Long-term Cycles of Variability of Jupiter’s Atmosphere from Ground-based Infrared Observations

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arrate Antunano ◽  
Leigh N Fletcher ◽  
Glenn S Orton ◽  
James A Sinclair ◽  
Yasumasa Kasaba

<p>Jupiter’s atmosphere displays some of the most dramatic weather of any planet in our Solar System, with cycles of activity changing the upper tropospheric and stratospheric temperatures, aerosols, and cloud structures through physical processes that are not yet well understood. In the troposphere, Jupiter’s banded structure undergoes dramatic planetary-scale disturbances that can evolve over short timescales changing its appearance completely at a range of altitudes, from the cloud tops (~500 mbar) to the deeper levels (1-4 bar). Some of these tropospheric variations seem to occur randomly, like the impressive fading and revival of the South Equatorial Belt at 7°-17° S (planetocentric latitude), while others follow a periodic pattern, like the North Equatorial Belt expansions at 7°-17° N (with a ~4.5-year periodicity), the Equatorial Zone disturbances (~7-year period) within ±7° of the equator (Antuñano et al. 2018 doi:  https://doi.org/10.1029/2018GL080382) and the convective outbreaks at 21° N in the North Temperate Belt (~5-year period) (Antuñano et al., 2019 doi: https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/ab2cd6). In the stratosphere, Jupiter’s equatorial and off-equatorial temperature and winds at 10-20 mbar exhibit a remarkable 4-5-year periodic oscillation with height forced by waves produced from tropospheric meteorological activity at the equatorial latitudes.</p> <p>Here we use almost 40 years (more than 3 jovian years) of ground-based infrared observations captured at NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF), the Very Large Telescope (VLT) and Subaru between 1980 and 2019 in a number of filters spanning from 7.9 to 24.5 µm.  These filters sample upper tropospheric and stratospheric temperatures and aerosols via collision-induced hydrogen and helium absorption, and emission from stratospheric hydrocarbons.  This long-term time series is used to (i) understand the impact of the previously mentioned tropospheric activity on the periodicity of the stratospheric temperature oscillations, (ii) characterize the long-term variability of Jupiter’s atmosphere at different altitudes in the upper troposphere and stratosphere, and (iii) investigate the long-term thermal, chemical and aerosol changes in Jupiter’s troposphere. In particular, we generate Lomb-Scargle periodograms and apply a Wavelet Transform analysis to our dataset to look for potential periodicities on the brightness temperature variability in different filters and compare them to previously reported cyclic activity at visible wavelengths (sensing the ammonia cloud top at ~500 mbar) and 5 µm (sensing the 1-4 bar pressure level). Finally, a Principal Component Analyses (PCA) is also performed to analyse the correlation of the brightness temperature variations at different belts and zones.</p>

Author(s):  
Robert H. Ellison

Prompted by the convulsions of the late eighteenth century and inspired by the expansion of evangelicalism across the North Atlantic world, Protestant Dissenters from the 1790s eagerly subscribed to a millennial vision of a world transformed through missionary activism and religious revival. Voluntary societies proliferated in the early nineteenth century to spread the gospel and transform society at home and overseas. In doing so, they engaged many thousands of converts who felt the call to share their experience of personal conversion with others. Though social respectability and business methods became a notable feature of Victorian Nonconformity, the religious populism of the earlier period did not disappear and religious revival remained a key component of Dissenting experience. The impact of this revitalization was mixed. On the one hand, growth was not sustained in the long term and, to some extent, involvement in interdenominational activity undermined denominational identity; on the other hand, Nonconformists gained a social and political prominence they had not enjoyed since the middle of the seventeenth century and their efforts laid the basis for the twentieth-century explosion of evangelicalism in Africa, Asia, and South America.


