An improved algorithm for generating global window brightness temperatures from multiple satellite infrared imagery

An improved algorithm for the generation of gridded window brightness temperatures is presented. The primary data source is the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project, level B3 data, covering the period from July 1983 to the present. The algorithm rakes window brightness, temperatures from multiple satellites, both geostationary and polar orbiting, which have already been navigated and normalized radiometrically to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer, and generates 3-hourly global images on a 0.5 degrees by 0.5 degrees latitude-longitude grid. The gridding uses a hierarchical scheme based on spherical kernel estimators. As part of the gridding procedure, the geostationary data are corrected for limb effects using a simple empirical correction to the radiances, from which the corrected temperatures are computed. This is in addition to the application of satellite zenith angle weighting to downweight limb pixels in preference to nearer-nadir pixels. The polar orbiter data are windowed on the target time with temporal weighting to account for the noncontemporaneous nature of the data. Large regions of missing data are interpolated from adjacent processed images using a form of motion compensated interpolation based on the estimation of motion vectors using an hierarchical block matching scheme. Examples are shown of the various stages in the process. Also shown are examples of the usefulness of this type of data in GCM validation.

Local agenda 21 and planning practice: structural transformation or window dressing?

Local Agenda 21 seeks the meaningful involvement of a wide range of local groups and stakeholders in the formulation and implementation of public policy and a free flow of communication and discussion between them and their respective local authorities (and other areas and levels of decision-making). This paper explores the reality of this process using case study evidence from local planning practice in Liverpool (in the north of England) and Reading (in the south of the country). It concentrates on the interaction between LA21 groups and local planning authorities around the preparation of local land use plans and other policy initiatives and the day-to-day regulation of development permits. The paper builds on ‘New Institutionalist’ theory to explore the constraints and opportunities for significant transformations in social, political and economic ‘structures’ or ‘ways of doing things’ through the LA21 process. It concludes that the two cases provide evidence of mixed success in achieving such changes in established planning practices.

A simplified method for referring the energy and overheating performance of window design

This paper describes a simplified dynamic thermal model which simulates the energy and overheating performance of windows. To calculate artificial energy use within a room, the model employs the average illuminance method, which takes into account the daylight energy impacting upon the room by the use of hourly climate data. This tool describes the main thermal performance ( heating, cooling and overheating risk) resulting proposed a design of window. The inputs are fewer and simpler than that are required by complicated simulation programmes. The method is suited for the use of architects and engineers at the strategic phase of design, when little is available.

Optimal estimation of sea surface temperature from split-window observations

Optimal estimation (OE) improves sea surface temperature (SST) estimated from satellite infrared imagery in the “split-window”, in comparison to SST retrieved using the usual multi-channel (MCSST) or non-linear (NLSST) estimators. This is demonstrated using three months of observations of the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) on the first Meteorological Operational satellite (Metop-A), matched in time and space to drifter SSTs collected on the global telecommunications system. There are 32,175 matches. The prior for the OE is forecast atmospheric fields from the Météo-France global numerical weather prediction system (ARPEGE), the forward model is RTTOV8.7, and a reduced state vector comprising SST and total column water vapour (TCWV) is used. Operational NLSST coefficients give mean and standard deviation (SD) of the difference between satellite and drifter SSTs of 0.00 and 0.72 K. The “best possible” NLSST and MCSST coefficients, empirically regressed on the data themselves, give zero mean difference and SDs of 0.66 K and 0.73 K respectively. Significant contributions to the global SD arise from regional systematic errors (biases) of several tenths of kelvin in the NLSST. With no bias corrections to either prior fields or forward model, the SSTs retrieved by OE minus drifter SSTs have mean and SD of − 0.16 and 0.49 K respectively. The reduction in SD below the “best possible” regression results shows that OE deals with structural limitations of the NLSST and MCSST algorithms. Using simple empirical bias corrections to improve the OE, retrieved minus drifter SSTs are obtained with mean and SD of − 0.06 and 0.44 K respectively. Regional biases are greatly reduced, such that the absolute bias is less than 0.1 K in 61% of 10°-latitude by 30°-longitude cells. OE also allows a statistic of the agreement between modelled and measured brightness temperatures to be calculated. We show that this measure is more efficient than the current system of confidence levels at identifying reliable retrievals, and that the best 75% of satellite SSTs by this measure have negligible bias and retrieval error of order 0.25 K.

