The winds of the world,

Mode of access: Internet.

Winds of doctrine; studies in contemporary opinion,

The intellectual temper of the age.--Modernism and Christianity.--The philosophy of M. Henri Bergson.--The philosophy of Mr. Bertrand Russel.--Shelley: or, The poetic value of revolutionary principles.--The genteel tradition in American philosophy.

Winds of change : the history of the Office of the Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy, 1967-1992 /

Mode of access: Internet.

Monarchs in Australia: On the winds of a storm?

The monarch butterfly, Danaus plexippus, is one of Australia's best-known exotic butterflies, being first recorded here in the spring/summer of 1870/1871. However, the source of the original population is unknown. Using historical records we suggest that the most likely source of the founder population was from Vanuatu and/or New Caledonia. Many almost simultaneous 'first records' for the butterfly in Australia suggest that a large, well-distributed population was present when first noticed. While such a population may have developed from a limited number of individuals flying across the Coral Sea, the well documented, very dramatic appearance of large monarch populations in Australia does not appear to fit this model. Rather, we hypothesise that large numbers of monarchs were carried to Australia on cyclonic winds: no fewer that 3 cyclones hit the Queensland coast in early 1870. If one or more of these cyclones tracked from the Vanuatu/New Caledonia chain, then they may have transported monarchs. Once established on the central/northern Queensland coast, natural migration would account for the appearance of butterflies further south.

The winds of change? Exploring political effects of Hurricane Andrew

Before dawn on August 24, 1992, Hurricane Andrew smashed into south Florida, particularly southern Dade County, and soon become the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history. Andrew's impacts quickly overwhelmed local and state emergency response capabilities and eventually required major federal assistance, including regular military units. While the social and economic impacts of Hurricane Andrew are relatively well researched, much less attention has been given to its possible political effects. ^ Focusing on incumbent officeholders at three levels (municipal, state legislative, and statewide) who stood for reelection after Hurricane Andrew, this study seeks to determine whether they experienced any political effects from Andrew. That is, this study explores the possible interaction between the famous “incumbency advantage” and an “extreme event,” in this case a natural disaster. The specific foci were (1) campaigns and campaigning (a research process that included 43 personal interviews), and (2) election results before and after the event. ^ Given well-documented response problems, the working hypothesis was that incumbents experienced largely negative political fallout from the disaster. The null hypothesis was that incumbents saw no net political effects, but the reverse hypothesis was also considered: incumbents benefited politically from the event. ^ In the end, this study found that although the election process was physically disrupted, especially in south Dade County, the disaster largely reinforced the incumbency advantage. More specifically, the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew allowed most incumbent officeholders to (1) enhance constituency service, (2) associate themselves with the flow of external assistance, (3) achieve major personal visibility and media coverage, and yet (4) appear non-political or at least above normal politics. Overall, this combination allowed incumbents to very effectively “campaign without campaigning,” a point borne out by post-Andrew election results. ^

Surface mean flow and turbulence structure in tropical cyclone winds

Hurricanes are one of the deadliest and costliest natural hazards affecting the Gulf coast and Atlantic coast areas of the United States. An effective way to minimize hurricane damage is to strengthen structures and buildings. The investigation of surface level hurricane wind behavior and the resultant wind loads on structures is aimed at providing structural engineers with information on hurricane wind characteristics required for the design of safe structures. Information on mean wind profiles, gust factors, turbulence intensity, integral scale, and turbulence spectra and co-spectra is essential for developing realistic models of wind pressure and wind loads on structures. The research performed for this study was motivated by the fact that considerably fewer data and validated models are available for tropical than for extratropical storms. ^ Using the surface wind measurements collected by the Florida Coastal Monitoring Program (FCMP) during hurricane passages over coastal areas, this study presents comparisons of surface roughness length estimates obtained by using several estimation methods, and estimates of the mean wind and turbulence structure of hurricane winds over coastal areas under neutral stratification conditions. In addition, a program has been developed and tested to systematically analyze Wall of Wind (WoW) data, that will make it possible to perform analyses of baseline characteristics of flow obtained in the WoW. This program can be used in future research to compare WoW data with FCMP data, as gust and turbulence generator systems and other flow management devices will be used to create WoW flows that match as closely as possible real hurricane wind conditions. ^ Hurricanes are defined as tropical cyclones for which the maximum 1-minute sustained surface wind speeds exceed 74 mph. FCMP data include data for tropical cyclones with lower sustained speeds. However, for the winds analyzed in this study the speeds were sufficiently high to assure that neutral stratification prevailed. This assures that the characteristics of those winds are similar to those prevailing in hurricanes. For this reason in this study the terms tropical cyclones and hurricanes are used interchangeably. ^

