Winter fog over the Indo-Gangetic Plains: mapping and modelling using remote sensing and GIS

Almost every year in the winter months (December–February), the vast Indo-Gangetic Plain south of the Himalaya is affected by dense fog. This fog is considered as radiational fog, and sometime it becomes smog (when it mixes with smoke). The typical meteorological, topographic and increasing pollution conditions over the Indo-Gangetic Plain are perhaps the common contributing factors for fog formation. In the present study, the North Indian fog has been successfully mapped and analysed using NOAA-AVHRR satellite data. In the winter seasons of 2005–06, 2006–07 and 2007–08, the fog-affected area has been found to cover about 575,800 km², 594,100 km² and 478,000 km², respectively. Less fog in 2007–08 may be the consequence of high fluctuations in the meteorological parameters like temperature, relative humidity and wind speed as related to the prevailing synoptic regime for that season. The dissipation and migration pattern of fog in the study area has also been interpreted on the basis of the analysis of both meteorological and satellite data. Further analysis of the fog-affected area allowed identifying more fog-prone regions. Analysis of past fog-affected days and corresponding meteorological conditions enabled us to identify favourable conditions for fog formation viz. air temperature 3–13°C, relative humidity >87%, wind speed <2 m/s and elevation <300 m. Based on the observations of past fog formation and corresponding governing parameters, fog for few selected days could be predicted in hind-sight and later verified with NOAA images.     

Dust ion acoustic (DIA) solitary waves in plasmas with weak relativistic effects in electrons and ions

In the new investigation of dust-ion acoustic (DIA) waves with negative dust charges and weakly relativistic ions and electrons in the plasma, compressive and rarefactive DIA solitons of interesting characters are established through the Korteweg-de Vries (KdV) equation. Eventually, the amplitudes of the compressive DIA solitons are found to be constant at some critical temperature ratio α _c (electron to ion temperature ratio) identifying some critical dust charge Z _dc . It is predicted, that the reception of dust charges by the plasma particles at the variation of temperature starts functioning to the growth of compressive soliton’s constant stage of amplitude after the state of critical α _c . The identification of critical dust charge (Z _dc ) which is found to be very great for solitons of constant amplitudes becomes feasible for very small dust to ion density ratio (σ). But it can be achieved, we observe, due to the relativistic increase in ion-density as in mass, which is also a salient feature of this investigation.     

Equations of motion of elliptic restricted problem of three bodies with variable mass

The differential equations of motion of the elliptic restricted problem of three bodies with decreasing mass are derived. The mass of the infinitesimal body varies with time. We have applied Jeans' law and the space-time transformation of Meshcherskii. In this problem the space-time transformation is applicable only in the special case whenn=1,k=0,q=1/2. We have applied Nechvile's transformation for the elliptic problem. We find that the equations of motion of our problem differ from that of constant mass only by a small perturbing force.     

Spintessence: A Possible Candidate as a Driver of the Late Time Cosmic Acceleration

In this paper, it is shown completely analytically that a spintessence model in the dust dominated universe can very well serve the purpose of providing an early deceleration and a present day acceleration.     

On some transonic aspects of general relativistic spherical accretion on to Schwarzschild black holes

The equations governing general relativistic, spherically symmetric, hydrodynamic accretion of polytropic fluid on to black holes are solved in the Schwarzschild metric to investigate some of the transonic properties of the flow. Only stationary solutions are discussed. For such accretion, it has been shown that real physical sonic points may form even for flow with   γ <4/3  or   γ >5/3  . The behaviour of some flow variables in the close vicinity of the event horizon is studied as a function of specific energy and the polytropic index of the flow.     

A new technique for exact and unique solution of transfer equations in finite media

In this paper we develop a new method, combined with Laplace transformation and Wiener-Hopf technique, to obtain unique solutions of transport equations in finite media. For this purpose we consider the simple transfer equation for diffuse reflection by a plane-parallel finite atmosphere scattering radiation with moderate anisotropy. It is transformed, by Laplace transformation, into two coupled linear integral equations which are then reduced to two uncoupled Fredholm integral equations admitting of unique solutions by the method of iteration for values of the breadth of the atmosphere greater than that specified, depending on the scattering process.     

Nonlinear shift of wave parameters of whistlers in the ionosphere

The expression for nonlinear shift of a wave number of a whistler wave propagating through the ionosphere has been derived and the results have been discussed. It is seen that nonlinear shift of a wave number of a whistler is significant in some physical situations. From numerical estimations it is observed that wave number shifts of a whistler for both the LCP and RCP waves become significant when the frequency of the waves are nearly equal to the ion-cyclotron frequency.     

Exact solution of equation for radiative transfer in semi-infinite Rayleigh scattering atmosphere using the laplace transform and the Wiener-Hopf technique

We have considered six scalar transport equations which are obtained from the vector transport equation to determine four Stokes's parameters to the problem of diffuse reflection in the semi-infinite plane parallel Rayleigh scattering atmosphere. By use of the Laplace transform and the Wiener-Hopf technique, these equations have been solved exactly to obtain the emergent intensity and the intensity at any optical depth and to reconstruct the Stokes's parameters. Solutions for emergent distribution so obtained are identical with the results of Chandrasekhar (1950).