Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Adapting To Low Colorado River Flows And Storage: Lessons From 3 Computer Exercises, David E. Rosenberg

Publications

As Colorado River flows and reservoir levels decline, discussion is ramping up about adapting operations to low flow and storage because existing operations adapt only to storage. This post reviews three recent computer exercises that adapted Colorado River operations to low flow and low storage. Three final paragraphs synthesize lessons to build towards more equitable and sustainable operations.

Climatology Of Deep O+ Dropouts In The Night-Time F-Region In Solar Minimum Measured By A Langmuir Probe Onboard The International Space Station, Shantanab Debchoudhury, Aroh Barjatya, Joseh I. Minow, Victoria N. Coffey, Linda N. Parker

Publications

The Floating Potential Measurement Unit (FPMU) onboard the International Space Station includes a Wide sweeping Langmuir Probe (WLP) that has been operating in the F-region of the ionosphere at ∼400 km since 2006. While traditional Langmuir probe estimates include critical plasma parameters like electron density and temperature, we have also extracted the O+ percentage from the total ion constituents. This O+ composition dataset from the recent minimum in the Solar Cycle 24 reveals orbits with dropouts in O+ to below 80% of the total background ion density at ISS orbital altitudes. The observed O+ percentages during these dropouts are much …

Modeling Studies Of Gravity Wave Dynamics In Highly Structured Environments: Reflection, Trapping, Instability, Momentum Transport, Secondary Gravity Waves, And Induced Flow Responses, Wenjun Dong, David C. Fritts, Michael P. Hickey, Alan Z. Liu, Thomas S. Lund, Shaodong Zhang, Yanying Yan, Fan Yang

Publications

A compressible numerical model is applied for three-dimensional (3-D) gravity wave (GW) packets undergoing momentum deposition, self-acceleration (SA), breaking, and secondary GW (SGW) generation in the presence of highly-structured environments enabling thermal and/or Doppler ducts, such as a mesospheric inversion layer (MIL), tidal wind (TW), or combination of MIL and TW. Simulations reveal that ducts can strongly modulate GW dynamics. Responses modeled here include reflection, trapping, suppressed transmission, strong local instabilities, reduced SGW generations, higher altitude SGW responses, and induced large-scale flows. Instabilities that arise in ducts experience strong dissipation after they emerge, while trapped smaller-amplitude and smaller-scale GWs can …

Statistical Characteristics Of High-Frequency Gravity Waves Observed By An Airglow Imager At Andes Lidar Observatory, Alan Z. Liu, Bing Cao

Publications

The long-term statistical characteristics of high-frequency quasi-monochromatic gravity waves are presented using multi-year airglow images observed at Andes Lidar Observatory (ALO, 30.3° S, 70.7° W) in northern Chile. The distribution of primary gravity wave parameters including horizontal wavelength, vertical wavelength, intrinsic wave speed, and intrinsic wave period are obtained and are in the ranges of 20–30 km, 15–25 km, 50–100 m s−1, and 5–10 min, respectively. The duration of persistent gravity wave events captured by the imager approximately follows an exponential distribution with an average duration of 7–9 min. The waves tend to propagate against the local background winds and …

Mesosphere And Lower Thermosphere Changes Associated With The 2 July 2019 Total Eclipse In South America Over The Andes Lidar Observatory, Cerro Pachon, Chile, A. Liu, F. Vargas, G. Swenson, C. Segura, P. Vega, J. Fuentes, D. Pautet, M. Taylor, Y. Zhao, Y. Morton, H. Bourne

Publications

This article presents the results of a week of observations around the 2 July 2019, total Chilean eclipse. The eclipse occurred between 19:22 and 21:46 UTC, with complete sun disc obscuration at 20:38–20:40 UTC (16:38–16:40 LT) over the Andes Lidar Observatory (ALO) at (30.3°S, 70.7°W). Observations were carried out using ALO instrumentation with the goal to observe possible eclipse-induced effects on the mesosphere and lower thermosphere region (MLT; 75–105 km altitude). To complement our data set, we have also utilized TIMED/SABER temperatures and ionosonde electron density measurements taken at the University of La Serena's Juan Soldado Observatory. Observed events include …

A Monte Carlo Method For Evaluating Empirical Gyrochronology Models And Its Application To Wide Binary Benchmarks, Tomomi Otani, Ted Von Hippel, Derek Buzasi, Terry Oswalt, Alexander Stone-Martinez, Patrice Majewski

Publications

No abstract provided.

