A numerical model of the partitioning of trace chemical solutes during drop freezing

Partitioning of volatile chemicals among the gas, liquid, and solid phases during freezing of liquid water in clouds can impact trace chemical distributions in the troposphere and in precipitation. We describe here a numerical model of this partitioning during the freezing of a supercooled liquid drop. Our model includes the time-dependent calculation of the coupled processes of crystallization kinetics, heat transport, and solute mass transport, for a freezing hydrometeor particle. We demonstrate the model for tracer partitioning during the freezing of a 1000 μm radius drop on a 100 μm ice substrate, under a few ambient condition scenarios. The model effectively simulates particle freezing and solute transport, yielding results that are qualitatively and quantitatively consistent with previous experimental and theoretical work. Results suggest that the ice shell formation time is governed by heat loss to air and not by dendrite propagation, and that the location of ice nucleation is not important to freezing times or the effective partitioning of chemical solutes. Even for the case of nucleation at the center of the drop, we found that dendrites propagated rapidly to form surface ice. Freezing then proceeded from the outside in. Results also indicate that the solid-liquid interfacial surface area is not important to freezing times or the effective partitioning of chemical solutes, and that the rate aspects of trapping are more important than equilibrium solid-liquid partitioning to the effective partitioning resulting from freezing.     

京津冀夏季强降水下冰云宏微观特征

根据Aqua MODIS 2级云产品和Cloudsat的2级产品资料,结合降水数据和MODIS L1B级辐射率数据,对发生在京津冀地区夏季的三次强降水过程中冰云的宏微观物理量的特征进行分析,并探究这些物理量和降水强度的关系。结果表明：在水平分布中,强降水过程中降水强度高值区内云相为冰云,冰云云顶高度在8~17 km,冰云粒子有效半径、冰云光学厚度、冰水路径分别最高可达60 μm、 150、 5 000 g?m^-2;冰云光学厚度、冰水路径、冰云云顶高度随降水强度增大而增大。在垂直分布中,冰云主要分布在3.5 km以上,发生强降水站点的冰云为深对流云,冰云粒子有效半径、冰水含量、冰云粒子数浓度分别最高可达150 μm、 3 000 mg?m^-3 、 500 L^-1;冰云粒子有效半径高值区存在于云层中下部,且随高度上升而减小,冰云粒子数浓度高值区存在于云层中上部,且随高度上升而增加,冰水含量高值区则存在于云层中部;冰云粒子有效半径、冰水含量、冰云粒子数浓度在9 km以上随降水强度增大而增大。     

An improved segmentation approach for planar surfaces from unstructured 3D point clouds

The extraction of object features from massive unstructured point clouds with different local densities, especially in the presence of random noisy points, is not a trivial task even if that feature is a planar surface. Segmentation is the most important step in the feature extraction process. In practice, most segmentation approaches use geometrical information to segment the 3D point cloud. The features generally include the position of each point (X, Y and Z), locally estimated surface normals and residuals of best fitting surfaces; however, these features could be affected by noisy points and in consequence directly affect the segmentation results. Therefore, massive unstructured and noisy point clouds also lead to bad segmentation (over-segmentation, under-segmentation or no segmentation). While the RANSAC (random sample consensus) algorithm is effective in the presence of noise and outliers, it has two significant disadvantages, namely, its efficiency and the fact that the plane detected by RANSAC may not necessarily belong to the same object surface; that is, spurious surfaces may appear, especially in the case of parallel-gradual planar surfaces such as stairs. The innovative idea proposed in this paper is a modification for the RANSAC algorithm called Seq-NV-RANSAC. This algorithm checks the normal vector (NV) between the existing point clouds and the hypothesised RANSAC plane, which is created by three random points, under an intuitive threshold value. After extracting the first plane, this process is repeated sequentially (Seq) and automatically, until no planar surfaces can be extracted from the remaining points under the existing threshold value. This prevents the extraction of spurious surfaces, brings an improvement in quality to the computed attributes and increases the degree of automation of surface extraction. Thus the best fit is achieved for the real existing surfaces.     

Hα emission objects in Circinus

We present a new survey for Hα emission objects in the Circinus cloud complex and introduce an efficient photometric method for detecting Hα emission via observations in a narrow‐band filter. The observed flux is compared to a blackbody fit of the continuum. Our search strategy reveals 20 stars with strong Hα emission (EW > 10 Å), eight of them being new detections. All Hα stars display infrared excess corroborating their youth. On the other hand, the region contains a number of infrared excess objects that do not show Hα emission. Our results support the picture that accretion – as witnessed by Hα emission – is a highly variable phenomenon. Therefore, Hα surveys can only trace the temporarily active objects. In contrast, infrared excess is a more robust tracer that reveals most of the population of young stellar objects in a star forming region. Our analysis of the general stellar content of the region yields a reliable distance of 450 pc for the Circinus cloud. Moreover, we find a ratio of total‐to‐selective extinction of R^V = 2.8 suggesting that smaller‐than‐normal dust grains may be present. (© 2013 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

