1,100 research outputs found
Synonymy and stratigraphic ranges of Belemnopsis in the Heterian and Ohauan Stages (Callovian-Tithonian), southwest Auckland, New Zealand.
Belemnopsis stevensi, Belemnopsis maccrawi, and Belemnopsis sp. A (Challinor 1979a) are synonymous; B. stevensi has priority. New belemnite material from Kawhia Harbour and Port Waikato, together with graphical study methods, indicates that many small fragmentary specimens associated with B. stevensi in the lower part of its stratigraphic range are probably the same taxon. B. stevensi has been found only in the Middle and Upper Heterian Stage (Lower Kimmeridgian) at Kawhia and only in the Lower Ohauan Stage (Upper Kimmeridgian) at Port Waikato. This apparently disjunct distribution is attributed to poor exposure in the relevant sections. Belemnopsis kiwiensis n.sp., Belemnopsis cf. sp. B, Belemnopsis sp. B, Belemnopsis sp. D, and Belemnopsis spp. are associated with B. stevensi near the lowest known point in its stratigraphic range. The distribution of stratigraphically useful belemnites within the Heterian and Ohauan Stages is: Conodicoelites spp. (Lower Heterian; correlated with Lower Callovian); Belemnopsis annae (Lower and Middle Heterian; Lower Callovian/Lower Kimmeridgian); Belemnopsis stevensi (Middle Heterian/Lower Ohauan; Kimmeridgian); Belemnopsis keari (Upper Heterian; Kimmeridgian); Belemnopsis trechmanni (Upper Ohauan; Upper Kimmeridgian/Middle Tithonian). The apparently extreme range of Belemnopsis annae remains unexplained. Klondyke Sandstone (new) is recognised as the basal member of Moewaka Formation (Port Waikato area)
CMB power spectrum parameter degeneracies in the era of precision cosmology
Cosmological parameter constraints from the CMB power spectra alone suffer
several well-known degeneracies. These degeneracies can be broken by numerical
artefacts and also a variety of physical effects that become quantitatively
important with high-accuracy data e.g. from the Planck satellite. We study
degeneracies in models with flat and non-flat spatial sections, non-trivial
dark energy and massive neutrinos, and investigate the importance of various
physical degeneracy-breaking effects. We test the CAMB power spectrum code for
numerical accuracy, and demonstrate that the numerical calculations are
accurate enough for degeneracies to be broken mainly by true physical effects
(the integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect, CMB lensing and geometrical and other
effects through recombination) rather than numerical artefacts. We quantify the
impact of CMB lensing on the power spectra, which inevitably provides
degeneracy-breaking information even without using information in the
non-Gaussianity. Finally we check the numerical accuracy of sample-based
parameter constraints using CAMB and CosmoMC. In an appendix we document recent
changes to CAMB's numerical treatment of massive neutrino perturbations, which
are tested along with other recent improvements by our degeneracy exploration
results.Comment: 27 pages, 28 figures. Latest CAMB version available from
http://camb.info/. Reduced number of figures, plot legend corrected and minor
edits to match published versio
Generation of Curvature Perturbations with Extra Anisotropic Stress
We study the evolution of curvature perturbations and the cosmic microwave
background (CMB) power spectrum in the presence of an hypothesized extra
anisotropic stress which might arise, for example, from the dark radiation term
in brane-world cosmology. We evolve the scalar modes of such perturbations
before and after neutrino decoupling and analyze their effects on the CMB
spectrum. A novel result of this work is that the cancellation of the neutrino
and extra anisotropic stress could lead to a spectrum of residual curvature
perturbations which is similar to the observed CMB power spectrum. This implies
a possible additional consideration in the determination of cosmological
parameters from the CMB analysis.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figures; improved discussio
Recommended from our members
Global and regional impacts of climate change at different levels of global temperature increase
The assessment of the impacts of climate change at different levels of global warming helps inform national and international policy discussion around mitigation targets. This paper provides consistent estimates of global and regional impacts and risks at increases in global mean temperature up to 5 °C above pre-industrial levels, for over 30 indicators representing temperature extremes and heatwaves, hydrological change, floods and droughts and proxies for impacts on crop yields. At the global scale, all the impacts that could plausibly be either adverse or beneficial are adverse, and impacts and risks increase with temperature change. For example, the global average chance of a major heatwave increases from 5% in 1981â2010 to 28% at 1.5 °C and 92% at 4 °C, of an agricultural drought increases from 9 to 24% at 1.5 °C and 61% at 4 °C, and of the 50-year return period river flood increases from 2 to 2.4% at 1.5 °C and 5.4% at 4 °C. The chance of a damaging hot spell for maize increases from 5 to 50% at 4 °C, whilst the chance for rice rises from 27 to 46%. There is considerable uncertainty around these central estimates, and impacts and risks vary between regions. Some impactsâfor example heatwavesâincrease rapidly as temperature increases, whilst others show more linear responses. The paper presents estimates of the risk of impacts exceeding specific targets and demonstrates that these estimates are sensitive to the thresholds used
Current cosmological constraints from a 10 parameter CMB analysis
We compute the constraints on a ``standard'' 10 parameter cold dark matter
(CDM) model from the most recent CMB and data and other observations, exploring
30 million discrete models and two continuous parameters. Our parameters are
the densities of CDM, baryons, neutrinos, vacuum energy and curvature, the
reionization optical depth, and the normalization and tilt for both scalar and
tensor fluctuations.
Our strongest constraints are on spatial curvature, -0.24 < Omega_k < 0.38,
and CDM density, h^2 Omega_cdm <0.3, both at 95%. Including SN 1a constraints
gives a positive cosmological constant at high significance.