Author(s):  
Yao Li ◽  
Haoyang Li ◽  
Jianqing Ruan

The natural environment is one of the most critical factors that profoundly influences human races. Natural disasters may have enormous effects on individual psychological characteristics. Using China’s long-term historical natural disaster dataset from 1470 to 2000 and data from a household survey in 2012, we explore whether long-term natural disasters affect social trust. We find that there is a statistically significant positive relationship between long-term natural disaster frequency and social trust. We further examine the impact of long-term natural disaster frequency on social trust in specific groups of people. Social trust in neighbors and doctors is stronger where long-term natural disasters are more frequent. Our results are robust after we considering the geographical difference. The effect of long-term natural disasters remains positively significant after we divide the samples based on geographical location. Interestingly, the impact of long-term flood frequency is only significant in the South and the impact of long-term drought frequency is only significant in the North.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Cassandra R. Davis ◽  
Sarah R. Cannon ◽  
Sarah C. Fuller

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to identify and describe the long-term impacts of hurricanes on schools and discuss approaches to improving recovery efforts.Design/methodology/approachInterviews with 20 school districts in Texas and North Carolina after Hurricanes Harvey (2017) and Matthew (2016). In total, 115 interviews were conducted with teachers, principals, district superintendents and representatives from state education agencies. Interview questions focused on the impact of storms and strategies for recovery.FindingsThe authors uncovered three long-term impacts of hurricanes on schools: (1) constrained instructional time, (2) increased social-emotional needs and (3) the need to support educators.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper focuses on two storms, in two states, in two successive years. Data collection occurred in Texas, one academic year after the storm. As compared to the North Carolina, data collection occurred almost two academic years after the storm.Practical implicationsThis paper illuminates strategies for stakeholders to implement and expedite hurricane recovery through; (1) updating curricula plans, (2) providing long-term counselors and (3) supporting educators in and out of school.Originality/valueTo date, very few studies have explored the ways in which schools face long-term impacts following a disaster. This paper provides insight to the challenges that prolong the impacts of disasters and impede recovery in schools. With hurricanes and related disasters continuing to affect schooling communities, more research is needed to identify the best ways to support schools, months to years after an event.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bolin Xu ◽  
Qing He ◽  
Kwok Pan Chun ◽  
Julian Klaus ◽  
Rémy Schoppach ◽  
...  

<p>Teleconnections relate regional pressure patterns to local climate anomalies, influencing the variation of vegetation patterns. Over west continental Europe, droughts have been widely investigated with persistent low-frequency atmospheric circulation patterns (e.g. the North Atlantic Oscillation, NAO) with the centers over the Atlantic based on the 500mb height anomalies of the Northern Hemisphere. However, the effects of teleconnection patterns with the centers of active variability over the North and Caspian Seas is largely unexplored for droughts related to vegetation patterns. In this study, we explored the impact of the North Sea-Caspian Pattern (NCP) on regional ecohydrologic conditions in the Greater Region of Luxembourg in Western Europe. Using a Principal Component Analysis (PCA), we first decomposed the annual Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) from the Global Inventory Monitoring and Modeling System (GIMMS) between 1981 and 2015. In the first PCA component, a distinctive greening trend of NDVI is detected since the late 1980s. However, the corresponding station observations and the ERA5 reanalysis data show that the region in west continental Europe became increasingly drier based on the difference between precipitation and evaporation. We explain the above paradoxical greening but drying patterns by the mechanism of NCP over the region. During the positive phase of NCP, the high pressure over the North Sea weakens circulation over the region and leads to warmer conditions in west continental Europe. These conditions are good for vegetation growth because the region was mainly energy-limited during the observed period at the annual scale based on a Budyko analysis. However, the positive phase of NCP also promotes divergent conditions at the lower troposphere and it reduces moisture flux over the region. In the Budyko space, the persistent positive phase of NCP would lead the energy-limited region to be water-limited. As the positive phase of NCP is expected to be more frequent along with the increasing global temperatures, the region may start to experience increasing water stress on vegetation. These results suggest that unforeseen droughts related to vegetation may be emerging in the region. New drought monitoring and management measures related to vegetation should be developed at west continental Europe, especially during the positive phase of NCP.</p>


