A possible method of correcting low frequency radio observations for ionospheric absorption
Two-antenna interferometer for absorption correction of low frequency ionospheric radio observations
IONOSPHERIC ABSORPTION↗
SEARCH · Engineering Papers
Results for “Observational methods”
Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.
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A method to correct the calibration shift observed in a Nimbus medium resolution infrared radiometer on the NASA Convair 990 aircraft
Correction equations for calibration shift observed in Nimbus Medium Resolution Infrared Radiometer aboard NASA Convair 990 aircraft
CONVAIR CV-990 AIRCRAFT↗
Bistatic-radar studies of the moon with Explorer 35. Part 2 - Methods of data reduction and reduced observations Final report
Bistatic-radar data reduction and Explorer 35 reflectivity and bandwidth tables with polarization spectra
Simpson, R. A.↗
Acceleration of convergence of vector sequences
A general approach to the construction of convergence acceleration methods for vector sequence is proposed. Using this approach, one can generate some known methods, such as the minimal polynomial extrapolation, the reduced rank extrapolation, and the topological epsilon algorithm, and also some new ones. Some of the new methods are easier to implement than the known methods and are observed to have similar numerical properties. The convergence analysis of these new methods is carried out, and it is shown that they are especially suitable for accelerating the convergence of vector sequences that are obtained when one solves linear systems of equations iteratively. A stability analysis is also given, and numerical examples are provided. The convergence and stability properties of the topological epsilon algorithm are likewise given.
Sidi, A.↗
Acceleration of convergence of vector sequences
A general approach to the construction of convergence acceleration methods for vector sequence is proposed. Using this approach, one can generate some known methods, such as the minimal polynomial extrapolation, the reduced rank extrapolation, and the topological epsilon algorithm, and also some new ones. Some of the new methods are easier to implement than the known methods and are observed to have similar numerical properties. The convergence analysis of these new methods is carried out, and it is shown that they are especially suitable for accelerating the convergence of vector sequences that are obtained when one solves linear systems of equations iterative. A stability analysis is also given, and numerical examples are provided. The convergence and stability properties of the topological epsilon algorithm are likewise given.
Sidi, A.↗
Development of Large Area Emulsion Chamber Methods with a Super Conducting Magnet for Observation of Cosmic Ray Nuclei from 1 GeV to 1,000 TeV (Emulsion Techniques)
The research developed the fundamental techniques of the emulsion chamber methods that permit measurements of the composition and energy spectra of cosmic rays at energies ranging from 1 GeV/n to over 1,000 TeV/n. The research program consisted of exploring new principles and techniques in measuring very high energy cosmic nuclei with large-area emulsion chambers for high statistics experiments. These tasks have been accomplished and their use was essential in successful analysis of the balloon-borne emulsion chamber experiments up to 10(exp 14) eV. It also provided the fundamental technologies for designing large-area detectors that are aimed at measuring the composition at above 1015 eV region. The latter is now partially succeeded by a NASA Mission Concept, Advanced Cosmic Composition Experiments on the Space Station (ACCESS). The cosmic ray group at the University of Alabama in Huntsville has performed technological R & D as well as contributing to the Japanese-American-Emulsion-Chamber-Experiments (JACEE) Collaboration with the regular data analysis. While primary research support for other institutions' efforts in the JACEE experiments came from NSF and DOE, primary support for the University of Alabama in Huntsville was this contract. Supplemental tasks to standardize the data base and hardware upgrades (automatized microscope) had this institutions cooperation. Investigation of new techniques in this program consisted of development of a fast calorimetry, magnetic/scattering selection of high momentum tracks for a pairmeter, and high statistics momentum measurements for low energy nuclei (E < 1 TeV/n). The highest energy calorimetry and a pairmeter have been considered as strawman instruments by the GOAL (Galactic Origin and Acceleration Limit) proposal of the NASA Cosmic Ray Working Group for long- duration balloon flights. We accomplished the objectives of the GOAL program with three circumpolar, Antarctic JACEE balloon flights during 1992 - 1994.
Takahashi, Yoshiyuki↗
Successful Hybrid Approach to Visual and Video Observations of the 1999 Leonid Storm
A new hybrid technique of visual and video meteor observations is described. The method proved particularly effective for airborne observations of meteor shower activity. Results from the 1999 Leonid Multi-Instrument Aircraft Campaign are presented, and the profile shape of the 1999 Leonid storm is discussed in relation to meteor shower models. We find that the storm is best described with a Lorentz profile. Application to past meteor outbursts shows that the cui,rent multi-trailet model of a dust trail is slightly shifted and we crossed deeper into the 1899 epoch trallet than expected.
