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At least 541 records · Page 30

Application of VISSR Atmospheric Sounder (VAS) data

Sounding data which were derived from VAS radiance measurements and anticipated increased time and space resolution of the mesoscale environment are outlined. The new data presents problems which are not encounted when using conventional measurements because of the irregular spacing of the data, biases in the data, and errors due to cloud contaminated measurements. These problems are addressed and an analysis technique which utilizes LFM guess fields to produce a consistent four dimensional data set which describes the mesoscale environment over a large area is presented.

Jedlovec, G. J.↗

Waveform inversion of mantle Love waves - The Born seismogram approach

Normal mode theory, extended to the slightly laterally heterogeneous earth by the first-order Born approximation, is applied to the waveform inversion of mantle Love waves (200-500 sec) for the earth's lateral heterogeneity at l = 2 and a spherically symmetric anelasticity (Q sub mu) structure. The data are from the Global Digital Seismograph Network (GDSN). The l = 2 pattern is very similar to the results of other studies that used either different methods, such as phase velocity measurements and multiplet location measurements, or a different data set, such as mantle Rayleigh waves from different instruments. The results are carefully analyzed for variance reduction and are most naturally explained by heterogeneity in the upper 420 km. Because of the poor resolution of the data set for the deep interior, however, a fairly large heterogeneity in the transition zones, of the order of up to 3.5 percent in shear wave velocity, is allowed. It is noteworthy that Love waves of this period range can not constrain the structure below 420 km and thus any model presented by similar studies below this depth are likely to be constrained by Rayleigh waves (spheroidal modes) only.

Tanimoto, T.↗

Structural dynamic measurement practices for turbomachinery at the NASA Lewis Research Center

Methods developed for measuring blade and rotor-shaft system response include optical systems, transient instruments, and special digital data processing equipment. Optical methods offer some distinct benefits for blade vibration measurement. Transient and steady state measurements of the response of rotor-shaft systems strongly affect analytical methods development. Digital computing systems allow processing of large volumes of high speed data from rotating blade sets. Also, digital systems develop useful vibration response signatures from randomly excited systems. Research facilities include the spin rig facility and the transient rotor response lab.

Kiraly, L. J.↗

Aerodynamics of Seeing on Large Transport Aircraft

Efforts were undertaken to obtain a set of data that examined the level of turbulence and the scale sizes in the shear layer existing over the fence quieted cavity on the NASA-Ames Kuiper Airborne Observatory (KAO). These data were to be taken during the present study and compared with data taken from previous wind tunnel experiments, for which both aerodynamic and direct optical measurements were made. The data obtained during the present study were presented and discussed in light of their impact on the quality of optical images, that is, seeing through the shear layer. In addition, scaling relationships were presented that allow optical data obtained in one aerodynamic environment to be estimated for another one at perhaps different Mach numbers, scale sizes, or aircraft configurations.

Rose, William C.↗

Computer Data-Entry System Facilitates Proofreading

Visual optical-electronic display for encoding and measurement (VODEM) is system of computer data-entry and display equipment and associated software. Designed to reduce significantly rate of errors in text or other data entered manually or by optical character-recognition equipment and eases task of proofreading those data. Accuracy increased and stress reduced. Provides head-on display including two texts or sets of data to be compared. Developed in large-screen and small-screen version differing mainly in display equipment. Large-screen version includes cathode-ray-tube video display; small-screen version includes smaller liquid-crystal display mounted on computer-controlled x-y drive.

Woo, John, Jr.↗

Visualizing the semantic content of large text databases using text maps

A methodology for generating text map representations of the semantic content of text databases is presented. Text maps provide a graphical metaphor for conceptualizing and visualizing the contents and data interrelationships of large text databases. Described are a set of experiments conducted against the TIPSTER corpora of Wall Street Journal articles. These experiments provide an introduction to current work in the representation and visualization of documents by way of their semantic content.

Combs, Nathan↗

Deriving earth science products from SSM/I

A few of the major accomplishments during the second phase include: (1) all three Special Sensor Microwave Imagers (SSM/I's: F08, F10, and F11) have been cross-calibrated; (2) a very large, quality-controlled, collocated SSM/I and radiosonde data set has been produced; (3) the SSM/I-radiosonde and SSM/I-buoy data sets have been used to calibrate the SSM/I ocean retrieval algorithm; (4) ocean products have been produced for both F10 and F11 SSM/I for 1991-1993; (5) the SSM/I-buoy data set was used to better determine the variation of the ocean T(sub B) with wind direction; and (6) it was demonstrated that under high wind conditions, wind direction information can be obtained from individual SSM/I observations.

Wentz, Frank J.↗

Interactive atmospheric data access via high-speed networks

The VIS-5D system running on large workstations lets scientists interactively explore atmospheric simulation data sets containing up to 5 x 10(exp 7) points. A distributed version of VIS-5D running on a workstation and a supercomputer will make it possible to interactively explore data sets containing up to 10(exp 10) points. Wide area gigabit networks will bring this capability to scientists at most academic and research institutions. This software will help scientists to interactively develop numerical models of atmospheric phenomena.

