On the 22-year oscillations

Observational data of the solar diameter in Italy during 1876–1937 and in Greenwich during 1851–1937 were analyzed. The Whittaker operator with different smoothing coefficients was used. The average data sets for the analysis of the possible oscillations of the solar diameter during 1876–1937 were obtained. Average values of the solar radius R(t) and absolute values of its time derivative ¦dR(t)/dt¦ were compared with the Wolf number, W(t), and with the integral A(t) = ₀ ^t W(t)dt + constant. A good correlation r(R, W) = ¦dR(t)/dt¦, W(t) and r(R, A) = R(t), A(t) was found. It was shown that the frequency spectra of R(t) and A(t) are similar. It was found that during odd 11-yr cycles, the solar diameter decreases, whereas during even cycles it increases. A hysteresis-like behavior in the variation of R(t) during the 22-yr solar magnetic cycle was demonstrated.     

Molecular and isotopic composition of hydrate-bound and dissolved gases in the southern basin of Lake Baikal, based on an improved headspace gas method

Assessments of the molecular and isotopic composition of hydrate-bound and dissolved gases in pore water were conducted during the multi-phase gas hydrate project (MHP-09) cruise VER09-03 to the southern basin of Lake Baikal in September 2009. To avoid changes in gas composition during core sampling and transport, various headspace methods were investigated aimed at preserving the dissolved gases in pore water. When distilled water was added to the sediment samples, the concentrations of carbon dioxide and oxygen decreased because of dissolution into the water and/or microbial consumption. When the headspace was not flushed with inert gases, trace levels of hydrogen and ethylene were detected. The findings suggest that best preparation is achieved by flushing the headspace with helium, and adding a saturated aqueous solution of sodium chloride. This improved headspace method served to examine the molecular and isotopic compositions of gas samples retrieved at several new sites in the southern basin. Methane was the major component, and the proportion of ethane ranged widely from 0.0009 to 1.67?mol% of the total hydrocarbon gases. The proportions of propane and higher hydrocarbons were small or less than their detection limits. The carbon isotope signatures suggest that microbial-sourced methane and ethane were dominant in the Peschanka study area, whereas ethane was of thermogenic origin at all other study sites in the southern basin of Lake Baikal.     

A multigrid methodology for assimilation of measurements into regional tidal models

This paper presents a rigorous, yet practical, method of multigrid data assimilation into regional structured-grid tidal models. The new inverse tidal nesting scheme, with nesting across multiple grids, is designed to provide a fit of the tidal dynamics to data in areas with highly complex bathymetry and coastline geometry. In these areas, computational constraints make it impractical to fully resolve local topographic and coastal features around all of the observation sites in a stand-alone computation. The proposed strategy consists of increasing the model resolution in multiple limited area domains around the observation locations where a representativeness error is detected in order to improve the representation of the measurements with respect to the dynamics. Multiple high-resolution nested domains are set up and data assimilation is carried out using these embedded nested computations. Every nested domain is coupled to the outer domain through the open boundary conditions (OBCs). Data inversion is carried out in a control space of the outer domain model. A level of generality is retained throughout the presentation with respect to the choice of the control space; however, a specific example of using the outer domain OBCs as the control space is provided, with other sensible choices discussed. In the forward scheme, the computations in the nested domains do not affect the solution in the outer domain. The subsequent inverse computations utilize the observation-minus-model residuals of the forward computations across these multiple nested domains in order to obtain the optimal values of parameters in the control space of the outer domain model. The inversion is carried out by propagating the uncertainty from the control space to model tidal fields at observation locations in the outer and in the nested domains using efficient low-rank error covariance representations. Subsequently, an analysis increment in the control space of the outer domain model is computed and the multigrid system is steered optimally towards observations while preserving a perfect dynamical balance. The method is illustrated using a real-world application in the context of the Philippines Strait Dynamics experiment.     

