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The Museum of Physics (University of Turin) was established in 2009 and displays scientific instruments dating from the early 1700s. A monitoring microclimatic campaign has been performed in an ...exposing hall that houses also part of the collection of the Library of the Department of Physics. The measurements were made using 11 thermo-hygrometers during 13 months inside and outside some showcases, and an outdoor meteorological station on the building top monitored the external weather conditions. Time delays in temperature between outdoor, indoor and inside showcases environments were evaluated. The microclimatic analysis show that the showcases mitigate the daily excursions in temperature and relative humidity and that the showcase microclimatic conditions are dependent on the position in the room. Finally, a new index is proposed to compare the “goodness” of microclimate in the different sites.
EUSO-SPB1 was a balloon-borne mission of the JEM-EUSO (Joint Experiment Missions for Extreme Universe Space Observatory) Program aiming at the ultra-high energy cosmic ray (UHECR) observations from ...space. We operated the EUSO-SPB1 telescope consisting of 1 m
2
Fresnel refractive optics and multi-anode photomultiplier tubes. With a total of 2304 channels, each performed the photon counting every 2.5 µs, allowing for spatiotemporal imaging of the air shower events in an ~ 11°× 11° field of view. EUSO-SPB1 was the first balloon-borne fluorescence detector with a potential to detect air shower events initiated by the EeV energy cosmic rays. On 24 April 2017 UTC, EUSO-SPB1 was launched on the NASA’s Super Pressure Balloon that flew at ~16 – 33 km flight height for ~12 days. Before the flight was terminated, ~27 hours of data acquired in the air shower detection mode were transmitted to the ground. In the present work, we aim at evaluating the role of the clouds during the operation of EUSO-SPB1. We employ the WRF (Weather Research and Forecasting) model to numerically simulate the cloud distribution below EUSO-SPB1. We discuss the key results of the WRF model and the impact of the clouds on the air shower measurement and the efficiency of the cosmic ray observation. The present work is a part of the collaborative effort to estimate the exposure for air shower detections.
The ARCADE (Atmospheric Research for Climate and Astroparticle DEtection) project is a 3 years project funded by MIUR, that aims to study the aerosol attenuation of UV light in atmosphere using ...multiple instruments and techniques, as those commonly used in the cosmic rays community: elastic Lidar, Raman Lidar, side-scattering measurements using a distant laser source. All measurements will be acquired on the same air mass at the same time, in a semi-desertic site near Lamar, Colorado (U.S.). For each instrument, multiple analysis techniques will be tested: the target is a better comprehension of the systematics and limits of applicability of each method. The system is composed by a Lidar (elastic+Raman), fully designed and built within this project, and by the Atmospheric Monitoring Telescope (AMT), a telescope for the detection of UV light owned by the Colorado School of Mines. The setup of the two instruments is described in detail here. The project is presently in its third year: the Lidar system has been tested at the University of L'Aquila in February 2014 before shipment to the U.S., and the AMT has been recently reinstalled and tested in Lamar (May 2014). In June/July 2014 the ARCADE group will work out the final setup of the Lidar+AMT system in Lamar and will begin data acquisition.
This study presents the results of an application to a Bora severe weather episode (January 1995) in the northern Adriatic Sea of the regional two‐way atmosphere‐ocean coupled model (RAMS‐DieCAST), ...developed jointly by the Università di Torino and the Istituto Sperimentale Talassografico del CNR, Trieste. RAMS‐DieCAST showed significantly better ability to predict the sea surface temperature (SST) and its time evolution during the above mentioned episode using a full two‐way coupling as opposed to simpler one‐way forcing of the ocean. In this context, we found out that even in the high‐frequency variability conditions that are typical of Bora events, heat fluxes from the sea must be taken into account for a better description of air‐sea interaction processes in a dynamical framework. The SST evolution has been chosen as a validation parameter, owing to its availability and relevance for the characterization of the marine environment and local weather and climate studies. The simulations carried out with RAMS‐DieCAST present a small systematic error in calculating the SST evolution; however, a sensitivity analysis of the model to the preparation of initial conditions of the simulation suggested that climatological initialization could be partly responsible for this error, which might be reduced by assimilating satellite‐derived SSTs into the preparation of the initial conditions of the model.
A fully coupled atmosphere–ocean model, endowed with a feedback of the ocean model on the atmospheric one, was applied in order to simulate the variations of temperature and sea currents induced by ...the occurrence of a late-fall episode of intense Sirocco wind over the Adriatic Sea.
