After a couple of extra days off, I’ve been back at work today – there were a couple of things that needed fixing in my thesis – a typo here and there in my equations and I had to move the figures into the body of each chapter – I couldn’t just keep them at the end of each chapter like I prefer. It’s surprising how long that takes. And it takes even longer if:

1. The automatic figure numbering in word goes screwy because you want to use letters in the appendices
2. The equations in the captions go screwy every time I refresh the fields in the list of figures – they change random things to bold and a lot of the markup vanishes, so things like ends up looking like 15o

But, at least my thesis is pretty close to matching the style guide… I ought to be able to submitting as soon as I get the last bit of paperwork from physics.

 

Holton, 1.3 –1.4.1

Scale analysis – estimating the magnitudes of various terms
Typical expected values for various quantities are specified:

• Magnitudes of field variables
• Amplitudes of fluctuations
• Characteristic length, depth and time scales of the fluctuations

These values are used to estimate and compare the magnitudes of the various terms in the equations

Eg: a mid-latitude cyclone typically has a 10hPa surface pressure fluctuation and extends across a distance of about 1000 km.

The horizontal pressure gradient is estimated by Pa/m

Pressure fluctuations of 10hPa are common over many systems, such as tornados, squall lines and hurricanes. The differences in spatial scale lead to different terms being dominant in the dynamics of these phenomena.

Fundamental Forces – nature of the forces influencing the atmospheric motions.
Body forces: act on center of mass of fluid parcel. Proportional to parcel mass.

Surface forces: Across boundaries. Independent of mass.

The chief forces in the atmosphere are the pressure gradient, gravity and frictional forces.
In the rotating frame of the earth, the Coriolis force is also important.

Pressure gradient force –

Consider an infinitesimal volume element of air in a box centered on . The molecules in this box are constantly hitting the walls, transferring momentum to it. The force per unit area is given by the pressure. The pressure at the center is , and the pressure at the walls can be approximated as a Taylor expansion to first order in the length of the box.
Then, the sum of the pressure forces acting on opposite walls will be proportional to the negative of the pressure gradient times the volume of the box

*diagrams and equations – enter when I’m at a desk*

The volume times the density is equal to the mass. Dividing both sides by the mass gives the acceleration due to the pressure:

The forces are only proportional to the gradient in the pressure, not its absolute values.

 

In this post, I am putting up the bibliography from my thesis. This is essentially a (non-exhaustive) list of the papers I’ve read in the last few years.

In the unlikely event I have a lot of free time in the near future, I will update this with doi links and maybe some notes on the papers that I spent the most time thinking about.

Agudelo, P. A., J. A. Curry, C. D. Hoyos, and P. J. Webster, 2006: Transition between suppressed and active phases of intraseasonal oscillations in the Indo-Pacific warm pool. J. Climate, 19, 5519–5530.

Andersen, J. A. and Z. Kuang, 2008: A Toy Model of the Instability in the Equatorially Trapped Convectively Coupled Waves on the Equatorial Beta Plane, J. Atmos. Sci., 65, 3736-3757.

Andersen, J. A. and Z. Kuang, 2012: Moist Static Energy Budget of MJO-like disturbances in the atmosphere of a zonally symmetric aquaplanet, J. Climate,  25, 2782–2804, doi: 10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00168.1

Andersen, J. A. and Z. Kuang, 2012b: The sensitivity of propagation of the MJO-like anomaly observed in SPCAM to variations in the Aquaplanet Climate. In preparation.

Anyamba, E., E. Williams, J. Susskind, A. Fraser-Smith, and M. Fullekrug, 2000: The manifestation of the Madden-Julian Oscillation in global deep convection and in the Schumann resonance intensity, J. Atmos. Sci., 57, 1029–1044.

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Araligidad, N. M., and E. D. Maloney, 2008: Wind-driven latent heat flux and the intraseasonal oscillation. Geophys. Res. Lett., 35, L04815.

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Arnold, N. and E. Tziperman, 2012: Enhanced MJO-like Variability at High SST in Aquaplanet Simulations with a Super-Parameterized GCM. In preparation.

Back, L. E., and C. S. Bretherton, 2005: The relationship between wind speed and precipitation in the east Pacific ITCZ. J. Climate, 18, 4317–4328.

Back, L. E., and C. S. Bretherton, 2006: Geographic variability in the export of moist static energy and vertical motion profiles in the tropical Pacific. Geophys. Res. Lett., 33, L17810.

Benedict, J., and D. A. Randall, 2007: Observed characteristics of the MJO relative to maximum rainfall. J. Atmos. Sci., 64, 2332–2354.