Surface Mean Flow and Turbulence Structure in Tropical Cyclone Winds

Hurricanes are one of the deadliest and costliest natural hazards affecting the Gulf coast and Atlantic coast areas of the United States. An effective way to minimize hurricane damage is to strengthen structures and buildings. The investigation of surface level hurricane wind behavior and the resultant wind loads on structures is aimed at providing structural engineers with information on hurricane wind characteristics required for the design of safe structures. Information on mean wind profiles, gust factors, turbulence intensity, integral scale, and turbulence spectra and co-spectra is essential for developing realistic models of wind pressure and wind loads on structures. The research performed for this study was motivated by the fact that considerably fewer data and validated models are available for tropical than for extratropical storms. Using the surface wind measurements collected by the Florida Coastal Monitoring Program (FCMP) during hurricane passages over coastal areas, this study presents comparisons of surface roughness length estimates obtained by using several estimation methods, and estimates of the mean wind and turbulence structure of hurricane winds over coastal areas under neutral stratification conditions. In addition, a program has been developed and tested to systematically analyze Wall of Wind (WoW) data, that will make it possible to perform analyses of baseline characteristics of flow obtained in the WoW. This program can be used in future research to compare WoW data with FCMP data, as gust and turbulence generator systems and other flow management devices will be used to create WoW flows that match as closely as possible real hurricane wind conditions. Hurricanes are defined as tropical cyclones for which the maximum 1-minute sustained surface wind speeds exceed 74 mph. FCMP data include data for tropical cyclones with lower sustained speeds. However, for the winds analyzed in this study the speeds were sufficiently high to assure that neutral stratification prevailed. This assures that the characteristics of those winds are similar to those prevailing in hurricanes. For this reason in this study the terms tropical cyclones and hurricanes are used interchangeably.

Testing quasar unification: radiative transfer in clumpy winds

Various unification schemes interpret the complex phenomenology of quasars and luminous active galactic nuclei (AGN) in terms of a simple picture involving a central black hole, an accretion disc and an associated outflow. Here, we continue our tests of this paradigm by comparing quasar spectra to synthetic spectra of biconical disc wind models, produced with our state-of-the-art Monte Carlo radiative transfer code. Previously, we have shown that we could produce synthetic spectra resembling those of observed broad absorption line (BAL) quasars, but only if the X-ray luminosity was limited to 1043 erg s-1. Here, we introduce a simple treatment of clumping, and find that a filling factor of ˜0.01 moderates the ionization state sufficiently for BAL features to form in the rest-frame UV at more realistic X-ray luminosities. Our fiducial model shows good agreement with AGN X-ray properties and the wind produces strong line emission in, e.g., Lyα and C IV 1550 Å at low inclinations. At high inclinations, the spectra possess prominent LoBAL features. Despite these successes, we cannot reproduce all emission lines seen in quasar spectra with the correct equivalent-width ratios, and we find an angular dependence of emission line equivalent width despite the similarities in the observed emission line properties of BAL and non-BAL quasars. Overall, our work suggests that biconical winds can reproduce much of the qualitative behaviour expected from a unified model, but we cannot yet provide quantitative matches with quasar properties at all viewing angles. Whether disc winds can successfully unify quasars is therefore still an open question.

DopSCAT: A mission concept for simultaneous measurements of marine winds and surface currents

A radar scatterometer operates by transmitting a pulse of microwave energy toward the ocean's surface and measuring the normalized (per-unit-surface) radar backscatter coefficient (σ°). The primary application of scatterometry is the measurement of near-surface ocean winds. By combining σ° measurements from different azimuth angles, the 10 m vector wind can be determined through a Geophysical Model Function (GMF), which relates wind and backscatter. This paper proposes a mission concept for the measurement of both oceanic winds and surface currents, which makes full use of earlier C-band radar remote sensing experience. For the determination of ocean currents, in particular, the novel idea of using two chirps of opposite slope is introduced. The fundamental processing steps required to retrieve surface currents are given together with their associated accuracies. A detailed description of the mission proposal and comparisons between real and retrieved surface currents are presented. The proposed ocean Doppler scatterometer can be used to generate global surface ocean current maps with accuracies better than 0.2 m/s at a spatial resolution better than 25 km (i.e., 12.5 km spatial sampling) on a daily basis. These maps will allow gaining some insights on the upper ocean mesoscale dynamics. The work lies at a frontier, given that the present inability to measure ocean currents from space in a consistent and synoptic manner represents one of the greatest weaknesses in ocean remote sensing.

