Oscillations of the intertropical convergence zone and the genesis of easterly waves. Part I: diagnostics and theory

We examine the mean and transient state of the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) by analyzing data and using simple theory. We concentrate on the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean noting that there exists in this region a well-developed mean ITCZ. Furthermore, it is a region where there has been considerable discussion in the literature of whether easterly waves develop in situ or propagate westwards from the Atlantic Ocean. The region is typical of tropical regions where there is a strong cross-equatorial pressure gradient (CEPG): mean convection well removed from the equator but located equatorward of the maximum sea-surface temperature (SST) and minimum sea level pressure (MSLP). Further to the west, near the dateline where the CEPG is much smaller, convection is weaker and collocated with SST and MSLP extrema. It is argued that in regions of significant CEPG that the near-equatorial tropical system is inertially unstable and that the rectification of the instability for a given CEPG determines the location and intensity of the climatological ITCZ. Using simple theoretical arguments, we develop an expression for the mean latitude of the ITCZ as a function of the CEPG. We note on a day-by-day basis that the ITCZ is highly transient state with variability occurring on 3–8 day time scales. Transients with amplitudes about half of the mean ITCZ, propagate northwards from the near-equatorial southern hemisphere as anomalous meridional oscillations, eventually amplifying convection in the vicinity of the mean ITCZ. It is argued that in these longitudes of strong CEPG the mean ITCZ is continually inertially unstable with advections of anticylonic vorticity across the equator resulting in the creation of an oscillating divergence–convergence doublet. The low-level convergence produces convection and the resultant vortex tube stretching generates cyclonic vorticity which counteracts the northward advection of anticylonic vorticity. During a cycle, the mid-troposphere heating near 10oN oscillates between 6 and 12 K/day at the inertial frequency of the latitude of the mean convection. As a result, there exists an anomalous and shallower, oscillating meridional circulation with a magnitude about 50% of the mean ITCZ associated with the stable state following the generation of anticylonic vorticity. Further, it is argued that the instabilities of the ITCZ are directly associated with in situ development of easterly waves which occur with the inertial period of the latitude of the mean ITCZ. The dynamical sequences and the genesis of easterly waves are absent in the regions further to the east where the CEPG is much weaker or absent altogether. In a companion study (Part II), numerical experiments are conducted to test the hypothesis raised in the present study.     

Soil aggregation estimates in CZO-Fuchsenbigl

The study presents results on the informativity and spatial variation of soil aggregation characteristics in one of the Critical Zone Observatories (CZO) in Europe – Fuchsenbigl, Austria. Water stable aggregates of different size were measured, and strong relationships between soil aggregation estimates were found. The horizontal variation of water stable aggregates at particular depths can be explained by certain vertical heterogeneity of the soil profiles in space. The water stable aggregates in 1–3 mm size dry aggregates in the upper layer vary from 44% to 76% under native vegetation, drop to 1% under intensive cultivation, and comprise 19% in land not tilled for 5 years. The results allow linking the characteristics of soil structure with other biotic and chemical properties for better estimation of the driving forces for soil aggregate formation.     

Evaluation of inductive logic programming for information extraction from natural language texts to support spatial data recommendation services

In this article we analyze a well-known and extensively researched problem: how to find all datasets, on the one hand, and on the other hand only those that are of value to the user when dealing with a specific spatially oriented task. In analogy with existing approaches to a similar problem from other fields of human endeavor, we call this software solution ‘a spatial data recommendation service.’ In its final version, this service should be capable of matching requests created in the user's mind with the content of the existing datasets, while taking into account the user's preferences obtained from the user's previous use of the service. As a result, the service should recommend a list of datasets best suited to the user's needs. In this regard, we consider metadata, particularly natural language definitions of spatial entities, a crucial piece of the solution. To be able to use this information in the process of matching the user's request with the dataset content, this information must be semantically preprocessed. To automate this task we have applied a machine learning approach. With inductive logic programming (ILP) our system learns rules that identify and extract values for the five most frequent relations/properties found in Slovene natural language definitions of spatial entities. The initially established quality criterion for identifying and extracting information was met in three out of five examples. Therefore we conclude that ILP offers a promising approach to developing an information extraction component of a spatial data recommendation service.     

Empirical Modeling of TSI: A Critical View

Solar empirical models based on regression of two variability indices for radiation from the photosphere and chromosphere fit total solar irradiance (TSI) observations with accuracy comparable to the precision reported for the observations themselves. However, the physical meaning of the fitting coefficients and their stability during different phases of the solar cycle has not been examined in detail. We test the stability of the coefficients in regression models of the VIRGO TSI observations over the nine years from the minimum of Cycle 23 in 1996 through the maximum to 2005. We also show how the coefficients converge to the ‘`best fit’' using a search in the coefficient space. Analysis of TSI variability in different phases of this cycle shows little change in regression models as long as the time periods used in the regression are long enough to show the slow solar cycle variation in TSI. We extend our analysis to TSI observations from ERB, ACRIM2, ACRIM3, DIARAD, and TIM. The regression models from these time series show large systematic differences in fitting coefficients for the plage and sunspot indices that we used. These differences are significantly larger than the estimated uncertainties in the coefficients and point to the difficulty of combining observations from different instruments to create an accurate composite TSI record over several solar cycles. Our results clearly demonstrate the improvement in precision of TSI measurements from the Nimbus 7 ERB in Cycle 22 to the latest SORCE TIM data in Cycle 23.     