Benedict, J., and D. A. Randall, 2009: Structure of the Madden-Julian Oscillation in the Superparameterized CAM. J. Atmos. Sci., 66, 3277—3296.

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Boos, W. R. and Z. Kuang, 2010: Mechanisms of poleward-propagating, intraseasonal convective anomalies in cloud-system resolving models. J. Atmos. Sci., 67, 3673-3691.

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Grabowski, W. W., 2003: MJO-like coherent structures: Sensitivity simulations using the Cloud-Resolving Convection Parameterization (CRCP). J. Atmos. Sci., 60, 847-864

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Hendon, H.H., M. C. Wheeler, and C. Zhang 2007: Seasonal dependence of the MJO-ENSO relationship. J. Climate, 20, 531-543.

Hidayat, R. and S. Kizu, 2010: Influence of the Madden–Julian Oscillation on Indonesian rainfall variability in austral summer, Int. J. Clim., 30, 1816-1825.

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*Now that my thesis is accepted, and most of the hard work is done, I want to try writing a series of posts that will cover what I did with my time the last few years.*

In this project, I’ve mostly been thinking about convection and some of the large-scqle organized circulations associated with it. Specifically, we’re interested in several types of propagating signals that form a large part of the variability in the tropical atmosphere that consist of coupled systems of convection and circulation: The Convectively coupled Equatorial waves and the MJO

1.1 Observations of the Convectively Coupled Equatorial Waves

One way we observe convection is in Outgoing Long-wave Radiation (OLR) – satellite measurements of the infra-red radiation coming up out of the atmosphere. The satellite essentially measures the infra-red radiated from the uppermost opaque surface. OLR is mostly a measure of the cloud top temperature – clouds act as reasonably good black bodies, so the OLR goes like temperature to the fourth power through the Stefan-Boltzmann law. Because temperature in the troposphere is closely related to height, high clouds are colder than low clouds, so OLR gives us a measure of cloud top height.

The deepest clouds give the lowest OLR, and places where the sky is clear give a higher OLR.

NOAA Satellite Outgoing Long Wave Radiation averaged over three days near the end of 2007

In the figure, you can see a large area of blue-cold-high clouds indicating the deep convection over Indonesia and in the South-Pacific Convergence Zone (SPCZ). The Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) is also visible, although the convection there is a little weaker (probably due to the averaging over several days of the more intermittent/variable convection in that region). In contrast, in places like Western Australia and over parts of Africa, the radiating surface is hot – in that region the satellites are seeing the surface.

In the satellite record of outgoing longwave radiation (OLR; Liebmann and Smith 1996)—a good proxy for deep tropical convection (see, e.g., Arkin and Andanuy 1989)—there are patterns of enhanced convection and precipitation organized on planetary scales. The waves are easily visualized in Hovmöller diagrams of the equatorial OLR (figure 1-1). This figure shows the OLR signal averaged between S and N for approximately a year of the OLR record (early October 1990 to early November 1991). Along with this is shown the OLR filtered to the Kelvin Wave (KW) and MJO spectral regions (discussed below), showing more clearly the presence of coherent waves of convection traversing the tropics.

The strongest and largest of these convective structures propagate eastwards at about 5 m/s with periods in the range of 30 to 90 days from the Indian Ocean to the central Pacific, coupled to planetary scale wind, temperature, and moisture anomalies. This disturbance is the MJO, which plays an important role in the global weather and climate (see below), so correctly simulating its behavior is an important goal for climate models. However, the MJO seen in most models is too weak and propagates too fast (e.g. Hayashi and Sumi 1986, Lau and Lau. 1986, Slingo et al. 1996, Maloney and Hartman 2001, Waliser et al. 2003, Zhang et al. 2006, Lin et al. 2006). The quality of the simulated MJO seems to be very sensitive to the details of the representation of convection (e.g. Wang and Schlesinger 1999, Maloney and Hartmann 2001, Zhu et al. 2009), indicating that the deficiencies in the modeling of the MJO may stem from a lack of understanding how convection interacts with the larger scale flows in reality.

 

I successfully defended my thesis yesterday – although I guess I do not really get my degree until commencement in a couple of weeks, I am going to start this now…

My thesis defense went really smoothly, all things considered. The night before, Zhiming gave me a bit of a scare by telling me that my slides needed a lot of polishing and I needed a lot more practice. It turned out, when I saw him in the morning he told me that he was just trying make sure I practiced a bit more. *sneaky, I may have to use that myself if I ever have students of my own in the future. Future student, forget you read that.*

Then, I decided realized that didn’t have my Mac video dongle (one of my personal theories is that Apple’s entire profit stems from requiring a brand new, different one of these for each model of MacBook), so I had to dash back to my office (from Lyman to the museum building) to pick it up (it’s not mine, in truth, it belongs to the EPS department – I borrowed it to practice my talk for Jacksonville a few weeks ago and “forgot” to take it back – I will take it back to Maryorie on Monday, honest). At least that gave me a chance to pick up a bottle of water for the talk from Buckminister’s on the way back.