Numerical investigation of infragravity wave amplifications during harbor oscillations influenced by variable offshore topography

The infragravity (IG) period oscillations inside an elongated rectangular harbor near the offshore fringing reef induced by normal-incident bichromatic short wave groups are simulated using a fully nonlinear Boussinesq model, FUNWAVE 2.0. Based on an IG wave separation procedure, this article presents a systematical investigation on how the maximum IG period component amplitude, the bound and free IG waves, and their relative components inside the harbor change with respect to the plane reef-face slope and the incident short wave amplitude under the condition of the 2nd to the 5th modes. For the given harbor and the ranges of the reef-face slope and the incident short wave amplitude studied in this paper, it is shown that both the maximum IG period component amplitude and the free IG wave component amplitude inside the harbor fluctuate widely with the reef-face slope, and their changing trends with the reef-face slope are almost identical with each other, while the bound IG waves inside the harbor seem insensitive to it. Both the maximum IG period component amplitude and those of the bound and free IG standing waves inside the harbor change cubically with the incident short wave amplitude.     

Seasonal and interannual variability of vertical turbulent exchange coefficient in the Black Sea pycnocline in 2013–2016 and its relation to variability of mean kinetic energy of surface currents

Ocean Dynamics - In this paper, we analyze seasonal and interannual variability of vertical turbulent diffusion coefficient (Kt). Our calculations are based on the time series from 2013 to 2016,...     

Investigating Hologram-Based Route Planning

It is often assumed that three-dimensional topographic maps provide more effective route planning, navigation, orientation, and way-finding results than traditional two-dimensional representations. The research reported here investigates whether three-dimensional spatial mappings provide better support for route planning than two-dimensional representations. In a set of experiments performed as part of this research, human subjects were randomly shown either a two- or three-dimensional hologram of San Francisco and were asked to plan a bicycling route between an origin and a destination point. In a second task, participants used these holograms to identify the highest elevation point in the displayed area. The eye-movements of the participants, throughout the process of looking at the geospatial holograms and executing the tasks, were recorded. The eye-tracking metrics analysis indicates with a high statistical level of confidence that three-dimensional holographic maps enable more efficient route planning. In addition, the research group is developing a new algorithm to analyze the differences between participant-selected routes and a set of "good routes." The algorithm employs techniques used to represent the boundary of objects and methods for assessing the difference between objects in modern digital image recognition, image registration, and image alignment applications. The overall goal is to create a theoretical framework for investigating and quantifying route planning effectiveness.     

Variable binaries and variables in binaries in the Binary star DataBase

The Binary star DataBase(BDB, http://bdb.inasan.ru) combines data from catalogs of binary and multiple stars of all observational types. There is a number of ways for variable stars to form or to be a part of binary or multiple systems. We describe how such stars are represented in the database.     

TanDEM-X multiparametric data features in sea ice classification over the Baltic sea

In this study, we assess the potential of X-band Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar imagery for automated classification of sea ice over the Baltic Sea. A bistatic SAR scene acquired by the TanDEM-X mission over the Bothnian Bay in March of 2012 was used in the analysis. Backscatter intensity, interferometric coherence magnitude, and interferometric phase have been used as informative features in several classification experiments. Various combinations of classification features were evaluated using Maximum likelihood (ML), Random Forests (RF) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifiers to achieve the best possible discrimination between open water and several sea ice types (undeformed ice, ridged ice, moderately deformed ice, brash ice, thick level ice, and new ice). Adding interferometric phase and coherence-magnitude to backscatter-intensity resulted in improved overall classification per- formance compared to using only backscatter-intensity. The RF algorithm appeared to be slightly superior to SVM and ML due to higher overall accuracies, however, at the expense of somewhat longer processing time. The best overall accuracy (OA) for three methodologies were achieved using combination of all tested features were 71.56, 72.93, and 72.91％ for ML, RF and SVM classifiers, respectively. Compared to OAs of 62.28, 66.51, and 63.05％ using only backscatter intensity, this indicates strong benefit of SAR interferometry in discriminating different types of sea ice. In contrast to several earlier studies, we were particularly able to successfully discriminate open water and new ice classes.     

Radiochemoecological Monitoring of the Salt Lakes of the Crimea

正1 Introduction The salt lakes of the Crimea contain the practically inexhaustible sources of salts of sodium,magnesium,bromine and other chemical elements(Ponizovskii,1965),being the potential powerful raw materials base for the