A revised L-band radio-brightness sensitivity to extreme winds under tropical cyclones: The 5 year SMOS-Storm database

Five years of SMOS L-band brightness temperature data intercepting a large number of tropical cyclones (TCs) are analyzed. The storm-induced half-power radio-brightness contrast (ΔI) is defined as the difference between the brightness observed at a specific wind force and that for a smooth water surface with the same physical parameters. ΔI can be related to surface wind speed and has been estimated for ~ 300 TCs that intercept with SMOS measurements. ΔI, expressed in a common storm-centric coordinate system, shows that mean brightness contrast monotonically increases with increased storm intensity ranging from ~ 5 K for strong storms to ~ 24 K for the most intense Category 5 TCs. A remarkable feature of the 2D mean ΔI fields and their variability is that maxima are systematically found on the right quadrants of the storms in the storm-centered coordinate frame, consistent with the reported asymmetric structure of the wind and wave fields in hurricanes. These results highlight the strong potential of SMOS measurements to improve monitoring of TC intensification and evolution. An improved empirical geophysical model function (GMF) was derived using a large ensemble of co-located SMOS ΔI, aircraft and H*WIND (a multi-measurement analysis) surface wind speed data. The GMF reveals a quadratic relationship between ΔI and the surface wind speed at a height of 10 m (U10). ECMWF and NCEP analysis products and SMOS derived wind speed estimates are compared to a large ensemble of H*WIND 2D fields. This analysis confirms that the surface wind speed in TCs can effectively be retrieved from SMOS data with an RMS error on the order of 10 kt up to 100 kt. SMOS wind speed products above hurricane force (64 kt) are found to be more accurate than those derived from NWP analyses products that systematically underestimate the surface wind speed in these extreme conditions. Using co-located estimates of rain rate, we show that the L-band radio-brightness contrasts could be weakly affected by rain or ice-phase clouds and further work is required to refine the GMF in this context.

Extrapolating Satellite Winds to Turbine Operating Heights

Ocean wind retrievals from satellite sensors are typically performed for the standard level of 10 m. This restricts their full exploitation for wind energy planning, which requires wind information at much higher levels where wind turbines operate. A new method is presented for the vertical extrapolation of satellite-based wind maps. Winds near the sea surface are obtained from satellite data and used together with an adaptation of the Monin–Obukhov similarity theory to estimate the wind speed at higher levels. The thermal stratification of the atmosphere is taken into account through a long-term stability correction that is based on numerical weather prediction (NWP) model outputs. The effect of the long-term stability correction on the wind profile is significant. The method is applied to Envisat Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar scenes acquired over the south Baltic Sea. This leads to maps of the long-term stability correction and wind speed at a height of 100 m with a spatial resolution of 0.02°. Calculations of the corresponding wind power density and Weibull parameters are shown. Comparisons with mast observations reveal that NWP model outputs can correct successfully for long-term stability effects and also, to some extent, for the limited number of satellite samples. The satellite-based and NWP-simulated wind profiles are almost equally accurate with respect to those from the mast. However, the satellite-based maps have a higher spatial resolution, which is particularly important in nearshore areas where most offshore wind farms are built.

Altimeter estimation of sea surface wind stress for light to moderate winds

Aircraft altimeter and in situ measurements are used to examine relationships between altimeter backscatter and the magnitude of near-surface wind and friction velocities. Comparison of altimeter radar cross section with wind speed is made through the modified Chelton-Wentz algorithm. Improved agreement is found after correcting 10-m winds for both surface current and atmospheric stability. An altimeter friction velocity algorithm is derived based on the wind speed model and an open-ocean drag coefficient. Close agreement between altimeter- and in situ-derived friction velocities is found. For this dataset, quality of the altimeter inversion to surface friction velocity is comparable to that for adjusted winds and clearly better than the inversion to true 10-m wind speed.