scholarly journals SURFACE SNOW DENSITY OF EAST ANTARCTICA DERIVED FROM IN-SITU OBSERVATIONS

Author(s):  
Y. Tian ◽  
S. Zhang ◽  
W. Du ◽  
J. Chen ◽  
H. Xie ◽  
...  

Models based on physical principles or semi-empirical parameterizations have used to compute the firn density, which is essential for the study of surface processes in the Antarctic ice sheet. However, parameterization of surface snow density is often challenged by the description of detailed local characterization. In this study we propose to generate a surface density map for East Antarctica from all the filed observations that are available. Considering that the observations are non-uniformly distributed around East Antarctica, obtained by different methods, and temporally inhomogeneous, the field observations are used to establish an initial density map with a grid size of 30&amp;thinsp;&amp;times;&amp;thinsp;30&amp;thinsp;km<sup>2</sup> in which the observations are averaged at a temporal scale of five years. We then construct an observation matrix with its columns as the map grids and rows as the temporal scale. If a site has an unknown density value for a period, we will set it to 0 in the matrix. In order to construct the main spatial and temple information of surface snow density matrix we adopt Empirical Orthogonal Function (EOF) method to decompose the observation matrix and only take first several lower-order modes, because these modes already contain most information of the observation matrix. However, there are a lot of zeros in the matrix and we solve it by using matrix completion algorithm, and then we derive the time series of surface snow density at each observation site. Finally, we can obtain the surface snow density by multiplying the modes interpolated by kriging with the corresponding amplitude of the modes. Comparative analysis have done between our surface snow density map and model results. The above details will be introduced in the paper.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Walter ◽  
Henning Löwe

&lt;p&gt;The microstructural evolution of surface snow under the influence of wind is hardly understood and poorly quantified, but crucial for polar and alpine snowpacks. Only few field studies addressed the process of wind affecting surface snow at the snow-atmosphere interface in detail. Available descriptions are based on empirical relations between snow density, wind velocity and air temperature. A microstructural picture discerning independent controls of snow crystal fragmentation, abrasion and sublimation is yet missing.&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The goal of this project is to analyze the relevant physical processes responsible for wind induced microstructural modifications, and develop parametrizations from controlled wind-tunnel experiments. A ring-shaped wind tunnel (RWT) with an infinite fetch was used in a cold lab to quantify the snow microstructural evolution through systematic variations of flow, snow, and temperature conditions. For the drift experiments, dendritic fresh snow was produced in a WSL/SLF snowmaker and slowly added to the wind tunnel during the experiments simulating precipitation. Measurement techniques like X-ray tomography, SnowMicroPen, density cutters and IceCube were applied to characterize the snow density (&amp;#961;), specific surface area (SSA), particle size and shape and vertical layering before and after the highly dendritic new snow was exposed to the wind.&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The vertical heterogeneity of the deposited snow was characterized by SnowMicroPen measurements, showing increasing densities towards the snow surface. Densification rates (normalized by the initial density &amp;#961;&lt;sub&gt;0&lt;/sub&gt;) of the surface layer measured with a density cutter show an increase with increasing wind velocity and are two to three orders of magnitude higher than those measured for isothermal metamorphism, underlining the importance of accurately understanding wind induced microstructural modifications. Densification rates simulated with stat-of-the-art snow physical models span an order of magnitude, significantly deviating from the measured values. The SSA, measured with the IceCube instrument, decreases with a rate of change of approximately -0.1 h&lt;sup&gt;-1&lt;/sup&gt;, which is an order of magnitude higher than the rates for isothermal metamorphism. We hypothesize that the smallest fragments disappear because of sublimation while being transported by the wind.&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The results of this project will lead to an improved, fundamental understanding of optically and mechanically relevant microstructural properties of surface snow and are thus applicable to many cryospheric processes like avalanche formation, exchange of chemical species with the atmosphere, alpine and polar mass balances, or radiative transfer.&lt;/p&gt;


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Alexey A. Ekaykin ◽  
Alexey V. Bolshunov ◽  
Vladimir Ya. Lipenkov ◽  
Mirko Scheinert ◽  
Lutz Eberlein ◽  
...  

