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A brief review is presented of available knowledge of the fluid motions within Jupiter's atmosphere. Evidence is presented to support the contention that the observed cloud masses are probably not simply convected by the main zonal flows. It is likely that an understanding of wave motions within the atmosphere will be of great importance in interpreting data gathered both from the ground and from spacecraft.
The results are presented of a variety of spherically symmetric one-dimensional (1D) calculations intended to determine the robustness of the dynamical hiccup phenomenon in protostellar cores. The 1D models show that the phenomenon is relatively insensitive to changes in the equations of state, numerical resolution, initial density and temperature, and the radiative transfer approximation. In 1D, the hiccup results in an explosive destruction of the entire inner protostellar core. Inner core formation is studied with a sequence of three-dimensional models which show that rapid inner core rotation stabilizes the hiccup instability. Instead, the inner core becomes quite flat and undergoes a cycle of binary fragmentation, binary decay into a single object surrounded by a bar, breakup of the bar into a binary, etc. When lesser amounts of rotation are involved, the inner core does hiccup somewhat, but mass is ejected in only a few directions, leading to several broad streams of ejecta.
We present three-dimensional (3D) maps of Jupiter’s atmospheric circulation at cloud-top level from Doppler-imaging data obtained in the visible domain with JIVE, the second node of the JOVIAL network, which is mounted on the Dunn Solar Telescope at Sunspot, New Mexico. We report on 12 nights of observations between May 4 and May 30, 2018, representing a total of about 80 hours. Firstly, the average zonal wind profile derived from our data is compatible with that derived from cloud-tracking measurements performed on Hubble Space Telescope images obtained in April 2018 from the Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) program. Secondly, we present the first ever two-dimensional maps of Jupiter’s atmospheric circulation from Doppler measurements. The zonal velocity map highlights well-known atmospheric features, such as the equatorial hot spots and the Great Red Spot (GRS). In addition to zonal winds, we derive meridional and vertical velocity fields from the Doppler data. The motions attributed to vertical flows are mainly located at the boundary between the equatorial belts and tropical zones, which could indicate active motion in these regions. Qualitatively, these results compare well to recent Juno data that have unveiled the three-dimensional structure of Jupiter’s wind field. To the contrary, the motions attributed to meridional circulation are very different from what is obtained by cloud tracking, except at the GRS. Because of limitations with data resolution and processing techniques, we acknowledge that our measurement of vertical or meridional flows of Jupiter are still to be confirmed.
The Accelerated Climate Modeling for Energy (ACME) program is a leading-edge climate and Earth system model designed to address the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) mission needs. The ACME project involves collaboration between seven National Laboratories, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, four academic institutions, and one private-sector company. The ACME project funds ongoing efforts to ensure the model continues to make efficient use of DOE Leadership Computing Facilities (LCFs) in order to best address the three driving grand challenge science questions:Water cycle: How will more realistic portrayals of features important to the water cycle (resolution, clouds, aerosols, snowpack, river routing, land use) affect river flow and associated freshwater supplies at the watershed scale?Cryosphere systems: Could a dynamical instability in the Antarctic ice sheet be triggered within the next 40 years?Biogeochemistry: What are the contributions and feedbacks from natural and managed systems to current greenhouse gas fluxes, and how will those factors and associated fluxes evolve in the future?
We have further followed the evolution of the orbital and physical properties of G2, the object currently falling toward the massive black hole in the Galactic Center on a near-radial orbit. New, very sensitive data were taken in 2013 April with NACO and SINFONI at the ESO VLT. The ''head'' of G2 continues to be stretched ever further along the orbit in position-velocity space. A fraction of its emission appears to be already emerging on the blueshifted side of the orbit, past pericenter approach. Ionized gas in the head is now stretched over more than 15,000 Schwarzschild radii R{sub S} around the pericenter of the orbit, at Almost-Equal-To 2000 R{sub S} Almost-Equal-To 20 light hours from the black hole. The pericenter passage of G2 will be a process stretching over a period of at least one year. The Brackett-{gamma} luminosity of the head has been constant over the past nine years, to within {+-}25%, as have the line ratios Brackett-{gamma}/Paschen-{alpha} and Brackett-{gamma}/Helium-I. We do not see any significant evidence for deviations of G2's dynamical evolution due to hydrodynamical interactions with the hot gas around the black hole from a ballistic orbit of an initially compact cloud with moderate velocity dispersion. The constant luminosity and the increasingly stretched appearance of the head of G2 in the position-velocity plane, without a central peak, is not consistent with several proposed models with continuous gas release from an initially bound zone around a faint star on the same orbit as G2.