Minor structural abnormalities in the infant face disrupt neural processing: a unique window into early caregiving responses

Infant faces elicit early, specific activity in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), a key cortical region for reward and affective processing. A test of the causal relationship between infant facial configuration and OFC activity is provided by naturally occurring disruptions to the face structure. One such disruption is cleft lip, a small change to one facial feature, shown to disrupt parenting. Using magnetoencephalography, we investigated neural responses to infant faces with cleft lip compared with typical infant and adult faces. We found activity in the right OFC at 140 ms in response to typical infant faces but diminished activity to infant faces with cleft lip or adult faces. Activity in the right fusiform face area was of similar magnitude for typical adult and infant faces but was significantly lower for infant faces with cleft lip. This is the first evidence that a minor change to the infant face can disrupt neural activity potentially implicated in caregiving.

'he perceives himself as a caterpillar […]' constructions of the disabled subject in the critical response to Alfred Hitchcock's 'Rear Window'

This chapter focuses on critical responses to Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, especially their construction of disability. The suggestion is that such criticism takes the disabled body to be both necessary and superfluous to the meaning of the film, a difficulty that, I argue, can be read more widely within film theory. Ever since Christian Metz’s ‘the Imaginary Signifier’, the condition of being ‘bound to a wheelchair’ is understood to have a resonance for theories of film spectatorship, but only ever in a sense that does away with the wheelchair as a mark of difference.

Proposed feasibility oversight for pre-pack administration in England and Wales: window dressing or effective reform?

The 2014 Graham proposals aimed at reducing recidivism are unlikely to achieve the desired goals. It is argued that due consideration must be had for the future of the rescued entity. Further, both the viability review and the proposed capital structure of the rescued entity must be carefully assessed.

Simulation of the diurnal cycle in a climate model and its evaluation using data from Meteosat 7

The representation of the diurnal cycle in the Hadley Centre climate model is evaluated using simulations of the infrared radiances observed by Meteosat 7. In both the window and water vapour channels, the standard version of the model with 19 levels produces a good simulation of the geographical distributions of the mean radiances and of the amplitude of the diurnal cycle. Increasing the vertical resolution to 30 levels leads to further improvements in the mean fields. The timing of the maximum and minimum radiances reveals significant model errors, however, which are sensitive to the frequency with which the radiation scheme is called. In most regions, these errors are consistent with well documented errors in the timing of convective precipitation, which peaks before noon in the model, in contrast to the observed peak in the late afternoon or evening. When the radiation scheme is called every model time step (half an hour), as opposed to every three hours in the standard version, the timing of the minimum radiance is improved for convective regions over central Africa, due to the creation of upper-level layer-cloud by detrainment from the convection scheme, which persists well after the convection itself has dissipated. However, this produces a decoupling between the timing of the diurnal cycles of precipitation and window channel radiance. The possibility is raised that a similar decoupling may occur in reality and the implications of this for the retrieval of the diurnal cycle of precipitation from infrared radiances are discussed.

Convectively coupled equatorial waves: A new methodology for identifying wave structures in observational data