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhixin Hao

<p>In China, historical documents record a large quantity of information related to climate change and grain harvest. This information can help to explore the impacts of extreme drought or flood on crop production, which can provide implications for the adaptation of agriculture to higher-probability extreme climate in the context of global warming. In this paper, reported extreme drought/flood chronologies and reconstructed grain harvest series derived from historical documents were adopted in order to investigate the association between the reported frequency of extreme drought/flood in eastern China and reconstructed poor harvests during 801–1910. The results show that extreme droughts were reported more often in 801–870, 1031–1230, 1481–1530, and 1581–1650 over the whole of eastern China. On a regional scale, extreme droughts were reported more often in 1031–1100, 1441–1490, 1601–1650, and 1831–1880 in the North China Plain, 801–870, 1031–1120, 1161–1220, and 1471–1530 in Jianghuai, and 991–1040, 1091–1150, 1171–1230, 1411–1470, and 1481–1530 in Jiangnan. The grain harvest was reconstructed to be generally poor in 801–940, 1251–1650, and 1841–1910, but the reconstructed harvests were bumper in 951–1250 and 1651–1840, approximately. During the entire period from 801 to 1910, the frequency of reporting of extreme droughts in any subregion of eastern China was significantly associated over the long term with lower reconstructed harvests. The association between reported frequency of extreme floods and reconstructed low harvests appeared to be much weaker, while reconstructed harvest was much worse when extreme drought and extreme flood in different subregions were reported in the same year. The association between reconstructed poor harvests and reported frequency of regional extreme droughts was weak during the warm epoch of 920–1300 but strong during the cold epoch of 1310–1880, which could imply that a warm climate could weaken the impact of extreme drought on poor harvests; yet other historical factors may also contribute to these different patterns extracted from the two datasets.</p>


2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Otilia-Maria Bordeianu ◽  
◽  
Claudia-Elena Grigoras-Ichim ◽  
Lucia Morosan-Danila ◽  
◽  
...  

The global crisis generated by the COVID-19 pandemic among the population and at the level of companies, state institutions, etc., underlined the importance of analysing its impact at different levels (intern, national and international level). The concepts of sustainability, development and growth must be aware, adapted and implemented more and more frequently, even constantly, in order to cope with the current evolution of the economy (and not only). The paper is an empirical research conducted in the North-East Region of Romania, aiming to analyse the impact of COVID-19 on local companies (especially SME’s), in the context of existing correlation between the COVID-19 impact on resizing, restricting, changing the number of active employees, changing revenue, changing turnover and changing profit, based on the Spearman correlation coefficients. In this sense, it was important to implement sustainability strategies and ensure the activity and resources of companies in the long term, because the effects of an economic crisis (natural resources, human resources, not only financial) are felt in 2021 and will be felt in the future 10 years. The paper concludes with two practical solutions to ensure the sustainability of the companies involved in the study, solutions that can be applied by all companies that have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.


2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-130
Author(s):  
Beata Bieszk-Stolorz ◽  
Krzysztof Dmytrów

Research background: Because the active labour market policy requires high resources, it is important to analyse the effectiveness of its instruments. For the unemployment, it is essential to identify the groups of persons threatened by the long-term unemployment, to assess the impact of programmes on exit from unemployment and monitoring the disbursement of funds. Purpose of the article: The goal of the article was identification of clusters of poviats in Poland with respect to cost and employment effectiveness of basic forms of professional activisation in the years 2008–2014. Methods: The poviats were clustered by means of the k-means method. Variables were standardised and the number of clusters was determined by means of the v-fold cross-validation. Findings & Value added: The analysis did not allow to unambiguously specify areas in Poland with better use of funds allocated in the activisation programmes. The poviats in the middle-east Poland were generally characterized by worse values of effectiveness. However, the unemployment rate in these areas was relatively small. On the contrary, the poviats in the north-east Poland had high unemployment rate and the funds were used effectively. Assessment of effectiveness of forms of professional activisation is very important because the activities of poviat labour offices influence the counteraction to unemployment.


