1,064 research outputs found
Great Plains Soils May be C Sinks
Numerous studies with wide-ranging results have been conducted to resolve if Great Plains soils are a C source or sink. The authors addressed the source/sink question by examining the results from producer soil samples and production surveys that were analyzed and archived by the South Dakota Soil Testing Laboratory. Results showed that between 1985 and 2010, soil organic C content increased at a rate of 326 lb C/A/year, for a total increase of 24%. The increase was attributed to planting better adapted varieties and using better management practices that on average increased corn grain yields 2.29 bu/A/year. Higher soil organic C has impacts on water quality, soil productivity, and plant nutrition. For example, if we assume that the C:N ratio of organic matter is 10:1, then these findings would indicate that soils during this 25-year period were a sink for both C and N, and could have influenced the N needed to optimize crop yields
Trigonometric Parallaxes of Central Stars of Planetary Nebulae
Trigonometric parallaxes of 16 nearby planetary nebulae are presented,
including reduced errors for seven objects with previous initial results and
results for six new objects. The median error in the parallax is 0.42 mas, and
twelve nebulae have parallax errors less than 20 percent. The parallax for
PHL932 is found here to be smaller than was measured by Hipparcos, and this
peculiar object is discussed. Comparisons are made with other distance
estimates. The distances determined from these parallaxes tend to be
intermediate between some short distance estimates and other long estimates;
they are somewhat smaller than estimated from spectra of the central stars.
Proper motions and tangential velocities are presented. No astrometric
perturbations from unresolved close companions are detected.Comment: 24 pages, includes 4 figures. Accepted for A
Corrigendum
Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2010. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Climate 23 (2010): 2230â2231, doi:10.1175/2009JCLI3566.1.Corrigendum: Sokolov, A., and Coauthors, 2009: Probabilistic forecast for twenty-first-century climate based on uncertainties
in emissions (without policy) and climate parameters. J. Climate, 22, 5175â5204
The USNO-B Catalog
USNO-B is an all-sky catalog that presents positions, proper motions,
magnitudes in various optical passbands, and star/galaxy estimators for
1,042,618,261 objects derived from 3,643,201,733 separate observations. The
data were obtained from scans of 7,435 Schmidt plates taken for the various sky
surveys during the last 50 years. USNO-B1.0 is believed to provide all-sky
coverage, completeness down to V = 21, 0.2 arcsecond astrometric accuracy at
J2000, 0.3 magnitude photometric accuracy in up to five colors, and 85%
accuracy for distinguishing stars from non-stellar objects. A brief discussion
of various issues is given here, but the actual data are available from
http://www.nofs.navy.mil and other sites.Comment: Accepted by Astronomical Journa
Probabilistic Forecast for 21st Century Climate Based on Uncertainties in Emissions (without Policy) and Climate Parameters
Abstract and PDF report are also available on the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change website (http://globalchange.mit.edu/).The MIT Integrated Global System Model is used to make probabilistic projections of climate change from 1861 to 2100. Since the model's first projections were published in 2003 substantial improvements have been made to the model and improved estimates of the probability distributions of uncertain input parameters have become available. The new projections are considerably warmer than the 2003 projections, e.g., the median surface warming in 2091 to 2100 is 5.1°C compared to 2.4°C in the earlier study. Many changes contribute to the stronger warming; among the more important ones are taking into account the cooling in the second half of the 20th century due to volcanic eruptions for input parameter estimation and a more sophisticated method for projecting GDP growth which eliminated many low emission scenarios. However, if recently published data, suggesting stronger 20th century ocean warming, are used to determine the input climate parameters, the median projected warning at the end of the 21st century is only 4.1°C. Nevertheless all our simulations have a very small probability of warming less than 2.4°C, the lower bound of the IPCC AR4 projected likely range for the A1FI scenario, which has forcing very similar to our median projection. The probability distribution for the surface warming produced by our analysis is more symmetric than the distribution assumed by the IPCC due to a different feedback between the climate and the carbon cycle, resulting from a different treatment of the carbon-nitrogen interaction in the terrestrial ecosystem.his work was supported in part by the OfïŹce of Science (BER), U.S. Department of Energy Grant No. DE-FG02-93ER61677, NSF, and by the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change
Trigonometric Parallaxes for Two Late-Type Subdwarfs: LSR1425+71 (sdM8.0) and the Binary LSR1610-00 (sd?M6pec)
Trigonometric parallax astrometry and BVI photometry are presented for two
late-type subdwarf candidates, LSR1425+71 (sdM8.0) and LSR1610-00 (sd?M6pec).
