Characteristics of spectral aerosol optical depths over India during ICARB

Spectral aerosol optical depth (AOD) measurements, carried out regularly from a network of observatories spread over the Indian mainland and adjoining islands in the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea, are used to examine the spatio-temporal and spectral variations during the period of ICARB (March to May 2006). The AODs and the derived Ångström parameters showed considerable variations across India during the above period. While at the southern peninsular stations the AODs decreased towards May after a peak in April, in the north Indian regions they increased continuously from March to May. The Ångström coefficients suggested enhanced coarse mode loading in the north Indian regions, compared to southern India. Nevertheless, as months progressed from March to May, the dominance of coarse mode aerosols increased in the columnar aerosol size spectrum over the entire Indian mainland, maintaining the regional distinctiveness. Compared to the above, the island stations showed considerably low AODs, so too the northeastern station Dibrugarh, indicating the prevalence of cleaner environment. Long-range transport of aerosols from tshe adjoining regions leads to remarkable changes in the magnitude of the AODs and their wavelength dependencies during March to May. HYSPLIT back-trajectory analysis shows that enhanced long-range transport of aerosols, particularly from the west Asia and northwest coastal India, contributed significantly to the enhancement of AOD and in the flattening of the spectra over entire regions; if it is the peninsular regions and the island Minicoy are more impacted in April, the north Indian regions including the Indo Gangetic Plain get affected the most during May, with the AODs soaring as high as 1.0 at 500 nm. Over the islands, the Ångström exponent (α) remained significantly lower (～1) over the Arabian Sea compared to Bay of Bengal (BoB) (～1.4) as revealed by the data respectively from Minicoy and Port Blair. Occurrences of higher values of α, showing dominance of accumulation mode aerosols, over BoB are associated well with the advection, above the boundary layer, of fine particles from the east Asian region during March and April. The change in the airmass to marine in May results in a rapid decrease in α over the BoB.     

Mapping groundwater recharge potential using GIS approach in Darwha block

Groundwater is the most important source of water in meeting irrigation, drinking, and other needs in India. The assessment of the potential zone for its recharge is critical for sustainable usage, quality management, and food security. This study reports alternative mapping of the groundwater recharge potential of a selected block by including large-scale soil data. Thematic layers of soil, geomorphology, slope, land use land cover, topographical wetness index, and drainage density of Darwha block (District Yavatmal, Maharashtra, India) were generated and integrated in a geographic information system environment. The topographic maps, thematic maps, field data, and satellite image were processed, classified, and weighted using analytical hierarchical process for their contribution to groundwater recharge. The layers were integrated by weighted linear combination method in the GIS environment to generate four groundwater potential zones viz., “poor,” “poor to moderate,” “moderate to high,” and “high.” Based on the generated groundwater potential map, about 9830 ha (12%) of the study area was categorized as high potential for recharge, 25,558 ha (31%) as poor to moderate, 33,398 ha (40%) as moderate to high, and 12,565 ha (15%) as poor potential zone. The zonation corresponds well with the field data on greater well density (0.22/ha) and irrigated crop area (27%) in the high potential zone as against 0.02 wells/ha and only 6% irrigated area in the poor zone. The map is recommended for use in regulating groundwater development decisions and judicious expenditure on drilling new wells by farmers and the state authorities.     

Numerical Simulation of the Sensitivity of Summer Monsoon Circulation and Rainfall over India to Land Surface Processes

—The influence of soil moisture and vegetation variation on simulation of monsoon circulation and rainfall is investigated. For this purpose a simple land surface parameterization scheme is incorporated in a three-dimensional regional high resolution nested grid atmospheric model. Based on the land surface parameterization scheme, latent heat and sensible heat fluxes are explicitly estimated over the entire domain of the model. Two sensitivity studies are conducted; one with bare dry soil conditions (no latent heat flux from land surface) and the other with realistic representation of the land surface parameters such as soil moisture, vegetation cover and landuse patterns in the numerical simulation. The sensitivity of main monsoon features such as Somali jet, monsoon trough and tropical easterly jet to land surface processes are discussed.¶Results suggest the necessity of including a detailed land surface parameterization in the realistic short-range weather numerical predictions. An enhanced short-range prediction of hydrological cycle including precipitation was produced by the model, with land surface processes parameterized. This parameterization appears to simulate all the main circulation features associated with the summer monsoon in a realistic manner.     