Abstract The region of Ridge B in central East Antarctica is one of the last unexplored parts of the continent and, at the same time, ranks among the most promising places to search for Earth's oldest ice. In January 2020, we carried out the first scientific traverse from Russia's Vostok Station to the topographical dome of Ridge B (Dome B, 3807 m above sea level, 79.02°S, 93.69°E). The glaciological programme included continuous snow-radar profiling and geodetic positioning along the traverse's route, installation of snow stakes, measurements of snow density, collection of samples for stable water isotope and chemical analyses and drilling of a 20 m firn core. The first results of the traverse show that the surface mass balance at Dome B (2.28 g cm−2 year−1) is among the lowest in Antarctica. The firn temperature below the layer of annual variations is −58.1 ± 0.2°C. A very low value of heavy water stable isotope content (-58.2‰ for oxygen-18) was discovered at a distance of 170 km from Vostok Station. This work is the first step towards a comprehensive reconnaissance study of the Ridge B area aimed at locating the best site for future deep drilling for the oldest Antarctic ice.


2012 ◽  
Vol 58 (209) ◽  
pp. 529-539 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shin Sugiyama ◽  
Hiroyuki Enomoto ◽  
Shuji Fujita ◽  
Kotaro Fukui ◽  
Fumio Nakazawa ◽  
...  

AbstractDuring the Japanese-Swedish Antarctic traverse expedition of 2007/08, we measured the surface snow density at 46 locations along the 2800 km long route from Syowa station to Wasa station in East Antarctica. The mean snow density for the upper 1 (or 0.5) m layer varied from 333 to 439 kg m-3 over a region spanning an elevation range of 365-3800 ma.s.l. The density variations were associated with the elevation of the sampling sites; the density decreased as the elevation increased, moving from the coastal region inland. However, the density was relatively insensitive to the change in elevation along the ridge on the Antarctic plateau between Dome F and Kohnen stations. Because surface wind is weak in this region, irrespective of elevation, the wind speed was suggested to play a key role in the near-surface densification. The results of multiple regression performed on the density using meteorological variables were significantly improved by the inclusion of wind speed as a predictor. The regression analysis yielded a linear dependence between the density and the wind speed, with a coefficient of 13.5 kg m-3 (m s-1)-1. This relationship is nearly three times stronger than a value previously computed from a dataset available in Antarctica. Our data indicate that the wind speed is more important to estimates of the surface snow density in Antarctica than has been previously assumed.


1998 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. M. D. Vellieux

A comparison has been made of two methods for electron-density map improvement by the introduction of atomicity, namely the iterative skeletonization procedure of the CCP4 program DM [Cowtan & Main (1993). Acta Cryst. D49, 148–157] and the pseudo-atom introduction followed by the refinement protocol in the program suite DEMON/ANGEL [Vellieux, Hunt, Roy & Read (1995). J. Appl. Cryst. 28, 347–351]. Tests carried out using the 3.0 Å resolution electron density resulting from iterative 12-fold non-crystallographic symmetry averaging and solvent flattening for the Pseudomonas aeruginosa ornithine transcarbamoylase [Villeret, Tricot, Stalon & Dideberg (1995). Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA, 92, 10762–10766] indicate that pseudo-atom introduction followed by refinement performs much better than iterative skeletonization: with the former method, a phase improvement of 15.3° is obtained with respect to the initial density modification phases. With iterative skeletonization a phase degradation of 0.4° is obtained. Consequently, the electron-density maps obtained using pseudo-atom phases or pseudo-atom phases combined with density-modification phases are much easier to interpret. These tests also show that for ornithine transcarbamoylase, where 12-fold non-crystallographic symmetry is present in the P1 crystals, G-function coupling leads to the simultaneous decrease of the conventional R factor and of the free R factor, a phenomenon which is not observed when non-crystallographic symmetry is absent from the crystal. The method is far less effective in such a case, and the results obtained suggest that the map sorting followed by refinement stage should be by-passed to obtain interpretable electron-density distributions.