2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Ojeme

Despite the importance of satisfaction, loyalty and relationship length in the literature, there is very little evidence of studies within the Nigerian Business to Business (B2B) Relationship terrain. This paper seeks to investigate the effect of relationship length on SMEs association with their banks in Nigeria. Measurement Items were adapted from various scale sets presented in existing studies were combined to investigate the B2B relationship context. Data were collected from 221 SMEs via a self-administered questionnaire completed either by the SME owner or senior manager with responsibility for relationship with their bank, providing 199 usable records. Principal Component Exploratory Analysis (PCA) was used to determine the underlying data structure, with subsequent deployment of Cronbach’s alpha as a post-hoc assessment of the internal reliability of the retained factors. Subsequently, regression analysis was employed to determine the impact of satisfaction on loyalty in a short and long term relationship contexts. The analysis presented suggests that the SMEs’ had evidence of been satisfied with their bank, however, the regression analysis for both short and long term relationship length were both significant in impacting their loyalty towards their bank. The originality of this paper lies in the investigation of a B2B relationship involving SMEs and banks within a relationship context that hitherto was unknown and the validation of relevant relationship building blocks. 


2012 ◽  
Vol 140 (2) ◽  
pp. 543-561 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason A. Otkin

A regional-scale Observing System Simulation Experiment is used to examine how changes in the horizontal covariance localization radius employed during the assimilation of infrared brightness temperature observations in an ensemble Kalman filter assimilation system impacts the accuracy of atmospheric analyses and short-range model forecasts. The case study tracks the evolution of several extratropical weather systems that occurred across the contiguous United States during 7–8 January 2008. Overall, the results indicate that assimilating 8.5-μm brightness temperatures improves the cloud analysis and forecast accuracy, but has the tendency to degrade the water vapor mixing ratio and thermodynamic fields unless a small localization radius is used. Vertical cross sections showed that varying the localization radius had a minimal impact on the shape of the analysis increments; however, their magnitude consistently increased with increasing localization radius. By the end of the assimilation period, the moisture, temperature, cloud, and wind errors generally decreased with decreasing localization radius and became similar to the Control case in which only conventional observations were assimilated if the shortest localization radius was used. Short-range ensemble forecasts showed that the large positive impact of the infrared observations on the final cloud analysis diminished rapidly during the forecast period, which indicates that it is difficult to maintain beneficial changes to the cloud analysis if the moisture and thermodynamic forcing controlling the cloud evolution are not simultaneously improved. These results show that although assimilation of infrared observations consistently improves the cloud field regardless of the length of the localization radius, it may be necessary to use a smaller radius to also improve the accuracy of the moisture and thermodynamic fields.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Ying Shen ◽  
Tingting Zhang ◽  
Jichao Cui ◽  
Siyu Chen ◽  
Huifang Han ◽  
...  

Summary The North China Plain (NCP) is an important agricultural area, where conventional tillage (CT) is used year-round. However, long-term CT has damaged the soil structure, threatening agricultural sustainability. Since 2002, we have conducted a long-term tillage experiment in the NCP to explore the effects of different types of tillage on soil and crop yield. As part of long-term conservation tillage, we conducted a 2-year study in 2016/2017 to determine the impact of no tillage (NT), subsoiling (SS), rotary tillage (RT) and CT on soil aggregate distribution, aggregate-associated organic carbon (AOC), aggregate-associated microbial biomass carbon (AMBC), and maize yield. Compared to CT, NT increased the content of macro-aggregates (+4.8%), aggregate-AOC (+8.3%), and aggregate-AMBC (+18.3%), but decreased maize yield (−11.5%). SS increased the contents of macro-aggregates (+5%), aggregate-AOC (+14.7%), and aggregate-AMBC (+16%); although the yield increase was not significant (+0.22%), it had the highest economic benefit among the four tillage measures. RT had no significant advantage when considering the above soil variables; moreover, it reduced maize yield by 16.1% compared with CT. Overall, SS is a suitable tillage measure to improve soil macro-aggregate content, carbon content, yield, and economic benefit in the NCP area.


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