42 research outputs found
A Quantum Rosetta Stone for Interferometry
Heisenberg-limited measurement protocols can be used to gain an increase in
measurement precision over classical protocols. Such measurements can be
implemented using, e.g., optical Mach-Zehnder interferometers and Ramsey
spectroscopes. We address the formal equivalence between the Mach-Zehnder
interferometer, the Ramsey spectroscope, and the discrete Fourier transform.
Based on this equivalence we introduce the ``quantum Rosetta stone'', and we
describe a projective-measurement scheme for generating the desired
correlations between the interferometric input states in order to achieve
Heisenberg-limited sensitivity. The Rosetta stone then tells us the same method
should work in atom spectroscopy.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure
The Open Global Glacier Model (OGGM) v1.1
Despite their importance for sea-level rise, seasonal water availability, and
as a source of geohazards, mountain glaciers are one of the few remaining
subsystems of the global climate system for which no globally applicable,
open source, community-driven model exists. Here we present the Open Global
Glacier Model (OGGM), developed to provide a modular and open-source
numerical model framework for simulating past and future change of any
glacier in the world. The modeling chain comprises data downloading tools
(glacier outlines, topography, climate, validation data), a preprocessing
module, a mass-balance model, a distributed ice thickness estimation model,
and an ice-flow model. The monthly mass balance is obtained from gridded
climate data and a temperature index melt model. To our knowledge, OGGM is
the first global model to explicitly simulate glacier dynamics: the model
relies on the shallow-ice approximation to compute the depth-integrated flux
of ice along multiple connected flow lines. In this paper, we describe and
illustrate each processing step by applying the model to a selection of
glaciers before running global simulations under idealized climate forcings.
Even without an in-depth calibration, the model shows very realistic
behavior. We are able to reproduce earlier estimates of global glacier volume
by varying the ice dynamical parameters within a range of plausible values.
At the same time, the increased complexity of OGGM compared to other
prevalent global glacier models comes at a reasonable computational cost:
several dozen glaciers can be simulated on a personal computer, whereas
global simulations realized in a supercomputing environment take up to a few
hours per century. Thanks to the modular framework, modules of various
complexity can be added to the code base, which allows for new kinds of model
intercomparison studies in a controlled environment. Future developments will
add new physical processes to the model as well as automated calibration
tools. Extensions or alternative parameterizations can be easily added by the
community thanks to comprehensive documentation. OGGM spans a wide range of
applications, from ice–climate interaction studies at millennial timescales
to estimates of the contribution of glaciers to past and future sea-level
change. It has the potential to become a self-sustained community-driven
model for global and regional glacier evolution.</p
GPS water vapour tomography: preliminary results from the ESCOMPTE field experiment, Atmos
Abstract Water vapour plays a major role in atmospheric processes but remains difficult to quantify due to its high variability in time and space and the sparse set of available measurements. The GPS has proved its capacity to measure the integrated water vapour at zenith with the same accuracy as other methods. Recent studies show that it is possible to quantify the integrated water vapour in the line of sight of the GPS satellite. These observations can be used to study the 3D heterogeneity of the troposphere using tomographic techniques. We develop three-dimensional tomographic software to model the three-dimensional distribution of the tropospheric water vapour from GPS data. First, the tomographic software is validated by simulations based on the realistic ESCOMPTE GPS network configuration. Without a priori information, the absolute value of water vapour is less resolved as opposed to relative horizontal variations. During the ESCOMPTE field experiment, a dense network of 17 dual frequency GPS receivers was operated for 2 weeks within a 20Ă‚20-km area around Marseille (southern France). The network extends from sea level to the top of the Etoile chain (~700 m high). Optimal results have been obtained with time windows of 30-min intervals and input data evaluation every 15 min. The optimal grid for the ESCOMTE geometrical configuration has a horizontal step size of 0.058Ă‚0.058 and 500 m vertical step size. Second, we have compared the results of real data inversions with independent observations. Three inversions have been compared to three successive radiosonde launches and shown to be consistent. A good resolution compared to the a priori information is obtained up to heights of 3000 m. A humidity spike at 4000-m altitude remains unresolved. The reason is probably that the signal is spread homogeneously over the whole network and that such a feature is not resolvable by tomographic techniques. The results of our pure GPS inversion show a correlation with meteorological phenomena. Our measurements could be related to the land-sea breeze. Undoubtedly, tomography has some interesting potential for the water vapour cycle studies at small temporal and spatial scales.