Jenniskens, Peter↗
Identifying Ultra Low Frequency Waves in the Lunar Plasma Environment Using Trajectory Analysis and Resonance Conditions
Abstract Recent studies show that localized crustal magnetic fields on the lunar surface can reflect a significant portion of the incoming solar wind protons. These reflected ions can drive a wide range of plasma waves. It is difficult to determine the intrinsic properties of low-frequency waves with single-spacecraft observations, which can be heavily Doppler shifted. We describe a technique to combine trajectory analysis of reflected protons with the Doppler shift and resonance conditions to identify ultralow-frequency waves at the Moon. On 31 January 2014 plasma waves were detected by one of the Acceleration, Reconnection, Turbulence and Electrodynamics of the Moon's Interaction with the Sun (ARTEMIS) probes as it approached the lunar wake; these waves were not detected by the second ARTEMIS probe located upstream in the undisturbed solar wind. The observed waves had a frequency below the local ion cyclotron frequency and had right-hand circular polarization in the reference frame of the Moon. By solving the Doppler shift and the cyclotron resonance equations, we determined the conditions for reflected ions to excite the observed waves. Simulated trajectories of reflected ions correspond to ARTEMIS ion observations and support the hypothesis that reflected ions are the primary driver of the waves. By combining trajectory analysis with the resonance conditions, we identify scenarios where ions that satisfy the resonance conditions are present in the right location to generate the observed waves. Using this method, we can uniquely identify the observed waves as upstream propagating right-hand polarized waves, subject to the assumption that they are generated by cyclotron resonance with ions.
Magnetic↗
Reduction of observed airplane performance to standard conditions
This report shows how the actual performance of an airplane varies with air temperature when the pressure is held constant. This leads to comparatively simple methods of reducing observed data to standard conditions. The new methods which may be considered exact for all practical purposes, have been used by the Navy Department for about a year, with very satisfactory results. The report also contains a brief historical review of the important papers which have been published on the subject of performance reduction, and traces the development of the standard atmosphere. (author)
Diehl, Walter S↗
Monitoring CO 2 Storage at Cranfield, Mississippi with Time-Lapse Offset VSP – Using Integration and Modeling to Reduce Uncertainty
A time-lapse Offset Vertical Seismic Profile (OVSP) data set was acquired as part of a subsurface monitoring program for geologic sequestration of CO 2 . The storage site at Cranfield, near Natchez, Mississippi, is part of a detailed area study (DAS) site for geologic carbon sequestration operated by the U.S. Dept. of Energy’s Southeast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (SECARB). The DAS site includes three boreholes, an injection well and two monitoring wells. The project team selected the DAS site to examine CO 2 sequestration multiphase fluid flow and pressure at the interwell scale in a brine reservoir. The time-lapse (TL) OVSP was part of an integrated monitoring program that included well logs, crosswell seismic, electrical resistance tomography and 4D surface seismic. The goals of the OVSP were to detect the CO 2 induced change in seismic response, give information about the spatial distribution of CO 2 near the injection well and to help tie the high-resolution borehole monitoring to the 4D surface data. The VSP data were acquired in well CFU 31-F1, which is the ~3200 m deep CO 2 injection well at the DAS site. A preinjection survey was recorded in late 2009 with injection beginning in December 2009, and a post injection survey was conducted in Nov 2010 following injection of about 250 kT of CO 2 . The sensor array for both surveys was a 50-level, 3-component, Sercel MaxiWave system with 15 m (49 ft) spacing between levels. The source for both surveys was an accelerated weight drop, with different source trucks used for the two surveys. Consistent time-lapse processing was applied to both data sets. Time-lapse processing generated difference corridor stacks to investigate CO 2 induced reflection amplitude changes from each source point. Corridor stacks were used for amplitude analysis to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) for each shot point. Spatial variation in reflectivity (used to ‘map’ the plume) was similar in magnitude to the corridor stacks but, due to relatively lower S/N, the results were less consistent and more sensitive to processing and therefore are not presented. We examined the overall time-lapse repeatability of the OVSP data using three methods, the NRMS and Predictability (Pred) measures of Kragh and Christie (2002) and the signal-to-distortion ratio (SDR) method of Cantillo (2011). Because time-lapse noise was comparable to the observed change, multiple methods were used to analyze data reliability. The reflections from the top and base reservoir were identified on the corridor stacks by correlation with a synthetic response generated from the well logs. A consistent change in the corridor stack amplitudes from pre- to post-CO 2 injection was found for both the top and base reservoir reflections on all ten shot locations analyzed. In addition to the well-log synthetic response, a finite-difference elastic wave propagation model was built based on rock/fluid properties obtained from well logs, with CO 2 induced changes guided by time-lapse crosswell seismic tomography (Ajo-Franklin, et al., 2013) acquired at the DAS site. Time-lapse seismic tomography indicated that two reservoir zones were affected by the flood. The modeling established that interpretation of the VSP trough and peak event amplitudes as reflectivity from the top and bottom of reservoir is appropriate even with possible tuning effects. Importantly, this top/base change gives confidence in an interpretation that these changes arise from within the reservoir, not from bounding lithology. The modeled time-lapse change and the observed field data change from 10 shotpoints are in agreement for both magnitude and polarity of amplitude change for top and base of reservoir. Therefore, we conclude the stored CO 2 has been successfully detected and, furthermore, the observed seismic reflection change can be applied to Cranfield’s 4D surface seismic for spatially delineating the CO 2 /brine interface.
