Rapid adjustments are responses to forcing agents that cause a perturbation to the top of atmosphere energy budget but are uncoupled to changes in surface warming. Different mechanisms are ...responsible for these adjustments for a variety of climate drivers. These remain to be quantified in detail. It is shown that rapid adjustments reduce the effective radiative forcing (ERF) of black carbon by half of the instantaneous forcing, but for CO2 forcing, rapid adjustments increase ERF. Competing tropospheric adjustments for CO2 forcing are individually significant but sum to zero, such that the ERF equals the stratospherically adjusted radiative forcing, but this is not true for other forcing agents. Additional experiments of increase in the solar constant and increase in CH4 are used to show that a key factor of the rapid adjustment for an individual climate driver is changes in temperature in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere.
Plain Language Summary
Long‐term global warming can be estimated with knowledge of how climate forcing agents affect the Earth's top‐of‐atmosphere energy imbalance or effective radiative forcing. Changes in climate forcers, such as greenhouse gases, the Sun's intensity, or emission of aerosol particles, typically impose a direct change in the energy budget, termed an instantaneous radiative forcing. Further to this, a climate forcer may induce changes in the atmosphere, such as a change in thermal structure, clouds, or humidity. These changes themselves, termed rapid adjustments, contribute to the top‐of‐atmosphere energy budget. Together, the instantaneous radiative forcing plus rapid adjustments equals the effective radiative forcing. We show that for different climate forcing agents, the rapid adjustments behave very differently and are driven by different atmospheric mechanisms. For example, rapid adjustments add to the instantaneous forcing for a carbon dioxide increase, due to a cooling of the stratosphere, but oppose instantaneous forcing for black carbon, driven by a warming troposphere and lowering of cloud height. Understanding rapid adjustments gives a more complete picture of the climate effects of different climate forcers.
Key Points
Rapid adjustments affect the Earth's energy balance in different ways for greenhouse gas, aerosol, and solar forcing
Radiative kernels and partial radiative perturbations are used to diagnose rapid adjustments from atmospheric and cloud changes
Noncloud adjustments agree well between models, whereas cloud adjustments exhibit more spread
By the end of 2018, 42 years after the landing of the two Viking seismometers on Mars, InSight will deploy onto Mars’ surface the SEIS (
S
eismic
E
xperiment for
I
nternal
S
tructure) instrument; a ...six-axes seismometer equipped with both a long-period three-axes Very Broad Band (VBB) instrument and a three-axes short-period (SP) instrument. These six sensors will cover a broad range of the seismic bandwidth, from 0.01 Hz to 50 Hz, with possible extension to longer periods. Data will be transmitted in the form of three continuous VBB components at 2 sample per second (sps), an estimation of the short period energy content from the SP at 1 sps and a continuous compound VBB/SP vertical axis at 10 sps. The continuous streams will be augmented by requested event data with sample rates from 20 to 100 sps. SEIS will improve upon the existing resolution of Viking’s Mars seismic monitoring by a factor of
∼
2500
at 1 Hz and
∼
200
000
at 0.1 Hz. An additional major improvement is that, contrary to Viking, the seismometers will be deployed via a robotic arm directly onto Mars’ surface and will be protected against temperature and wind by highly efficient thermal and wind shielding. Based on existing knowledge of Mars, it is reasonable to infer a moment magnitude detection threshold of
M
w
∼
3
at
40
∘
epicentral distance and a potential to detect several tens of quakes and about five impacts per year. In this paper, we first describe the science goals of the experiment and the rationale used to define its requirements. We then provide a detailed description of the hardware, from the sensors to the deployment system and associated performance, including transfer functions of the seismic sensors and temperature sensors. We conclude by describing the experiment ground segment, including data processing services, outreach and education networks and provide a description of the format to be used for future data distribution.
Few studies have examined the associations between sleep duration, shiftwork, and exercise to the infrequent menstruation, hyperandrogenism, and ovarian morphological changes observed in women with ...polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS).
To examine whether lifestyle factors, including short sleep duration, insufficient exercise, and shiftwork, alone or in combination, are associated with the reproductive and metabolic abnormalities typical of PCOS in a healthy population.
Prospective cross-sectional study of 231 women, including healthcare workers recruited for an annual health screen, healthy referral patients from the Women's Clinic and volunteers from the university community at the National University Hospital, Singapore, from 2011 to 2015.