The Replacement Rule For Nonlinear Shallow Water Waves, A. Ludu, Z. Zong

Publications

When a (1 + 1)-dimensional nonlinear PDE in real function η(x, t) admits localized traveling solutions we can consider L to be the average width of the envelope, A the average value of the amplitude of the envelope, and V the group velocity of such a solution. The replacement rule (RR or nonlinear dispersion relation) procedure is able to provide a simple qualitative relation between these three parameters, without actually solve the equation. Examples are provided from KdV, C-H and BBM equations, but the procedure appears to be almost universally valid for such (1 + 1)-dimensional nonlinear PDE and their …

Improving White Dwarfs As Chronometers With Gaia Parallaxes And Spectroscopic Metallicities, Adam Moss, Ted Von Hippel, Elliot Robinson, Kareem El-Badry, David C. Stenning, David Van Dyk, Morgan Fouesneau, Coryn A.L. Bailer-Jones, Elizabeth Jeffery, Jimmy Sargent, Isabelle Kloc, Natalie Moticska

Publications

White dwarfs (WDs) offer unrealized potential in solving two problems in astrophysics: stellar age accuracy and precision. WD cooling ages can be inferred from surface temperatures and radii, which can be constrained with precision by high-quality photometry and parallaxes. Accurate and precise Gaia parallaxes along with photometric surveys provide information to derive cooling and total ages for vast numbers of WDs. Here we analyze 1372 WDs found in wide binaries with main-sequence (MS) companions and report on the cooling and total age precision attainable in these WD+MS systems. The total age of a WD can be further constrained if its …

Oxygen Ion Escape At Venus Associated With Three-Dimensional Kelvin-Helmholtz Instability, Tong Dang, Xuanye Ma, Jiuhou Le, Binzheng Zhang, Tielong Zhang, Zhonghua Yao, John Lyon, Sudong Xiao, Maodong Yan, Oliver Brambles, Kareem Sorathia

Publications

How oxygens escape from Venus has long been a fundamental but controversial topic in the planetary research. Among various key mechanisms, the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability (KHI) has been suggested to play an important role in the oxygen ion escape from Venus. Limited by either scarce in-situ observations or simplified theoretical estimations, the mystery of oxygen ion escape process associated with KHI is still unsettled. Here we present the first three-dimensional configuration of KHI at Venus with a global multifluid magnetohydrodynamics model, showing a significantly fine structure and evolution of the KHI. KHI mainly occurred at the low latitude boundary layer if …

Simulation Of Infrasonic Acoustic Wave Imprints On Airglow Layers During The 2016 M7.8 Kaikoura Earthquake, P. A. Inchin, J. Aguilar Guerrero, J. B. Snively, Y. Kaneko

Publications

Simulations of hypothesized but unobserved mesopause airglow (MA) disturbances generated by infrasonic acoustic waves (IAWs) during the 2016 M7.8 Kaikoura earthquake are performed. Realistic surface displacements are calculated in a forward seismic wave propagation model and incorporated into a 3-D nonlinear compressible neutral atmosphere model as a source of IAWs at the surface-air interface. Inchin et al. (2021), https://doi.org/10.1029/2020av000260 previously showed that Global Positioning System-based total electron content (TEC) observations can be used to constrain the finite-fault kinematics of the Kaikoura earthquake. However, due to limitations of Global Navigation Satellite System network coverage and coalescence of nonlinear IAW fronts, they …

Iseeq: Information Seeking Question Generation Using Dynamic Meta-Information Retrieval And Knowledge Graphs, Manas Gaur, Kalpa Gunaratna, Vijay Srinivasan, Hongxia Jin

Publications

Conversational Information Seeking (CIS) is a relatively new research area within conversational AI that attempts to seek information from end-users in order to understand and satisfy users’ needs. If realized, such a system has far-reaching benefits in the real world; for example, a CIS system can assist clinicians in pre-screening or triaging patients in healthcare. A key open sub-problem in CIS that remains unaddressed in the literature is generating Information Seeking Questions (ISQs) based on a short initial query from the end user. To address this open problem, we propose Information SEEking Question generator (ISEEQ), a novel approach for generating …

