下垫面对雹云形成发展的影响

利用中尺度模式WRF(Weather Research and Forecasting)对2005年5月31日发生在北京地区的一次强冰雹天气过程进行了数值模拟研究,并与观测的雷达回波、冰雹云移动路径和冰雹落区进行比较,在此基础上探讨了城市和农田两种下垫面对雹云的影响。结果表明,由于"城市热岛"效应的作用,城市下垫面的地面感热通量显著增加,有利于雹云的发展增强和大冰雹的形成,使地面累积降雹量增加,但对雹云移动路径影响不大。农田下垫面具有较大的潜热通量,局地蒸发强,有利于大量小冰雹的形成,云中冰雹含量增加,但降雹强度较弱,地面累积降雹量小。     

广州地区雷暴过程云-地闪特征及其环境条件

应用雷电定位系统和高空观测资料并结合雷达回波资料, 对广州地区雷暴过程云-地闪特征进行分析, 并就有、无云-地闪出现的两组不同对流天气过程的环境条件进行了比较研究。结果表明:广州地区的雷暴过程以负的云-地闪为主, 负云-地闪所占比例在90%以上。云-地闪发生频率与雷暴系统强度演变有直接联系, 对于同一系统来说, 随着系统回波强度的增强, 云-地闪发生的频率也增高。但不同系统中, 云-地闪发生频率有很大不同, 回波强(弱)的对流系统并不意味着云-地闪发生的频率就高(低)。有云-地闪记录的对流天气过程具有更大的垂直切变、更高的相对风暴螺旋度以及更多的对流抑制能量, 云-地闪现象更易于出现在更加有组织和更强的对流系统中。研究还发现广州及周边城市区域对雷暴系统回波强度及云-地闪现象可能有影响, 两个典型个例分析表明, 雷暴系统移经城市区域时回波强度减弱, 云-地闪发生频率减小, 雷暴移过城市区域后, 强度可重新加强, 云-地闪发生频率增大。     

上海气温变化及城市化影响初步分析

为研究在全球变化背景下上海市区气温变化规律和城市化进程对其影响,分析了上海市区气温对全球变暖的响应,对比了市区和郊区气温在不同气候背景下的变化趋势,采用与郊区台站对比法分析了上海市区气温城市化效应,研究了城市化进程与气温各分量长期变化趋势之间的关系,将高空与地面观测资料相结合,定量估算了城市化效应对平均气温的贡献,初步讨论了气温的城市化效应成因。研究结果表明：1873~2004年上海市区年平均气温的长期变化趋势为1.31 ℃/(100 a),在1921~1948年和1979~2004年两个时期增温明显,其中第二段增温强于第一段;与郊区站点相比,市区在降温期内降温最小,增温期内升温幅度最大;城市发展导致市区和郊区气温有显著差别且温差逐年加大,其中平均气温和最低气温在秋季的差别最大,最高气温市区和郊区之间差别在夏季最大;城市化进程加快了地面气温升高的速率,其中以最低气温最为明显;在1980年代城市化效应使上海市区年平均温度平均升高0.4 ℃,在1990年代平均升高1.1 ℃。     

CloudSat卫星及其在天气和云观测分析中的应用

介绍了2006年4月28日成功发射的第1颗以对云层特性进行全球主动遥感测量CloudSat卫星的观测仪器、工作参数、运行方式、数据产品及“A—Train”卫星群等基本概况。CloudSat卫星主要有效载荷是94GHz（3mm波）云雷达,它可以“切开”云层,获得许多有关云的最新气象数据,主要数据产品包括了云的宏观物理参量和微观物理参量。介绍了CloudSat卫星已获得的典型天气和云的初期观测结果：从首次观测的云三维图片,可以清楚地看到南极洲上空风暴云的垂直剖面结构特征;从首张获得降雪云的垂直剖面图像可以得到降雪云层的发展状态以及结构特点;使用CloudSat统计数据可分析全球水凝物的分布特征。将TRMM卫星上的测雨雷达与CloudSat卫星上的云雷达联合观测研究,可以获得从薄云到浓厚云及降水的精细垂直结构特征。通过下载的CloudSat观测资料,对我国典型台风和层状云系等两类不同天气条件下云的宏微观结构特征等进行了初步分析,可以看到台风眼区附近云系的垂直结构随台风发展不同阶段的演变;从层状云系的垂直剖面可以清楚地发现云层的内部分层结构及不同相态的垂直分布特征等。     

Misconceptions about the Hubble recession law

Almost all astronomers now believe that the Hubble recession law was directly inferred from astronomical observations. It turns out that this common belief is completely false. Those models advocating the idea of an expanding universe are ill-founded on observational grounds. This means that the Hubble recession law is really a working hypothesis. One alternative to the Hubble recession law is the tired-light hypothesis originally proposed by Zwicky (Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. 15:773, 1929). This hypothesis leads to a universe that is an eternal cosmos continually evolving without beginning or end. Such a universe exists in a dynamical state of virial equilibrium. Observational studies of the redshift-magnitude relation for Type Ia supernovae in distant galaxies might provide the best observational test for a tired-light cosmology. The present study shows that the model Hubble diagram for a tired-light cosmology gives good agreement with the supernovae data for redshifts in the range 0<z<2. This observational test of a static cosmology shows that the real universe is not necessarily undergoing expansion nor acceleration. An erratum to this article can be found at     

iVINE – Ionization in the parallel tree/sph code VINE: first results on the observed age-spread around O-stars

