Effects of land-use changes on organic carbon in bulk soil and associated physical fractions in China's Horqin Sandy Grassland

The Horqin Sandy Grassland is one of the most seriously desertified areas in China's agro-pastoral ecotone due to its fragile ecology, combined with improper and unsustainable land management. We inves...     

Reducing background effects in orchards through spectral vegetation index correction

Satellite remote sensing provides an alternative to time-consuming and labor intensive in situ measurements of biophysical variables in agricultural crops required for precision agriculture applications. In orchards, however, the spatial resolution causes mixtures of canopies and background (i.e. soil, grass and shadow), hampering the estimation of these biophysical variables. Furthermore, variable background mixtures obstruct meaningful comparisons between different orchard blocks, rows or within each row. Current correction methodologies use spectral differences between canopies and background, but struggle with a vegetated orchard floor. This background influence and the lack of a generic solution are addressed in this study.Firstly, the problem was demonstrated in a controlled environment for vegetation indices sensitive to chlorophyll content, water content and leaf area index. Afterwards, traditional background correction methods (i.e. soil-adjusted vegetation indices and signal unmixing) were compared to the proposed vegetation index correction. This correction was based on the mixing degree of each pixel (i.e. tree cover fraction) to rescale the vegetation indices accordingly and was applied to synthetic and WorldView-2 satellite imagery. Through the correction, the effect of background admixture for vegetation indices was reduced, and the estimation of biophysical variables was improved (ΔR² = 0.2–0.31).     

VARIATIONS OF CLOUD FRACTION OVER EAST ASIA UNDER GLOBAL WARMING CONDITIONS IN THE PAST 20 YEARS

Based on the variation of cloud fraction revealed by D2 Cloud Climatic Data of the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project and trend analysis methods, the trend of different types of cloud fraction over East Asia during 1984-2006 is obtained. The analysis focuses on the relationship between temperature and different cloud fraction under the background of globe warming. The result shows a fluctuating decreasing tendency in the total cloud fraction, high-level cloud and low-level cloud over East Asia with the decrement being 2.24%, 1.65% and 1.68%, respectively, while the mid-level cloud increases by 1.07%. In addition, there are great regional differences in cloud fraction. Temperature and water-vapor content variation caused by the greenhouse effects over East Asia is the primary reason for the variation of cloud fraction. Over the Tibetan Plateau, the Bay of Bengal and the Intertropical Convergence Zone, the temperature is negatively correlated with high-level cloud, but positively correlated with mid- and low-level cloud. However, over the West Pacific and the ocean east and north of Japan, the temperature is negatively correlated with low-level cloud but positively correlated with high-level cloud.     

Diffuse CO<Subscript>2</Subscript> degassing at Vesuvio,Italy

At Vesuvio, a significant fraction of the rising hydrothermal–volcanic fluids is subjected to a condensation and separation process producing a CO₂–rich gas phase, mainly expulsed through soil diffuse degassing from well defined areas called diffuse degassing structures (DDS), and a liquid phase that flows towards the outer part of the volcanic cone. A large amount of thermal energy is associated with the steam condensation process and subsequent cooling of the liquid phase. The total amount of volcanic–hydrothermal CO₂ discharged through diffuse degassing has been computed through a sequential Gaussian simulation (sGs) approach based on several hundred accumulation chamber measurements and, at the time of the survey, amounted to 151 t d^–1. The steam associated with the CO₂ output, computed assuming that the original H₂O/CO₂ ratio of hydrothermal fluids is preserved in fumarolic effluents, is 553 t d^–1, and the energy produced by the steam condensation and cooling of the liquid phase is 1.47×10¹² J d^–1 (17 MW). The location of the CO₂ and temperature anomalies show that most of the gas is discharged from the inner part of the crater and suggests that crater morphology and local stratigraphy exert strong control on CO₂ degassing and subsurface steam condensation. The amounts of gas and energy released by Vesuvio are comparable to those released by other volcanic degassing areas of the world and their estimates, through periodic surveys of soil CO₂ flux, can constitute a useful tool to monitor volcanic activity.Editorial responsibility: H. Shinohara     

Nouvelles données sur le téphra de Sarliève et le téphra CF7, marqueurs chrono-stratigraphiques de Grande Limagne (Massif central,France)

