The Important Role Played by Atmospheric Angular Momentum in the Non-linear Prediction of the Variations in the Length of Day

The variation in the length of day has complicated time-varying characteristics and the traditional method for linear time series analysis is always difficult to obtain good effect of prediction. If the non-linear artificial neural network technique is adopted to predict the variation in the length of day, the topological structure of the network model is determined by the least square error method. By taking into account the close relation between the variation in the length of day and the general circulation of atmosphere, the axial sequence of atmospheric angular momentum is introduced into the forecasting model of neural network. The results show that the forecast accuracy is significantly improved by taking advantage of the combination of the length of day and the atmospheric angular momentum sequence in comparison with the individual adoption of the data of the length of day.     

Excitation of Annual Polar Wobble by Global Oceans

A reasonable and quantitative result on the variation of polar wobble excited by the oceans is not available at present. Numerous researches have shown that atmospheric motion is the greatest excitation source for the seasonal variations in the polar wobble and that oceanic motion is one of the main remaining excitation sources. The excitation of variation in the annual polar wobble caused by oceans from 1992 to 2004 both globally and in latitude dependence, have been studied in depth by means of the new generation of SODA oceanic data assimilation (SODA-1.4.2 and SODA-1.4.3) and the ECCO oceanic data assimilation. The result shows that the variation in the seasonal polar wobble excited by the SODA oceans is very close to that of the residual after the action of the atmosphere and land water is deducted from the geodesic excitation function for a large part of the investigated time interval, and that there is overall agreement between the two as regards the annual amplitude and phase. In addition, in comparison with the result of early SODA-Bata 7, the new generation of SODA oceanic excitation has achieved obvious improvements. The latitude distributions of the excitations of the annual polar wobble by the SODA and ECCO oceans are consistent in the Greenwich direction, while having obvious differences in the direction of 90° E.     

Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Observational Data Weighting Method of Combined Orbit Determination of Near-earth Satellites of Bi-satellite Positioning System and its Applications

In the light of the problem of amalgamation and processing of multisource observational data in the combined orbit determination of near-earth satellites of the bi-satellite positioning system, the optimal weighting method of the improved variance component estimation of the two-step systematic error correction of homogeneous observational data is proposed. Analyses show that the multi-source amalgamation measurement model of the heterogeneous observational data essentially is a multi-structure, multi-parameter non-linear regression model, and the optimal weighting method of the combination of model structure characteristic analysis and variance component estimation of the heterogeneous observational data is established. The realization algorithms of the optimal weighting and the combined orbit determination parameter estimation of the two sorts of observational data are designed, and the simulation experiments of the combined orbit determination are carried out by taking the distances among the two satellites and the backup satellite and the homogeneous observational data and the distance between the two satellites and the heterogeneous observational data of satellite sensor angle measurements as the examples. The results of theoretical analysis and simulation calculation show that for the combined orbit determination of homogeneous observational data, the accuracy of orbit determination obtained by adopting the variance component estimation method of the two-step systematic error correction can be more superior than that obtained by means of the traditional empirical weighting method. For the combined orbit determination of heterogeneous observational data, through the introduction of the weighting factor by which the model structure is characterized the accuracies of the combined orbit determination of the near-earth satellite and geostationary satellite are both improved to a certain extent in comparison with the mean weighting mode.     

A Study of the Scale Height of the Thin Galactic Disk in the Solar Neighborhood

An attempt is made to determine the scale height of the thin Galactic disk in the solar neighborhood using various stellar samples from the accurate astrometric data of the Hipparcos satellite. Using the Tycho color indices and considering the completeness of the samples, several samples were selected from the main sequence and the horizontal branch. Based on two rather complete samples, it is found that the scale height of the Galactic disk defined by the O-B type main sequence stars is 103.1 ± 3.0 pc and the Sun is located at height of 15.2 ± 7.3 pc above its mean plane; while the scale height of the Galactic disk defined by the horizontal branch stars is 144.0 the ±10.0 pc and the Sun is located at height 3.5 ± 5.4 pc above the mean plane. Owing to the incompleteness of observational samples, it is not possible to use the main sequence stars of spectral types A, F, G, K and M to make a reliable determination of the scale height.     

Snow cover monitoring in the Northern Patagonia Icefield using MODIS satellite images (2000–2006)

The snow cover of the Northern Patagonia Icefield (NPI) was monitored after applying the Normalized Difference Snow Index (NDSI) and the Red/NIR band ratio to 134 Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) images captured between 2000 and 2006. The final results show that the snow cover extent of the NPI fluctuates a lot in winter, in addition to its seasonal behaviour. The minimum snow cover extent of the period (3600 km²) was observed in March 2000 and the maximum (11,623 km²) in August 2001. We found that temperature accounts for approximately 76% of the variation of the snow cover extent over the entire icefield. We also show two different regimes of winter snow cover fluctuations corresponding to the eastern and the western sides of the icefield. The seasonality of the snow cover on the western side was determined by temperature rather than precipitation, while on the east side the seasonality of the snow cover was influenced by the seasonal behaviour of both temperature and precipitation. This difference can be explained by the two distinct climates: coastal and continental. The fluctuations in the winter snow cover extent were more pronounced and less controlled by temperature on the western side than on the eastern side of the icefield. Snow cover extent was correlated with temperature R² = 0.75 and R² = 0.74 for the western and eastern sides, respectively. Since limited meteorological data are available in this region, our investigation confirmed that the change in snow cover is an interesting climatic indicator over the NPI providing important insights in mass balance comprehension. Since snow and ice were distinguished snow cover fluctuations can be associated to fluctuations in the snow accumulation area of the NPI. In addition, days with minimum snow covers of summer season can be associated to the period in which Equilibrium Line Altitude (ELA) is the highest.     

