The Jason-1 Mission

On December 7, 2001, the Jason-1 satellite was successfully launched by a Boeing Delta II rocket from the Vandenberg site in California, USA. Its main mission was to maintain the high accuracy altimeter measurements, provided since 1992 by TOPEX/Poseidon (T/P), ensuring continuity in observing and monitoring the ocean for intraseasonal to interannual changes, mean sea level, tides, and so forth. Despite four times less mass and power, the Jason-1 system has been designed to have the same performances as T/P, measuring sea surface topography at the centimeter level. This new Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales/National Aeronautics and Space Administration (CNES/NASA) mission also provides near real-time data for sea state and ocean forecast. The first 10 months of the Jason mission were dedicated to the verification of the system performance and cross-calibration with T/P measurements. A complete CALVAL plan was conducted by the Science and Project Teams of the mission based on in situ and regional experiments, global statistical approaches, and multisatellite comparisons, taking advantage of the T/P-Jason overlap during the first months of the mission. CALVAL and first science results showed that the Jason-1 performances were compliant with prelaunch specifications. This was a needed preamble before starting the routine phase of the mission in July 2003 with generation and distribution of validated geophysical data records to the whole user community.     

An alternative approach to determine a vessel's center of gravity: the center of buoyancy method

The location of a ship's vertical center of gravity (KG) is an important measurement needed to estimate the initial stability of a vessel. Traditionally, this measurement is obtained by determining the metacentric height (GM) using results from the inclining experiment. Such an approach is valid only for hull forms that are inclined to a small angle such that the metacenter remains stationary. This paper documents an alternative method for finding KG, called the center of buoyancy (CoB) method, which is based on the location of the centroid of the displaced volume. While the center of buoyancy method is valid for all ships, it is especially suited for vessels of unusual form. For such vessels, the location of the metacenter may change significantly at small angles of inclination, thereby making the conventional inclining reduction inaccurate. This paper addresses the need for the center of buoyancy method and details the steps required for its application.     

Jason-1 Geophysical Performance Evaluation

The Jason-1 satellite was launched on 7 December 2001 with the primary objective of continuing the high accuracy time series of altimeter measurements that began with the TOPEX/Poseidon mission in 1992. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to validate the performance of the Jason-1 measurement system, and to verify that its error budget is at least at the same level as that of the TOPEX/Poseidon mission. The article reviews the main components of the Jason-1 altimetric error budget from instrument characterization to the geophysical use of the data. Using the Interim Geophysical Data Records (16DR) that were distributed to the Jason-1 Science Working Team during the verification phase of the mission, it is shown that the Jason-1 mission is performing well enough to continue studies of the large-scale features of the ocean, and especially to continue time series of mean sea-level variations with an accuracy comparable to TOPEX/Poseidon.     

Assessment of the molecular composition of particulate organic matter exchanged between the Saeftinghe salt marsh (southwestern Netherlands) and the adjacent water system

In this study the chemical composition of seston, transported by tidal water between an estuarine salt marsh and the adjacent water system, was assessed. The analytical techniques used are Pyrolysis in combination with Gas Chromatography and/or Mass Spectrometry. Interpretation of the Py-MS data was aided by discriminant analysis.The presented results indicate that throughout the year a dominant refractory fraction is present in the seston, but that seasonal additions can be distinguished. Apart from this seasonal pattern, differences between ebb and flood can be visualized by the use of discriminant analysis. During summertime, flood seston is enriched with lipids and recently synthesized polysaccharides, while during the rest of the year the flood tide samples contain more (remains of) lignin and polysaccharides than their ebb tide counterparts. The lignin markers comprise only fragments with extremely altered (reduced) character.These results, which highlight the molecular composition of the exchanged seston but do not offer exact quantitative budget estimations, provide no evidence for export of lignin-rich particulate halophytic material from the marsh to the water system. On the contrary, based on seston compositions, the water system seems to supply lignin-rich particles to the marsh during a considerable part of the year.     

Conjugate photoelectrons at L = 5·6 and the 6300 Å postsunset enhancement

A series of simultaneous incoherent-backscatter and 6300 Å tilting-filter photometer observations were made in the winter and early spring of 1972 at Chatanika, Alaska. These observations have been combined for magnetically quiet nights to deduce the presence of excitation by two sources in addition to dissociative recombination. The first appears to be a source that is steady for at least three hours, centered about local midnight, but that varies from night to night, taking on values between 10 and 40 Rayleighs for the nights in question. It is suggested that this source may be a flux of low-energy electrons or protons. The second source is impact excitation by electrons from the magnetic conjugate point. The emission due to this source appears to be small immediately after local sunset, rises to a maximum at about 92° conjugate solar zenith angle (CSZA), and then decreases to zero in the vicinity of 105° CSZA. The deduced intensities for this source at 92° CSZA are in the region of 15–30 Rayleighs for local F-layer critical frequencies of 3?2 MHz, respectively.     

Mantle plumes link magnetic superchrons to phanerozoic mass depletion events

The four most recent large mass extinction events in the Phanerozoic – the Cretaceous–Tertiary (KT), the Triassic–Jurassic (TJ), and the Permo-Triassic (PT) and Guadalupian–Tatarian (GT) doublet – are associated with a major flood basalt eruption, with the timing of peak volcanic activity corresponding within measurement uncertainties to the extinction event. Three magnetic superchrons precede the four largest Phanerozoic extinctions. The Cretaceous Long Normal Superchron (duration  35 Myr) precedes the KT and the Permian Kiaman Long Reversed Superchron ( 50 Myr) precedes the PT–GT doublet. In addition, the newly recognized Ordovician Moyero Long Reversed Superchron ( 30 Myr) precedes the end-Ordovician extinction event. There is a 10–20 Myr delay between the end of each superchron and the subsequent mass depletion event, both of which represent distant outliers from their respective populations. We propose that deep mantle plumes link these seemingly unrelated phenomena. Long-term ( 200 Myr) variations in mantle convection possibly associated with the Wilson cycle induce temporal and spatial variations in heat flow at the core–mantle boundary. Polarity reversals are frequent when core heat flow is high and infrequent when it is low. Thermal instabilities in the D”-layer of the mantle increase core heat flow, end the magnetic superchron, and generate deep mantle plumes. The plumes ascend through the mantle on a 20 Myr time scale, producing continental flood basalt (trap) eruptions, rapid climatic change, and massive faunal depletions.     

Comparison of free-surface and rigid-lid finite element models of barotropic instabilities

The main goal of this work is to appraise the finite element method in the way it represents barotropic instabilities. To that end, three different formulations are employed. The free-surface formulation solves the primitive shallow-water equations and is of predominant use for ocean modeling. The vorticity–stream function and velocity–pressure formulations resort to the rigid-lid approximation and are presented because theoretical results are based on the same approximation. The growth rates for all three formulations are compared for hyperbolic tangent and piecewise linear shear flows. Structured and unstructured meshes are utilized. The investigation is also extended to time scales that allow for instability meanders to unfold, permitting the formation of eddies. We find that all three finite element formulations accurately represent barotropic instablities. In particular, convergence of growth rates toward theoretical ones is observed in all cases. It is also shown that the use of unstructured meshes allows for decreasing the computational cost while achieving greater accuracy. Overall, we find that the finite element method for free-surface models is effective at representing barotropic instabilities when it is combined with an appropriate advection scheme and, most importantly, adapted meshes.