Grid-based simulation of soil moisture in the UK: future changes in extremes and wetting and drying dates

Soil moisture, typically defined as the amount of water in the unsaturated soil layer, is a central component of the hydrological cycle. The potential impacts of climate change on soil moisture have been less specifically studied than those on river flows, despite soil moisture deficits/excesses being a factor in a range of natural hazards, as well as having obvious importance for agriculture. Here, 1 km grids of monthly mean soil moisture content are simulated using a national-scale grid-based hydrological model, more typically applied to look at changes in river flows across Britain. A comparison of the soil moisture estimates from an observation-based simulation, with soil moisture deficit data from an operational system developed by the UK Met Office (Meteorological Office Rainfall and Evaporation Calculation System; MORECS), shows relatively good correspondence in soil drying and wetting dates, and in the month when soils are driest. The UK Climate Projections 2018 Regional projections are then used to drive the hydrological model, to investigate changes in occurrence of indicative soil moisture extremes and changes in typical wetting and drying dates of soils across the country. Analyses comparing baseline (December 1981–November 2011) and future (December 2050–November 2080) time-slices suggest large increases in the spatial occurrence of low soil moisture levels, along with later soil wetting dates, although changes to soil drying dates are less clear. Such information on potential future changes in soil moisture is important to enable the development of appropriate adaptation strategies for a range of sectors vulnerable to soil moisture levels

Assessment of atmospheric aerosols from two reanalysis products over Australia

Assessments of atmospheric aerosols from reanalysis are important for understanding uncertainty in model simulations, and ultimately predictions, such as for solar power or air quality forecasts and assessments. This study intercompares total aerosol optical depth (AOD) and dust AOD (DAOD) from two global reanalyses datasets, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) Monitoring Atmospheric Composition and Climate (MACC) and the NASA Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research-2 (MERRA-2). These are evaluated against AeroSpan (Aerosol characterisation via Sun photometry: Australian Network) ground observations which forms part of the Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) over the Australian continent for the 2002–2012 period. During dust storms, AeroSpan/AERONET AOD measurements were missing due to cloud screening. To overcome validation limitations in sun photometry for dust events, a nephelometer's scattering coefficient is qualitatively compared against reanalysis of DAOD at a key dust storm activation site, Tinga Tingana in South Australia (~200 km east of Lake Eyre). A specific extreme event that occurred in 2009 originating from the Lake Eyre basin, a major dust source covering one-sixth of Australia, was studied. The results show that MERRA-2 reanalysis overestimates monthly total AOD twice as much compared to AeroSpan/AERONET ground observations but seems better correlated against AeroSpan/AERONET than ECMWF/MACC. Mean data of MERRA-2 time series over 10 years provide lower DAOD values and lower dust aerosol estimates than ECMWF/MACC reanalysis (over the Lake Eyre basin with spatial averaging). Specifically at Tinga Tingana, the correlation from MERRA-2 (0.45 correlation) and ECMWF/MACC (0.43 correlation) against AeroSpan/AERONET's AOD were similar. Between MERRA-2 and ECMWF/MACC decade long daily gridded DAOD, the correlation coefficient was high at 0.73, again indicating similarity between the datasets. MERRA-2 total AOD correlation is significantly higher (by 0.26) against AeroSpan/AERONET than ECMWF/MACC. MERRA-2 also provides higher AOD values in extreme cases which may correspond to dust storms. During dust storms, a hybrid strategy using nephelometers and hourly reanalysis from MERRA-2 is able to identify dust storms better than AeroSpan/AERONET. Overall, this work can enable and inform better aerosol data assimilation into forecast models such as for solar energy, agriculture or air quality over Australia

Influence of surfactants on the structure of titanium oxide gels : experiments and simulations

We report here on experimental and numerical studies of the influence of surfactants on mineral gel synthesis. The modification of the gel structure when the ratios water-precursor and water-surfactant vary is brought to the fore by fractal dimension measures. A property of {\em polydispersity of the initial hydrolysis} is proposed to explain these results, and is successfuly tested through numerical experiments of three dimensional chemically limited aggregation.Comment: 12 pages, 4 Postscript figures, uses RevTe

Prevention of childhood poisoning in the home: overview of systematic reviews and a systematic review of primary studies

Unintentional poisoning is a significant child public health problem. This systematic overview of reviews, supplemented with a systematic review of recently published primary studies synthesizes evidence on non-legislative interventions to reduce childhood poisonings in the home with particular reference to interventions that could be implemented by Children's Centres in England or community health or social care services in other high income countries. Thirteen systematic reviews, two meta-analyses and 47 primary studies were identified. The interventions most commonly comprised education, provision of cupboard/drawer locks, and poison control centre (PCC) number stickers. Meta-analyses and primary studies provided evidence that interventions improved poison prevention practices. Twenty eight per cent of studies reporting safe medicine storage (OR from meta-analysis 1.57, 95% CI 1.22–2.02), 23% reporting safe storage of other products (OR from meta-analysis 1.63, 95% CI 1.22–2.17) and 46% reporting availability of PCC numbers (OR from meta-analysis 3.67, 95% CI 1.84–7.33) demonstrated significant effects favouring the intervention group. There was a lack of evidence that interventions reduced poisoning rates. Parents should be provided with poison prevention education, cupboard/drawer locks and emergency contact numbers to use in the event of a poisoning. Further research is required to determine whether improving poison prevention practices reduces poisoning rates