Hibbard, William↗

Microgravity Science Glovebox

The Microgravity Science Glovebox (MSG) is a versatile research facility designed to permit the flexibility of crew manipulated investigations on the International Space Station (ISS). The MSG configuration has been planned around the concept of an experimental workstation where a variety of experiments can be installed and operated in a fashion very similar to their operation in a ground-based laboratory. The approach has been to provide a large working volume with a significant set of power, data and imaging resources, all enclosed, but accessible by the crew through sealed glove ports. This arrangement allows the advantage of interactive experimentation without unduly compromising the experiment design with restrictions imposed by protective and containment challenges that normally arise in manned space-flight laboratories. In addition, the data and imaging resources allow cooperative monitoring of experiment progress between the crew and ground-based scientists. As ISS utilization evolves, the MSG is scheduled to become a major pathfinder for developing and exploiting the scientific advantages of truly enabling the coupling of experimentation in space with an evaluative response from the crew and investigators.

Roark, Walt↗

Atmospheric/Space Environment Support Lessons Learned Regarding Aerospace Vehicle Design and Operations

In modern government and aerospace industry institutions the necessity of controlling current year costs often leads to high mobility in the technical workforce, "one-deep" technical capabilities, and minimal mentoring for young engineers. Thus, formal recording, use, and teaching of lessons learned are especially important in the maintenance and improvement of current knowledge and development of new technologies, regardless of the discipline area. Within the NASA Technical Standards Program Website http://standards.nasa.gov there is a menu item entitled "Lessons Learned/Best Practices". It contains links to a large number of engineering and technical disciplines related data sets that contain a wealth of lessons learned information based on past experiences. This paper has provided a small sample of lessons learned relative to the atmospheric and space environment. There are many more whose subsequent applications have improved our knowledge of the atmosphere and space environment, and the application of this knowledge to the engineering and operations for a variety of aerospace programs.

Vaughan, William W.↗

Investigation of water vapor motion winds from geostationary satellites

Water vapor imagery from geostationary satellites has been available for over a decade. These data are used extensively by operational analysts and forecasters, mainly in a qualitative mode (Weldon and Holmes 1991). In addition to qualitative applications, motions deduced in animated water vapor imagery can be used to infer wind fields in cloudless regimes, thereby augmenting the information provided by cloud-drift wind vectors. Early attempts at quantifying the data by tracking features in water vapor imagery met with modest success (Stewart et al. 1985; Hayden and Stewart 1987). More recently, automated techniques have been developed and refined, and have resulted in upper-level wind observations comparable in quality to current operational cloud-tracked winds (Laurent 1993). In a recent study by Velden et al. (1993) it was demonstrated that wind sets derived from Meteosat-3 (M-3) water vapor imagery can provide important environmental wind information in data void areas surrounding tropical cyclones, and can positively impact objective track forecasts. M-3 was repositioned to 75W by the European Space Agency in 1992 in order to provide complete coverage of the Atlantic Ocean. Data from this satellite are being transmitted to the U.S. for operational use. Compared with the current GOES-7 (G-7) satellite (positioned near 112W), the M-3 water vapor channel contains a superior horizontal resolution (5 km vs. 16 km ). In this paper, we examine wind sets derived using automated procedures from both GOES-7 and Meteosat-3 full disk water vapor imagery in order to assess this data as a potentially important source of large-scale wind information. As part of a product demonstration wind sets were produced twice a day at CIMSS during a six-week period in March and April (1994). These data sets are assessed in terms of geographic coverage, statistical accuracy, and meteorological impact through preliminary results of numerical model forecast studies.

Velden, Christopher S.↗

Global variability of water vapor and condensate from SSM/I

In the three years since its launch, the Special Sensor Microwave Imager (SSM/I) provided the beginnings of a data set crucial to the study of the Earth's global hydrologic cycle. Investigations with SSM/I centered largely on two themes: (1) an analysis of the variability in atmospheric moisture as a signature of dynamic and kinematic processes, and (2) development of high quality data sets for determining moisture balance and, eventually, diabatic heating on regional and planetary scales. To date, most of the emphasis has been on the precipitable water field since algorithms for this quantity appear to be the most mature. In addition, researchers began work with liquid water, precipitating ice and ocean surface wind stress fields. The retrievals used in these studies are from algorithms developed by Wentz (RSS Tech Rpt. 1989) and Spencer (1988 JTECH).

Robertson, Franklin R.↗

A search for a dynamical attractor in Cygnus X-1

A method used for searching for low-dimensional attractors in fluctuating signals is applied to the aperiodicity observed in Cyg X-1. The analysis technique for determining the dimension of an attractor given its light curve, and the practical limitations in applying the technique, are described. The requirement of large amounts of low-noise data is found to be very important in using the technique. No low-dimensional attractor is found for the set of Cyg X-1 data used, but evidence of an attractor with large dimension may be present.

