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Abstract

Shallow sediments can respond non-linearly to large dynamic strains and undergo a subsequent healing phase as the material gradually recovers following the passing of seismic waves. This study focuses on the physical changes in the subsurface caused by the shaking from a buried chemical explosion detonated in a borehole in Nevada, USA, as a part of the Source Physics Experiment Phase II. The explosion damaged the shallow subsurface and modified the frequency content recorded by 491 geophones and 2240 Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) channels within 2.5 km from surface ground zero. We observe a gradual shift of resonance frequencies in the 10–25 Hz frequency band in the hours following the explosion and develop a method to characterize the related logarithm-type healing process of the shallow (i.e., upper ∼25 m) subsurface. We find that stronger levels of ground motion increase the relative degree of damage and duration of the subsurface healing; with the spall region exhibiting the largest degree of damage and longest healing recovery time. We observe coherent spatial patterns of damage with the region located to the southeast of the explosion exhibiting more damage than the southwest region. This study demonstrates that both DAS and co-located geophones capture similar temporal changes associated with the physical processes occurring in the subsurface, with the high-density sampling of DAS measurements enabling a new capability to monitor the fine-scale changes of the Earth's shallow subsurface following the detonation of a buried explosion.

Storm-chasing for science can be exciting and stressful—we know, because we do it. It has also been essential for developing today's understanding of how tornadoes form and how they behave.

It was only in the low 90s, but a bona fide swelter had set in across Tucson by 9:45 a.m. on June 28, if the sights at Reid Park were any indication.

Research from Los Alamos National Laboratory shows that a new rock physics model will provide more comprehensive and actionable data about how carbon dioxide changes rock properties throughout geologic storage sites, which will make monitoring for geologic carbon storage more reliable. The results were published in Communications Earth & Environment journal.

An increased amount of thick sea ice flowing south from the Arctic Ocean shortened the ice-free shipping season in several parts of the Northwest Passage between 2007 and 2021, according to an analysis in Communications Earth & Environment.

Abstract

The Tanlu Fault Zone (TLFZ) and Chifeng-Kaiyuan Fault (CKF) serve as tectonic boundaries between the North China Craton (NCC) and the Central Asian Orogenic Belt (CAOB). Clarifying the refined structure of these tectonic boundaries is crucial for understanding the relationships between the tectonic units and the heterogeneity in the destruction of the NCC. In this study, two linear seismic arrays were deployed across these tectonic boundaries. Based on the phase velocity dispersion and receiver functions extracted from the seismic arrays, the Hamiltonian Monte Carlo algorithm was employed for the joint inversion of the S-wave velocity (Vs) in the crust and uppermost mantle. The Vs model was then used to correct the time differences in common conversion point (CCP) stacking. The CCP stacking results indicate that the boundary faults TLFZ and CKF are both whole-crustal faults that separate the NCC and CAOB. The Vs structure showed a significant low-velocity anomaly in the mantle beneath the NCC, with intense seismic activity within the crust. This suggests that the NCC was affected by the subduction of the Western Pacific, leading to crustal and mantle destruction. In contrast, the CAOB exhibited a clear high-velocity anomaly with relatively stable crustal structures. We believe that the NCC and CAOB have undergone structural modification and destruction due to the closure of the Paleo-Asian Ocean and the activities of the TLFZ since the Late Mesozoic. During the Cenozoic, the region east of the TLFZ experienced more significant destruction in the NCC than the other adjacent tectonic units.

Droughts evoke images of months to years of dry, dangerous conditions caused by minimal rain. While this captures traditional droughts, similar conditions can occur in a matter of weeks or even days.

A group of scientists have released a landmark report on glacial geoengineering—an emerging field studying whether technology could halt the melting of glaciers and ice sheets as climate change progresses.

The only way to visit Ken Able's office is to traverse Great Bay Boulevard, a narrow, five-mile long road in Tuckerton, New Jersey, that crosses a network of brackish tidal marshes via a series of wood bridges.

Abstract

Accurately simulating moisture transport in summer over the TP is uncertain for current numerical models with one important factor being horizontal resolution. In this study, in order to investigate the moisture transport across scales, three experiments are conducted for summer of 2015 using a global variable-resolution model (MPAS-A), including one with globally quasi-uniform resolution of 60 km (U60km) and two with regional refinements over the TP at resolutions of 16 km (V16km) and 4 km (V4km). The wet bias of summer rainfall within the TP increase from U60km to V16km but is significantly improved in V4km. One important source of rainfall bias is the moisture transport across scales. The differences in moisture transport among three simulations are significantly influenced by the changes in wind fields through the Himalayas and eastern TP in two layers, 700–600 and 600–400 hPa, which is largely modulated by their difference in large-scale circulations particularly monsoon depression. At convection-parameterized scale (from 60 to 16 km), the scale-aware Grell-Freitas convection scheme produces more rainfall and latent heat due to its large sensitivity to the integrating timestep. This sensitivity along with further resolved dynamical processes, collectively strengthen the monsoon depression to the south of TP and make it shift northward in conjunction with the mid-latitude westerlies. With resolution increasing to convection-permitting scale (from 16 to 4 km), the resolved moist convection releases significantly less latent heat and then reproduces a weaker monsoon depression. This causes a discrepancy that exceeds the resolution-related difference at convection-parameterized scale.

