Large-scale circulation departures related to wet episodes in northeast Brazil

Large scale circulation features are presented as related to wet spells over northeast Brazil (Nordeste) during the rainy season (March and April) of 1979. The rainy season season is devided into dry and wet periods, the FGGE and geostationary satellite data was averaged and mean and departure fields of basic variables and cloudiness were studied. Analysis of seasonal mean circulation features show: lowest sea level easterlies beneath upper level westerlies; weak meridional winds; high relative humidity over the Amazon basin and relatively dry conditions over the South Atlantic Ocean. A fluctuation was found in the large scale circulation features on time scales of a few weeks or so over Nordeste and the South Atlantic sector. Even the subtropical High SLP's have large departures during wet episodes, implying a short period oscillation in the Southern Hemisphere Hadley circulation

Empirically derived climate predictability over the extratropical northern hemisphere

International audienceA novel application of a technique developed from chaos theory is used in describing seasonal to interannual climate predictability over the Northern Hemisphere (NH). The technique is based on an empirical forecast scheme - local approximation in a reconstructed phase space - for time-series data. Data are monthly 500 hPa heights on a latitude-longitude grid covering the NH from 20° N to the equator. Predictability is estimated based on the linear correlation between actual and predicted heights averaged over a forecast range of one- to twelve.month lead. The method is capable of extracting the major climate signals on this time scale including ENSO and the North Atlantic Oscillation

Toward Increased Utilization of Historical Hurricane Chronologies

The record of past tropical cyclones provides an important means to evaluate the hurricane hazard. Historical chronologies are a source of information about tropical cyclones prior to the modern era. Chenoweth (2006) describes an archive of 383 tropical cyclones occurring during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, largely before the official hurricane record. The present study demonstrates a novel way this archive can be used to articulate historical tropical cyclone activity across space. First, an event in the archive is assigned a series of latitude/longitude coordinates approximating the descriptive locations of the cyclone’s affect. Second, tropical cyclones from the modern record that approach these locations (modern analogs) are mapped. Third, a probable pathway and a realistic track of the archived event is created by averaging the modern analog tracks. As an example, the procedure is used to generate a map showing the tracks of the Atlantic tropical cyclones of 1766. Sensitivity of the methodology to changes in event location and event timing are considered. The study shows that historical hurricane chronologies when combined with a history of cyclone tracks can provide useful information about the older events that is not directly related to where the original information was gathered. When this information is available for all cyclones it should help climatologists better understand long-term variations in tropical cyclone activity

Chiral constituent quark model study of the process γp→ηp\gamma p \to \eta p

A constituent quark model is developed for the reaction, allowing us to investigate all available data for differential cross sections as well as single polarization asymmetries (beam and target) by including {\it all} of the PDG, one to four star, nucleon resonances ($S_{11}$, $P_{11}$, $P_{13}$, $D_{13}$, $D_{15}$, $F_{15}$, $F_{17}$, $G_{17}$, $G_{19}$, $H_{19}$, $I_{1,11}$, and $K_{1,13}$). Issues related to the missing resonances are also briefly discussed by examining possible contributions from several new resonances ($S_{11}$, $P_{11}$, $P_{13}$, $D_{13}$, $D_{15}$, and $H_{1,11}$).Comment: 3 pages,2 figures, presented in NSTAR2007, Bonn, Germany,5 - 8 September 200

Searching for determinism in observed data: a review of the issues involved

International audienceIn this paper we present a review of advances made and problems still existing in the application of the theory of chaos and dynamical systems to time series. In particular we discuss issues pertaining the estimation of dimensions, Lyapunov exponents and nonlinear prediction from an observable. We analyze the problems and discuss proper ways to deal with them