Lochner, James C.↗

The Use of CASES-97 Observations to Assess and Parameterize the Impact of Land-Surface Heterogeneity on Area-Average Surface Heat Fluxes for Large-Scale Coupled Atmosphere-Hydrology Models

To understand the effects of land-surface heterogeneity and the interactions between the land-surface and the planetary boundary layer at different scales, we develop a multiscale data set. This data set, based on the Cooperative Atmosphere-Surface Exchange Study (CASES97) observations, includes atmospheric, surface, and sub-surface observations obtained from a dense observation network covering a large region on the order of 100 km. We use this data set to drive three land-surface models (LSMs) to generate multi-scale (with three resolutions of 1, 5, and 10 kilometers) gridded surface heat flux maps for the CASES area. Upon validating these flux maps with measurements from surface station and aircraft, we utilize them to investigate several approaches for estimating the area-integrated surface heat flux for the CASES97 domain of 71x74 square kilometers, which is crucial for land surface model development/validation and area water and energy budget studies. This research is aimed at understanding the relative contribution of random turbulence versus organized mesoscale circulations to the area-integrated surface flux at the scale of 100 kilometers, and identifying the most important effective parameters for characterizing the subgrid-scale variability for large-scale atmosphere-hydrology models.

Chen, Fei↗

An Estimate of Solar Wind Velocity Profiles in a Coronal Hole and a Coronal Streamer Area (6-40 R(radius symbol)

Total electron content data obtained from the Ulysses Solar Corona Experiment (SCE) in 1991 were used to select two data sets, one associated with a coronal hole and the other with coronal streamer crossings. (This is largely equatorial data shortly after solar maximum.) The solar wind velocity profile is estimated for these areas.

solar corona solar wind coronal streamer Ulysses↗

A compressed marine data set for geomagnetic field modeling

Some 13 million scalar magnetic field data points that have been collected from the world's ocean areas reside in the collection of the National Geophysical Data Center. In order to derive a suitable data set for modeling the geomagnetic field of the earth, each ship track is divided into 220 km segments. The distribution of the reduced data in position, time and local time is discussed. The along-track filtering process described has proved to be an effective method of condensing large numbers of shipborne magnetic data into a manageable and meaningful data set for field modeling. This process also provides the benefits of smoothing short-wavelength crystal anomalies, discarding data recorded during magnetically noisy periods, and assigning reasonable error estimates to be utilized in the least squares modeling.

Langel, R. A.↗

Large-scale kinetic energy spectra from Eulerian analysis of EOLE wind data

A data set of 56,000 winds determined from the horizontal displacements of EOLE balloons at the 200 mb level in the Southern Hemisphere during the period October 1971-February 1972 is utilized for the computation of planetary- and synoptic-scale kinetic energy space spectra. However, the random distribution of measurements in space and time presents some problems for the spectral analysis. Two different approaches are used, i.e., a harmonic analysis of daily wind values at equi-distant points obtained by space-time interpolation of the data, and a correlation method using the direct measurements. Both methods give similar results for small wavenumbers, but the second is more accurate for higher wavenumbers (k above or equal to 10). The spectra show a maximum at wavenumbers 5 and 6 due to baroclinic instability and then decrease for high wavenumbers up to wavenumber 35 (which is the limit of the analysis), according to the inverse power law k to the negative p, with p close to 3.

Desbois, M.↗

Reduction of Marine Magnetic Data for Modeling the Main Field of the Earth

The marine data set archived at the National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC) consists of shipborne surveys conducted by various institutes worldwide. This data set spans four decades (1953, 1958, 1960-1987), and contains almost 13 million total intensity observations. These are often less than 1 km apart. These typically measure seafloor spreading anomalies with amplitudes of several hundred nanotesla (nT) which, since they originate in the crust, interfere with main field modeling. The source for these short wavelength features are confined within the magnetic crust (i.e., sources above the Curie isotherm). The main field, on the other hand, is of much longer wavelengths and originates within the earth's core. It is desirable to extract the long wavelength information from the marine data set for use in modeling the main field. This can be accomplished by averaging the data along the track. In addition, those data which are measured during periods of magnetic disturbance can be identified and eliminated. Thus, it should be possible to create a data set which has worldwide data distribution, spans several decades, is not contaminated with short wavelengths of the crustal field or with magnetic storm noise, and which is limited enough in size to be manageable for the main field modeling. The along track filtering described above has proved to be an effective means of condensing large numbers of shipborne magnetic data into a manageable and meaningful data set for main field modeling. Its simplicity and ability to adequately handle varying spatial and sampling constraints has outweighed consideration of more sophisticated approaches. This filtering technique also provides the benefits of smoothing out short wavelength crustal anomalies, discarding data recorded during magnetically noisy periods, and assigning reasonable error estimates to be used in the least square modeling. A useful data set now exists which spans 1953-1987.

Baldwin, R. T.↗