54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
A parallel p ‐adaptive discontinuous Galerkin method for the Euler equations with dynamic load‐balancing on tetrahedral grids
Abstract A novel p ‐adaptive discontinuous Galerkin (DG) method has been developed to solve the Euler equations on three‐dimensional tetrahedral grids. Hierarchical orthogonal basis functions are adopted for the DG spatial discretization while a third order TVD Runge‐Kutta method is used for the time integration. A vertex‐based limiter is applied to the numerical solution in order to eliminate oscillations in the high order method. An error indicator constructed from the solution of order and is used to adapt degrees of freedom in each computational element, which remarkably reduces the computational cost while still maintaining an accurate solution. The developed method is implemented with under the Charm++ parallel computing framework. Charm++ is a parallel computing framework that includes various load‐balancing strategies. Implementing the numerical solver under Charm++ system provides us with access to a suite of dynamic load balancing strategies. This can be efficiently used to alleviate the load imbalances created by p ‐adaptation. A number of numerical experiments are performed to demonstrate both the numerical accuracy and parallel performance of the developed p ‐adaptive DG method. It is observed that the unbalanced load distribution caused by the parallel p ‐adaptive DG method can be alleviated by the dynamic load balancing from Charm++ system. Due to this, high performance gain can be achieved. For the testcases studied in the current work, the parallel performance gain ranged from 1.5× to 3.7×. Therefore, the developed p ‐adaptive DG method can significantly reduce the total simulation time in comparison to the standard DG method without p ‐adaptation.
97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
Substantial Diel Changes of Cloud Adjustments to Aerosols in Ship‐Tracks
Clouds adjust their albedo, amount and liquid water path to anthropogenic aerosols, and produce a climate forcing. Such cloud adjustments are complex functions of both environmental conditions and interaction time. However, direct observations of temporal changes in cloud adjustments are limited. Here, we develop a method to show observational evidence of substantial diel changes in cloud adjustments within ship-tracks. Polluted clouds experiencing extended nighttime exposure exhibit higher increases in cloud fraction while liquid-water path adjustments follow a non-monotonic evolution. The higher cloud fraction increase persists through daytime. Such diel variations likely stem from diel changes in solar heating and background cloud precipitation, and are important because nighttime changes persist and affect solar radiation during the day. Accounting for diel variations produces a stronger aerosol forcing, by −0.1 ∼−0.4 Wm −2 . Our approach reveals how the temporal evolution of cloud adjustments can have important implications for aerosol-cloud interactions.
Yuan, Tianle [NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GS↗
Autoionization states of SO2
Assignments are reported for the autoionizing states of SO2(+) in the 1020-630 A region. The Rydberg states of SO(+) were observed by the method of molecular beam photoionization mass spectrometry, which ensures that all the states observed are autoionizing in nature. The vibrational progressions obtained are assigned to the 4b2-3s, 4b2-3d, 7a1-3p, 7a1-3d, and 2b1-3p Rydberg states. Dips in the photoionization efficiency curves of SO2(+) and SO(+) correspond to those of a window resonance series previously observed in photoabsorption.
