Investigations with satellite data. 2: Temperature retrievals

A method for retrieving atmospheric temperatures in a severe storm situation was investigated. Retrieval was accomplished through the aid of satellite radiance measurements and nearby radiosondes. A set of coefficients was derived which when multiplied by the measured radiances, yielded smaller temperature retrieval errors than the minimum-information retrieval method

Wilderness attribute mapping in the United Kingdom

A wilderness continuum concept can identify the wilder areas of Britain. Geographical Information Systems are used to present information on these areas and solicit public opinion as to which factors are perceived to be important wilderness quality indicators. Consensus maps are compiled from a composite of individual responses and the results compared to Britain’s network of protected areas

Interplay of disorder and interactions in subcritically tilted and anisotropic three-dimensional Weyl fermions

We study the effects of disorder and Coulomb interactions on the physics of three-dimensional type-I Weyl fermions with tilted and anisotropic dispersions in a renormalization group approach. To lowest non-trivial loop order we show that the tendency of the Coulomb interactions to restore the symmetry of the dispersion in the semimetallic region of the phase diagram dominates the stabilization of the tilt and anisotropy favored by weak disorder. We argue that the topology of the renormalization flow of the disorder and Coulomb couplings is essentially determined by gauge invariance, so that these findings continue to hold qualitatively at any order in perturbation theory.Comment: 9+5 page

Dense gas and star formation in individual Giant Molecular Clouds in M31

This article has been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society © 2018 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.9 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in MNRASStudies both of entire galaxies and of local Galactic star formation indicate a dependency of a molecular cloud's star formation rate (SFR) on its dense gas mass. In external galaxies, such measurements are derived from HCN(1-0) observations, usually encompassing many Giant Molecular Clouds (GMCs) at once. The Andromeda galaxy (M31) is a unique laboratory to study the relation of the SFR and HCN emission down to GMC scales at solar-like metallicities. In this work, we correlate our composite SFR determinations with archival HCN, HCO+, and CO observations, resulting in a sample of nine reasonably representative GMCs. We find that, at the scale of individual clouds, it is important to take into account both obscured and unobscured star formation to determine the SFR. When correlated against the dense-gas mass from HCN, we find that the SFR is low, in spite of these refinements. We nevertheless retrieve an SFR - dense-gas mass correlation, confirming that these SFR tracers are still meaningful on GMC scales. The correlation improves markedly when we consider the HCN/CO ratio instead of HCN by itself. This nominally indicates a dependency of the SFR on the dense-gas fraction, in contradiction to local studies. However, we hypothesize that this partly reflects the limited dynamic range in dense-gas mass, and partly that the ratio of single-pointing HCN and CO measurements may be less prone to systematics like sidelobes. In this case, the HCN/CO ratio would importantly be a better empirical measure of the dense-gas content itself.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Hydrodynamic Limit for an Hamiltonian System with Boundary Conditions and Conservative Noise

We study the hyperbolic scaling limit for a chain of N coupled anharmonic oscillators. The chain is attached to a point on the left and there is a force (tension) $\tau$ acting on the right. In order to provide good ergodic properties to the system, we perturb the Hamiltonian dynamics with random local exchanges of velocities between the particles, so that momentum and energy are locally conserved. We prove that in the macroscopic limit the distributions of the elongation, momentum and energy, converge to the solution of the Euler system of equations, in the smooth regime.Comment: New deeply revised version. 1 figure adde

Survey- and fishery-derived estimates of Pacific cod (Gadus macrocephalus) biomass: implications for strategies to reduce interactions between groundfish fisheries and Steller sea lions (Eumetopias jubatus)

Survey- and fishery-derived biomass estimates have indicated that the harvest indices for Pacific cod (Gadus macrocephalus) within a portion of Steller sea lion (Eumetopias jubatus) critical habitat in February and March 2001 were five to 16 times greater than the annual rate for the entire Bering Sea-Aleutian Islands stock. A bottom trawl survey yielded a cod biomass estimate of 49,032 metric tons (t) for the entire area surveyed, of which less than half (23,329 t) was located within the area used primarily by the commercial fishery, which caught 11,631 t of Pacific cod. Leslie depletion analyses of fishery data yielded biomass estimates of approximately 14,500 t (95% confidence intervals of approximately 9,000–25,000 t), which are within the 95% confidence interval on the fished area survey estimate (12,846–33,812 t). These data indicate that Leslie analyses may be useful in estimating local fish biomass and harvest indices for certain marine fisheries that are well constrained spatially and relatively short in duration (weeks). In addition, fishery effects on prey availability within the time and space scales relevant to foraging sea lions may be much greater than the effects indicated by annual harvest rates estimated from stock assessments averaged across the range of the target spe

The Diversity of Type Ia Supernovae from Broken Symmetries

Type Ia supernovae result when carbon-oxygen white dwarfs in binary systems accrete mass from companion stars, reach a critical mass, and explode. The near uniformity of their light curves makes these supernovae good standard candles for measuring cosmic expansion, but a correction must be applied to account for the fact that the brighter supernovae have broader light curves. One-dimensional modelling, with a certain choice of parameters, can reproduce this general trend in the width-luminosity relation, but the processes of ignition and detonation have recently been shown to be intrinsically asymmetric. Here we report on multi-dimensional modelling of the explosion physics and radiative transfer that reveals that the breaking of spherical symmetry is a critical factor in determining both the width luminosity relation and the observed scatter about it. The deviation from sphericity can also explain the finite polarization detected in the light from some supernovae. The slope and normalization of the width-luminosity relation has a weak dependence on certain properties of the white dwarf progenitor, in particular the trace abundances of elements other than carbon and oxygen. Failing to correct for this effect could lead to systematic overestimates of up to 2% in the distance to remote supernovae.Comment: Accepted to Natur

Investigations with satellite data temperature retrievals

A method is presented for using satellite measurements to interpolate vertical temperature soundings between radiosonde stations. The method finds a set of coefficients, which when multiplied by corresponding measured radiance quantities, yield zero temperature error at a radiosonde station. This derived set of coefficients is then applied to satellite radiance measurements at places between radiosonde stations. The computations show, for example, that the average absolute error in the layer 1000-800 mbs is only 0.3K when the corresponding 'minimum-information' method error was 2.9K. The method may be most applicable to measurements from geostationary satellites, but should also be applicable to measurements from polar orbiting satellites under certain conditions