An Unusually Powerful Water-Maser Flare in the Galactic Source W49N

The most powerful flare ever registered in the Galactic water-maser source W49N has been detected in long-term monitoring data in the 6₁₆–5₂₃ transition with line frequency f = 22.235 GHz carried out on the 22-m Simeiz, 32-m Toruń, 100-m Effelsberg, and 32-m Medicina radio telescopes, beginning in September 2017 and continuing in 2018. Some stages of the flare were monitored daily. Detailed variations of the source spectral flux density with time have been obtained. At the flare maximum, the flux exceeded P ≈ 8 × 10⁴ Jy, and this was record highest flux registered over the entire history of observations of this source. Important conclusions related to details of the mechanism for the H₂O line emission have been drawn. An exponential increase in the flare flux density was detected during both the rise and decline of the flare. The data obtained indicate that the maser is unsaturated, and remained in this state up to the maximum observed flux densities. Additional support for the idea that the maser is unsaturated is the shape of the dependence of the line width on the flux. The characteristics of the variations of the spectral flux density are probably associated with a sharp increase in the density of the medium and the photon flux that led to an increase in the temperature from an initial level of 10–40 K to hundreds of Kelvins. Interferometric maps of the object during the increase in the spectral flux density of the flare have been obtained. A possible mechanism for the primary energy release in W49N is considered.

     

Riverine large wood and recreation safety: A framework to discretize and contextualize hazard

The importance of large wood (LW) to riverine functions is well established scientifically and increasingly recognized by river managers in many countries. However, public perceptions largely associate LW with elevated danger and/or need for intervention. Such perspectives are amplified amongst recreational river users (defined here as any individuals that recreate by floating on the water surface of a river) who interact more directly with rivers than the general public and commonly view wood in life-or-death terms. Given that human life occupies a highest-order charge for river managers, they are left in a difficult position when safety appears to conflict with environmental services. LW deficits are perpetuated partly because wood removal, often in the name of safety, is far easier than placing wood in rivers. Further, river restoration practitioners are frequently burdened with expectations and liability unparalleled in built environments. A fundamentally different mindset is necessary to achieve desired ecologic outcomes when working with rivers. Based on two decades of experience as boaters, LW practitioners, and emergency responders, we (1) discuss LW hazard and risk from recreational and management viewpoints, (2) discretize objective and measurable physical properties of LW hazards, and (3) propose a decision framework that implicitly addresses risk by considering LW hazards relative to river use and ambient hazards. The approach is structured to increase objectivity in LW hazard mitigation and diminish asymmetric biases that favor LW removal. Our intent is to build understanding and rational flexibility among risk-averse management, regulatory, and funding entities to facilitate implementation of scientific understanding without undue risk to river users. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Importance sampling for efficient modelling of hydraulic loads in the Rhine–Meuse delta

During flood events, breaching of flood defences along a river system can have a significant reducing effect on downstream water levels and flood risks. This paper presents a Monte Carlo based flood risk framework for policy decision making, which takes this retention effect into account. The framework is developed to estimate societal flood risk in terms of potential numbers of fatalities and associated probabilities. It is tested on the Rhine–Meuse delta system in the Netherlands, where floods can be caused by high flows in the Rhine and Meuse rivers and/or high sea water levels in the North Sea. Importance sampling is applied in the Monte Carlo procedure to increase computational efficiency of the flood risk computations. This paper focuses on the development and testing of efficient importance sampling strategies for the framework. The development of an efficient importance sampling strategy for river deltas is more challenging than for non-tidal rivers where only discharges are relevant, because the relative influence of river discharge and sea water level on flood levels differs from location to location. As a consequence, sampling methods that are efficient and accurate for one location may be inefficient for other locations or, worse, may introduce errors in computed design water levels. Nevertheless, in the case study described in this paper the required simulation time was reduced by a factor 100 after the introduction of an efficient importance sampling method in the Monte Carlo framework, while at the same time the accuracy of the Monte Carlo estimates were improved.     

A wetting and drying algorithm with a combined pressure/free-surface formulation for non-hydrostatic models

A wetting and drying method for free-surface problems for the three-dimensional, non-hydrostatic Navier–Stokes equations is proposed. The key idea is to use a horizontally fixed mesh and to apply different boundary conditions on the free-surface in wet and dry zones. In wet areas a combined pressure/free-surface kinematic boundary condition is applied, while in dry areas a positive water level and a no-normal flow boundary condition are enforced. In addition, vertical mesh movement is performed to accurately represent the free-surface motion. Non-physical flow in the remaining thin layer in dry areas is naturally prevented if a Manning–Strickler bottom drag is used. The treatment of the wetting and drying processes applied through the boundary condition yields great flexibility to the discretisation used. Specifically, a fully unstructured mesh with any finite element choice and implicit time discretisation method can be applied. The resulting method is mass conservative, stable and accurate. It is implemented within Fluidity-ICOM [1] and verified against several idealized test cases and a laboratory experiment of the Okushiri tsunami.     