Groundwater targeting in a hard-rock terrain using fracture-pattern modeling, Niva River basin, Andhra Pradesh, India

In hard-rock terrain, due to the lack of primary porosity in the bedrock, joints, fault zones, and weathered zones are the sources for groundwater occurrence and movement. To study the groundwater potential in the hard-rock terrain and drought-prone area in the Niva River basin, southern Andhra Pradesh state, India, Landsat 5 photographic data were used to prepare an integrated hydrogeomorphology map. Larsson's integrated deformation model was applied to identify the various fracture systems, to pinpoint those younger tensile fracture sets that are the main groundwater reservoirs, and to understand the importance of fracture density in groundwater prospecting. N35°–55°E fractures were identified as tensile and N35°–55°W fractures as both tensile and shear in the study area. Apparently, these fractures are the youngest open fractures. Wherever N35°–55°E and N35°–55°W fracture densities are high, weathered-zone thickness is greater, water-table fluctuations are small, and well yields are high. Groundwater-potential zones were delineated and classified as very good, good to very good, moderate to good, and poor. Electronic Publication     

Photometric,spectral phase and temperature effects on 4 Vesta and HED meteorites: Implications for the Dawn mission

Phase angle and temperature are two important parameters that affect the photometric and spectral behavior of planetary surfaces in telescopic and spacecraft data. We have derived photometric and spectral phase functions for the Asteroid 4 Vesta, the first target of the Dawn mission, using ground-based telescopes operating at visible and near-infrared wavelengths (0.4–2.5 μm). Photometric lightcurve observations of Vesta were conducted on 15 nights at a phase angle range of 3.8–25.7° using duplicates of the seven narrowband Dawn Framing Camera filters (0.4–1.0 μm). Rotationally resolved visible (0.4–0.7 μm) and near-IR spectral observations (0.7–2.5 μm) were obtained on four nights over a similar phase angle range. Our Vesta photometric observations suggest the phase slope is between 0.019 and 0.029 mag/deg. The G parameter ranges from 0.22 to 0.37 consistent with previous results (e.g., Lagerkvist, C.-I., Magnusson, P., Williams, I.P., Buontempo, M.E., Argyle, R.W., Morrison, L.V. [1992]. Astron. Astrophys. Suppl. Ser. 94, 43–71; Piironen, J., Magnusson, P., Lagerkvist, C.-I., Williams, I.P., Buontempo, M.E., Morrison, L.V. [1997]. Astron. Astrophys. Suppl. Ser. 121, 489–497; Hasegawa, S. et al. [2009]. Lunar Planet. Sci. 40. ID 1503) within the uncertainty. We found that in the phase angle range of 0° < α ? 25° for every 10° increase in phase angle Vesta’s visible slope (0.5–0.7 μm) increases 20%, Band I and Band II depths increase 2.35% and 1.5% respectively, and the BAR value increase 0.30. Phase angle spectral measurements of the eucrite Moama in the lab show a decrease in Band I and Band II depths and BAR from the lowest phase angle 13° to 30°, followed by possible small increases up to 90°, and then a dramatic drop between 90° and 120° phase angle. Temperature-induced spectral effects shift the Band I and II centers of the pyroxene bands to longer wavelengths with increasing temperature. We have derived new correction equations using a temperature series (80–400 K) of HED meteorite spectra that will enable interpretation of telescopic and spacecraft spectral data using laboratory calibrations at room temperature (300 K).     