Gas-rich minor mergers contribute significantly to the gas reservoir of early-type galaxies (ETGs) at low redshift, yet the star formation efficiency (SFE; the star formation rate divided by the molecular gas mass) appears to be strongly suppressed following some of these events, in contrast to the more well-known merger-driven starbursts. We present observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) of six ETGs, which have each recently undergone a gas-rich minor merger, as evidenced by their disturbed stellar morphologies. These galaxies were selected because they exhibit extremely low SFEs. We use the resolving power of ALMA to study the morphology and kinematics of the molecular gas. The majority of our galaxies exhibit spatial and kinematical irregularities, such as detached gas clouds, warps, and other asymmetries. These asymmetries support the interpretation that the suppression of the SFE is caused by dynamical effects stabilizing the gas against gravitational collapse. Through kinematic modelling we derive high velocity dispersions and Toomre Q stability parameters for the gas, but caution that such measurements in edge-on galaxies suffer from degeneracies. We estimate merger ages to be about 100 Myr based on the observed disturbances in the gas distribution. Furthermore, we determine that these galaxies lie, on average, two orders of magnitude below the Kennicutt–Schmidt relation for star-forming galaxies as well as below the relation for relaxed ETGs. We discuss potential dynamical processes responsible for this strong suppression of star formation surface density at fixed molecular gas surface density.
First release of version 2 of the Energy Exascale Earth System Model. The atmosphere component remains EAM. Major changes since version 1 include: all column-physics parameterizations are computed on a separate grid that has approximately half the number of points of the dynamics grid, a new nonhydrostatic dynamical core (running in hydrostatic mode) with semi-Lagrangian tracer transport, CLUBB updated from v1 to v2, a new convective trigger (dCAPE/ULL) based on the dynamic Convective Available Potential Energy (CAPE) (dCAPE) and the Unrestricted Launch Level (ULL) concepts is used in ZM. minimum cloud droplet number changed, gravity wave drag energy conservation fixed and new tunings used, dust emission size distribution changed to emit more coarse dust particles The land component is still ELM. Major changes since version 1 include: using SNICAR-AD for radiation in snow to match the sea-ice model and fixing bugs in snow compaction and water state calculation. The ocean component remains MPAS-ocean. Major change since version 1 include: Redi isopycnal mixing has been updated, tested, and tuned in combination with the Gent-McWilliams parameterization, a sign error was fixed in the 3rd-order flux routines, the mesh used in low-resolution coupled cases was modified and the time steps adjusted, new regionally refined meshes were created, one focused on North America and another on the Southern Ocean, including ice shelf cavities. The sea-ice component remains MPAS-seaice. Major changes since version 1 include: A new heat- and freshwater-conserving coupling of frazil ice, turning off of SSH filtering, addition of SNICAR-AD and snow grain aging. The land-ice component remains MPAS-Albany-landIce (MALI) and is a static ice sheet. There is more out-of-the-box support for cryosphere configurations including the new regionally refined configuration around Antarctica with ice shelf cavities. The river model is MOSART. The half-degree river mesh was redone so it no longer treats Black and Caspian seas as ocean. The coupler remains cpl7/MCT. Major changes since version 1 include handling of ice shelf melt fluxes (heat / freshwater exchange with the ocean), and data icebergs. All components allow regional refinement of their meshes and two separate example of refinement, one in and around North America and one around Antarctica and the Southern Ocean, are provided.