We present a three-dimensional, fully parallelized, efficient implementation of ionizing ultraviolet (UV) radiation for smoothed particle hydrodynamics ( sph ) including self-gravity. Our method is based on the sph / tree code vine . We therefore call it iVINE (for Ionization + VINE). This approach allows detailed high-resolution studies of the effects of ionizing radiation from, for example, young massive stars on their turbulent parental molecular clouds. In this paper, we describe the concept and the numerical implementation of the radiative transfer for a plane-parallel geometry and we discuss several test cases demonstrating the efficiency and accuracy of the new method. As a first application, we study the radiatively driven implosion of marginally stable molecular clouds at various distances of a strong UV source and show that they are driven into gravitational collapse. The resulting cores are very compact and dense exactly as it is observed in clustered environments. Our simulations indicate that the time of triggered collapse depends on the distance of the core from the UV source. Clouds closer to the source collapse several 10⁵ yr earlier than more distant clouds. This effect can explain the observed age spread in OB associations where stars closer to the source are found to be younger. We discuss possible uncertainties in the observational derivation of shock front velocities due to early stripping of protostellar envelopes by ionizing radiation.     

The escape of ionizing photons from supernova-dominated primordial galaxies

In order to assess the contribution of Lyman break galaxies (LBGs) and Lyman α emitters (LAEs) at redshifts  3 < z < 7  to the ionization of intergalactic medium (IGM), we investigate the escape fractions of ionizing photons from supernova-dominated primordial galaxies by solving the three-dimensional (3D) radiative transfer. The model galaxy is employed from an ultra-high-resolution chemodynamic simulation of a primordial galaxy by Mori & Umemura, which well reproduces the observed properties of LAEs and LBGs. The total mass of model galaxy is  10¹¹ M_⊙  . We solve not only photoionization but also collisional ionization by shocks. In addition, according to the chemical enrichment, we incorporate the effect of dust extinction, taking the size distributions of dust into account. As a result, we find that dust extinction reduces the escape fractions by a factor of 1.5–8.5 in the LAE phase and by a factor of 2.5–11 in the LBG phase, while the collisional ionization by shocks increases the escape fractions by a factor of  ≈2  . The resultant escape fractions are 0.07–0.47 in the LAE phase and 0.06–0.17 in the LBG phase. These results are well concordant with the recent estimations derived from the flux density ratio at 1500 to 900 Å of LAEs and LBGs. Combining the resultant escape fractions with the luminosity functions of LAEs and LBGs, we find that high- z LAEs and LBGs can ionize the IGM at   z = 3–5  . However, ionizing radiation from LAEs as well as LBGs falls short of ionizing the IGM at   z > 6  . That implies that additional ionization sources may be required at   z > 6  .     

Prompt optical emission and synchrotron self-absorption constraints on emission site of GRBs

We constrain the distance of the gamma-ray burst (GRB) prompt emission site from the explosion centre R , by determining the location of the electron's self-absorption frequency in the GRB prompt optical-to-X/γ-ray spectral energy distribution, assuming that the optical and the γ-ray emissions are among the same synchrotron radiation continuum of a group of hot electrons. All possible spectral regimes are considered in our analysis. The method has only two assumed parameters, namely the bulk Lorentz factor of the emitting source Γ and the magnetic field strength B in the emission region (with a weak dependence). We identify a small sample of four bursts that satisfy the following three criteria: (1) they all have simultaneous optical and γ-ray detections in multiple observational time intervals, (2) they all show temporal correlations between the optical and γ-ray light curves and (3) the optical emission is consistent with belonging to the same spectral component as the γ-ray emission. For all the time intervals of these four bursts, it is inferred that   R ≥ 10¹⁴  (Γ/300)^3/4 ( B /10⁵ G)^1/4  cm. For a small fraction of the sample, the constraint can be pinned down to   R ≈ 10¹⁴–10¹⁵ cm  for  Γ∼ 300  . For a second sample of bursts with prompt optical non-detections, only upper limits on R can be obtained. We find no inconsistency between the R -constraints for this non-detection sample and those for the detection sample.     

A new moment method for continuum radiative transfer in cosmological re-ionization

We introduce a new code for computing time-dependent continuum radiative transfer and non-equilibrium ionization states in static density fields with periodic boundaries. Our code solves the moments of the radiative transfer equation, closed by an Eddington tensor computed using a long characteristics (LC) method. We show that traditional short characteristics and the optically thin approximation are inappropriate for computing Eddington factors for the problem of cosmological re-ionization. We evolve the non-equilibrium ionization field via an efficient and accurate (errors <1 per cent) technique that switches between fully implicit or explicit finite differencing depending on whether the local time-scales are long or short compared to the time-step. We tailor our code for the problem of cosmological re-ionization. In tests, the code conserves photons, accurately treats cosmological effects and reproduces analytic Strömgren sphere solutions. Its chief weakness is that the computation time for the LC calculation scales relatively poorly compared to other techniques  ( t _LC∝ N ^∼1.5_cells)  ; however, we mitigate this by only recomputing the Eddington tensor when the radiation field changes substantially. Our technique makes almost no physical approximations, so it provides a way to benchmark faster but more approximate techniques. It can readily be extended to evolve multiple frequencies, though we do not do so here. Finally, we note that our method is generally applicable to any problem involving the transfer of continuum radiation through a periodic volume.