiannual cycles which are parameterized in terms of harmonic functions. The inclusion of seasonal variabilities substantially reduces the residuals of the fitted model. The information obtained in this study can be useful to design maritime works, because (a) the model improves the understanding of the variability of extreme wave climate along a year and (b) the model accounts for the duration of the storm, which is a key parameter in several formulations for rubble mound breakwater design.     

The circulation of the Indian Ocean at 32°S

Using inverse methods a circulation for a new section along 32°S in the Indian Ocean is derived with a maximum in the overturning stream function (or deep overturning) of 10.3 Sv at 3310 m. Shipboard and Lowered Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP) data are used to inform the choice of reference level velocity for the initial geostrophic field. Our preferred solution includes a silicate constraint (−312 ± 380 kmol s⁻¹) consistent with an Indonesian throughflow of 12 Sv. The overturning changes from 12.3 Sv at 3270 m when the silicate constraint is omitted to 10.3 Sv when it is included. The deep overturning varies by only ±0.7 Sv as the silicate constraint varies from +68 to −692 kmol s⁻¹, and by ±0.3 Sv as the net flux across the section, driven by the Indonesian throughflow, varies from −7 to −17 Sv with an appropriately scaled silicate flux constraint. Thus, the overturning is insensitive to the size of the Indonesian throughflow and silicate constraint within their apriori uncertainties. We find that the use of the ADCP data adds significant detail to the horizontal circulation. These resolved circulations include the Agulhas Undercurrent, deep cyclonic gyres and deep fronts, features evidenced by long term integrators of the flow such as current meter and float measurements as well as water properties.     

Onshore sandbar migration at Tairua Beach (New Zealand): Numerical simulations and field measurements

We observed the onshore migration (3.5 m/day) of a nearshore sandbar at Tairua Beach, New Zealand during 4 days of low-energy wave conditions. The morphological observations, together with concurrent measurements of waves and suspended sediment concentrations, were used to test a coupled, wave-averaged, cross-shore model. Because of the coarse bed material and the relatively low-energy conditions, the contribution of the suspended transport to the total transport was predicted and observed to be negligible. The model predicted the bar to move onshore because of the feedback between near-bed wave skewness, bedload, and the sandbar under weakly to non-breaking conditions at high tide. The predicted bathymetric evolution contrasts, however, with the observations that the bar migrated onshore predominantly at low tide. Also, the model flattened the bar, while in the observations the sandbar retained its steep landward-facing flank. A comparison between available observations and numerical simulations suggests that onshore propagating surf zone bores in very shallow water (< 0.25 m) may have been responsible for most of the observed bar behaviour. These processes are missing from the applied model and, given that the observed conditions can be considered typical of very shallow sandbars, highlight a priority for further field study and model development. The possibility that the excess water transported by the bores across the bar was channelled alongshore to near-by rip-channels further implies that traditional cross-shore measures to judge the applicability of a cross-shore morphodynamic model may be misleading.     

Wave diffraction and near-trapping by a multi-column gravity-based structure

This paper is concerned with the diffraction of water waves by offshore structures, with the ultimate aim of proposing tools for guiding airgap design. The diffraction of monochromatic waves by an array of four bottom mounted cylinders and a gravity-based structure is studied in detail using linear and second order theory. The phenomenon of near-trapping is investigated, allowing guidelines for airgap design to be established. When contemplating airgap design, however, it is crucially important that consideration is given to the largest waves in a sea state. Therefore, in this study a design wave, called NewWave, is proposed as a realistic model for large ocean waves and is used as the incident wave field in the wave-structure diffraction analysis.     

1997–1998 El Niño off Peru: A numerical study

An eddy-resolving numerical simulation for the Peru–Chile system between 1993 and 2000 is analyzed, mainly for the 1997–1998 El Niño. Atmospheric and lateral oceanic forcings are realistic and contain a wide range of scales from days to interannual. The solution is validated against altimetric observations and the few in situ observations available. The simulated 1997–1998 El Niño closely resembles the real 1997–1998 El Niño in its time sequence of events. The two well-marked, sea-level peaks in May–June and November–December 1997 are reproduced with amplitudes close to those observed. Other sub-periods of the El Niño seem to be captured adequately. Simple dynamical analyses are performed to explain the 1997–1998 evolution of the upwelling in the model. The intensity of the upwelling appears to be determined by an interplay between alongshore, poleward advection (related to coastal trapped waves) and wind intensity, but also by the cross-shore geostrophic flow and distribution of the water masses on a scale of 1000 km or more (involving Rossby waves westward propagation and advection from equatorial currents). In particular, the delay of upwelling recovery until fall 1998 (i.e., well after the second El Niño peak) is partly due to the persistent advection of offshore stratified water toward the coast of Peru. Altimetry data suggest that these interpretations of the numerical solution also apply to the real ocean.