2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 581-604 ◽  
Author(s):  
Armin Eftekhari ◽  
Michael B Wakin ◽  
Rachel A Ward

Abstract Leverage scores, loosely speaking, reflect the importance of the rows and columns of a matrix. Ideally, given the leverage scores of a rank-r matrix $M\in \mathbb{R}^{n\times n}$, that matrix can be reliably completed from just $O (rn\log ^{2}n )$ samples if the samples are chosen randomly from a non-uniform distribution induced by the leverage scores. In practice, however, the leverage scores are often unknown a priori. As such, the sample complexity in uniform matrix completion—using uniform random sampling—increases to $O(\eta (M)\cdot rn\log ^{2}n)$, where η(M) is the largest leverage score of M. In this paper, we propose a two-phase algorithm called MC2 for matrix completion: in the first phase, the leverage scores are estimated based on uniform random samples, and then in the second phase the matrix is resampled non-uniformly based on the estimated leverage scores and then completed. For well-conditioned matrices, the total sample complexity of MC2 is no worse than uniform matrix completion, and for certain classes of well-conditioned matrices—namely, reasonably coherent matrices whose leverage scores exhibit mild decay—MC2 requires substantially fewer samples. Numerical simulations suggest that the algorithm outperforms uniform matrix completion in a broad class of matrices and, in particular, is much less sensitive to the condition number than our theory currently requires.


2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 1177-1194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guitao Shi ◽  
Meredith G. Hastings ◽  
Jinhai Yu ◽  
Tianming Ma ◽  
Zhengyi Hu ◽  
...  

Abstract. Antarctic ice core nitrate (NO3-) can provide a unique record of the atmospheric reactive nitrogen cycle. However, the factors influencing the deposition and preservation of NO3- at the ice sheet surface must first be understood. Therefore, an intensive program of snow and atmospheric sampling was made on a traverse from the coast to the ice sheet summit, Dome A, East Antarctica. Snow samples in this observation include 120 surface snow samples (top ∼ 3 cm), 20 snow pits with depths of 150 to 300 cm, and 6 crystal ice samples (the topmost needle-like layer on Dome A plateau). The main purpose of this investigation is to characterize the distribution pattern and preservation of NO3- concentrations in the snow in different environments. Results show that an increasing trend of NO3- concentrations with distance inland is present in surface snow, and NO3- is extremely enriched in the topmost crystal ice (with a maximum of 16.1 µeq L−1). NO3- concentration profiles for snow pits vary between coastal and inland sites. On the coast, the deposited NO3- was largely preserved, and the archived NO3- fluxes are dominated by snow accumulation. The relationship between the archived NO3- and snow accumulation rate can be depicted well by a linear model, suggesting a homogeneity of atmospheric NO3- levels. It is estimated that dry deposition contributes 27–44 % of the archived NO3- fluxes, and the dry deposition velocity and scavenging ratio for NO3- were relatively constant near the coast. Compared to the coast, the inland snow shows a relatively weak correlation between archived NO3- and snow accumulation, and the archived NO3- fluxes were more dependent on concentration. The relationship between NO3- and coexisting ions (nssSO42-, Na+ and Cl−) was also investigated, and the results show a correlation between nssSO42- (fine aerosol particles) and NO3- in surface snow, while the correlation between NO3- and Na+ (mainly associated with coarse aerosol particles) is not significant. In inland snow, there were no significant relationships found between NO3- and the coexisting ions, suggesting a dominant role of NO3- recycling in determining the concentrations.


1999 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 55-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qin Dahe ◽  
Paul A. Mayewski ◽  
Ren Jiawen ◽  
Xiao Cunde ◽  
Sun Junying

