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Hinton, B. B.

Publications and source records attributed to Hinton, B. B..

13 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1985

A correction for the errors in ship reports of light winds

The errors in ship wind reports of light wings tend to significantly bias their mean. This occurs because wind speed is a scalar quantity that is constrained to zero or positive values. Therefore, observations tend to overestimate the light winds because of the one-sided distribution of errors, but the bias disappears under stronger winds. A method for removing this bias from ship data is presented. In particular, the method is applied to interpreting the ratios of wind speeds observed by ships to those obtained from tracking low level clouds. Corrected ratios allow low cloud speeds to serve as proxy data for surface based observations.

Hinton, B. B.↗
NASA NTRS1985

Autocorrelation of wind observations

Autocorrelation and variance statistics are calculated for cloud motion measurements from four different sources, rawinsonde wind reports, synoptic land station reports, ship reports, aircraft reports, automatic aircraft reports gathered during the Global Weather Experiment, and Seasat scatterometer winds from September 1978. The last of these data sources exhibited the highest autocorrelations and lowest standard deviations over short distances. Structure function plots of autocovariances against separation distance between observations indicated that Seasat was most sensitive to wind field structure by having low autovariance at short distances.

Wylie, D. P.↗
NASA NTRS1983

Satellite microwave radiances correlated with radar rain rates over land

The characteristics of upwelling microwave radiation from raindrops as measured by satellite sensors are examined. The scanning multichannel microwave radiometers on board the Nimbus 7 and Seasat satellites have the capability of quantifying the perpendicularly polarized antenna temperatures at 37, 21, 18, 10.7, and 6.6 GHz. The instruments scan the earth at a constant 50 deg angle to the surface with a footprint that varies from 20-70 km. Radar rainfall measurements have an accuracy of within 60 percent, whereas a series of test measurements using SMMR data in comparison with radar data for rainfall in the same areas showed that the microwave data depicted rainfall rates with less than 1.55 mm/h error. Details of the rainfall rate algorithms used to treat the satellite microwave data are provided, noting that the identification of rainfall rates is dependent on quantifying the amount the upwelling radiance is reduced due to rainfall.

Spencer, R. W.↗
NASA NTRS1979

Extended record length of atmospheric data gathered via Nimbus-6

A low-power nonvolatile data memory unit was developed for free floating balloons in the TWERL experiment. By means of multiple identification codes data records, several hours long, could be transferred in compressed form to the Nimbus-6 satellite for retransmission to ground stations. Eight of these units were flown on constant density balloons to investigate atmospheric wave motions throughout the Southern Hemisphere. One returned valid data for ten months. Similar techniques could be used with other types of observing platforms.

Afanasjevs, J.↗
NASA NTRS1973

Role of gas-surface interactions in the reduction of Ogo 6 neutral particle mass spectrometer data.

Data obtained with the quadrupole mass spectrometer aboard the Ogo 6 satellite show the effects of significant surface interaction processes, including nearly complete recombination of incoming atomic oxygen on the walls of the instrument antechamber plus adsorption and desorption of oxygen and carbon monoxide. The observed data are fit by solving the time-dependent continuity equations accounting for production and loss of atomic oxygen, molecular oxygen, and (in the case of mass 28) carbon monoxide. The surface parameters that best fit the data are selected and applied to the determination of ambient densities and their estimated errors.

Hedin, A. E.↗
NASA NTRS1973

Role of gas-surface interactions in the reduction of OGO 6 neutral-particle mass spectrometer data

Data obtained with the quadrupole mass spectrometer aboard the OGO 6 satellite show the effects of significant surface interaction processes, including nearly complete recombination of incoming atomic oxygen on the walls of the instrument antechamber plus absorption and desorption of oxygen and carbon monoxide. The observed data are fit by solving the time-dependent continuity equations accounting for production and loss of atomic oxygen, molecular oxygen, and (in the case of mass 28) carbon monoxide. The surface parameters that best fit the data are selected and applied to the determination of ambient densities and their estimated errors.

Hedin, A. E.↗
NASA NTRS1972

Role of gas surface interactions in the reduction of OGO-6 neutral gas particle mass spectrometer data

The gas-surface interaction effects observed by the quadrupole mass spectrometer are described, and the technique developed to account for them in determining ambient neutral densities is summarized. The total ion current and the ion currents for ions with molecular weights 2, 4, 16, 28, and 32 are sampled for 1.125 sec once every 9.216 sec, for 258 sec out of a 368 sec cycle. An equation is given for the number density of any constituent in the ion source region, and source density data are discussed. The mass 28 background gas is considered to be CO rather than N2, and a CO model is developed. A quasi-equilibrium model of the atomic oxygen interactions is constructed, and a set of surface parameters is determined which provides a reasonable fit to the mass 16 and 32 source densities consistent with the predicted ambient atomic oxygen.

Hedin, A. E.↗