Estimation of the sub-iron-iron flux ratio in cosmic rays over alice springs using a balloon flight experiment with a CR-39 detector

The sub-iron-iron flux ratio in cosmic rays at an atmospheric depth of 9.8 g cm^–2 has been estimated using a balloon-borne CR-39 (HCB) stack launched from Alice Springs for 32 hours. The recovered and chemically etched plates were analysed optically and the measured etch pit diameters yielded the sub-iron-iron flux ratio at the flight altitude. The sub-iron-iron flux ratio has been corrected for the top of the atmosphere by considering the loss of heavy ions due to nuclear interaction and fragmentation. The present result has been compared with the result expected from the source composition derived by Protheroeet al. as well as other authors.     

Singular spectrum analysis,harmonic regression and El-Nino effect on total ozone (1979–1993) over India and surrounding regions

The Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) is a satellite instrument that records Total Column Ozone (TCO) concentration (in DB) of the atmosphere in the form of different overpass files. We have selected 23 sites over India (15), Pakistan (4), Bangladesh (1) and adjoining China (3) to investigate the TCO scenario over this region. About 114,000 historical records (1979M1–1992M12) from 23 overpass files were processed to generate 23 monthly mean time series (TS) of TCO. Statistical analysis followed by singular spectrum analysis (SSA), harmonic regression (HR) and spatial interpolation have been used to accomplish the investigation. Four dominant signals; quasi-biennial signal (QBI, \(\hbox {T} = 30.12\) months), quasi-annual signal (QAN, \(\hbox {T} = 19.69\) months), annual signal (ANN, \(\hbox {T} = 12\) months) and semi-annual signal (SAN, \(\hbox {T} = 6\) months) were discerned to explain the variability. Direct latitudinal effect on the TCO distribution was observed. The variance was limited between 80.53 and 90.13%; ANN contributes 65.93–93.22% followed by SAN 0.58–5.69%, QAN 0.33–5.48%, and QBI 0.06–5.94%. Peak values of the oscillations are estimated from phasor diagrams: QBI, March to May in the mid-latitude; QAN, April, and May; ANN, February to April; SAN, March to May. Incisive pictures of the average distribution and variability of four sinusoids were investigated from contour plots. Two ozone valley were discerned from Spatial interpolation; one over Deccan Plateau in low and other over Tibetan Plateau in high latitude. 179 outliers from \(23 \times 168\) observations have been identified after harmonic regression. The appearance of the outliers is highly consistent with extreme phases of multivariate ENSO Index and Dipole Mode Index.     

Sea breeze activity at an inland station Kharagpur (India) — A case study

Surfaces fluxes, turbulent kinetic energy and Flux Richardson number are calculated for three typical sea breeze days characterizing three types of sea breeze onset at an inland station Kharagpur (22°21 N, 87°19 E), 80 km inland, one of the sites for MONTBLEX (MONsoon Trough Boundary Layer EXperiment), in India. The sea breeze onset is associated with a decrease in momentum and heat fluxes and an increase in moisture flux. The turbulent kinetic energy shows quite a significant value even in the late afternoon. The surface layer becomes nearly stable even before sunset, due to the passage of the sea breeze.     

Effects of cloud types on cloud-radiation interaction over the Asian monsoon region

This paper quantifies the sensitivity of radiation budget quantities to different cloud types over the Asian monsoon region using the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project. Multiple regression was used to estimate the radiative effects of individual cloud type. It was observed that the regression performed better when the solution was constrained with clear sky fluxes, which is evident by an improvement in R ² statistics. The sensitivity coefficients calculated for the Asian monsoon region reveal that, while the LWCRCF and SWCRF will be most vulnerable to changes in cloud cover of deep convective clouds, NETCRF will be susceptible to changes in the nimbostratus clouds. Although the cloud radiative forcing of individual cloud types are found to be similar in sign to previous global findings, their magnitudes are found to vary. It is seen that cirrus clouds play an important role in governing the radiative behavior of this region.     

High-resolution simulations of West African climate using regional climate model (RegCM3) with different lateral boundary conditions

To downscale climate change scenarios, long-term regional climatologies employing global model forcing are needed for West Africa. As a first step, this work examines present-day integrations (1981–2000) with a regional climate model (RCM) over West Africa nested in both reanalysis data and output from a coupled atmospheric–ocean general circulation model (AOGCM). Precipitation and temperature from both simulations are compared to the Climate Research Unit observations. Their spatial distributions are shown to be realistic. Annual cycles are considerably correlated. Simulations are also evaluated with respect to the driving large-scale fields. RCM offers some improvements compared to the AOGCM driving field. Evaluation of seasonal precipitation biases reveals that RCM dry biases are highest on June–August around mountains. They are associated to cold biases in temperature which, in turn, are connected to wet biases in precipitation outside orographic zones. Biases brought through AOGCM forcing are relatively low. Despite these errors, the simulations produce encouraging results and show the ability of the AOGCM to drive the RCM for future projections.