Wu, C. Y. R.↗
Automated Decomposition of Model-based Learning Problems
A new generation of sensor rich, massively distributed autonomous systems is being developed that has the potential for unprecedented performance, such as smart buildings, reconfigurable factories, adaptive traffic systems and remote earth ecosystem monitoring. To achieve high performance these massive systems will need to accurately model themselves and their environment from sensor information. Accomplishing this on a grand scale requires automating the art of large-scale modeling. This paper presents a formalization of [\em decompositional model-based learning (DML)], a method developed by observing a modeler's expertise at decomposing large scale model estimation tasks. The method exploits a striking analogy between learning and consistency-based diagnosis. Moriarty, an implementation of DML, has been applied to thermal modeling of a smart building, demonstrating a significant improvement in learning rate.
Williams, Brian C.↗
Surface and allied studies in silicon solar cells
Two main results are presented. The first deals with a simple method that determines the minority-carrier lifetime and the effective surface recombination velocity of the quasi-neutral base of silicon solar cells. The method requires the observation of only a single transient, and is amenable to automation for in-process monitoring in manufacturing. This method, which is called short-circuit current decay, avoids distortion in the observed transient and consequent inacccuracies that arise from the presence of mobile holes and electrons stored in the p/n junction spacecharge region at the initial instant of the transient. The second main result consists in a formulation of the relevant boundary-value problems that resembles that used in linear two-port network theory. This formulation enables comparisons to be made among various contending methods for measuring material parameters of p/n junction devices, and enables the option of putting the description in the time domain of the transient studies in the form of an infinite series, although closed-form solutions are also possible.
Lindholm, F. A.↗
Recent Development on O(+) - O Collision Frequency and Ionosphere-Thermosphere Coupling
The collision frequency between an oxygen atom and its singly charged ion controls the momentum transfer between the ionosphere and the thermosphere. There has been a long standing discrepancy, extending over a decade, between the theoretical and empirical determination of this frequency: the empirical value of this frequency exceeded the theoretical value by a factor of 1.7. Recent improvements in theory were obtained by using accurate oxygen ion-oxygen atom potential energy curves, and partial wave quantum mechanical calculations. We now have applied three independent statistical methods to the observational data, obtained at the MIT/Millstone Hill Observatory, consisting of two sets A and B. These methods give results consistent with each other, and together with the recent theoretical improvements, bring the ratio close to unity, as it should be. The three statistical methods lead to an average for the ratio of the empirical to the theoretical values equal to 0.98, with an uncertainty of +/-8%, resolving the old discrepancy between theory and observation. The Hines statistics, and the lognormal distribution statistics, both give lower and upper bounds for the Set A equal to 0.89 and 1.02, respectively. The related bounds for the Set B are 1.06 and 1.17. The average values of these bounds thus bracket the ideal value of the ratio which should be equal to unity. The main source of uncertainties are errors in the profile of the oxygen atom density, which is of the order of 11%. An alternative method to find the oxygen atom density is being suggested.
Omidvar, K.↗
Pyroscopegridding: Geo-Leo Aerosol Data Fusion (an Open-Source Package)
The retrieval of aerosol optical depths (AODs) from sun-synchronous polar orbiting satellites, such as MODISs, VIIRSs, OMI, TROPOMI, etc., has been widely adopted as a method for obtaining information regarding particulate matter (PM) and related atmospheric processes. However, the advent of recently launched geostationary satellites, such as GOES-16/17/18, Himawari-8/9, and Meteosat Third Generation (MTG), has led to an increased temporal resolution of AOD observations (order of 10 minutes), resulting in typically one or more images per hour during daylight hours, compared to the once-per-day observations obtained from LEO satellites. By integrating these observations, the diurnal cycle of global AOD can be characterized at local, regional, and global scales. The scientific community is still examining the novel data from geostationary satellite observations and evaluating methods for effectively merging these observations with differing spatial and temporal resolutions. This presents a significant ""Big Data"" challenge, encompassing not only data storage, but also data discoverability, accessibility, and migration within cloud computing environments. This study presents our attempts at fusing Level 2 aerosol data from six satellites, three of which are geostationary (GOES-16/17 and Himawari-8) and three of which are polar orbiting (TERRA/MODIS, AQUA/MODIS, and SNPP-VIIRS), using the Dark Target aerosol retrieval algorithm. The ability to fuse remote sensing products on demand into desired temporal and spatial domains empowers researchers and practitioners to more efficiently work with satellite and sensor data. It is our hope that through making our open-source package and accompanying functionality available, the scientific community will have improved access to aerosol data processing resources.
Jennifer Wei↗