Convectively coupled equatorial waves are fundamental components of the interaction between the physics and dynamics of the tropical atmosphere. A new methodology, which isolates individual equatorial wave modes, has been developed and applied to observational data. The methodology assumes that the horizontal structures given by equatorial wave theory can be used to project upper- and lower-tropospheric data onto equatorial wave modes. The dynamical fields are first separated into eastward- and westward-moving components with a specified domain of frequency–zonal wavenumber. Each of the components for each field is then projected onto the different equatorial modes using the y structures of these modes given by the theory. The latitudinal scale yo of the modes is predetermined by data to fit the equatorial trapping in a suitable latitude belt y = ±Y. The extent to which the different dynamical fields are consistent with one another in their depiction of each equatorial wave structure determines the confidence in the reality of that structure. Comparison of the analyzed modes with the eastward- and westward-moving components in the convection field enables the identification of the dynamical structure and nature of convectively coupled equatorial waves. In a case study, the methodology is applied to two independent data sources, ECMWF Reanalysis and satellite-observed window brightness temperature (Tb) data for the summer of 1992. Various convectively coupled equatorial Kelvin, mixed Rossby–gravity, and Rossby waves have been detected. The results indicate a robust consistency between the two independent data sources. Different vertical structures for different wave modes and a significant Doppler shifting effect of the background zonal winds on wave structures are found and discussed. It is found that in addition to low-level convergence, anomalous fluxes induced by strong equatorial zonal winds associated with equatorial waves are important for inducing equatorial convection. There is evidence that equatorial convection associated with Rossby waves leads to a change in structure involving a horizontal structure similar to that of a Kelvin wave moving westward with it. The vertical structure may also be radically changed. The analysis method should make a very powerful diagnostic tool for investigating convectively coupled equatorial waves and the interaction of equatorial dynamics and physics in the real atmosphere. The results from application of the analysis method for a reanalysis dataset should provide a benchmark against which model studies can be compared.

Polydispersity-induced macrophase separation in diblock copolymer melts

The effect of A-block polydispersity on the phase behavior of AB diblock copolymer melts is examined using a complete self-consistent field theory treatment that allows for fractionation of the parent molecular-weight distribution. In addition to observing the established shift in phase boundaries, we find the emergence of significant two-phase coexistence regions causing, for instance, the disappearance of the complex phase window. Furthermore, we find evidence that polydispersity relieves packing frustration, which will reduce the tendency for long-range order.

Estimating surface CO2 fluxes from space-borne dry air mole fraction observations using an Ensemble Kalman filter

We have developed an ensemble Kalman Filter (EnKF) to estimate 8-day regional surface fluxes of CO2 from space-borne CO2 dry-air mole fraction observations (XCO2) and evaluate the approach using a series of synthetic experiments, in preparation for data from the NASA Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO). The 32-day duty cycle of OCO alternates every 16 days between nadir and glint measurements of backscattered solar radiation at short-wave infrared wavelengths. The EnKF uses an ensemble of states to represent the error covariances to estimate 8-day CO2 surface fluxes over 144 geographical regions. We use a 12×8-day lag window, recognising that XCO2 measurements include surface flux information from prior time windows. The observation operator that relates surface CO2 fluxes to atmospheric distributions of XCO2 includes: a) the GEOS-Chem transport model that relates surface fluxes to global 3-D distributions of CO2 concentrations, which are sampled at the time and location of OCO measurements that are cloud-free and have aerosol optical depths <0.3; and b) scene-dependent averaging kernels that relate the CO2 profiles to XCO2, accounting for differences between nadir and glint measurements, and the associated scene-dependent observation errors. We show that OCO XCO2 measurements significantly reduce the uncertainties of surface CO2 flux estimates. Glint measurements are generally better at constraining ocean CO2 flux estimates. Nadir XCO2 measurements over the terrestrial tropics are sparse throughout the year because of either clouds or smoke. Glint measurements provide the most effective constraint for estimating tropical terrestrial CO2 fluxes by accurately sampling fresh continental outflow over neighbouring oceans. We also present results from sensitivity experiments that investigate how flux estimates change with 1) bias and unbiased errors, 2) alternative duty cycles, 3) measurement density and correlations, 4) the spatial resolution of estimated flux estimates, and 5) reducing the length of the lag window and the size of the ensemble. At the revision stage of this manuscript, the OCO instrument failed to reach its orbit after it was launched on 24 February 2009. The EnKF formulation presented here is also applicable to GOSAT measurements of CO2 and CH4.