3d Numerical Simulation Of Secondary Wave Generation From Mountain Wave Breaking Over Europe, Christopher J. Heale, Katrina Bossert, Sharon L. Vadas

Publications

In this paper, we simulate an observed mountain wave event over central Europe and investigate the subsequent generation, propagation, phase speeds and spatial scales, and momentum deposition of secondary waves under three different tidal wind conditions. We find the mountain wave breaks just below the lowest critical level in the mesosphere. As the mountain wave breaks, it extends outwards along the phases and fluid associated with the breaking flows downstream of its original location by 500–1,000 km. The breaking generates a broad range of secondary waves with horizontal scales ranging from the mountain wave instability scales (20–300 km), to multiples …

Feedback Interactions Between The Ionosphere And Magnetosphere At Middle Latitude, Mergen Alimaganbetov, Anatoly Streltsov

Publications

Observations show that magnetic pulsations with frequencies around 1 mHz are frequently detected simultaneously at different latitudes on the ground, in the inner magnetosphere, and in the solar wind. The coupling between oscillations in the dynamic pressure or magnetic field carried by the solar wind and the ULF waves detected on the ground at high latitudes has been suggested in several studies. We present results from a numerical study of ultra-low-frequency waves detected by the ground magnetometers at middle latitudes during substorm. We investigate the hypothesis that these waves are generated by the ionospheric feedback instability driven by the large-scale …

Venus Mountain Waves In The Upper Atmosphere Simulated By A Time-Invariant Linear Full-Wave Spectral Model, Michael P. Hickey, Richard L. Walterscheid, Thomas Navarro, Gerald Schubert

Publications

A 2-D spectral full-wave model is described that simulates the generation and propagation of mountain waves over idealized topography in Venus' atmosphere. Modeled temperature perturbations are compared with the Akatsuki observations. Lower atmosphere eddy diffusivity and stability play a major role in the upward propagation of gravity waves from their mountain sources. Two local times (LT) are considered. For LT = 11 h the waves are blocked by a critical level near 100 km altitude, while for LT = 16 h the waves propagate into the thermosphere. As a result of the small scale height in the Venus thermosphere, for …

Comparison Of Mlt Momentum Fluxes Over The Andes At Four Different Latitudinal Sectors Using Multistatic Radar Configurations, J. Federico Conte, Alan Liu, Zishun Qiao, Jorge L. Chau, David C. Fritts, José L. Hormaechea, Jacobo O. Salvador, Marco A. Milla

Publications

The middle atmosphere over South America, particularly above the Andes mountain range, is known as one of the most dynamically active regions in the world. Previous studies have investigated wave dynamics at mesosphere and lower thermosphere (MLT) altitudes within this region, but only a handful of them have made use of continuous measurements provided by specular meteor radars (SMRs). Furthermore, it was only until recently that MLT horizontal wind gradients were estimated for the first time using Spread Spectrum Interferometric Multistatic meteor radar Observing Network (SIMONe) Argentina, a multistatic SMR network located in southern Patagonia. By observing larger amounts of …

A New Geometric Structure On Tangent Bundles, Nikos Georgiou, Brendan Guilfoyle

Publications

For a Riemannian manifold (N, g), we construct a scalar flat neutral metric G on the tangent bundle TN. The metric is locally conformally flat if and only if either N is a 2- dimensional manifold or (N, g) is a real space form. It is also shown that G is locally symmetric if and only if g is locally symmetric. We then study submanifolds in TN and, in particular, find the conditions for a curve to be geodesic. The conditions for a Lagrangian graph in the tangent bundle TN to have parallel mean curvature …

The Data Analytics And The Science Revolution, Leila Halawi, Amal Clarke, Kelly George

Publications

This text highlights the difference between analytics and data science, using predictive analytic techniques to analyze different historical data, including aviation data and concrete data, interpreting the predictive models, and highlighting the steps to deploy the models and the steps ahead. The book combines the conceptual perspective and a hands-on approach to predictive analytics using SAS VIYA, an analytic and data management platform. The authors use SAS VIYA to focus on analytics to solve problems, highlight how analytics is applied in the airline and business environment, and compare several different modeling techniques. They decipher complex algorithms to demonstrate how they …

Resonant Alfvén Waves In The Lower Auroral Ionosphere: Evidence For The Nonlinear Evolution Of The Ionospheric Feedback Instability, Hassanali Akbari, Anatoly Streltsov, Robert Pfaff, James Clemmons, Henry Freudenreich, Douglas Rowland