We report that this study examines historical simulations of ENSO in the E3SM-1-0, CESM2, and GFDL-CM4 climate models, provided by three leading U.S. modeling centers as part of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 6 (CMIP6). These new models have made substantial progress in simulating ENSO’s key features, including: amplitude; timescale; spatial patterns; phase-locking; spring persistence barrier; and recharge oscillator dynamics. However, some important features of ENSO are still a challenge to simulate. In the central and eastern equatorial Pacific, the models’ weaker-than-observed subsurface zonal current anomalies and zonal temperature gradient anomalies serve to weaken the nonlinear zonal advection of subsurface temperatures, leading to insufficient warm/cold asymmetry of ENSO’s sea surface temperature anomalies (SSTA). In the western equatorial Pacific, the models’ excessive simulated zonal SST gradients amplify their zonal temperature advection, causing their SSTA to extend farther west than observed. The models underestimate both ENSO’s positive dynamic feedbacks (due to insufficient zonal wind stress responses to SSTA) and its thermodynamic damping (due to insufficient convective cloud shading of eastern Pacific SSTA during warm events); compensation between these biases leads to realistic linear growth rates for ENSO, but for somewhat unrealistic reasons. The models also exhibit stronger-than-observed feedbacks onto eastern equatorial Pacific SSTAs from thermocline depth anomalies, which accelerates the transitions between events and shortens the simulated ENSO period relative to observations. Implications for diagnosing and simulating ENSO in climate models are discussed.
The Radar Wind Profiler for Cloud Forecasting at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) [http://www.arm.gov/campaigns/osc2013rwpcf] campaign was scheduled to take place from 15 July 2013 through 15 July 2015 (or until shipped for the next U.S. Department of Energy Atmospheric Radiation Measurement [ARM] Climate Research Facility first Mobile Facility [AMF1] deployment). The campaign involved the deployment of the AMF1 Scintec 915 MHz Radar Wind Profiler (RWP) at BNL, in conjunction with several other ARM, BNL and National Weather Service (NWS) instruments. The two main scientific foci of the campaign were: 1) To provide profiles of the horizontal wind to be used to test and validate short-term cloud advection forecasts for solar-energy applications and 2) to provide vertical profiling capabilities for the study of dynamics (i.e., vertical velocity) and hydrometeors in winter storms. This campaign was a serendipitous opportunity that arose following the deployment of the RWP at the Two-Column Aerosol Project (TCAP) campaign in Cape Cod, Massachusetts and restriction from participation in the Green Ocean Amazon 2014/15 (GoAmazon 2014/15) campaign due to radio-frequency allocation restriction for international deployments. The RWP arrived at BNL in the fall of 2013, but deployment was delayed until fall of 2014 as work/safety planning and site preparation were completed. The RWP further encountered multiple electrical failures, which eventually required several shipments of instrument power supplies and the final amplifier to the vendor to complete repairs. Data collection began in late January 2015. The operational modes of the RWP were changed such that in addition to collecting traditional profiles of the horizontal wind, a vertically pointing mode was also included for the purpose of precipitation sensing and estimation of vertical velocities. The RWP operated well until the end of the campaign in July 2015 and collected observations for more than 20 precipitation events.
Presented at the 2016 IEEE International Symposium on Technologies for Homeland Security (HST), this LDRD-funded research received a Best Paper award, the highest award presented at the conference. The research focused on developing, implementing, and testing a novel computer network operations architecture that enables proactive defense by managing and monitoring enterprise resource allocations and network flows. The architecture leverages three emerging concepts: software-defined networks, cloud computing, and deception, to enable the detection and identification of anomalous access and intrusions to adjust to the dynamic nature of the adversary and to provide a mechanism to discover and react to the adversary’s attacks in a methodical and proactive manner. Additionally, the work allows network defenders to gather information on an adversary’s tools, tactics and procedures, providing insight into the “what, why, and how” of the adversary’s operations. A summary of the work presented at IEEE can be found at http://tiny.sandia.gov/8d8lu.
An analysis is reported of the pattern of radial growth of an extended spoke observed in the Voyager 2 low-resolution Saturn ring 'movie'. The feature is atypical in that it orbits Saturn at the corotational rate for 1-1/2 hours after the onset of its formation and then undergoes a 40-min acceleration to sustained Keplerian velocities. A correlation between the dynamical phases and the radial growth modes of the spoke is observed, one that seems consistent with the plasma cloud model of spoke formation and evolution proposed by Goertz and Morfill (1983), taken in the limit of high charge density.