The coupled model was made up of the RAMS atmospheric model coupled with the DieCAST ocean model with the purpose to obtain more realistic forcing conditions of the lower winds on the underlying sea surface.
The two main phenomena highlighted by the simulation are: the genesis of a 10 cm s
−
1
north-
westward current along the Italian coastline and a general cooling of the entire basin of approximately 1 °C limited to the upper 40 m. The same current shows an offshore anti-cyclonic pattern at different latitude in the whole basin.
The results generally agree with experimental data collected by surface drifters released in different regions of the Adriatic Sea as a part of the international DOLCEVITA project, which also includes the same Sirocco episode considered here. The simulated currents represent the drifter trajectories quite accurately, with only few exceptions in the northernmost region of the basin, characterized by shallow water conditions. The simulated SST fields fully agree with the temperature values observed by the same drifters.
The main purpose of this paper is to contribute to the improvement of the present knowledge concerning the transient components of the global carbon cycle, superimposed to the periodic seasonal ...oscillation and to the yearly trend. This purpose has been achieved through the comparison among the calculated concentration fields of atmospheric CO
2 and its comparison with the sea-surface temperature patterns, forestation maps, forest fires, and the anthropogenic emissions extracted from Edgar V.2.0 database. In order to identify with high spatial resolution the most relevant areas of CO
2 sources and sinks, we have applied a methodology based on a statistical analysis of simulated back-trajectories related to atmospheric concentration values measured at some receptor sites where the back-trajectories originate.
In particular, we have used a 2-year time series (1996 and 1997) of CO
2 concentration data observed in three receptor sites located in high mountain areas, in order to reduce significantly the effects due to local influences (such as emissions from industries and urban areas or the absorption processes due to the vegetation). The back-trajectories were computed by means of the wind fields provided by the ECMWF analysis (T213/L31 model) on a regular grid. The area investigated was from 11°W to 36°E in longitude and from 30°N to 57°N in latitude. The final concentration field was computed by means of a statistical source–receptor model, based on a methodology developed by Stohl (Atmos. Environ. 30 (1996) 579) and adapted here with some modifications in the pre- and post-processing phases.
Before applying the model, a careful evaluation of its sensitivity to the input data has been performed, followed by an analysis to identify the optimal configuration of the model.
The results have shown a satisfactory accuracy in the identification of the major sources and sinks considered.
With the intention of identifying and monitoring space and time patterns of carbon dioxide sources and sinks, the seasonal fields of atmospheric CO
2 concentration over an area covering Europe, the ...Boreal Atlantic, and North Africa have been computed by using CO
2 observations measured at one or two remote sites in conjunction with the backward air trajectories crossing the same observation sites.
The air trajectories have been calculated by means of the wind speed fields provided by the ECMWF (European Centre of Medium-range Weather Forecast, of Reading, UK) analyses (T213/L31 model) on a regular grid, while the atmospheric CO
2 concentrations have been measured at two alpine European stations, located in the free atmosphere, far from the influence of local industrial pollution.
A modified version of the statistical receptor-to-source-oriented-model (hereafter, source-oriented model) of Stohl (Atmos. Environ. 30 (1998) 947), using the above-mentioned air trajectories, has then been applied to reconstruct the spatial distribution fields of atmospheric CO
2.
This source-oriented methodology belongs to a family of models which are simpler and easier to use than the more powerful and widespread inverse models and can allow a reliable deduction of the location of sources and sinks of gas tracers.
We have applied this kind of model in order to identify source and sink macro-regions of CO
2 over the above-mentioned area in the period 1993–1998. The CO
2 observing stations of Plateau Rosà (3480
m a.s.l., in the western Alps) and Zugspitze (2937
m, in the eastern Alps) have been considered particularly fit for this purpose, because of their location in high orography areas, allowing to monitor values of atmospheric CO
2 concentrations representative of fairly well-mixed air, not affected by some local influences (industries, urban emissions, etc.). In this way, it can be assumed that possible maxima or minima observed in the trend of measured gas concentration can be due to contaminations of the air mass during its whole travel, at some specific locations identified by the source-oriented model.
The most interesting result obtained in this study is the seasonal cycle of the atmospheric CO
2 concentration found over the mid- and sub-tropical latitudes of the Boreal Atlantic Ocean and evident in all simulations. This cycle appears to be clearly related to the seasonal trend of the SST, particularly in the tropical and subtropical Atlantic regions, and is particularly evident during the warmest months (during Spring, Autumn and particularly in Summer).
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