Assessing bias corrections of oceanic surface conditions for atmospheric models

Future sea surface temperature and sea-ice concentration from coupled ocean–atmosphere general circulation models such as those from the CMIP5 experiment are often used as boundary forcings for the downscaling of future climate experiments. Yet, these models show some considerable biases when compared to the observations over present climate. In this paper, existing methods such as an absolute anomaly method and a quantile–quantile method for sea surface temperature (SST) as well as a look-up table and a relative anomaly method for sea-ice concentration (SIC) are presented. For SIC, we also propose a new analogue method. Each method is objectively evaluated with a perfect model test using CMIP5 model experiments and some real-case applications using observations. We find that with respect to other previously existing methods, the analogue method is a substantial improvement for the bias correction of future SIC. Consistency between the constructed SST and SIC fields is an important constraint to consider, as is consistency between the prescribed sea-ice concentration and thickness; we show that the latter can be ensured by using a simple parameterisation of sea-ice thickness as a function of instantaneous and annual minimum SIC.</p

Scheduling Scientific Experiments on the Rosetta/Philae Mission

International audienceThe Rosetta/Philae mission was launched in 2004 by the European Space Agency (ESA). It is scheduled to reach the comet 67P/ChuryumovGerasimenko in 2014 after traveling more than six billion kilometers. The Philae module will then be separated from the orbiter (Rosetta) to attempt the first ever landing on the surface of a comet. If it succeeds, it will engage a sequence of scientific exploratory experiments on the comet. In this paper we describe a constraint programming model for scheduling the different experiments of the mission. A feasible plan must satisfy a number of constraints induced by energetic resources, precedence relations on activities, or incompatibility between instruments. Moreover, a very important aspect is related to the transfer (to the orbiter then to Earth) of all the data produced by the instruments. The capacity of inboard memories and the limitation of transfers within visibility windows between lander and orbiter, make the transfer policy implemented on the lander's CPU prone to data loss. We introduce a global constraint to handle data transfers. The goal of this constraint is to ensure that data-producing activities are scheduled in such a way that no data is lost. Thanks to this constraint and to the filtering rules we propose, mission control engineers are now able to compute feasible plans in a few seconds for scenarios where minutes or even hours were previously often required. Moreover, in many cases, data transfers are now much more accurately simulated, thus increasing the reliability of the plans