scholarly journals Cirrus Mammatus Properties Derived from an Extended Remote Sensing Dataset

2006 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 712-725 ◽  
Author(s):  
Likun Wang ◽  
Kenneth Sassen

Abstract The first quantitative and statistical evaluation of cirrus mammatus clouds based on wavelet analysis of remote sensing data is made by analyzing the University of Utah Facility for Atmospheric Remote Sensing (FARS) 10-yr high-cloud dataset. First, a case study of cirrus mammata combining a high-resolution lidar system and a W-band Doppler radar is presented, yielding an assessment of the thermodynamic environment and dynamic mechanisms. Then, 25 cirrus mammatus cases selected from the FARS lidar dataset are used to disclose their characteristic environmental conditions, and vertical and length scales. The results show that cirrus mammata occur in the transition zone from moist (cloudy) to dry air layers with weak wind shear, which suggests that cloud-induced thermal structures play a key role in their formation. Their maximum vertical and horizontal length scales vary from 0.3 to 1.1 km and 0.5 to 8.0 km, respectively. It is also found that small-scale structures develop between the large-scale protuberances. The spectral slopes of the lidar-returned power and mean radar Doppler velocity data extracted from the cirrus cloud-base region further indicate the presence of developed three-dimensional, locally isotropic, homogeneous turbulence generated by buoyancy. Finally, comparisons of anvil and cirrus mammata are made. Although both are generated in a similar environment, cirrus mammata generally do not form fallout fronts like their anvil counterparts, and so do not have their smooth and beautiful outlines.

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (22) ◽  
pp. 4709
Author(s):  
Haiyang Shi ◽  
Qun Pan ◽  
Geping Luo ◽  
Olaf Hellwich ◽  
Chunbo Chen ◽  
...  

Understanding the impacts of environmental factors on spatial–temporal and large-scale rodent distribution is important for rodent damage prevention. Investigating rat hole density (RHD) is one of the most effective methods to obtain the intensity of rodent damage. However, most of the previous field surveys or UAV-based remote sensing methods can only evaluate small-scale RHD and its influencing factors. However, these studies did not consider large-scale temporal and spatial heterogeneity. Therefore, we collected small-scale and in situ measurement records of RHD on the northern slope of the Tien Shan Mountains in Xinjiang (NTXJ), China, from 1982 to 2015, and then used correlation analysis and Bayesian network (BN) to analyze the environmental impacts on large-scale RHD with satellite remote sensing data such as the GIMMS NDVI product. The results show that the built BN can better quantify causality in the environmental mechanism modeling of RHD. The NDVI and LAI data from satellite remote sensing are important to the spatial–temporal RHD distribution and the mapping in the future. In regions with an elevation higher than 600 m (UPR) and lower than 600 m (LWR) of NTXJ, there are significant differences in the driving mechanism patterns of RHD, which are dependent on the elevation variation. In LWR, vegetation conditions have a weaker impact on RHD than UPR. It is possibly due to the Artemisia eaten by the dominant species Lagurus luteus (LL) in UPR being more sensitive to precipitation and temperature if compared with the Haloxylon ammodendron eaten by the Rhombomys opimus (RO) in LWR. In LWR, grazing intensity is more strongly and positively correlated to RHD than UPR, possibly due to both winter grazing and RO dependency on vegetation distribution; moreover, in UPR, sheep do not feed Artemisia as the main food, and the total vegetation is sufficient for sheep and LL to coexist. Under the different conditions of water availability of LWR and UPR, grazing may affect the ratio of aboveground and underground biomass by photosynthate allocation, thereby affecting the distribution of RHD. In extremely dry years, the RHD of LWR and UPR may have an indirect interactive relation due to changes in grazing systems.


