Precipitation in Northern Quebec and Labrador: An Evaluation of Measurement Techniques

Deals with the systematic errors in climatic data produced by short-period and intermittent records, positioning of isolines on small-scale maps, a station network with only 23 permanent, mostly coastal stations for a 1,450,000 sq km area, imperfect instruments and sampling techniques, and observational and recording errors, all of which apply to the Labrador-Ungava region. Indirect methods for adjusting precipation gage data: snow surveying, stream gaging, interception and evapotranspiration calculations and watershed rain gage networks, are discussed. The results, which necessarily are only speculative, suggest a systematic annual error of 6 in.Les précipitations dans le nord du Québec et au Labrador : évaluation des techniques de mesure. La vérification, au moyen de techniques hydrologiques, des cartes publiées de hauteur moyenne des précipitations pour une région continentale subarctique révèle une erreur annuelle systématique de 6 pouces (152 mm). L'analyse a une portée subcontinentale, mais on utilise les valeurs d'une station climatologique centrale pour éclairer les techniques indirectes servant au rajustement des données pluviométriques. Ces méthodes comprennent les mesures d'épaisseur du manteau nival et des débits fluviaux, le calcul de l'interception et de l'évapo-transpiration, et l'établissement de réseaux pluviométriques de bassin. Tous les paramètres hydrologiques se caractérisent par des erreurs inhérentes de mesure et par de courtes séries de données. Conséquemment, les résultats de cette enquête doivent être considérés comme spéculatifs

Measurement of Pressure Dependent Fluorescence Yield of Air: Calibration Factor for UHECR Detectors

In a test experiment at the Final Focus Test Beam of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, the fluorescence yield of 28.5 GeV electrons in air and nitrogen was measured. The measured photon yields between 300 and 400 nm at 1 atm and 29 deg C are Y(760 Torr, air) = 4.42 +/- 0.73 and Y(760 Torr, nitrogen) = 29.2 +/- 4.8 photons per electron per meter. Assuming that the fluorescence yield is proportional to the energy deposition of a charged particle traveling through air, good agreement with measurements at lower particle energies is observed.Comment: 22 pages, 14 figures, 2 tables, submitted to Astroparticle Physic

Alternative Methods to Finding Patterns in HiRes Stereo Data

In this paper Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays UHECRs data observed by the HiRes fluorescence detector in stereo mode is analyzed to search for events in the sky with an arrival direction lying on a great circle. Such structure is known as the arc structure. The arc structure is expected when the charged cosmic rays pass through the galactic magnetic field. The arcs searched for could represent a broad or a small scale anisotropy depending on the proposed source model for the UHECRs. The Arcs in this paper are looked for using Hough transform were Hough transform is a technique used to looking for patterns in images. No statistically significant arcs were found in this study