Mining metrics for buried treasure

The same but different: That might describe two metrics. On the surface CLASSI may show two metrics are locally equivalent, but buried beneath one may be a wealth of further structure. This was beautifully described in a paper by M.A.H. MacCallum in 1998. Here I will illustrate the effect with two flat metrics -- one describing ordinary Minkowski spacetime and the other describing a three-parameter family of Gal'tsov-Letelier-Tod spacetimes. I will dig out the beautiful hidden classical singularity structure of the latter (a structure first noticed by Tod in 1994) and then show how quantum considerations can illuminate the riches. I will then discuss how quantum structure can help us understand classical singularities and metric parameters in a variety of exact solutions mined from the Exact Solutions book.Comment: 16 pages, no figures, minor grammatical changes, submitted to Proceedings of the Malcolm@60 Conference (London, July 2004

Finite element simulation of three-dimensional free-surface flow problems

An adaptive finite element algorithm is described for the stable solution of three-dimensional free-surface-flow problems based primarily on the use of node movement. The algorithm also includes a discrete remeshing procedure which enhances its accuracy and robustness. The spatial discretisation allows an isoparametric piecewise-quadratic approximation of the domain geometry for accurate resolution of the curved free surface. The technique is illustrated through an implementation for surface-tension-dominated viscous flows modelled in terms of the Stokes equations with suitable boundary conditions on the deforming free surface. Two three-dimensional test problems are used to demonstrate the performance of the method: a liquid bridge problem and the formation of a fluid droplet

The detection of Gravitational Waves

This chapter is concerned with the question: how do gravitational waves (GWs) interact with their detectors? It is intended to be a theory review of the fundamental concepts involved in interferometric and acoustic (Weber bar) GW antennas. In particular, the type of signal the GW deposits in the detector in each case will be assessed, as well as its intensity and deconvolution. Brief reference will also be made to detector sensitivity characterisation, including very summary data on current state of the art GW detectors.Comment: 33 pages, 12 figures, LaTeX2e, Springer style files --included. For Proceedings of the ERE-2001 Conference (Madrid, September 2001

Ab initio Quantum and ab initio Molecular Dynamics of the Dissociative Adsorption of Hydrogen on Pd(100)

The dissociative adsorption of hydrogen on Pd(100) has been studied by ab initio quantum dynamics and ab initio molecular dynamics calculations. Treating all hydrogen degrees of freedom as dynamical coordinates implies a high dimensionality and requires statistical averages over thousands of trajectories. An efficient and accurate treatment of such extensive statistics is achieved in two steps: In a first step we evaluate the ab initio potential energy surface (PES) and determine an analytical representation. Then, in an independent second step dynamical calculations are performed on the analytical representation of the PES. Thus the dissociation dynamics is investigated without any crucial assumption except for the Born-Oppenheimer approximation which is anyhow employed when density-functional theory calculations are performed. The ab initio molecular dynamics is compared to detailed quantum dynamical calculations on exactly the same ab initio PES. The occurence of quantum oscillations in the sticking probability as a function of kinetic energy is addressed. They turn out to be very sensitive to the symmetry of the initial conditions. At low kinetic energies sticking is dominated by the steering effect which is illustrated using classical trajectories. The steering effects depends on the kinetic energy, but not on the mass of the molecules. Zero-point effects lead to strong differences between quantum and classical calculations of the sticking probability. The dependence of the sticking probability on the angle of incidence is analysed; it is found to be in good agreement with experimental data. The results show that the determination of the potential energy surface combined with high-dimensional dynamical calculations, in which all relevant degrees of freedon are taken into account, leads to a detailed understanding of the dissociation dynamics of hydrogen at a transition metal surface.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figures, subm. to Phys. Rev.

A Helicity-Based Method to Infer the CME Magnetic Field Magnitude in Sun and Geospace: Generalization and Extension to Sun-Like and M-Dwarf Stars and Implications for Exoplanet Habitability

Patsourakos et al. (Astrophys. J. 817, 14, 2016) and Patsourakos and Georgoulis (Astron. Astrophys. 595, A121, 2016) introduced a method to infer the axial magnetic field in flux-rope coronal mass ejections (CMEs) in the solar corona and farther away in the interplanetary medium. The method, based on the conservation principle of magnetic helicity, uses the relative magnetic helicity of the solar source region as input estimates, along with the radius and length of the corresponding CME flux rope. The method was initially applied to cylindrical force-free flux ropes, with encouraging results. We hereby extend our framework along two distinct lines. First, we generalize our formalism to several possible flux-rope configurations (linear and nonlinear force-free, non-force-free, spheromak, and torus) to investigate the dependence of the resulting CME axial magnetic field on input parameters and the employed flux-rope configuration. Second, we generalize our framework to both Sun-like and active M-dwarf stars hosting superflares. In a qualitative sense, we find that Earth may not experience severe atmosphere-eroding magnetospheric compression even for eruptive solar superflares with energies ~ 10^4 times higher than those of the largest Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) X-class flares currently observed. In addition, the two recently discovered exoplanets with the highest Earth-similarity index, Kepler 438b and Proxima b, seem to lie in the prohibitive zone of atmospheric erosion due to interplanetary CMEs (ICMEs), except when they possess planetary magnetic fields that are much higher than that of Earth.Comment: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2017SoPh..292...89