Forests ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. 891
Author(s):  
Hooman Latifi ◽  
Ruben Valbuena

The alarming increase in the magnitude and spatiotemporal patterns of changes in composition, structure and function of forest ecosystems during recent years calls for enhanced cross-border mitigation and adaption measures, which strongly entail intensified research to understand the underlying processes in the ecosystems as well as their dynamics. Remote sensing data and methods are nowadays the main complementary sources of synoptic, up-to-date and objective information to support field observations in forest ecology. In particular, analysis of three-dimensional (3D) remote sensing data is regarded as an appropriate complement, since they are hypothesized to resemble the 3D character of most forest attributes. Following their use in various small-scale forest structural analyses over the past two decades, these sources of data are now on their way to be integrated in novel applications in fields like citizen science, environmental impact assessment, forest fire analysis, and biodiversity assessment in remote areas. These and a number of other novel applications provide valuable material for the Forests special issue “3D Remote Sensing Applications in Forest Ecology: Composition, Structure and Function”, which shows the promising future of these technologies and improves our understanding of the potentials and challenges of 3D remote sensing in practical forest ecology worldwide.


1996 ◽  
pp. 51-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. V. M. Unni

The recognition of versatile importance of vegetation for the human life resulted in the emergence of vegetation science and many its applications in the modern world. Hence a vegetation map should be versatile enough to provide the basis for these applications. Thus, a vegetation map should contain not only information on vegetation types and their derivatives but also the geospheric and climatic background. While the geospheric information could be obtained, mapped and generalized directly using satellite remote sensing, a computerized Geographic Information System can integrate it with meaningful vegetation information classes for large areas. Such aft approach was developed with respect to mapping forest vegetation in India at. 1 : 100 000 (1983) and is in progress now (forest cover mapping at 1 : 250 000). Several review works reporting the experimental and operational use of satellite remote sensing data in India were published in the last years (Unni, 1991, 1992, 1994).


2008 ◽  
Vol 615 ◽  
pp. 371-399 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. DONG

We report three-dimensional direct numerical simulations of the turbulent flow between counter-rotating concentric cylinders with a radius ratio 0.5. The inner- and outer-cylinder Reynolds numbers have the same magnitude, which ranges from 500 to 4000 in the simulations. We show that with the increase of Reynolds number, the prevailing structures in the flow are azimuthal vortices with scales much smaller than the cylinder gap. At high Reynolds numbers, while the instantaneous small-scale vortices permeate the entire domain, the large-scale Taylor vortex motions manifested by the time-averaged field do not penetrate a layer of fluid near the outer cylinder. Comparisons between the standard Taylor–Couette system (rotating inner cylinder, fixed outer cylinder) and the counter-rotating system demonstrate the profound effects of the Coriolis force on the mean flow and other statistical quantities. The dynamical and statistical features of the flow have been investigated in detail.


1999 ◽  
Vol 382 ◽  
pp. 307-329 ◽  
Author(s):  
JUDITH K. FOSS ◽  
K. B. M. Q. ZAMAN

The large- and small-scale vortical motions produced by ‘delta tabs’ in a two-stream shear layer have been studied experimentally. An increase in mixing was observed when the base of the triangular shaped tab was affixed to the trailing edge of the splitter plate and the apex was pitched at some angle with respect to the flow axis. Such an arrangement produced a pair of counter-rotating streamwise vortices. Hot-wire measurements detailed the velocity, time-averaged vorticity (Ωx) and small-scale turbulence features in the three-dimensional space downstream of the tabs. The small-scale structures, whose scale corresponds to that of the peak in the dissipation spectrum, were identified and counted using the peak-valley-counting technique. The optimal pitch angle, θ, for a single tab and the optimal spanwise spacing, S, for a multiple tab array were identified. Since the goal was to increase mixing, the optimal tab configuration was determined from two properties of the flow field: (i) the large-scale motions with the maximum Ωx, and (ii) the largest number of small-scale motions in a given time period. The peak streamwise vorticity magnitude [mid ]Ωx−max[mid ] was found to have a unique relationship with the tab pitch angle. Furthermore, for all cases examined, the overall small-scale population was found to correlate directly with [mid ]Ωx−max[mid ]. Both quantities peaked at θ≈±45°. It is interesting to note that the peak magnitude of the corresponding circulation in the cross-sectional plane occurred for θ≈±90°. For an array of tabs, the two quantities also depended on the tab spacing. An array of contiguous tabs acted as a solid deflector producing the weakest streamwise vortices and the least small-scale population. For the measurement range covered, the optimal spacing was found to be S≈1.5 tab widths.