Characteristics of temporal variability in the California Current system are analyzed using a 30-month time series of CZCS imagery. About 20-25 percent of the variance is produced by a periodic annual cycle with peak values in winter. Analysis of ship-based chlorophyll measurements indicates that the winter peak is only characteristic of the upper portion of the euphotic zone and that total water column chlorophyll peaks during the spring upwelling season. Satellite studies of intraannual variability are modulated by strong 5- to 6-day oscillation in the availability of usable imagery, resulting from a combination of satellite orbital dynamics, which produces images of the study area roughly 4 out of every 6 days, and an oscillation in cloud cover, which controls the availability of clear imagery. The cloud cover oscillation, which is also present in coastal winds, undoubtedly affects the ocean surface and biases the data obtained by satellites. Analysis of data using a 5-day time step indicates that the predominant mode of nonseasonal variability is characterized by in-phase fluctuations throughout the southern and central California coastal region.
The ongoing aim of the research is to investigate the dynamical and physical evolution of interplanetary dust particles in order to produce a detailed global model of the zodiacal cloud and its constituent components that is capable of predicting thermal fluxes in mid-infrared wave bands to an accuracy of 1% or better; with the additional aim of exploiting this research as a basis for predicting structure in exozodiacal clouds that may be signatures of unseen planets.
Global wind observations are fundamental for studying weather and climate dynamics and for operational forecasting. Most wind measurements come from atmospheric motion vectors (AMVs) by tracking the displacement of cloud or water vapor features. These AMVs generally rely on thermal infrared (IR) techniques for their height assignments, which are subject to large uncertainties in the presence of weak or reversed vertical temperature gradients near the planetary boundary layer (PBL)and tropopause folds. Stereo imaging can overcome the height assignment problem using geometric parallax for feature height determination. In this study we develop a stereo 3D-Wind algorithm to simultaneously retrieve AMV and height from geostationary (GEO) and low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite imagery and apply it to collocated Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES)and Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) imagery. The new algorithm improves AMV and height relative to products from GOES or MISR alone, with an estimated accuracy of <0.5 m/s in AMV and <200 m in height with 2.2 km sampling. The algorithm can be generalized to other LEO-GEO or LEO-LEO combinations for greater spatiotemporal coverage. The technique demonstrated with MISR and GOES has important implications for future high-quality AMV observations, for which a low-cost constellation of CubeSats can play a vital role.
The regulation of galactic-scale star formation rates (SFRs) is a basic problem for theories of galaxy formation and evolution: which processes are responsible for making observed star formation rates so inefficient compared to maximal rates of gas content divided by dynamical timescale? Here we study the effect of magnetic fields of different strengths on the evolution of giant molecular clouds (GMCs) within a kiloparsec patch of a disk galaxy and resolving scales down to ≃0.5 pc. Including an empirically motivated prescription for star formation from dense gas (n{sub H}>10{sup 5} cm{sup −3}) at an efficiency of 2% per local free-fall time, we derive the amount of suppression of star formation by magnetic fields compared to the nonmagnetized case. We find GMC fragmentation, dense clump formation, and SFR can be significantly affected by the inclusion of magnetic fields, especially in our strongest investigated B-field case of 80 μG. However, our chosen kiloparsec-scale region, extracted from a global galaxy simulation, happens to contain a starbursting cloud complex that is only modestly affected by these magnetic fields and likely requires internal star formation feedback to regulate its SFR.