A trachytic tephra, discovered in the ancient lake of Sarliève, ‘Grande Limagne’, has been dated using the thermoluminescence technique. The obtained age, 16±4 ka ($\text{2}\text{σ}$), is older than that of the trachytic volcanoes of the Cha??ne des Puys, the ashes of which have already been locally recognised in the region. Its analysis confirms its originality. In the course of the comparisons made to search for its spring, it appears that the wide-dispersion tephra CF7, beforehand correlated by hypothesis to the Puy de Clierzou, probably originates from the Kilian crater or the Puy de Vasset. To cite this article: D. Miallier et al., C. R. Geoscience 336 (2004).     

kSZ from patchy reionization: The view from the simulations

We present the first calculation of the kinetic Sunyaev–Zel’dovich (kSZ) effect due to the inhomogeneus reionization of the universe based on detailed large-scale radiative transfer simulations of reionization. The resulting sky power spectra peak at ℓ = 2000–8000 with maximum values of [ℓ(ℓ + 1)C_ℓ/(2π)]_max  4–7 × 10 ⁻¹³. The scale roughly corresponds to the typical ionized bubble sizes observed in our simulations, of 5–20 Mpc. The kSZ anisotropy signal from reionization dominates the primary CMB signal above ℓ = 3000. At large-scales the patchy kSZ signal depends only on the source efficiencies. It is higher when sources are more efficient at producing ionizing photons, since such sources produce larger ionized regions, on average, than less efficient sources. The introduction of sub-grid gas clumping in the radiative transfer simulations produce significantly more power at small-scales, but has little effect at large-scales. The patchy reionization kSZ signal is dominated by the post-reionization signal from fully-ionized gas, but the two contributions are of similar order at scales ℓ  3000 − 10⁴, indicating that the kSZ anisotropies from reionization are an important component of the total kSZ signal at these scales.     

NCEP 全球预报系统在ARM SGP站点预报大气温度、湿度和云量的检验

利用美国大气辐射测量项目(ARM)制作的“气候模拟最佳估计”(CMBE)观测数据集,检验美国环境预报中心(NCEP)全球预报系统(GFS)2001～2008年在ARM Southern Great Plains(SGP)站点预报的大气温度、相对湿度和云量的垂直分布,主要结论如下:(1)NCEP GFS较好地预报出了温度...     

Characteristics of Solar Radiation and the Impact of Clouds at Yangbajing, Tibet

Yangbajing (YBJ) is located in the Tibetan Plateau, China. The characteristics of solar radiation and its relationship with clouds at YBJ from April 2009 to April 2010 were analyzed in this paper. The annual mean solar radiation was 478.4 W m 2 , and the annual mean transmittance was 0.713. The atmospheric mean trans- mittance of clear skies reaches 0.828 when the solar elevation angle (SEA) is greater than 10 degrees. Comparisons with numerical simulations show that the atmosphere of YBJ is clean. Impacts from atmospheric conditions on solar radiation are similar for clear skies during the year because the standard deviation of transmittance in clear skies was less than 0.05 when the SEA was greater than 10 degrees. It is important to understand the impact of clouds on solar radiation without considering other impact factors. In the last part of this article, the authors analyzed and established a statistical quantitative relationship between surface solar radiation and cloud fraction.     

Influences of Two Convective Schemes on the Radiative Energy Budget in GAMIL1.0

The Grid-point Atmospheric Model of IAP LASG version 1.0 (GAMIL1.0) is used to investigate the impacts of different convective schemes on the radiative energy budget.The two convective schemes are Zhang and McFarlance (1995)/Hack (1994) (ZM) and Tiedtke (1989)/Nordeng (1994) (TN).Two simulations are performed:one with the ZM scheme (EX_ZM) and the other with the TN scheme (EX_TN).The results indicate that during the convective process,more water vapor consumption and temperature increment are found in the EX_ZM,especially in the lower model layer,its environment is therefore very dry.In contrast,there is a moister atmosphere in the EX_TN,which favors low cloud formation and large-scale condensation,and hence more low cloud fraction,higher cloud water mixing ratio,and deeper cloud extinction optical depth are simulated,reflecting more solar radiative flux in the EX_TN.This explains why the TN scheme underestimates the net shortwave radiative flux at the top of the atmosphere and at surface.In addition,convection influences longwave radiation,surface sensible and latent heat fluxes through changes in cloud emissivity and precipitation.