For the former we measure an absolute parallax of 13.37+/-0.51 mas yielding
Mv=15.25+/-0.09. The astrometry for LSR1610-00 shows that this object is an
astrometric binary with a period of 1.66+/-0.01 yr. The photocentric orbit is
derived from the data; it has a moderate eccentricity (e ~ 0.44+/-0.02) and a
semi-major axis of 0.28+/-0.01 AU based on our measured absolute parallax of
31.02+/-0.26 mas. Our radial velocity measure of -108.1+/-1.6 km/s for
LSR1610-00 at epoch 2006.179, when coupled with the observation of -95+/-1 km/s
at epoch 2005.167 by Reiners & Basri, indicates a systemic radial velocity of
-101+/-1 km/s for the LSR1610-00AB pair. The galactic velocity components for
LSR1425+71 and LSR1610-00AB -- (U,V,W)=(84+/-6, -202+/-13, 66+/-14) km/s and
(U,V,W)=(36+/-2, -232+/-2, -61+/-2) km/s, respectively. For both stars, the
velocities are characteristic of halo population kinematics. However, modeling
shows that both stars have orbits around the galaxy with high eccentricity that
pass remarkably close to the galactic center. LSR1425+71 has a luminosity and
colors consistent with its metal-poor subdwarf spectral classification, while
LSR1610-00 has a luminosity and most colors indicative of being only mildly
metal-poor, plus a uniquely red B-V color. The companion to LSR1610-00 must be
a low-mass, substellar brown dwarf. We speculate on the paradoxical nature of
LSR1610-00 and possible sources of its peculiarities.Comment: Accepted for ApJ. 37 pages, including 8 figure
MIT Integrated Global System Model (IGSM) Version 2: Model Description and Baseline Evaluation
Abstract in HTML and technical report in PDF available on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change website (http://mit.edu/globalchange/www/).The MIT Integrated Global System Model (IGSM) is designed for analyzing the global environmental changes that may result from anthropogenic causes, quantifying the uncertainties associated with the projected changes, and assessing the costs and environmental effectiveness of proposed policies to mitigate climate risk. This report documents Version 2 of the IGSM, which like the previous version, includes an economic model for analysis of greenhouse gas and aerosol precursor emissions and mitigation proposals, a coupled atmosphere-ocean-land surface model with interactive chemistry, and models of natural ecosystems. In this global framework the outputs of the combined anthropogenic and natural emissions models provide the driving forces for the coupled atmospheric chemistry and climate models. Climate model outputs then drive a terrestrial model predicting water and energy budgets, CO2, CH4, and N2O fluxes, and soil composition, which feed back to the coupled climate/chemistry model. The first version of the integrated framework (which we will term IGSM1) is described in Prinn et al. (1999) and in publications and Joint Program Reports and Technical Notes provided on the Programâs website (http://mit.edu/globalchange/). Subsequently, upgrades of component model capabilities have been achieved, allowing more comprehensive and realistic studies of global change. Highlights of these improvements include: a substantially improved economics model, needed to provide emissions projections and to assess an increasingly complex policy environment; a new global terrestrial model comprised of state-of-the-art biogeophysical, ecological and natural biogeochemical flux components, which provides an improved capacity to study consequences of hydrologic and ecologic change; the addition of a three-dimensional ocean representation, replacing the previous two-dimensional model, which allows examination of the global thermohaline circulation and its associated climate change impacts; the addition of an explicit oceanic carbon cycle including the impact of the biological pump; the addition of a new urban air pollution model enabling better treatments of human health and climate impacts; and the addition of greater flexibility for study of terrestrial ecosystem and urban pollution effects. This report documents the essential features of the new IGSM structure.This research was supported by the U.S Department of Energy, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. National Science Foundation, U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, U.S. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration; and the Industry and Foundation Sponsors of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change: Alstom Power (France), American Electric Power (USA), BP p.l.c. (UK/USA), Chevron Corporation (USA), CONCAWE (Belgium), DaimlerChrysler AG (Germany), Duke Energy (USA), J-Power (Japan), Electric Power Research Institute (USA), ElectricitĂ© de France, ExxonMobil Corporation (USA), Ford Motor Company (USA), General Motors (USA), Murphy Oil Corporation (USA), Oglethorpe Power Corporation (USA), RWE Power (Germany), Shell Petroleum (Netherlands/UK), Southern Company (USA), Statoil ASA (Norway), Tennessee Valley Authority (USA), Tokyo Electric Power Company (Japan), Total (France), G. Unger Vetlesen Foundation (USA)
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