scholarly journals Inferring the source regions of pulsating auroras

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Grono ◽  
Eric Donovan

Abstract. The aurora is an essential tool for remote sensing the large-scale dynamics of the magnetosphere which are to difficult to observe in situ and impossible to recreate in a lab. Despite pulsating aurora being a common and widespread morning-sector phenomenon, the processes responsible for its differentiation are not understood. In situ measurements of the pulsating aurora source regions are difficult to associate with specific auroral features, yet such observations will be necessary for identifying the unique causes of pulsating auroras. This study reports a method of inferring when a spacecraft is passing through the source region of patchy aurora (PA) based on the structuring of chorus. The locations of longer-lived chorus packets are found to correspond to the region of PA occurrence reported by Grono et al. (2019b). This result constrains the region where the structuring mechanisms and conditions responsible for PA and patchy pulsating aurora (PPA) can exist.

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (12) ◽  
pp. 3609-3629 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. B. Taylor ◽  
E. Torrecilla ◽  
A. Bernhardt ◽  
M. H. Taylor ◽  
I. Peeken ◽  
...  

Abstract. The relationship between phytoplankton assemblages and the associated optical properties of the water body is important for the further development of algorithms for large-scale remote sensing of phytoplankton biomass and the identification of phytoplankton functional types (PFTs), which are often representative for different biogeochemical export scenarios. Optical in-situ measurements aid in the identification of phytoplankton groups with differing pigment compositions and are widely used to validate remote sensing data. In this study we present results from an interdisciplinary cruise aboard the RV Polarstern along a north-to-south transect in the eastern Atlantic Ocean in November 2008. Phytoplankton community composition was identified using a broad set of in-situ measurements. Water samples from the surface and the depth of maximum chlorophyll concentration were analyzed by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), flow cytometry, spectrophotometry and microscopy. Simultaneously, the above- and underwater light field was measured by a set of high spectral resolution (hyperspectral) radiometers. An unsupervised cluster algorithm applied to the measured parameters allowed us to define bio-optical provinces, which we compared to ecological provinces proposed elsewhere in the literature. As could be expected, picophytoplankton was responsible for most of the variability of PFTs in the eastern Atlantic Ocean. Our bio-optical clusters agreed well with established provinces and thus can be used to classify areas of similar biogeography. This method has the potential to become an automated approach where satellite data could be used to identify shifting boundaries of established ecological provinces or to track exceptions from the rule to improve our understanding of the biogeochemical cycles in the ocean.


2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 7165-7219 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. B. Taylor ◽  
E. Torrecilla ◽  
A. Bernhardt ◽  
M. H. Taylor ◽  
I. Peeken ◽  
...  

Abstract. The relationship between phytoplankton assemblages and the associated optical properties of the water body is important for the further development of algorithms for large-scale remote sensing of phytoplankton biomass and the identification of phytoplankton functional types (PFTs), which are often representative for different biogeochemical export scenarios. Optical in-situ measurements aid in the identification of phytoplankton groups with differing pigment compositions and are widely used to validate remote sensing data. In this study we present results from an interdisciplinary cruise aboard the R/V Polarstern along a north-to-south transect in the eastern Atlantic Ocean in November 2008. Phytoplankton community composition was identified using a broad set of in-situ measurements. Water samples from the surface and the depth of maximum chlorophyll concentration were analyzed by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), flow cytometry, spectrophotometry and microscopy. Simultaneously, the above- and underwater light field was measured by a set of high spectral resolution (hyperspectral) radiometers. An unsupervised cluster algorithm applied to the measured parameters allowed us to define bio-optical provinces, which are compared to ecological provinces proposed elsewhere in the literature. This method has the potential to become an automated approach where satellite data could be used to identify shifting boundaries of established ecological provinces or to track exceptions from the rule to improve our understanding of the biogeochemical cycles in the ocean.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 228
Author(s):  
Jian Kang ◽  
Rui Jin ◽  
Xin Li ◽  
Yang Zhang

In recent decades, microwave remote sensing (RS) has been used to measure soil moisture (SM). Long-term and large-scale RS SM datasets derived from various microwave sensors have been used in environmental fields. Understanding the accuracies of RS SM products is essential for their proper applications. However, due to the mismatched spatial scale between the ground-based and RS observations, the truth at the pixel scale may not be accurately represented by ground-based observations, especially when the spatial density of in situ measurements is low. Because ground-based observations are often sparsely distributed, temporal upscaling was adopted to transform a few in situ measurements into SM values at a pixel scale of 1 km by introducing the temperature vegetation dryness index (TVDI) related to SM. The upscaled SM showed high consistency with in situ SM observations and could accurately capture rainfall events. The upscaled SM was considered as the reference data to evaluate RS SM products at different spatial scales. In regard to the validation results, in addition to the correlation coefficient (R) of the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) SM being slightly lower than that of the Climate Change Initiative (CCI) SM, SMAP had the best performance in terms of the root-mean-square error (RMSE), unbiased RMSE and bias, followed by the CCI. The Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) products were in worse agreement with the upscaled SM and were inferior to the R value of the X-band SM of the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2). In conclusion, in the study area, the SMAP and CCI SM are more reliable, although both products were underestimated by 0.060 cm3 cm−3 and 0.077 cm3 cm−3, respectively. If the biases are corrected, then the improved SMAP with an RMSE of 0.043 cm3 cm−3 and the CCI with an RMSE of 0.039 cm3 cm−3 will hopefully reach the application requirement for an accuracy with an RMSE less than 0.040 cm3 cm−3.


2021 ◽  
pp. 105623
Author(s):  
Stefan Becker ◽  
Ramesh Prasad Sapkota ◽  
Binod Pokharel ◽  
Loknath Adhikari ◽  
Rudra Prasad Pokhrel ◽  
...  

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (9) ◽  
pp. 3095-3112 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Sawamura ◽  
D. Müller ◽  
R. M. Hoff ◽  
C. A. Hostetler ◽  
R. A. Ferrare ◽  
...  

Abstract. Retrievals of aerosol microphysical properties (effective radius, volume and surface-area concentrations) and aerosol optical properties (complex index of refraction and single-scattering albedo) were obtained from a hybrid multiwavelength lidar data set for the first time. In July 2011, in the Baltimore–Washington DC region, synergistic profiling of optical and microphysical properties of aerosols with both airborne (in situ and remote sensing) and ground-based remote sensing systems was performed during the first deployment of DISCOVER-AQ. The hybrid multiwavelength lidar data set combines ground-based elastic backscatter lidar measurements at 355 nm with airborne High-Spectral-Resolution Lidar (HSRL) measurements at 532 nm and elastic backscatter lidar measurements at 1064 nm that were obtained less than 5 km apart from each other. This was the first study in which optical and microphysical retrievals from lidar were obtained during the day and directly compared to AERONET and in situ measurements for 11 cases. Good agreement was observed between lidar and AERONET retrievals. Larger discrepancies were observed between lidar retrievals and in situ measurements obtained by the aircraft and aerosol hygroscopic effects are believed to be the main factor in such discrepancies.


2018 ◽  
Vol 868 (2) ◽  
pp. 137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ming Xiong ◽  
Jackie A. Davies ◽  
Xueshang Feng ◽  
Bo Li ◽  
Liping Yang ◽  
...  

2017 ◽  
Vol 38 (7) ◽  
pp. 535-545 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jae-Jin Park ◽  
◽  
Sangwoo Oh ◽  
Kyung-Ae Park ◽  
Pierre-Yves Foucher ◽  
...  

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