Impact of high-resolution data assimilation of GPS zenith delay on Mediterranean heavy rainfall forecasting
Abstract. Impact of GPS (Global Positioning System) data assimilation is assessed here using a high-resolution numerical weather prediction system at 2.5 km horizontal resolution. The Zenithal Tropospheric Delay (ZTD) GPS data from mesoscale networks are assimilated with the 3DVAR AROME data assimilation scheme. Data from more than 280 stations over the model domain have been assimilated during 15-day long assimilation cycles prior each of the two studied events. The results of these assimilation cycles show that the assimilation of GPS ZTD with the AROME system performs well in producing analyses closer to the ZTD observations in average. Then the impacts of assimilating GPS data on the precipitation forecast have been evaluated. For the first case, only the AROME runs starting a few hours prior the triggerin
La campagne COPS : Initiation et cycle de vie de la convection en région montagneuse
L’étude des précipitations convectives
induites par l’orographie (Cops selon
l’acronyme anglais) est un projet international
coordonné qui comprend une
campagne d’observations de terrain et
un programme scientifique et qui vise
à améliorer la qualité des prévisions
des précipitations orographiques
convectives à la fois par l’observation
quadridimensionnelle et la modélisation
de leur cycle de vie. La campagne
de terrain s’est déroulée en juin-juilletaoût
2007 sur l’est de la France et le
sud-ouest de l’Allemagne. Son objectif
majeur était de fournir un jeu d’observations
mĂ©tĂ©orologiques, in situ et Ă
distance, aussi complet que possible et
sur toute la profondeur de la colonne
troposphérique. Après une brève revue
d’ensemble du projet, l’article se
concentre sur la contribution française
à la campagne Cops, décrit le dispositif
expérimental mis en oeuvre et met en
valeur quelques observations clés
Gather/numerous as a mass/count opposition
International audiencePredicates like gather and be numerous have both been described as 'collective predicates,' since they predicate something of a plurality. The two classes of predicates differ, however, with respect to plural quantifiers (e.g. all), which are grammatical with gather-type predicates but ungrammatical with numerous-type predicates. Here, I show that the gather/numerous opposition derives from mereological properties that are familiar from the domains of telicity and mass/count. I address problems of undergeneration and overgeneration with two technical innovations: first, I weaken the property of divisibility to Champollion's (2015) property of stratified reference; second, I provide mechanisms to rule out accidental satisfaction of the logical property. From a broader perspective, we place collective predication in a larger context by building empirical connections to mass/count and collectivity across semantic domains
Composing alternatives
There is a prominent line of work in natural language semantics, rooted in the work of Hamblin, in which the meaning of a sentence is not taken to be a single proposition, but rather a set of propositions—a set of alternatives. This allows for a more fine-grained view on meaning, which has led to improved analyses of a wide range of linguistic phenomena. However, this approach also faces a number of problems. We focus here on two of these, in our view the most fundamental ones. The first has to do with how meanings are composed, i.e., with the type-theoretic operations of function application and abstraction; the second has to do with how meanings are compared, i.e., the notion of entailment. Our aim is to reconcile what we take to be the essence of Hamblin’s proposal with the more orthodox type-theoretic framework rooted in the work of Montague in such a way that both the explanatory utility of the former and the solid formal foundations of the latter are preserved. Our proposal builds on insights from recent work on inquisitive semantics, and it also contributes to the further development of this framework by specifying how the inquisitive meaning of a sentence may be built up compositionally