The CNRM-CM5.1 global climate model: description and basic evaluation

A new version of the general circulation model CNRM-CM has been developed jointly by CNRM-GAME (Centre National de Recherches Météorologiques—Groupe d’études de l’Atmosphère Météorologique) and Cerfacs (Centre Européen de Recherche et de Formation Avancée) in order to contribute to phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). The purpose of the study is to describe its main features and to provide a preliminary assessment of its mean climatology. CNRM-CM5.1 includes the atmospheric model ARPEGE-Climat (v5.2), the ocean model NEMO (v3.2), the land surface scheme ISBA and the sea ice model GELATO (v5) coupled through the OASIS (v3) system. The main improvements since CMIP3 are the following. Horizontal resolution has been increased both in the atmosphere (from 2.8° to 1.4°) and in the ocean (from 2° to 1°). The dynamical core of the atmospheric component has been revised. A new radiation scheme has been introduced and the treatments of tropospheric and stratospheric aerosols have been improved. Particular care has been devoted to ensure mass/water conservation in the atmospheric component. The land surface scheme ISBA has been externalised from the atmospheric model through the SURFEX platform and includes new developments such as a parameterization of sub-grid hydrology, a new freezing scheme and a new bulk parameterisation for ocean surface fluxes. The ocean model is based on the state-of-the-art version of NEMO, which has greatly progressed since the OPA8.0 version used in the CMIP3 version of CNRM-CM. Finally, the coupling between the different components through OASIS has also received a particular attention to avoid energy loss and spurious drifts. These developments generally lead to a more realistic representation of the mean recent climate and to a reduction of drifts in a preindustrial integration. The large-scale dynamics is generally improved both in the atmosphere and in the ocean, and the bias in mean surface temperature is clearly reduced. However, some flaws remain such as significant precipitation and radiative biases in many regions, or a pronounced drift in three dimensional salinity.     

Helioseismic Holography of an Artificial Submerged Sound Speed Perturbation and Implications for the Detection of Pre-emergence Signatures of Active Regions

We use a publicly available numerical wave-propagation simulation of Hartlep et al. (Solar Phys. 268, 321, 2011) to test the ability of helioseismic holography to detect signatures of a compact, fully submerged, 5 % sound-speed perturbation placed at a depth of 50 Mm within a solar model. We find that helioseismic holography employed in a nominal “lateral-vantage” or “deep-focus” geometry employing quadrants of an annular pupil can detect and characterize the perturbation. A number of tests of the methodology, including the use of a plane-parallel approximation, the definition of travel-time shifts, the use of different phase-speed filters, and changes to the pupils, are also performed. It is found that travel-time shifts made using Gabor-wavelet fitting are essentially identical to those derived from the phase of the Fourier transform of the cross-covariance functions. The errors in travel-time shifts caused by the plane-parallel approximation can be minimized to less than a second for the depths and fields of view considered here. Based on the measured strength of the mean travel-time signal of the perturbation, no substantial improvement in sensitivity is produced by varying the analysis procedure from the nominal methodology in conformance with expectations. The measured travel-time shifts are essentially unchanged by varying the profile of the phase-speed filter or omitting the filter entirely. The method remains maximally sensitive when applied with pupils that are wide quadrants, as opposed to narrower quadrants or with pupils composed of smaller arcs. We discuss the significance of these results for the recent controversy regarding suspected pre-emergence signatures of active regions.     

HI imaging the low red-shift cosmic web

Only in recent years has the realization emerged that galaxies do not dominate the universal baryon budget but are merely the brightest pearls of an underlying cosmic web. Although the gas in these inter-galactic filaments is moderately to highly ionized, QSO absorption lines have shown that the surface area increases dramatically in going down to lower HI column densities. The first image of the cosmic web in HI emission has just been made of the Local Group filament connecting M31 and M33. The corresponding HI distribution function is in very good agreement with that of the QSO absorption lines, confirming the 30-fold increase in surface area expected between 10¹⁹ and 10¹⁷ cm⁻². The critical observational challenge is crossing the “HI desert”, the range of log(N_HI) from about 19.5 down to 18, over which photo-ionization by the intergalactic radiation field produces an exponential decline in the neutral fraction from essentially unity down to a few percent. Nature is kinder again to the HI observer below log(N_HI) = 18, where the neutral fraction decreases only very slowly with log(N_HI). With the SKA, we can begin the systematic study of the cosmic web beyond the Local Group. With moderate integration times, the necessary resolution and sensitivity can be achieved out to distances beyond the Virgo cluster. When combined with targeted optical and UV absorption line observations, the total baryonic masses and enrichment histories of the cosmic web will be determined over the complete range of environmental over-densities.     

Fusion of strings and its consequences at the highest cosmic ray energies

It is shown that the fusion of string is a source of particle production in nucleus-nucleus collisions outside the kinematical limits of nucleon-nucleon collisions. The spectrum of different particles is compared with the high energy data on p-A collisions obtaining a reasonable agreement. Results for A-B collisions at and AGeV are given and possible implications for cosmic rays are examined. Both the enhancement of the cumulative effect and the reduction of multiplicities implied by string fusion should strongly modify the first interactions and the profile of extensive air showers and should be taken into account in their simulation.     