Quantitative climate and vegetation trends since the late glacial on the northeastern Tibetan Plateau deduced from Koucha Lake pollen spectra

Quantitative information on vegetation and climate history from the late glacial-Holocene on the Tibetan Plateau is extremely rare. Here, we present palynological results of a 4.30-m-long sediment record collected from Koucha Lake in the Bayan Har Mountains, northeastern Tibetan Plateau. Vegetation change has been traced by biomisation, ordination of pollen data, and calculation of pollen ratios. The application of a pollen-climate calibration set from the eastern Tibetan Plateau to Koucha Lake pollen spectra yielded quantitative climate information. The area was covered by alpine desert/steppe, characteristic of a cold and dry climate (with 50% less precipitation than today) between 16,700 and 14,600 cal yr BP. Steppe vegetation, warm (∼ 1°C higher than today) and wet conditions prevailed between 14,600 and 6600 cal yr BP. These findings contradict evidence from other monsoon-influenced areas of Asia, where the early Holocene is thought to have been moist. Low effective moisture on the northeastern Tibetan Plateau was likely due to high temperature and evaporation, even though precipitation levels may have been similar to present-day values. The vegetation changed to tundra around 6600 cal yr BP, indicating that wet and cool climate conditions occurred on the northeastern Tibetan Plateau during the second half of the Holocene.     

Chandra smells a RRAT

“Rotating RAdio Transients” (RRATs) are a newly discovered astronomical phenomenon, characterised by occasional brief radio bursts, with average intervals between bursts ranging from minutes to hours. The burst spacings allow identification of periodicities, which fall in the range 0.4 to 7 seconds. The RRATs thus seem to be rotating neutron stars, albeit with properties very different from the rest of the population. We here present the serendipitous detection with the Chandra X-ray Observatory of a bright point-like X-ray source coincident with one of the RRATs. We discuss the temporal and spectral properties of this X-ray emission, consider counterparts in other wavebands, and interpret these results in the context of possible explanations for the RRAT population. B.M.G. acknowledges the support of NASA through LTSA grant NAG5-13023 and of an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship.     

A characteristic observable signature of preferred-frame effects in relativistic binary pulsars

In this paper, we develop a consistent, phenomenological methodology to measure preferred-frame effects (PFEs) in binary pulsars that exhibit a high rate of periastron advance. We show that in these systems the existence of a preferred frame for gravity leads to an observable characteristic 'signature' in the timing data, which uniquely identifies this effect. We expand the standard Damour–Deruelle timing formula to incorporate this 'signature' and show how this new PFE timing model can be used to either measure or constrain the parameters related to a violation of the local Lorentz invariance of gravity in the strong internal fields of neutron stars. In particular, we demonstrate that in the presence of PFEs we expect a set of the new timing parameters to have a unique relationship that can be measured and tested incontrovertibly. This new methodology is applied to the Double Pulsar, which turns out to be the ideal test system for this kind of experiment. The currently available data set allows us only to study the impact of PFEs on the orbital precession rate,     , providing limits that are, at the moment, clearly less stringent than existing limits on PFE strong-field parameters. However, simulations show that the constraints improve fast in the coming years, allowing us to study all new PFE timing parameters and to check for the unique relationship between them. Finally, we show how a combination of several suitable systems in a PFE antenna array , expected to be available, for instance, with the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), provides full sensitivity to possible violations of local Lorentz invariance in strong gravitational fields in all directions of the sky. This PFE antenna array may eventually allow us to determine the direction of a preferred frame should it exist.     

Phase-resolved Faraday rotation in pulsars

We have detected significant rotation measure (RM) variations for nine bright pulsars, as a function of pulse longitude. An additional sample of 10 pulsars showed a rather constant RM with phase, yet a small degree of RM fluctuation is visible in at least three of those cases. In all cases, we have found that the rotation of the polarization position angle across our 1.4 GHz observing band is consistent with the  λ²  law of interstellar Faraday rotation. We provide for the first time convincing evidence that RM variations across the pulse are largely due to interstellar scattering, although we cannot exclude that magnetospheric Faraday rotation may still have a minor contribution; alternative explanations of this phenomenon, like erroneous de-dispersion and the presence of non-orthogonal polarization modes, are excluded. If the observed, phase-resolved RM variations are common amongst pulsars, then many of the previously measured pulsar RMs may be in error by as much as a few tens of rad m⁻².