Wildfires are unplanned and unpredictable threats to Earth; while we may intuitively relate them to extreme heat at lower latitudes, they are known to occur in Arctic regions, such as those recently ravaging Russia.

Abstract

Observing system simulation experiments are carried out to investigate the added value of radio occultation (RO) refractivity observations with various spatial sampling scenarios on regional weather predictions across the Indian region. A full summer monsoon season (June through September 2020) was used to demonstrate how varying the numbers and horizontal resolutions of RO data impacted regional-scale weather forecasting. The MPAS (Model for Prediction Across Scales) was used to produce a nature run at a maximum horizontal resolution of 10 km. Then the WRF model with 12-km horizontal resolution was used to carry out assimilation/forecast experiments with varying number of simulated RO observations. When the performance of the experiments is taken into account for moisture, temperature, winds and rainfall, as well as prediction lengths, the results show that RO observations with 50-km resolution assimilated every 6 hr would provide the best results. Increasing the horizontal resolution to 25 km per 6 hr shows little overall improvement. Furthermore, RO data with horizontal resolutions lower than 100 km per 6 hr have only a small impact on the regional numerical weather prediction system. The number of low Earth orbit satellites in low-inclination orbits required to achieve occultations every 6 hr with 50-km resolution based on the COSMIC-2 mission is approximately 700. This work is relevant for the deployment of the cost-effective RO observing system for improved weather forecasting over the Indian region.

Abstract

The battering of bedrock by bedload collisions is the primary mechanism by which bedrock rivers erode and landscapes evolve. The energy imparted via impacts acts to detach bedrock via the growth and intersection of surface fractures. We present impact experiments designed to test the influence of particle impact energy on bedrock erosion rates. We found that erosional efficiency increased with increasing impact energy. Notably, these increases in efficiency are not captured by a widely-used mechanistic bedrock erosion model. Observed increases in erosional efficiency were linked with enhanced elastic energy dissipation captured by differences in the coefficient of restitution. We suggest that this increase in energy dissipation is indicative of enhanced crack extension for high velocity impacts. Our experiments indicate a clear energy-dependence for bedrock detachment processes that is not yet captured by bedrock incision models but may be integrated into long-term erosion rates and landscape evolution.

Abstract

Two Earth system models are analyzed to gain insight into the processes that govern projected changes in the South Asian monsoon. Warmer present-day base state tropical SSTs contribute to coupled processes that produce greater future tropical Pacific warming in CESM2 with less of an increase in season-mean monsoon precipitation compared to E3SMv2. This is attributed to changes in the large-scale east-west atmospheric Walker circulation, with relatively larger increases in precipitation and upper-level divergence over the tropical Pacific and increases in upper-level convergence over South Asia in CESM2. The stronger El Niño-like response in CESM2, which increases Pacific precipitation and upper-level divergence farther to the east, and larger future ENSO amplitude in E3SMv2, produce a greater relative increase in future monsoon-ENSO connections in E3SMv2 compared to CESM2. This analysis indicates that the key processes that affect future monsoon-ENSO connections are ENSO amplitude and size of the future tropical Pacific El Niño-like response.

Abstract

Biological productivity in the Southern Ocean is modulated by iron availability. Every summer, a large phytoplankton bloom forms northwest of the Ross Sea, above the Antarctic Australian Ridge (AAR), due to a plume of iron-rich waters. Here, we investigate the origin and trajectories of these iron-rich waters by analyzing water mass observations and Lagrangian experiments. Output from the Southern Ocean State Estimate (SOSE) and in situ measurements reveal that iron-rich AAR bloom waters share properties with Modified Circumpolar Deep Water (MCDW), which forms on the Antarctic shelf-slope. The Lagrangian experiments are conducted using SOSE velocities. Bloom waters tracked with virtual Lagrangian particles highlight an along isopycnal pathway of MCDW from Antarctica's shelf-slope to the AAR bloom site, illustrating advection of these waters by the Balleny Gyre. These results are supported by temperature-salinity analyses, which show a correlation between waters advected northwards; MCDW properties; and high iron concentrations.