The Amazon experiences fires every year, and the resulting biomass burning aerosols, together with cloud particles, influence the penetration of sunlight through the atmosphere, increasing the ratio of diffuse to direct photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) reaching the vegetation canopy and thereby potentially increasing ecosystem productivity. In this study, we use the NASA Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS) model with coupled aerosol, cloud, radiation, and ecosystem modules to investigate the impact of Amazon biomass burning aerosols on ecosystem productivity, as well as the role of the Amazon's clouds in tempering this impact. The study focuses on a 7-year period (2010–2016) during which the Amazon experienced a variety of dynamic environments (e.g., La Niña, normal years, and El Niño). The direct radiative impact of biomass burning aerosols on ecosystem productivity – called here the aerosol diffuse radiation fertilization effect – is found to increase Amazonian gross primary production (GPP) by 2.6 % via a 3.8 % increase in diffuse PAR (DFPAR) despite a 5.4 % decrease in direct PAR (DRPAR) on multiyear average during burning seasons. On a monthly basis, this increase in GPP can be as large as 9.9 % (occurring in August 2010). Consequently, the net primary production (NPP) in the Amazon is increased by 1.5 %, or ~92 Tg C yr -1 – equivalent to ~37 % of the average carbon lost due to Amazon fires over the 7 years considered. Clouds, however, strongly regulate the effectiveness of the aerosol diffuse radiation fertilization effect. The efficiency of this fertilization effect is the highest in cloud-free conditions and linearly decreases with increasing cloud amount until the cloud fraction reaches ~0.8, at which point the aerosol-influenced light changes from being a stimulator to an inhibitor of plant growth. Nevertheless, interannual changes in the overall strength of the aerosol diffuse radiation fertilization effect are primarily controlled by the large interannual changes in biomass burning aerosols rather than by changes in cloudiness during the studied period.
Based on kinematic data observed for very young, massive clusters that appear to be in dynamical equilibrium, it has recently been argued that such young systems are examples of where the early residual gas expulsion did not happen or had no dynamical effect. The intriguing scenario of a star cluster forming through a single starburst has thereby been challenged. Choosing the case of the R136 cluster of the Large Magellanic Cloud, the most cited one in this context, we perform direct N-body computations that mimic the early evolution of this cluster including the gas-removal phase (on a thermal timescale). Our calculations show that under plausible initial conditions which are consistent with observational data, a large fraction (>60%) of a gas-expelled, expanding R136-like cluster is bound to regain dynamical equilibrium by its current age. Therefore, the recent measurements of velocity dispersion in the inner regions of R136, which indicate that the cluster is in dynamical equilibrium, are consistent with an earlier substantial gas expulsion of R136 followed by a rapid re-virialization (in Almost-Equal-To 1 Myr). Additionally, we find that the less massive Galactic NGC 3603 Young Cluster (NYC), with a substantially longer re-virialization time, is likely to be found to have deviated from dynamical equilibrium at its present age ( Almost-Equal-To 1 Myr). The recently obtained stellar proper motions in the central part of the NYC indeed suggest this and are consistent with the computed models. This work significantly extends previous models of the Orion Nebula Cluster which already demonstrated that the re-virialization time of young post-gas-expulsion clusters decreases with increasing pre-expulsion density.
We present results from a comprehensive submillimeter spectral survey toward the source Orion South, based on data obtained with the Heterodyne Instrument for the Far-Infrared instrument on board the Herschel Space Observatory , covering the frequency range of 480 to 1900 GHz. We detect 685 spectral lines with signal-to-noise ratios (S/Ns) > 3 σ , originating from 52 different molecular and atomic species. We model each of the detected species assuming conditions of Local Thermodynamic Equilibrium. This analysis provides an estimate of the physical conditions of Orion South (column density, temperature, source size, and V {sub LSR}). We find evidence for three different cloud components: a cool ( T {sub ex} ∼ 20–40 K), spatially extended (>60″), and quiescent (Δ V {sub FWHM} ∼ 4 km s{sup -1}) component; a warmer ( T {sub ex} ∼ 80–100 K), less spatially extended (∼30″), and dynamic (Δ V {sub FWHM} ∼ 8 km s{sup -1}) component, which is likely affected by embedded outflows; and a kinematically distinct region ( T {sub ex} > 100 K; V {sub LSR} ∼ 8 km s{sup -1}), dominated by emission from species that trace ultraviolet irradiation, likely at the surface of the cloud. We find little evidence for the existence of a chemically distinct “hot-core” component, likely due to the small filling factor of the hot core or hot cores within the Herschel beam. We find that the chemical composition of the gas in the cooler, quiescent component of Orion South more closely resembles that of the quiescent ridge in Orion-KL. The gas in the warmer, dynamic component, however, more closely resembles that of the Compact Ridge and Plateau regions of Orion-KL, suggesting that higher temperatures and shocks also have an influence on the overall chemistry of Orion South.