*one more thing, I think*

One third of my committee is at CERN for the semester – so John had to Skype in – that was pretty easy, and the regular drop outs of the connection gave me a good excuse for loosing my train of thought, so I think it was a net positive.

Even though the Skype video meant John couldn’t see my slides.

*Even though the PDF of my slides I sent John from my dropbox had a font issue of some sort.

*Even though the ppt file I put on Dropbox somehow needed a password, so John couldn’t get it.

*Even though the version John eventually got had my notes plainly visible (I don’t think there was anything embarrassing there, and John promised not to look at them anyway).

Other than that (and only getting through about half my slides before it was decided that we had run long enough) the whole thing was pretty easy, and surprisingly, fun.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised – getting to talk for about 90 mins on stuff I know really well, and I am actually quite proud of, probably ought to be fun.

Anyway, I passed. That’s really all that matters.

I did not do any work for the rest of the day – I am quite certain I couldn’t have achieved anything anyway. Same with today.

There will be plenty to do on Monday – between GSAS paperwork, cleaning up a couple of typos I’ve spotted in my thesis and turning the bits that aren’t yet papers into publications (I want to get at least one more out before I move on).

Also, I realized last night that I’m now more qualified that Howard Wolowitz.

A) Where’s my space-station trip, fictional NASA?
B) watch out Cooper, you’re next;
C) no one in my followers/friends list went “who?” when I tweeted that.

*image caption: not anymore – the intake of 2001 physics grad students is finally done. Also, I used to have so much hair.*

 

2nd day keeping the food diary today, and I think it was a bit more successful than yesterday – I kept myself to my calorie budget (as long as I keep from eating anything else in the half hour or so until we go to bed). Keeping the diary helped me remember to skip things I didn’t really want to eat, like cookies, and to stop grazing the Xmas candy haul before I blew my budget right out of the water.

I think tomorrow will be another great day with the food diary – hopefully I can keep to the budget again…

 

At the end of the first day of keeping the food diary, I am pretty happy with the process. I have an app on my iPad called myfitnespal – this makes the whole thing streamlined and simple, so there’s little overhead to this new habit. I ended up a few hundred calories over my goal, but still under baseline, so I’m in the weight loss regime for the day (and the overage is partly due to all the extra chocolate and candy around the house left over from Xmas).

 

In an effort to get back into blogging (at least semi-regularly) I am re-rebooting 52 new things – its a new year (at least from a geo- and euro-centric perspective, so I’m going to try the whole new habit each week experiment one more time. The last few times I’ve started off with overly complicated diets – and failed miserably… this time around I’m going for a simpler first target with the intention of building up momentum as I go – this week, I’ll be keeping a food diary to try to watch what I eat and to keep my caloric intake at reasonable levels (it was staying low for the last few months then unaccountably ;) spiked in the last few weeks – based upon my observations of my weight and girth at least).

I’ll check in with how I’m going tonight.

 

Because I’m getting close to finishing, my ability to find things to procrastinate about is increasing…

Today there were painters in one of the admin offices, and they had moved a bunch of stuff out of the office. Including this (slice of) rock.

Now, I looked at this a bunch of times during the day (it’s between my office and the coffee machine), but I never really thought about it – it’s a rock, and I’m an atmosphere guy. But near the end of the day, one of the geologists pointed out this feature:

It kind of looks like a growth within the crystal. For a few moments we were perplexed – a growth like that couldn’t really happen, could it? Then we realized what was actually going on – take a close look at the layers of precipitated crystal.

———————-^^^—— Here is the intersection between the crystals precipitating off the walls and the crystals precipitating off the intrusion (unless the font messes up the position of the carats ;) )

You can see how the precipitated layers around the “growth” are mirror images of the layers growing out from the walls of the cavity. What must have happened is that there was an intrusion of rock from the inner wall into the cavity that ended just outside the plane of this cut. Then, when the layers of crystal formed, they also formed around the intrusion, creating this interesting feature.

Here’s the plane from the back:

And above:

 

The orange monster Martin will headline this new initiative withs a recurring feature that’ll teach kids about experimentation.

via Sesame Street Wants To Make Math and Science Fun Again.

^ This is cool!