Detecting,sourcing, and age-dating dredged sediments on the open shelf,southern California,using dead mollusk shells

Molluscan shell debris is an under-exploited means of detecting, sourcing, and age-dating dredged sediments in open-shelf settings. Backscatter features on the Southern California shelf are suggestive of dredged sediment hauled from San Diego Bay but deposited significantly inshore of the EPA-designated ocean disposal site. We find that 36% of all identifiable bivalve shells > 2 mm (44% of shells > 4 mm) in sediment samples from this 'short dump' area are from species known to live exclusively in the Bay; such shells are absent at reference sites of comparable water depth, indicating that their presence in the short-dump area signals non-compliant disposal rather than natural offshore transport or sea level rise. These sediments lack the shells of species that invaded California bays in the 1970s, suggesting that disposal preceded federal regulations. This inexpensive, low-tech method, with its protocol for rejecting alternative hypotheses, will be easy to adapt in other settings.     

Tail emission of prompt gamma-ray burst jets

Tail emission of the prompt gamma-ray burst (GRB) is discussed using a multiple emitting sub-shell (inhomogeneous jet, sub-jets or mini-jets) model, where the whole GRB jet consists of many emitting sub-shells. One may expect that such a jet with angular inhomogeneity should produce spiky tail emission. However, we found that the tail is not spiky but is decaying roughly monotonically. The global decay slope of the tail is not so much affected by the local angular inhomogeneity but affected by the global sub-shell energy distribution. The fact that steepening GRB tail breaks appeared in some events prefers the structured jets. If the angular size of the emitting sub-shell is around 0.01–0.02 rad, some bumps or fluctuations appear in the tail emission observed frequently in long GRBs. If the parameter differences of sub-shell properties are large, the tail has frequent changes of the temporal slope observed in a few bursts. Therefore, the multiple emitting sub-shell model has the advantage of explaining the small-scale structure in the observed rapid decay phase.     

K-feldspar rich shales from Jurassic bedded cherts in southeastern Slovenia

The study area in southeastern Slovenia is part of the transitional zone between the internal and the external Dinarides. Within Jurassic bedded cherts there are up to 2 cm thick shale intercalations, consisting of laminated, soft, fine-grained, green to brown material whose origin has been in question. In the majority of Tethyan cherts, the interbedded material is reported to be volcanogenic and/or terrigenous, although a detailed mineralogical analysis of the material is lacking. An XRD analysis confirmed the presence of quartz, illite, chlorite and K-feldspar, which is the prevailing component in some samples. Major and trace element data exclude both a volcanogenic and an hydrothermal origin. Several discrimination diagrams indicate the upper crustal terrigenous nature of shales and a biogenic silica source. The source material was probably from a Variscan crust, which at the time of deposition had already been weathered to kaolinite, and some sporadic muscovite. The MnO/Al₂O₃ ratio suggests a slow sedimentation rate of cherts and a faster one for shales, which probably settled from distal turbidity currents. The negative Ce anomaly indicates prolonged contact with ocean water. Sediments were deposited on a Tethyan passive margin, originally as silica-rich carbonate beds intercalated with mud. During late diagenesis, the mixing of marine and meteoric waters caused the further silicification of limestone and simultaneous potassium enrichment of shale which led to their alteration into illite or chlorite and, in sediments already rich in K-minerals, into K-feldspar.     

ERA-40-aided assessment of the atmospheric influence on satellite retrieval of Adriatic Sea surface temperature

The aim of this work is assessment of regional atmospheric influence on satellite derivation of Adriatic Sea surface temperature (SST). To this end the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF) ERA-40 reanalysis dataset has been employed to provide the temperature and humidity profiles and surface data, while the RTTOV 8.7 radiative transfer model was used to calculate the top-of-atmosphere brightness temperatures for the advanced very high-resolution radiometer (AVHRR) channels. Ten ERA-40 grid points over the Adriatic Sea were used in the analysis, providing 29,590, 00 UTC and 12 UTC, clear-sky profiles. Climatological analysis of the ERA-40 profiles demonstrated distinct seasonal variability over the Adriatic Sea. Seasonality noted in the temperature and specific humidity profiles also evinced in the atmospheric transmittance, thermal channels temperature deficit, and derived γ and ρ parameters. A multivariate analysis was applied to relate the simulated top-of-atmosphere brightness temperatures to the Adriatic SSTs in order to generate exploratory sets of SST retrieval coefficients. All derived coefficient sets exhibited smaller noise amplification factor than the global counterpart. A test comparison of satellite-derived SST with an 11-month in situ SST series showed than locally derived coefficients provide smaller scatter (improved precision), and skin-centred bias that requires additional adjustment. Almost identical SST residual and error metric was obtained with seasonally adjusted classical split-window coefficients and with coefficients explicitly accommodating water-vapor dependence. Comparison with data reinforces the notion that the atmosphere over the Adriatic may exhibit variability that cannot be fully accommodated by globally adjusted correction.