Publications

During the “Auroral Jets” experiment from Poker Flat, Alaska on 2 March 2017, two NASA sounding rockets were simultaneously launched into the active auroral ionosphere. The rockets were equipped with instrumentation to measure DC and AC electric fields, magnetic fields, energetic electrons, plasma density, and neutral winds and achieved apogees of 190 and 330 km. A prominent feature of the electric and magnetic field observations is the presence of localized large-amplitude (±40 mV/m and ±100 nT) small-scale (λ⊥∼ 1 km) Alfvén wave structures at altitudes as low as 150 km in the vicinity of up- and down-ward current regions. We …

The Source Of Auroral Omegas, Heidi K. Nykyri, J.M. Weygand, Mostafa El-Alaoui

Publications

The auroral wave-like structures called “omega bands” appear within the post-midnight sector auroral oval with shapes resembling the Greek letter omega, and are typically associated with the recovery phase of substorms. Prior work and MHD simulations suggest both high speed earthward flows and postmidnight flow shears are possible omega band source mechanisms. However, what produces omega bands is not well understood. It is most likely that the paucity of concurrent magnetospheric data has limited our ability to understand fully the mechanism responsible for the generation of the omega bands. We have identified about 263 auroral omegas in seven different THEMIS …

A Just Energy Transition Requires Research At The Intersection Of Policy And Technology, Erin Baker

Publications

The current energy system, in the US and around the world, is rife with inequities. The coming energy transition to a low carbon world has the potential to right some of these; but, without intention, it is more likely to perpetuate the current inequities. Enabling a just energy transition will require multiple categories of action, including fair policies and regulations; data and metrics; and knowledge generation. I focus on this last point, and particularly research at intersection of energy technology and social equity.

Weatherization And Energy Security: A Review Of Recent Events In Ercot, Golbon Zakeri, Maria Hmaria Hernandez, Matthew Lackner, James Manwell

Publications

Purpose of Review

This review addresses the question of energy security. With the transition of energy generation fleet to cleaner, more sustainable electricity production, energy security is a topic of increasing importance.

Recent Findings

Recent events in Texas brought the concept of energy security to the fore. In this review, we examine the makeup of electricity generation and the causes of the February 2021 blackout of Texas. We will investigate the cost/benefit of winterization in Texas and ask why this was not undertaken subsequent to a similar event in 2011.

Summary

We investigate the case of Texas blackout of February …

Data-Driven Decarbonization Of Residential Heating Systems: An Equity Perspective., John Wamburu, Emma Grazier, David Irwin, Christine Crago, Prashant Shenoy

Publications

Since heating buildings using natural gas, propane and oil makes up a significant proportion of the aggregate carbon emissions every year, there is a strong interest in decarbonizing residential heating systems using new technologies such as electric heat pumps. In this poster, we conduct a data-driven optimization study to analyze the potential of replacing gas heating with electric heat pumps to reduce carbon emissions in a city-wide distribution grid. We seek to not only reduce the carbon footprint of residential heating, but also show how to do so equitably. Our results show that lower income homes have an energy usage …

Sustainable Computing - Without The Hot Air, Noman Bashir, David Irwin, Prashant Shenoy, Abel Souza

Publications

The demand for computing is continuing to grow exponentially. This growth will translate to exponential growth in computing's energy consumption unless improvements in its energy-efficiency can outpace increases in its demand. Yet, after decades of research, further improving energy-efficiency is becoming increasingly challenging, as it is already highly optimized. As a result, at some point, increases in computing demand are likely to outpace increases in its energy-efficiency, potentially by a wide margin. Such exponential growth, if left unchecked, will position computing as a substantial contributor to global carbon emissions. While prominent technology companies have recognized the problem and sought to …

The Sustainability Of Decarbonizing The Grid: A Multi-Model Decision Analysis Applied To Mexico, Rodrigo Mercado Fernandez, Erin Baker

Publications

Mexico recognizes its vulnerability to the effects of climate change, including sea level rise, increasing average temperatures, more frequent extreme weather events and changes to the hydrological cycle. Because of these concerns Mexico has a vested interest in developing sustainable strategies for mitigating climate change as it develops its electricity grid. In this study, we use a set of sustainability criteria to evaluate a number of model-derived pathways for the electricity grid aimed at meeting Mexico's climate goals. We use a multi-step approach, combining pathways from multiple large scale global models with a detailed electricity model to leverage geographic information …