We explore the robustness of our results to various assumptions. We find that
three different data subsets give qualitatively consistent constraints. Some of
the technical issues that have the largest impact are the inclusion of
calibration errors, closed models, gravity waves, reionization, nucleosynthesis
constraints and 10-dimensional likelihood interpolation.Comment: Replaced to match published ApJ version. More details added. 13 ApJ
pages. CMB movies and color figs at
http://www.hep.upenn.edu/~max/10par_frames.html or from [email protected]
Constraints on the neutrino mass and the primordial magnetic field from the matter density fluctuation parameter
We have made an analysis of limits on the neutrino mass based upon the
formation of large-scale structure in the presence of a primordial magnetic
field. We find that a new upper bound on the neutrino mass is possible based
upon fits to the cosmic microwave background and matter power spectrum when the
existing independent constraints on the matter density fluctuation parameter
and the primordial magnetic field are taken into account.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, final version to appear in Phys. Rev. D, to match
proof
Lensed CMB power spectra from all-sky correlation functions
Weak lensing of the CMB changes the unlensed temperature anisotropy and
polarization power spectra. Accounting for the lensing effect will be crucial
to obtain accurate parameter constraints from sensitive CMB observations.
Methods for computing the lensed power spectra using a low-order perturbative
expansion are not good enough for percent-level accuracy. Non-perturbative
flat-sky methods are more accurate, but curvature effects change the spectra at
the 0.3-1% level. We describe a new, accurate and fast, full-sky
correlation-function method for computing the lensing effect on CMB power
spectra to better than 0.1% at l<2500 (within the approximation that the
lensing potential is linear and Gaussian). We also discuss the effect of
non-linear evolution of the gravitational potential on the lensed power
spectra. Our fast numerical code is publicly available.Comment: 16 pages, 4 figures. Changes to match PRD version including new
section on non-linear corrections. CAMB code available at http://camb.info
Internal delensing of Planck CMB temperature and polarization
We present a first internal delensing of CMB maps, both in temperature and polarization, using the public foreground-cleaned (SMICA) Planck 2015 maps. After forming quadratic estimates of the lensing potential, we use the corresponding displacement field to undo the lensing on the same data. We build differences of the delensed spectra to the original data spectra specifically to look for delensing signatures. After taking into account reconstruction noise biases in the delensed spectra, we find an expected sharpening of the power spectrum acoustic peaks with a delensing efficiency of 29 % (TT) 25 % (TE) and 22 % (EE). The detection significance of the delensing effects is very high in all spectra: 12 Ï in EE polarization; 18 Ï in TE; and 20 Ï in TT. The null hypothesis of no lensing in the maps is rejected at 26 Ï. While direct detection of the power in lensing B-modes themselves is not possible at high significance at Planck noise levels, we do detect (at 4.5 Ï {under the null hypothesis}) delensing effects in the B-mode map, with 7 % reduction in lensing power. Our results provide a first demonstration of polarization delensing, and generally of internal CMB delensing, and stand in agreement with the baseline ÎCDM Planck 2015 cosmology expectations.JC and AL acknowledge support from the European Research Council under the European Unionâs Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007-2013) / ERC Grant Agreement No. [616170], and AL and AC from the Science and Technology Facilities Council [grant numbers ST/L000652/1 and ST/N000927/1, respectively]. This research used resources of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, a DOE Office of Science User Facility supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02- 05CH11231
Comparing the effects of calibration and climate errors on a statistical crop model and a process-based crop model
Understanding the relationship between climate and crop productivity is a key component of projections of future food production, and hence assessments of food security. Climate models and crop yield datasets have errors, but the effects of these errors on regional scale crop models is not well categorized and understood. In this study we compare the effect of synthetic errors in temperature and precipitation observations on the hindcast skill of a process-based crop model and a statistical crop model. We find that errors in temperature data have a significantly stronger influence on both models than errors in precipitation. We also identify key differences in the responses of these models to different types of input data error. Statistical and process-based model responses differ depending on whether synthetic errors are overestimates or underestimates. We also investigate the impact of crop yield calibration data on model skill for both models, using datasets of yield at three different spatial scales. Whilst important for both models, the statistical model is more strongly influenced by crop yield scale than the process-based crop model. However, our results question the value of high resolution yield data for improving the skill of crop models; we find a focus on accuracy to be more likely to be valuable. For both crop models, and for all three spatial scales of yield calibration data, we found that model skill is greatest where growing area is above 10-15 %. Thus information on area harvested would appear to be a priority for data collection efforts. These results are important for three reasons. First, understanding how different crop models rely on different characteristics of temperature, precipitation and crop yield data allows us to match the model type to the available data. Second, we can prioritize where improvements in climate and crop yield data should be directed. Third, as better climate and crop yield data becomes available, we can predict how crop model skill should improve
Clusters of galaxies in the microwave band: influence of the motion of the Solar System
In this work we consider the changes of the SZ cluster brightness, flux and
number counts induced by the motion of the Solar System with respect to the
frame defined by the cosmic microwave background (CMB). These changes are
connected with the Doppler effect and aberration and exhibit a strong spectral
and spatial dependence. The correction to the SZ cluster brightness and flux
has an amplitude and spectral dependence, which is similar to the first order
cluster peculiar velocity correction to the thermal SZ effect. Due to the
change in the received cluster CMB flux the motion of the Solar System induces
a dipolar asymmetry in the observed number of clusters above a given flux
level. Similar effects were discussed for -ray bursts and radio
galaxies, but here, due to the very peculiar frequency-dependence of the
thermal SZ effect, the number of observed clusters in one direction of the sky
can be both, decreased or increased depending on the frequency band. A
detection of this asymmetry should be possible using future full sky CMB
experiments with mJy sensitivities.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures, submitted to Astronomy and Astrophysics,
corrected pdf-proble
- âŠ