Engineering Commons^™

System Performance Of Absolute Quartz-Crystal Barometers With Sub-Microbar Precision, Ganesh Kumar Subramanian Ananthanarayanan

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

In this thesis, the performance of absolute quartz-crystal barometers is presented, and their ability to measure, with sub-microbar precision, atmospheric pressure fluctuations with periods as short as a few seconds is demonstrated. The first observations of ocean-generated atmospheric infrasound with periods of about 5 s and sub-microbar amplitudes, called microbaroms, using single absolute barometers are presented. These barometers can measure microbaroms with amplitudes down to 50 nanobars and the 1-h estimates of microbarom amplitudes calculated from data collected independently with three collocated barometers differed by only a few nanobars. The observed microbaroms have amplitudes between 0.2 microbars and 1 microbar …

Design And Development Of A Ka-Band Interferometer For Cryospheric Applications, Harish K. Vedantham

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Topographic maps of the earth are essential to geographic and earth science studies. In particular, mapping and estimating physical parameters of the earth’s water and ice cover are critical to global climate studies. Among these, snow, ocean and fresh water topography, snow wetness and water equivalent are of immediate interest to the scientific community.

Challenges in the instrument development and deployment posed by these required measurements are twofold. Firstly, these measurements are required to have global coverage, yet maintain stringent spatial resolution and accuracy margins. Secondly, snow topography measurement requires minimal electromagnetic wave penetration through snow, hence requiring the use …