基于星载测雨雷达探测的亚洲对流和层云降水季尺度特征分析

利用热带测雨卫星搭载的测雨雷达10年探测结果,就季尺度亚洲对流降水和层云降水的降水频次和强度及降水垂直结构的特点进行了研究.结果表明春、秋、冬三季东亚季平均降水环西太平洋副热带高压呈带状分布,雨强一般不超过10 mm/d;夏季,沿孟加拉湾、中国西南、中国东部至日本的大片雨区中出现了大于12 mm/d强降水;亚洲陆面对流和层云降水强度均弱于洋面.亚洲山地强迫不但可引起迎风坡上千公里长度的高降水频次和强降水带,而且导致其下风方向降水频次减少.季尺度降水频次分析表明,亚洲大部分地区对流降水频次小于3%;而层云降水频次一般大于3%,最高可超过10%;副热带高压南侧及西南侧的热带地区对流和层云降水频次均高于副热带高压北侧及西北侧的中纬度地区;降水频次的区域分布还表明,春季中南半岛至中国华南及南海南部对流活动多于同期的印度次大陆.季平均对流和层云降水廓线的季节变化主要表现为"雨顶"高度的季节变化,即降水云的厚度变化;两类降水平均廓线季节变化的区域性差异表明,热带外地区较热带地区显著、陆面较同纬度洋面显著、孟加拉湾比南海显著,而南海和西太平洋暖池无明显的季节变化.此外,降水结构的剖面分析还表明对流降水存在4层结构、层云降水存在3层结构.     

Photometric distances to nine dark globules

Distances to nine dark globules are determined by a method using optical ( VRI ) and near-infrared (near-IR) ( JHK ) photometry of stars projected towards the field containing the globules. In this method, we compute intrinsic colour indices of stars projected towards the direction of the globule by dereddening the observed colour indices using various trial values of extinction   A _V   and a standard extinction law. These computed intrinsic colour indices for each star are then compared with the intrinsic colour indices of normal main-sequence stars and a spectral type is assigned to the star for which the computed colour indices best match with the standard intrinsic colour indices. Distances ( d ) to the stars are determined using the   A _V   and absolute magnitude  ( M_V )  corresponding to the spectral types thus obtained. A distance versus extinction plot is made and the distance at which   A _V   undergoes a sharp rise is taken to be the distance to the globule. All the clouds studied in this work are in the distance range 160–400 pc. The estimated distances to dark globules LDN 544, LDN 549, LDN 567, LDN 543, LDN 1113, LDN 1031, LDN 1225, LDN 1252 and LDN 1257 are  180 ± 35, 200 ± 40, 180 ± 35, 160 ± 30, 350 ± 70, 200 ± 40, 400 ± 80, 250 ± 50  and 250 ± 50 pc, respectively. Using the distances determined, we have estimated the masses of the globules and the far-IR luminosity of the IRAS sources associated with them. The mass of the clouds studied are in the range  10–200 M_⊙  .     

山东不同云系降水微物理参数特征

研究不同云系降水的微物理参数特征,对研究降水机制、人工影响天气、雷达定量测量降水、数值预报模式中微物理参数化方案的选择等都有一定意义。本文针对2015年济南地区的液态降水过程,基于微降水雷达(Micro Rain Radar,简称MRR)资料,研究不同云系降水的微物理参数。在400 m高度上,层状云降水0.02~0.2 mm h-1雨强样本数很大,但对累计降水量的贡献很小。混合云和对流云降水在大粒子端数浓度较高。在垂直方向上,层状云降水中的粒子的尺度较集中,中值体积直径D0平均在1 mm左右,随高度的变化不大。对流云降水在雨强大于20 mm h-1时,强垂直气流(包括上升气流和下沉气流)对粒子直径的影响较大,进而影响空中微降水雷达反演降水参数的数据质量。而垂直气流的影响对层状云降水影响较小,在层状云降水时,微降水雷达可以用来分析零度层亮带以下雨滴谱在垂直方向上的演变。     

地面固定式激光扫描点云中建筑物墙面信息的识别提取

地面固定式激光扫描系统能够获取大面积高分辨率的被测对象表面三维数据,本研究通过对固定式LiDAR激光数据做初分类,从地面点中粗提取具有少量噪声的建筑墙面数据,然后利用平面区域分割算法和立面约束条件提取建筑物墙面数据。在对两份固定式三维激光扫描点云的实验中,通过对不同分辨率的数据利用本文所提算法都取得了较好的墙面提取效果,实验证明了该方法的有效性。     

Hydrodynamical simulations of Galactic fountains – I. Evolution of single fountains

The ejection of the gas out of the disc in late-type galaxies is related to star formation and is due mainly to Type II supernovae. In this paper, we studied in detail the development of the Galactic fountains in order to understand their dynamical evolution and their influence on the redistribution of the freshly delivered metals over the disc. To this aim, we performed a number of 3D hydrodynamical radiative cooling simulations of the gas in the Milky Way where the whole Galaxy structure, the Galactic differential rotation and the supernova explosions generated by a single OB association are considered. A typical fountain powered by 100 Type II supernovae may eject material up to ∼2 kpc which than collapses back mostly in the form of dense, cold clouds and filaments. The majority of the gas lifted up by the fountains falls back on the disc remaining within a radial distance  Δ R = 0.5 kpc  from the place where the fountain originated. This localized circulation of disc gas does not influence the radial chemical gradients on large scale, as required by the chemical models of the Milky Way which reproduce the metallicity distribution without invoking large fluxes of metals. Simulations of multiple fountains fuelled by Type II supernovae of different OB associations will be presented in a companion paper.