Interpretable Design Of Reservoir Computing Networks Using Realization Theory, Wei Miao, Vignesh Narayanan, Jr-Shin Li

Publications

The reservoir computing networks (RCNs) have been successfully employed as a tool in learning and complex decision-making tasks. Despite their efficiency and low training cost, practical applications of RCNs rely heavily on empirical design. In this article, we develop an algorithm to design RCNs using the realization theory of linear dynamical systems. In particular, we introduce the notion of α-stable realization and provide an efficient approach to prune the size of a linear RCN without deteriorating the training accuracy. Furthermore, we derive a necessary and sufficient condition on the irreducibility of the number of hidden nodes in linear RCNs based …

A New Non-Inheriting Homogeneous Solution Of The Einstein-Maxwell Equations With Cosmological Term, Ian M. Anderson, Charles G. Torre

Publications

We find a new homogeneous solution to the Einstein-Maxwell equations with a cos- mological term. The spacetime manifold is R × S3. The spacetime metric admits a simply transitive isometry group G = R × SU(2) and is Petrov type I. The spacetime is geodesically complete and globally hyperbolic. The electromagnetic field is non- null and non-inheriting: it is only invariant with respect to the SU(2) subgroup and is time-dependent in a stationary reference frame.

Exo-Sir: An Epidemiological Model To Analyze The Impact Of Exogenous Spread Of Infection, Nirmal Kumar Sivaraman, Manas Gaur, Shivansh Baijal, Sakthi Balan Muthiah, Amit Sheth

Publications

Epidemics like Covid-19 and Ebola have impacted people's lives significantly. The impact of mobility of people across the countries or states in the spread of epidemics has been significant. The spread of disease due to factors local to the population under consideration is termed the endogenous spread. The spread due to external factors like migration, mobility, etc. is called the exogenous spread. In this paper, we introduce the Exo-SIR model, an extension of the popular SIR model and a few variants of the model. The novelty in our model is that it captures both the exogenous and endogenous spread of …

A Numerical Solution Of Water Flow In Unsaturated Soil With Evapotraspiration, Andrei Ludu, Harihar Khanal, Ramesh Chandra Timsina, Kedar Nath Uprety

Publications

Flow movement in unsaturated soil can be expressed by Richards equation. This equation can be obtained by applying the mass conversation law and the Darcy law. In this work, we solve one-dimensional Kirchhoff transformed Richards equation with loss of water due to the evaporation of unsaturated porous media (soils) and transpiration of plants numerically using Crank-Nicolson method. The result has compared with evapotranspiration function and without it in the governing equation. It has found that an additional work in time and flow movement is needs to reach the given boundary condition for the model without evapotranspiration.

A Mathematical Model For Transport And Growth Of Microbes In Unsaturated Porous Soil, Harihar Khanal, Andrei Ludu, Ramesh Chandra Timsina, Kedar Nath Uprety

Publications

In this work, we develop a mathematical model for transport and growth of microbes by natural (rain) water infiltration and flow through unsaturated porous soil along the vertical direction under gravity and capillarity by coupling a system of advection diffusion equations (for concentration of microbes and their growth-limiting substrate) with the Richards equation. (e model takes into consideration several major physical, chemical, and biological mechanisms. (e resulting coupled system of PDEs together with their boundary conditions is highly nonlinear and complicated to solve analytically. We present both a partial analytic approach towards solving the nonlinear system and finding the main …

Primary Versus Secondary Gravity Wave Responses At F-Region Heights Generated By A Convective Source, C. J. Heale, P. A. Inchin, J. B. Snively

Publications

A 2D nonlinear, compressible model is used to simulate the acoustic-gravity wave (AGW, i.e., encompassing the spectrum of acoustic and gravity waves) response to a thunderstorm squall-line type source. We investigate the primary and secondary neutral AGW response in the thermosphere, consistent with waves that can couple to the F-region ionospheric plasma, and manifest as Traveling Ionospheric Disturbances (TIDs). We find that primary waves at z = 240 km altitude have wavelengths and phase speeds in the range 170–270 km, and 180–320 m/s, respectively. The secondary waves generated have wavelengths ranging from ∼100 to 600 km, and phase speeds from …