Analysis of satellite data to deduce stratospheric constituents and UV spectroscopic properties of the atmosphere

The objective is to better understand the stratosphere, its constituents, and its ultraviolet optical properties, through detailed analysis of data from the SBUV instrument on Nimbus 7 and comparison with data from other instruments, including the NOAA 9 SBUV 2, SAGE, SME, and SMM. One conclusion to be drawn from the Ozone Trends Panel report is that there are unresolved differences in the ozone profiles measured by different instruments. While the purpose of the work is more to understand the details of the UV radiation field in the stratosphere than it is to assess the accuracy of the SBUV ozone measurement itself, improved understanding of specific problems in the UV will lead to more accurate ozone retrievals. Areas of study include the effect of aerosols on the backscattered albedo, the shape of the ozone profile near the stratopause, the effect of possible polar mesospheric clouds, and the measureability of nitric oxide and sulfur dioxide

Monstrous Souls Imprisoned in Monstrous Flesh: James Baldwin\u27s Discourse of God, Power, and Love from Go Tell It On The Mountain to The Amen Corner

In the middle decades of the twentieth century, James Baldwin offered a critique of a corrupt church framework in a way that differed from other black writers and social activists of his time, particularly in how he deals with racial attitudes within the black church and white Christianity’s tendency to scapegoat black Americans. Baldwin’s first novel, Go Tell It On The Mountain, and his last work to deal with the church, The Amen Corner, show figures of power within the black church who have abused their positions and betrayed those under their authority. He exposes the failure of religious power figures to recognize love as a humanizing force rather than an apathetic, submissive sort of concept that perpetuates an abusive cycle. Through these figures, Baldwin shows that love necessitates confrontation of these religious power figures, resulting in their fall. This fall is necessary in order for love to be humanized (Baldwin removes God from the conversation as the source of this love) and for individuals to gain a greater awareness of their own humanity and need for love. Baldwin’s work suggests that this need is suppressed and denied by the church in a way that dehumanizes an already “monstrous” black community, a concept that has been placed on black men in particular by white America. In some ways Baldwin’s black church is analogous to white America’s Christian foundation, its patriarchy, and its persecution and monsterization of the “other,” driven by its misunderstanding of love. Therefore, Baldwin’s confrontation of religious, black figures of power also provides a confrontation of white America

The Demiurge and the Primeval Serpent Motif within Classical Thought and its Culmination within Gnosticism and Early Christianity

Dragons or great serpents associated with creation stories have been well documented within ancient Near Eastern myths, Classical religion, and Judaism. The motif involved monstrous and hostile supernatural figures emblematic of disorder that were subdued by a benevolent deity. The sect known as the Gnostics that emerged in the first and second centuries AD drew upon these ancient creation narratives and creatively mixed them with the idea put forward by Plato of a Demiurge, or craftsman who ordered the material universe. Because they held that the material cosmos was inherently evil, the Gnostics endowed their Demiurge with the characteristics of the chimeric serpentine monsters of the mythology they borrowed. Therefore, according to the Gnostics the universe had been brought into its present state by a monster, rather than by the defeat of one as the older cosmogonies had claimed. The Gnostics held that this had also been the creator of the Old Testament. In contrast with this transgressive creation narrative, early Christian treatments of the topic demonstrated a relatively high degree of familiarity with past uses of the motif. Early Christian scholars finding the Gnostic narrative untenable observed that this interpretation of the Demiurge was not only inconsistent with Plato’s original meaning, which had more in common with their Logos or Word, but also with their own usage of the sea monster Leviathan from Jewish and Christian scripture which hewed more closely to older traditions in which a great dragon or serpent was subdued by the deity, initiating a state of order. Therefore, the thesis of this paper is that doctrinally orthodox early Christian scholarship held a view closer to the older creation narratives than the Gnostics

Analysis of SO2 signals in SBUV/TOMS data

Absorption bands between 300 nm and 315 nm were observed in spectral scans of the atmospheric albedo made by the Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet (SBUV) spectrometer following the eruption of El Chichon. It is shown that those bands coincide with peaks in the absorption coefficient spectrum of SO sub 2. The magnitude of the absorption is used to the column content of present SO sub 2. These observations confirm that the differential absorption between 312.5 nm and 317.5 nm in Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) data can be used to measure SO sub 2 with high spatial resolution. A maximum concentration of SO sub 2 of 15 matm-cm was observed by SBUV on April 15, 1982. The measurement based on direct measurement of band intensity can be used to calibrate the TOMS algorithm for deriving SO sub 2 amounts

A technique for determining daytime atmospheric oxide above 50 km from backscattered ultraviolet measurements

Airglow from gamma band resonance fluorescence of nitric oxide near 255 nm is calculated at several solar zenith angles. Data from the Nimbus 4 BUV wavelengths 273.5 to 287.6 nm is used to estimate the Rayleigh and ozone scattering contributions to the BUV 255.5 nm data and the remaining signal is attributed to NO airglow. The low solar zenith angle contributions by NO is less than 0.5%, and the high latitude/high zenith angle contribution exceeds 5%. This technique allows for estimating NO content above 50 km, as well as partitioning that content between the mesosphere and thermosphere

A technique for directly comparing radiances from two satellites

Solar Backscattering Ultraviolet-2 (SBUV/2) instrument on NOAA-9 orbit on June 1987, solar zenith angles of the observations; plot of weekly average differences between SBUV (Nimbus-7 and SBUV/2 (NOAA-9); radiance comparisons for March 1986; time dependence of relative change between SBUV and SBUV/2; and explicit wavelength dependence are presented in viewgraph format. Each is briefly discussed

Ozone measurements from the NOAA-9 and the Nimbus-7 satellites: Implications of short and long term variabilities

An overview is given of the measurements of total ozne and ozone profiles by the SBUV/2 instrument on the NOAA-9 spacecraft relative to similar measurements from the SBUV and TOMS instruments on Nimbus-7. It is shown that during the three year period from March 14, 1985, to February 28, 1988, when these data sets overlap, there have been significant changes in the calibrations of the three instruments which may be attributed to the drift of the NOSS-9 orbit to later equator crossing times (for SBUV/2). These changes in instrument characteristics have affected the absolute values of the trends derived from the three instruments, but their geophysical characteristics and response to short term variations are accurate and correlate well among the three instruments. For example, the total column ozone measured by the three instruments shows excellent agreement with respect to its day to day, seasonal, and latitudinal variabilities. At high latitudes, the day to day fluctuations in total ozone show a strong positive correlation with temperature in the lower stratosphere, as one might expect from the dynamical coupling of the two parameters at these latitudes