Application of Accelerometer Data in Precise Orbit Determination of GRACE -A and -B

We investigate how well the GRACE satellite orbits can be determined using the onboard GPS data combined with the accelerometer data.The preprocessing of the accelerometer data and the methods and models used in the orbit determination are presented.In order to assess the orbit accuracy,a number of tests are made,including external orbit comparison,and through Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR) residuals and K-band ranging (KBR) residuals.It is shown that the standard deviations of the position differences between the so-called precise science orbits (PSO) produced by GFZ,and the single-difference (SD) and zero-difference (ZD) dynamic orbits are about 7 cm and 6 cm,respectively.The independent SLR validation indicates that the overall root-mean-squared (RMS) errors of the SD solution for days 309-329 of 2002 are about 4.93cm and 5.22cm,for GRACE-A and B respectively; theoverall RMS errors of the ZD solution are about 4.25 cm and 4.71 cm,respectively.The relative accuracy between the two GRACE satellites is validated by the KBR data to be on a level of 1.29 cm for the SD,and 1.03 cm for the ZD solution.     

干旱区土地荒漠化中人类因素分析

目前干旱区突出的矛盾是,人类活动对环境的负效应在总体上已导致以土地荒漠化急剧发展为主的生态环境质量显著下降。基于1994年“联合国防治荒漠化公约”给出的土地荒漠化概念和干旱区的特点,划分土地荒漠化的自然因素和人为因素。通过人类活动的涵义和特点的探讨,首次全面和综合地分析了土地荒漠化发展中的人类活动因素,包括人类活动的驱动作用、人类各种活动方式的作用和人类活动的管理作用等。依据一定的原则,构建出适用于干旱区人类活动对土地荒漠化作用的指标体系,该指标体系多为量化指标并可反映人类活动的动态变化,可为人类活动在土地荒漠化中作用的更进一步(定量)研究提供依据。     

Orbital and mission planning constraints for the deflection of NEOs impacting on Earth

This paper is the third in a series. Paper 1 presented the results of numerical modeling of deflections of NEOs in route of collision with the Earth. The model was applied to a variety of dynamical cases including both asteroidal and cometary NEOs. Paper 2 introduced the concept of “distributed deflection,” i.e., the possibility to provide the ΔV necessary to deflect an object with a succession of maneuvers each of which would have been insufficient per se to obtain the desired result. In both papers no assumptions were made on the physical composition and structure of the NEO, nor on the details of the possible deflection maneuvers from the point of view of mission analysis. Moreover, ΔV-plots were computed assuming only along-track impulses (both in the positive and negative directions), because it is easy to demonstrate that in general this is energetically the most favorable configuration. Also in the present paper no assumptions were made on the physical composition and structure of the NEO, even if order of magnitude considerations are made on the physical feasibility of a deflection, in terms of the internal strength of the NEO. We present here the results of an investigation on the mission requirements necessary to deflect an object (or contribute to a succession of deflecting maneuvers) in terms of accessibility of the spacecraft terminal orbit from Earth with the current launchers.     

论珠江三角洲河网的人为影响

文章论述了珠江三角洲河网的发育、演变过程和整治方案。由于人类活动影响,珠江三角洲河网区西、北两江下游放射状河系支汊淤断及消亡,使西、北两江正干均成为单一水道;在两江汇流区内又受绥江三角洲南展而分离开来,只留一条狭窄的小河涌(思贤)连接;由于北江正干的淤积、西江正干刷深,使古代(唐代以前)西江合北江同流向东流入番禺(广州)的形势大变,形成江水反向西流入西江,西江水不能过入广州。由此,西、北两江合成的珠江三角洲主体网河区成为浅水狭窄的小河区,以往主要干流多不复存在,生态环境日益变劣。因此,需要修复河网。关键是把西江大量优质水源(沙少、污染少)引回,过入珠江三角洲网河区,北江水源也需截流使其不再西流入西江;开通北江大堤沿途防西水的闸门(如芦苞、西南、沙口等闸),以便通水通航;在思贤建立新型分水闸,可将西、北两江正干水源恢复到良好生态环境     

基于TOPEX/Poseidon卫星数据的江河流量测算

TOPEX／Poseidon卫星的原始目的是测量海面高度变化信息,为海洋监测服务。作者通过假设基准面的方法,将由TOPEX／Poseidon卫星数据估算的下垫面水位相对变化信息转化为”水位”系列并建立了由TOPEX／Poseidon得出的“水位”与相邻水文站实测流量间的相关关系,进而实现了由TOPEX／Poseidon卫星数据估算河道流量的目的。利用1998～1999年TOPEX／Poseidon在长江下游大通附近的过境数据和对应年份大通水文站实测流量数据,验证了本方法的可行性。研究结果表明：在长江下游河道地区,由TOPEX／Poseidon卫星数据可定量估算出山河流流量信息。