Hydrometallurgical processing and recovery of molybdenum trioxide from spent catalyst

Hydrometallurgical processing of spent hydrodesulphurisation (HDS) catalyst for the recovery of molybdenum using sodium carbonate and hydrogen peroxide mixtures was investigated. The results indicated that the recovery of molybdenum was largely dependent on the concentrations of Na₂CO₃ and H₂O₂ in the reaction medium, which controls the acidity of the leach liquor and carry over of impurities such as Al, Ni, P, Si and V. Leaching process was exothermic and leaching efficiency of molybdenum decreased with increasing solid to liquid ratio. Large scale leaching of spent catalyst, under optimum conditions: 20% pulp density, 85 g/L Na₂CO₃, 10 vol.% H₂O₂ and 1 h reaction, resulted a leaching efficiency of 84% Mo. The obtained leach liquor contained (g/L): Mo — 22.0, Ni — 0.015 and Al — 0.82, P — 1.1, Si — 0.094 and minor quantities of V — 8 mg/L, As and Co — < 1 mg/L. Recovery of Mo from leach solution as MoO₃ of 97.30% purity was achieved by ammonium molybdate precipitation method.     

Multivariate modeling of droughts using copulas and meta-heuristic methods

This study investigated the utility of two meta-heuristic algorithms to estimate parameters of copula models and for derivation of drought severity–duration–frequency (S–D–F) curves. Drought is a natural event, which has huge impact on both the society and the natural environment. Drought events are mainly characterized by their severity, duration and intensity. The study adopts standardized precipitation index for drought characterization, and copula method for multivariate risk analysis of droughts. For accurate estimation of copula model parameters, two meta-heuristic methods namely genetic algorithm and particle swarm optimization are applied. The proposed methodology is applied to a case study in Trans Pecos, an arid region in Texas, USA. First, drought severity and duration are separately modeled by various probability distribution functions and then the best fitted models are selected for copula modeling. For modeling the joint dependence of drought variables, different classes of copulas, namely, extreme value copulas, Plackett and Student’s t copulas are employed and their performance is evaluated using standard performance measures. It is found that for the study region, the Gumbel–Hougaard copula is the best fitted copula model as compared to the others and is used for the development of drought S–D–F curves. Results of the study suggest that the meta-heuristic methods have greater utility in copula-based multivariate risk assessment of droughts.     

Constraining albedo,diameter and composition of near-Earth asteroids via near-infrared spectroscopy

We present a method to constrain the albedo and diameters of near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) based on thermal flux in their near-infrared spectra (0.7–2.5 μm) using the Standard Thermal Model. Near-infrared spectra obtained with the SpeX instrument on NASA Infrared Telescope Facility are used to estimate the albedo and diameters of 12 NEAs (1992 JE, 1992 UY4, 1999 JD6, 2004 XP14, 2005 YY93, 2007 DS84, 2005 AD13, 2005 WJ56, 1999 JM8, 2005 RC34, 2003 YE45, and 2008 QS11). Albedo estimates were compared with average albedo for various taxonomic classes outlined by Thomas et al. (Thomas, C.A. et al. [2011]. Astron. J. 142(3)) and are consistent with their results. Spectral band parameters, like band centers, are derived and compared to spectra of laboratory mineral mixtures and meteorites to constrain their composition and possible meteorite analogs. Based on our study we estimate the albedos and diameters of these NEAs and compare them with those obtained by other techniques such as ground-based mid-infrared, Spitzer thermal infrared and Arecibo radar. Our results are broadly consistent with the results from other direct methods like radar. Determining the compositions of low albedo asteroids is a challenge due to the lack of deep silicate absorption features. However, based on weak absorption features and albedo, we suggest possible meteorite analogs for these NEAs, which include black chondrites, CM2 carbonaceous chondrites and enstatite achondrites. We did not find any specific trends in albedo and composition among the asteroids we observed.     

Self-gravitating fluid in a conformally-flat space-time

The Einstein field equations for an irrotational perfect fluid with pressurep, equal to energy density are studied when the space-time is conformally flat. The coordinate transformation to co-moving coordinates is discussed. The energy and Hawking-Penrose inequalities are studied. Static and non-static solutions of the field equations are obtained. It is interesting to note that in the static case the only spherically-symmetric conformally flat solution for self-gravitating fluid is simply the empty flat space-time of general relativity.