Nanoscale zero-valent iron flakes for groundwater treatment

Even today the remediation of organic contaminant source zones poses significant technical and economic challenges. Nanoscale zero-valent iron (NZVI) injections have proved to be a promising approach especially for source zone treatment. We present the development and the characterization of a new kind of NZVI with several advantages on the basis of laboratory experiments, model simulations and a field test. The developed NZVI particles are manufactured by milling, consist of 85 % Fe(0) and exhibit a flake-like shape with a thickness of <100 nm. The mass normalized perchloroethylene (PCE) dechlorination rate constant was 4.1 × 10^?3 L/g h compared to 4.0 × 10^?4 L/g h for a commercially available reference product. A transport distance of at least 190 cm in quartz sand with a grain size of 0.2–0.8 mm and Fe(0) concentrations between 6 and 160 g/kg (sand) were achieved without significant indications of clogging. The particles showed only a low acute toxicity and had no longterm inhibitory effects on dechlorinating microorganisms. During a field test 280 kg of the iron flakes was injected to a depth of 10–12 m into quaternary sand layers with hydraulic conductivities ranging between 10^?4 and 10^?5 m/s. Fe(0) concentrations of 1 g/kg (sand) or more [up to 100 g/kg (sand)] were achieved in 80 % of the targeted area. The iron flakes have so far remained reactive for more than 1 year and caused a PCE concentration decrease from 20.000–30.000 to 100–200 µg/L. Integration of particle transport processes into the OpenGeoSys model code proved suitable for site-specific 3D prediction and optimization of iron flake injections.     

Newly Identified Properties of Surface Acoustic Power

The cause of enhanced acoustic power surrounding active regions, known as the acoustic halo, is not as yet understood. We explore the properties of the enhanced acoustic power observed near disk center from 21 to 27 January 2002, including AR 9787. We find that i) there exists a strong correlation of the enhanced high-frequency power with magnetic-field inclination, with greater power in more horizontal fields, ii) the frequency of the maximum enhancement increases along with magnetic-field strength, and iii) the oscillations contributing to the halos show modal ridges that are shifted to higher wavenumber at constant frequency in comparison to the ridges of modes in the quiet Sun.     

Methods for point source analysis in high energy neutrino telescopes

Neutrino telescopes are moving steadily toward the goal of detecting astrophysical neutrinos from the most powerful galactic and extragalactic sources. Here we describe analysis methods to search for high energy point-like neutrino sources using detectors deep in the ice or sea. We simulate an ideal cubic kilometer detector based on real world performance of existing detectors such as AMANDA, IceCube, and ANTARES. An unbinned likelihood ratio method is applied, making use of the point spread function and energy distribution of simulated neutrino signal events to separate them from the background of atmospheric neutrinos produced by cosmic ray showers. The unbinned point source analyses are shown to perform better than binned searches and, depending on the source spectral index, the use of energy information is shown to improve discovery potential by almost a factor of two.     

Denudation rates on cratonic landscapes: comparison between suspended and dissolved fluxes,and 10Be analysis in the Nyong and Sanaga River basins,south Cameroon

South Cameroon is located in a tropical and tectonically quiescent region, with landscapes characterized by thick highly weathered regolith, indicative of the long‐term predominance of chemical weathering over erosion. Currently this region undergoes huge changes due to accelerated mutations related to a growing population and economical developments with associated needs and increasing pressures on land and natural resources. We analysed two of the main south Cameroon rivers: the Nyong River and Sanaga River. The Sanaga catchment undergoes a contrasted tropical climate from sub‐humid mountainous and humid climate and is impacted by deforestation, agriculture, damming, mining and urbanization, especially in the Mbam sub‐basin, draining the highly populated volcanic highlands. By contrast, the Nyong catchment, only under humid tropical climate, is preserved from anthropogenic disturbance with low population except in the region of Yaoundé (Méfou sub‐basin). Moreover the Nyong basin is dam‐free and less impacted by agriculture and logging. We explore both denudation temporal variability and the ratio between chemical and physical denudation through two catchment‐averaged erosion and denudation datasets. The first one consists of an 11‐year long gauging dataset, while the second one comes from cosmogenic radionuclides [CRNs, here beryllium‐10 (¹⁰Be)] from sand sampled in the river mainstreams (timescale of tens to hundreds of thousands of years). Modern fluxes estimated from gauging data range from 5 to 100 m/Ma (10 to 200 t/km²/yr); our calculations indicate that the usual relative contribution of chemical versus physical denudation is 60% and 40%, respectively, of the total denudation. Beryllium‐10 denudation rates and sediment fluxes range from 4.8 to 40.3 m/Ma or 13 to 109 t/km²/yr, respectively, after correction for quartz enrichment. These fluxes are slightly less than the modern fluxes observed in Cameroon and other stable tropical areas. The highest ¹⁰Be‐derived fluxes and the highest physical versus chemical denudation ratios are attributed to anthropogenic impact. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.