2019 ◽  
Vol 221 ◽  
pp. 695-706 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jianbo Qi ◽  
Donghui Xie ◽  
Tiangang Yin ◽  
Guangjian Yan ◽  
Jean-Philippe Gastellu-Etchegorry ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Feng Jie Zheng ◽  
Fu Zheng Qu ◽  
Xue Guan Song

Reservoir-pipe-valve (RPV) systems are widely used in many industrial process. The pressure in an RPV system plays an important role in the safe operation of the system, especially during the sudden operation such as rapid valve opening/closing. To investigate the pressure especially the pressure fluctuation in an RPV system, a multidimensional and multiscale model combining the method of characteristics (MOC) and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method is proposed. In the model, the reservoir is modeled by a zero-dimensional virtual point, the pipe is modeled by a one-dimensional MOC, and the valve is modeled by a three-dimensional CFD model. An interface model is used to connect the multidimensional and multiscale model. Based on the model, a transient simulation of the turbulent flow in an RPV system is conducted, in which not only the pressure fluctuation in the pipe but also the detailed pressure distribution in the valve are obtained. The results show that the proposed model is in good agreement with the full CFD model in both large-scale and small-scale spaces. Moreover, the proposed model is more computationally efficient than the CFD model, which provides a feasibility in the analysis of complex RPV system within an affordable computational time.


2019 ◽  
Vol 141 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Feng Jie Zheng ◽  
Chao Yong Zong ◽  
William Dempster ◽  
Fu Zheng Qu ◽  
Xue Guan Song

Reservoir-pipe-valve (RPV) systems are widely used in many industrial processes. The pressure in an RPV system plays an important role in the safe operation of the system, especially during the sudden operations such as rapid valve opening or closing. To investigate the pressure response, with particular interest in the pressure fluctuations in an RPV system, a multidimensional and multiscale model combining the method of characteristics (MOC) and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method is proposed. In the model, the reservoir is modeled as a zero-dimensional virtual point, the pipe is modeled as a one-dimensional system using the MOC, and the valve is modeled using a three-dimensional CFD model. An interface model is used to connect the multidimensional and multiscale model. Based on the model, a transient simulation of the turbulent flow in an RPV system is conducted in which not only the pressure fluctuation in the pipe but also the detailed pressure distribution in the valve is obtained. The results show that the proposed model is in good agreement when compared with a high fidelity CFD model used to represent both large-scale and small-scale spaces. As expected, the proposed model is significantly more computationally efficient than the CFD model. This demonstrates the feasibility of analyzing complex RPV systems within an affordable computational time.


2005 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 293-299 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Calenda ◽  
E. Gorgucci ◽  
F. Napolitano ◽  
A. Novella ◽  
E. Volpi

Abstract. A scale-invariance analysis of space and time rainfall events monitored by meteorological radar over the area of Rome (Italy) is proposed. The study of the scale-invariance properties of intense precipitation storms, particularly important in flood forecast and risk mitigation, allows to transfer rainfall information from the large scale predictive meteorological models to the small scale hydrological rainfall-runoff models. Precipitation events are monitored using data collected by the polarimetric Doppler radar Polar 55C (ISAC-CNR), located 15 km Southeast from downtown. The meteorological radar provides the estimates of rainfall intensity over an area of about 10 000 km2 at a resolution of 2×2 km2 in space and 5 min in time. Many precipitation events have been observed from autumn 2001 up to now. A scale-invariance analysis is performed on some of these events with the aim at exploring the multifractal properties and at understanding their dependence on the meteorological large-scale conditions.


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