AbstractGlaciochemical analysis of surface snow samples, collected along a profile crossing the Antarctic ice sheet from the Larsen Ice Shelf, Antarctic Peninsula, via the Antarctic Plateau through South Pole, Vostok and Komsomolskaya to Mirny station (at the east margin of East Antarctica), shows that the Weddell Sea region is an important channel for air masses to the high plateau of the Antarctic ice sheet (>2000 m a.s.l.). This opinion is supported by the following. (1) The fluxes of sea-salt ions such as Na+, Mg2 + and CF display a decreasing trend from the west to the east of interior Antarctica. In |eneral, as sea-salt aerosols are injected into the atmosphere over the Antarctic ice sheet from the Weddell Sea, large aerosols tend to decrease. For the inland plateau, few large particles of sea-salt aerosol reach the area, and the sea-salt concentration levels are low (2) The high altitude of the East Antarctic plateau, as well as the polar cold high-pressure system, obstruct the intrusive air masses mainly from the South Indian Ocean sector. (3) For the coastal regions of the East Antarctic ice sheet, the elevation rises to 2000 m over a distance from several to several tens of km. High concentrations of sea salt exist in snow in East Antarctica but are limited to a narrow coastal zone. (4) Fluxes of calcium and non-sea-salt sulfate in snow from the interior plateau do not display an eastward-decreasing trend. Since calcium is mainly derived from crustal sources, and nssSO42- is a secondary aerosol, this again confirms that the eastward-declining tendency of sea-salt ions indicates the transfer direction of precipitation vapor.


2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tatiana Gelvez ◽  
Hoover Rueda ◽  
Henry Arguello

<p>Spectral imaging aims to capture and process a 3-dimensional spectral image with a large amount of spectral information for each spatial location. Compressive spectral imaging techniques (CSI) increases the sensing speed and reduces the amount of collected data compared to traditional spectral imaging methods. The coded aperture snapshot spectral imager (CASSI) is an optical architecture to sense a spectral image in a single 2D coded projection by applying CSI. Typically, the 3D scene is recovered by solving an L1-based optimization problem that assumes the scene is sparse in some known orthonormal basis. In contrast, the matrix completion technique (MC) allows to recover the scene without such prior knowledge. The MC reconstruction algorithms rely on a low-rank structure of the scene. Moreover, the CASSI system uses coded aperture patterns that determine the quality of the estimated scene. Therefore, this paper proposes the design of an optimal coded aperture set for the MC methodology. The designed set is attained by maximizing the distance between the translucent elements in the coded aperture. Visualization of the recovered spectral signals and simulations over different databases show average improvement when the designed coded set is used between 1-3 dBs compared to the complementary coded aperture set, and between 3-9 dBs compared to the conventional random coded aperture set.</p>


Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (18) ◽  
pp. 5161
Author(s):  
Bing Liang ◽  
Wei Liu ◽  
Kun Liu ◽  
Mengde Zhou ◽  
Yang Zhang ◽  
...  

Full-field displacement perception and digital twins for core components play a crucial role in the precision manufacturing industry, such as aviation manufacturing. This paper presents a real-time full-field displacement perception method for the combination of online multipoint displacement monitoring and matrix completion theory. Firstly, a conceptual full-field displacement perception model based on the observed information of the multi-points is established. To obtain the full-field displacements of a core component, the component is divided into plentiful discrete points, including observed and unobserved points, based on which the relationship between the observed points and the full-field displacements is established. Then, the solution method of the full-field displacement perception model is proposed. Based on the matrix completion principle and the big data of the simulation, the optimization problem is employed to work out the model and, meanwhile, the pseudo-code is put forward. Finally, the full-field displacement perception experiments are performed. Repeated experiments show that the max error of the displacements calculated by the proposed method can be less than 0.094 mm and the median error can be less than 0.054 mm, while the average time frame can be less than 0.48 s, which is promising considering the high precision and efficiency requirements of the assembly of large aircraft.


Author(s):  
Andrew D McRae ◽  
Mark A Davenport

Abstract This paper considers the problem of estimating a low-rank matrix from the observation of all or a subset of its entries in the presence of Poisson noise. When we observe all entries, this is a problem of matrix denoising; when we observe only a subset of the entries, this is a problem of matrix completion. In both cases, we exploit an assumption that the underlying matrix is low-rank. Specifically, we analyse several estimators, including a constrained nuclear-norm minimization program, nuclear-norm regularized least squares and a non-convex constrained low-rank optimization problem. We show that for all three estimators, with high probability, we have an upper error bound (in the Frobenius norm error metric) that depends on the matrix rank, the fraction of the elements observed and the maximal row and column sums of the true matrix. We furthermore show that the above results are minimax optimal (within a universal constant) in classes of matrices with low-rank and bounded row and column sums. We also extend these results to handle the case of matrix multinomial denoising and completion.


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