High-resolution mean sea surface computed with altimeter data of Ers-1 (geodetic mission) and topex-poseidon

The remote-sensing satellite ERS-1, launched in 1991 to study the Earth's environment, was placed on a geodetic (168-day repeat) orbit between 1994 April and 1995 March to map, through altimetric measurements, the gravity field over the whole oceanic domain with a resolution of 8 km at the equator in both along-track and cross-track directions. We have analysed the precise altimeter data of the geodetic mission, and, by also using one year of Topex-Poseidon altimeter data, we have computed a global high-resolution mean sea surface. The various steps involved in pre-processing the ERS-1 data consisted of correcting the data for environmental factors, editing, and reducing, through crossover analyses, the radial orbit error, which directly affects sea-surface height measurements. For this purpose, we adjusted sinusoids at 1 and 2 cycle rev⁻¹ along the ERS-1 profiles in order to minimize crossover differences between ERS-1 and yearly averaged Topex-Poseidon profiles. In effect, the orbit of Topex-Poseidon is very accurately determined (within 2–3 cm for the radial component), so Topex-Poseidon altimeter profiles can serve as a reference to reduce the ERS-1 radial orbit error. The ERS-1 residual orbit error was further reduced through a second crossover analysis between all ascending and descending profiles of the geodetic mission. The along-track ERS-1 and Topex-Poseidon data were then interpolated over the whole oceanic domain on a regular grid of 1/16°× 1/16° size. The mapping of the gridded sea-surface heights reveals the very fine structure of the marine geoid, up until now unknown at a global scale. This new data set will be most useful for marine geophysical and tectonic investigations.     

Terrestrial water dynamics in the lower Ganges—estimates from ENVISAT and GRACE

In this study, the hydrodynamics of lower Ganges basin in India has been monitored using radar altimetry data from environmental satellite (ENVISAT) mission and microgravity data from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission. River stage time series have been constructed for different virtual stations on the lower Ganges. Time series for the integrated water volume changes from microgravity measurements have also been constructed to characterize the seasonal and interannual fluctuation patterns in water storage and flux. The ENVISAT dataset indicates an average seasonal river stage fluctuation of 8 m in the lower Ganges River. The GRACE dataset reveals a seasonal fluctuation ranging from 0.18 to 0.40 m in the vertically integrated total water storage in the lower Ganges basin. The two independent datasets show broad similarity in the lower Ganges basin and outline the importance of space-based techniques for monitoring continental water resources.     

Cathodoluminescence of synthetic and natural calcite: the effects of manganese and iron on orange emission

Summary The orange cathodoluminescence (CL) of calcite is known to be due to the presence of Mn²⁺ cations. It has been demonstrated here using CL and electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) crossed analysis from synthetic calcite that neither Fe²⁺ nor Fe³⁺ ions influence this luminescence emission. More complex natural calcium carbonates have been investigated to check whether or not this conclusion can be applied to them. For this purpose, different white marbles from Greek quarries were analysed with CL. The data are completed with neutron activation analysis (NAA) for manganese and iron contents. Again it is shown that only manganese plays a role in the orange CL of these white marbles. This result provides an important clue in the wide field of provenance determination of calcium carbonate used in ancient art.Received February 19, 2002; revised version accepted October 22, 2002 Published online March 10, 2003     

Gaseous drag and planetary formation by accretion

We have made numerical experiments of the collisional and gravitational interaction of a planetesimal swarm in the early Solar System. In particular we study the dynamical evolution of an initial population of kilometer-size planetesimals subject to collisions (accretion, rebound, cratering, and catastrophic fragmentation). This study is based on a Monte-Carlo statistical method and provides the mass and velocity distributions of the planetesimal swarm as a function of time as well as their distribution in heliocentric distance. Several experiments have been performed and three of them are presented here. They simulate the accretional growth of numerous planetesimals in the absence (or presence) of gaseous drag, with (or without) one larger embryo among them, and with (or without) a size gradient. The results show that (i) for a population of planetesimals submitted to a negative gradient in size as the heliocentric distance increases, the outer planetesimals spiral toward the Sun faster than inner ones, leading after some time to an accumulation of bodies inside the cloud which allows the formation of an embryo; (ii) the growth of one embryo among a population of planetesimals is accelerated by the presence of gas and is warranted as long as its feeding zone is fed by the inward flow of planetesimals due to gas drag. These results offer some complementary new insights in the understanding of the accretional formation of 4–5 terrestrial planets instead of the numerous Moon-size planets generally found in numerical experiments.