Abstract

Monitoring and investigation of the solar-terrestrial space environment is a huge challenge for humans in space age. To this end, China has established the Ground-based Space Environment Monitoring Network, namely Chinese Meridian Project (CMP). The project comprises three major systems: the Space Environment Monitoring System, Data and Communication System, and Scientific Application System. The Space Environment Monitoring System adopts a well-designed monitoring architecture, known as “One Chain, Three Networks, and Four Focuses,” to achieve stereoscopic and comprehensive monitoring of the entire solar-terrestrial space. The “One-Chain” component utilizes optical, radio, interplanetary scintillation, cosmic ray instruments to cover the causal chain of space weather disturbances from the solar surface to near-Earth space. For the ionosphere, middle and upper atmosphere, and magnetic field, instruments are deployed along longitudes of 120° and 100°E, and latitudes of 30° and 40°N, forming the “Three Networks.” Furthermore, more powerful monitoring facilities or large-scale instruments have been deployed in four key regions: the high-latitude polar region, mid-latitude region in northern China, low-latitude region at Hainan Island, and the Tibet region. These four regions are crucial for disturbances propagation and evolution, or possess unique geographical and topographical characteristics. The Data and Communication System and Scientific Application System are designed for data collecting, processing, storage, mining, and providing user service based on data acquired by the Space Environment Monitoring System. The data obtained by CMP will be shared with the global scientific community, facilitating enhanced collaboration on space weather and space physics research.

Abstract

The ground-based microwave radiometer (MWR) retrieves atmospheric profiles with a high temporal resolution for temperature and relative humidity up to a height of 10 km. These profiles have been widely used in the field of meteorological observation. Due to the inherent fragility of neural networks, one of the important issues in this field is to improve the reliability and stability of MWR profiles based on neural network inversion. We propose a deep learning method that adds noise to the BP neural network inversion (NBPNN) process. Comparison of the radiosonde data and NBPNN results shows that if the error of MWR brightness temperature is in the range of −2–2 K, the root-mean-square error (RMSE) of the temperature profile is 2.15 K, and the RMSE of the relative humidity profile is 19.46 % inverted by NBPNN. The results are much less than the errors of the temperature profile and relative humidity profile inverted by the traditional backpropagation neural network inverse method. From the comparison, we demonstrated that NBPNN significantly increases the inversion accuracy and robustness under the condition of errors in brightness temperature, which can reduce requirements for BT accuracy of MWR and achieve MWR long-term stability.

Abstract

Using Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms (THEMIS) data, we studied the stepwise development in high-latitude geomagnetic perturbations and Pi1 and Pi2 pulsations during substorm onsets and their association with stepwise auroral onset arc development by analyzing four substorm events. We found that the geomagnetic perturbations and pulsations which are magnetic signatures of the substorm on the ground show stepwise changes and excitation similar to the development of the auroral onset arc which is the visual manifestation of the substorm. We observed minor to small changes in magnetic perturbations and excitation of Pi2 pulsations before initial brightening (IB), and the subsequent excitation of Pi1 and the second Pi2 at or around the further enhancement of onset arc (FE). Then, a steep fall in the magnetic northward component, and the largest-amplitude and highest-frequency Pi1 and Pi2 pulsations appeared at or after poleward expansion (PE). The appearance of FE in all four events and its association with magnetic perturbations and pulsations suggest that FE is an important step in addition to IB and PE. The detailed analysis of the FE step using ground- and space-based data may provide information on the substorm triggering mechanism, the sequence of mechanisms behind the substorm, as well as the mechanisms responsible for the excitation of Pi1 and Pi2 pulsations.

Abstract

Energy transfer and transport in the terrestrial magnetotails are primarily driven by dipolarization fronts (DFs) embedded inside plasma jets. The DF-driven energy transfer has hitherto been believed to occur locally at the fronts. Different from the traditional knowledge, here we present the first observation of persistent energy conversion extended far behind a DF. The persistent energy conversion, which was dominated by energy loads and mainly contributed by electron currents, developed inside a turbulent, decaying flux pileup region (FPR), nearly 10 d DF (DF’s thickness) behind the DF. The energy transfer chain may be initiated by interaction between the ion flow and ambient plasmas and closed by electron dynamics, leading to electron acceleration perpendicular to magnetic field. These results highlight that electron physics in turbulent FPRs plays a crucial role in the energy transport in the planetary magnetospheres.

Abstract

Observational data sets for the high latitude middle atmosphere are key to understand the dynamics over those latitudes and the coupling between the lower and middle atmosphere. Utilizing long-term data sets from an all-sky imager at Tromsø, Norway (69.6°N, 19.2°E), the characteristics of 18 mesospheric frontal events in the Arctic winter mesosphere from 2011 to 2015 were studied. These frontal events exhibit horizontal extensions exceeding 500 km and were characterized by a sharp leading front, sometimes followed by a quasi-monochromatic wave train or a turbulent region. A subset of these frontal gravity wave events has been identified in the past as “bores.” While there have been numerous previous reports from low- and mid-latitude sites, and also from southern high latitudes, there have been a few from northern high latitudes. This study focuses on the frontal events in the northern high latitudes and provides new insights into the characteristics of these events. Their horizontal wavelengths primarily ranged from 20 to 40 km, and they exhibited phase speeds in the range 30–80 m/s. Most events were observed before local midnight. No clear link between these events and auroral activity was found. The majority of fronts were found propagating in the north-west direction, which might be due to the wind filtering effects.