黄河流域寒潮天气与凌情关系分析

利用1951～2008年冬季(11月至翌年3月)各月气温资料,统计分析了近50年黄河流域的寒潮天气过程,阐述了寒潮时空分布规律、变化特点、强度和影响范围。分析了寒潮天气与黄河凌情的关系及对凌情的影响,得出黄河流域寒潮天气在时间和空间上的分布是不均匀的,位于高纬度地区的宁蒙河段寒潮发生频率高于黄河下游,寒潮的强度也强于黄河下游,寒潮覆盖的范围也大于黄河下游;黄河流域以一般性寒潮天气最多,历史上强寒潮发生的次数非常少,除了磴口站发生过3次外,流域其他站均未发生过;20世纪80年代中期以后寒潮的活动呈现出逐步减少的趋势,冬季寒潮发生趋于平静;黄河流域50%的封河是寒潮天气造成的;冬季寒潮天气多封河天数也多;冬季寒潮过程次数多、降温幅度大、持续时间长、最低气温低时,黄河下游封河长度将较常年明显偏长。     

AstroGrid-D: Grid technology for astronomical science

We present status and results of AstroGrid-D, a joint effort of astrophysicists and computer scientists to employ grid technology for scientific applications. AstroGrid-D provides access to a network of distributed machines with a set of commands as well as software interfaces. It allows simple use of computer and storage facilities and to schedule or monitor compute tasks and data management. It is based on the Globus Toolkit middleware (GT4).Chapter 1 describes the context which led to the demand for advanced software solutions in Astrophysics, and we state the goals of the project.We then present characteristic astrophysical applications that have been implemented on AstroGrid-D in chapter 2. We describe simulations of different complexity, compute-intensive calculations running on multiple sites (Section 2.1), and advanced applications for specific scientific purposes (Section 2.2), such as a connection to robotic telescopes (Section 2.2.3). We can show from these examples how grid execution improves e.g. the scientific workflow.Chapter 3 explains the software tools and services that we adapted or newly developed. Section 3.1 is focused on the administrative aspects of the infrastructure, to manage users and monitor activity. Section 3.2 characterises the central components of our architecture: The AstroGrid-D information service to collect and store metadata, a file management system, the data management system, and a job manager for automatic submission of compute tasks.We summarise the successfully established infrastructure in chapter 4, concluding with our future plans to establish AstroGrid-D as a platform of modern e-Astronomy.     

Wind in Ireland: long memory or seasonal effect?

Since Haslett and Raftery’s paper Space-Time Modelling with Long-Memory Dependence: Assessing Ireland’s Wind Power Resource (1989), modelling meteorological time series with long memory processes, in particular the ARFIMA model has become very common. Haslett and Raftery fitted an ARFIMA model on Irish daily wind speeds. In this paper, we try to reproduce Haslett and Raftery’s results (focusing on the dynamic of the wind process, and not on cross-correlation and space dependencies), and show that an ARFIMA model does not properly capture the behaviour of the series (in Modelling daily windspeed in Ireland section). Indeed, the series show a periodic behaviour, that is not taken into account by the ARFIMA model. Removing this periodic behaviour yields no results either, we therefore try to fit a GARMA model that takes into account both seasonality and long memory (in Seasonality and long memory using GARMA models section). If a GARMA process can be fitted to the data to model Irish daily data, we will show that these models could also be used to model Dutch hourly data.

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Microlensing of an extended source by a power-law mass distribution

Microlensing promises to be a powerful tool for studying distant galaxies and quasars. As the data and models improve, there are systematic effects that need to be explored. Quasar continuum and broad-line regions may respond differently to microlensing due to their different sizes; to understand this effect, we study microlensing of finite sources by a mass function of stars. We find that microlensing is insensitive to the slope of the mass function but does depend on the mass range. For negative-parity images, diluting the stellar population with dark matter increases the magnification dispersion for small sources and decreases it for large sources. This implies that the quasar continuum and broad-line regions may experience very different microlensing in negative-parity lensed images. We confirm earlier conclusions that the surface brightness profile and geometry of the source have little effect on microlensing. Finally, we consider non-circular sources. We show that elliptical sources that are aligned with the direction of shear have larger magnification dispersions than sources with perpendicular alignment, an effect that becomes more prominent as the ellipticity increases. Elongated sources can lead to more rapid variability than circular sources, which raises the prospect of using microlensing to probe source shape.