Stratosphere-troposphere separation of nitrogen dioxide columns from the TEMPO geostationary satellite instrument

Separating the stratospheric and tropospheric contributions in satellite retrievals of atmospheric NO2 column abundance is a crucial step in the interpretation and application of the satellite observations. A variety of stratosphere–troposphere separation algorithms have been developed for sun-synchronous instruments in low Earth orbit (LEO) that benefit from global coverage, including broad clean regions with negligible tropospheric NO2 compared to stratospheric NO2. These global sun-synchronous algorithms need to be evaluated and refined for forthcoming geostationary instruments focused on continental regions, which lack this global context and require hourly estimates of the stratospheric column. Here we develop and assess a spatial filtering algorithm for the upcoming TEMPO geostationary instrument that will target North America. Developments include using independent satellite observations to identify likely locations of tropospheric enhancements, using independent LEO observations for spatial context, consideration of diurnally varying partial fields of regard, and a filter based on stratospheric to tropospheric air mass factor ratios. We test the algorithm with LEO observations from the OMI instrument with an afternoon overpass, and from the GOME-2 instrument with a morning overpass. We compare our TEMPO field of regard algorithm against an identical global algorithm to investigate the penalty resulting from the limited spatial coverage in geostationary orbit, and find excellent agreement in the estimated mean daily tropospheric NO2 column densities (R2=0.999, slope=1.009 for July and R2=0.998, slope=0.999 for January). The algorithm performs well even when only small parts of the continent are observed by TEMPO. The algorithm is challenged the most by east coast morning retrievals in the wintertime (e.g., R2=0.995, slope=1.038 at 14:00 UTC). We find independent global LEO observations (corrected for time of day) provide important context near the field-of-regard edges. We also test the performance of the TEMPO algorithm without these supporting global observations. Most of the continent is unaffected (R2=0.924 and slope=0.973 for July and R2=0.996 and slope=1.008 for January), with 90 % of the pixels having differences of less than ±0.2×1015 molecules cm−2 between the TEMPO tropospheric NO2 column density and the global algorithm. For near-real-time retrieval, even a climatological estimate of the stratospheric NO2 surrounding the field of regard would improve this agreement. In general, the additional penalty of a limited field of regard from TEMPO introduces no more error than normally expected in most global stratosphere–troposphere separation algorithms. Overall, we conclude that hourly near-real-time stratosphere–troposphere separation for the retrieval of NO2 tropospheric column densities by the TEMPO geostationary instrument is both feasible and robust, regardless of the diurnally varying limited field of regard.The authors are grateful to Kelly Chance, Xiong Liu, John Houck, Peter Zoogman, and other members of the TEMPO trace gas retrieval team for their input in preparation of this paper. Work at Dalhousie University was supported by Environment and Climate Change Canada. The authors also gratefully acknowledge the free use of TEMIS NO2 data from the GOME-2 sensor provided by http://www.temis.nl, last access: 12 November 2018, and the NASA Standard Product NO2 data from OMI provided by https://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/datasets/OMNO2_V003/summary, last access: 9 November 2018. (Environment and Climate Change Canada)https://www.atmos-meas-tech.net/11/6271/2018/Published versio

Strategic Network Formation with Attack and Immunization

Strategic network formation arises where agents receive benefit from connections to other agents, but also incur costs for forming links. We consider a new network formation game that incorporates an adversarial attack, as well as immunization against attack. An agent's benefit is the expected size of her connected component post-attack, and agents may also choose to immunize themselves from attack at some additional cost. Our framework is a stylized model of settings where reachability rather than centrality is the primary concern and vertices vulnerable to attacks may reduce risk via costly measures. In the reachability benefit model without attack or immunization, the set of equilibria is the empty graph and any tree. The introduction of attack and immunization changes the game dramatically; new equilibrium topologies emerge, some more sparse and some more dense than trees. We show that, under a mild assumption on the adversary, every equilibrium network with $n$ agents contains at most $2n-4$ edges for $n\geq 4$. So despite permitting topologies denser than trees, the amount of overbuilding is limited. We also show that attack and immunization don't significantly erode social welfare: every non-trivial equilibrium with respect to several adversaries has welfare at least as that of any equilibrium in the attack-free model. We complement our theory with simulations demonstrating fast convergence of a new bounded rationality dynamic which generalizes linkstable best response but is considerably more powerful in our game. The simulations further elucidate the wide variety of asymmetric equilibria and demonstrate topological consequences of the dynamics e.g. heavy-tailed degree distributions. Finally, we report on a behavioral experiment on our game with over 100 participants, where despite the complexity of the game, the resulting network was surprisingly close to equilibrium.Comment: The short version of this paper appears in the proceedings of WINE-1

Some applications of the NASTRAN level 16 subsonic flutter analysis capability

The Level 16 flutter analysis capability was applied to an aspect-ratio-6.8 subsonic transport type wing, an aspect-ratio-1.7 arrow wing, and an aspect-ratio-1.3 all movable horizontal tail with a geared elevator. The transport wing and arrow wing results are compared with experimental results obtained in the Langley transonic dynamic tunnel and with other calculated results obtained using subsonic lifting surface (kernel function) unsteady aerodynamic theory