The women completed a questionnaire, including their menstrual cycle length, sleep length, frequency of exercise and shift work. Hyperandrogenism (hirsutism score, testosterone, sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG)), ovarian morphology and function (anthral follicle count, ovarian volume, anti-mullerian hormone (AMH)), and metabolic measures (body mass index (BMI), waist hip ratio (WHR), blood pressure, fasting glucose, fasting insulin and fasting lipids) were examined through anthropometric measurements, transvaginal ultrasound scans, and blood tests.
No significant associations were observed between shift work, exercise or sleep duration and the androgenic and ovarian measures that define PCOS. However, women reporting fewer than 6 hours of sleep were more likely to report abnormal (short or long) menstrual cycle lengths (OR = 2.1; 95% CI, 1.1 to 4.2). Women who reported fewer than 6 hours of sleep had increased fasting insulin levels (difference in means = 2.13; 95% CI, 0.27 to 3.99 mU/L) and higher odds of insulin resistance (OR = 2.58; CI, 1.16 to 5.76). Lack of regular exercise was associated with higher mean fasting insulin (difference in means = 2.3 mU/L; 95% CI, 0.5 to 4.1) and HOMA-IR (difference in means = 0.49; 95% CI, 0.09 to 0.90) levels.
Women with insufficient sleep are at increased risk of menstrual disturbances and insulin resistance, but do not have the hyperandrogenism and polycystic ovarian morphology typical of PCOS.
Improved sleep duration may help reduce the risks of diabetes or infertility. Shift work, exercise or sleep duration appear not to impact the androgenic and ovarian measures that define PCOS.
Context.
High-precision pulsar timing requires accurate corrections for dispersive delays of radio waves, parametrized by the dispersion measure (DM), particularly if these delays are variable in ...time. In a previous paper, we studied the solar wind (SW) models used in pulsar timing to mitigate the excess of DM that is annually induced by the SW and found these to be insufficient for high-precision pulsar timing. Here we analyze additional pulsar datasets to further investigate which aspects of the SW models currently used in pulsar timing can be readily improved, and at what levels of timing precision SW mitigation is possible.
Aims.
Our goals are to verify: (a) whether the data are better described by a spherical model of the SW with a time-variable amplitude, rather than a time-invariant one as suggested in literature, and (b) whether a temporal trend of such a model’s amplitudes can be detected.
Methods.
We use the pulsar timing technique on low-frequency pulsar observations to estimate the DM and quantify how this value changes as the Earth moves around the Sun. Specifically, we monitor the DM in weekly to monthly observations of 14 pulsars taken with parts of the LOw-Frequency ARray (LOFAR) across time spans of up to 6 years. We develop an informed algorithm to separate the interstellar variations in the DM from those caused by the SW and demonstrate the functionality of this algorithm with extensive simulations. Assuming a spherically symmetric model for the SW density, we derive the amplitude of this model for each year of observations.
Results.
We show that a spherical model with a time-variable amplitude models the observations better than a spherical model with a constant amplitude, but that both approaches leave significant SW-induced delays uncorrected in a number of pulsars in the sample. The amplitude of the spherical model is found to be variable in time, as opposed to what has been previously suggested.
We present new limits on an isotropic stochastic gravitational-wave background (GWB) using a six pulsar data set spanning 18 yr of observations from the 2015 European Pulsar Timing Array data ...release. Performing a Bayesian analysis, we fit simultaneously for the intrinsic noise parameters for each pulsar, along with common correlated signals including clock, and Solar system ephemeris errors, obtaining a robust 95 per cent upper limit on the dimensionless strain amplitude A of the background of A < 3.0 × 10−15 at a reference frequency of 1 yr−1 and a spectral index of 13/3, corresponding to a background from inspiralling supermassive black hole binaries, constraining the GW energy density to Ωgw(f)h
2 < 1.1 × 10−9 at 2.8 nHz. We also present limits on the correlated power spectrum at a series of discrete frequencies, and show that our sensitivity to a fiducial isotropic GWB is highest at a frequency of ∼5 × 10−9 Hz. Finally, we discuss the implications of our analysis for the astrophysics of supermassive black hole binaries, and present 95 per cent upper limits on the string tension, Gμ/c
2, characterizing a background produced by a cosmic string network for a set of possible scenarios, and for a stochastic relic GWB. For a Nambu–Goto field theory cosmic string network, we set a limit Gμ/c
2 < 1.3 × 10−7, identical to that set by the Planck Collaboration, when combining Planck and high-ℓ cosmic microwave background data from other experiments. For a stochastic relic background, we set a limit of
$\Omega ^\mathrm{relic}_\mathrm{gw}(f)h^2<1.2 \times 10^{-9}$
, a factor of 9 improvement over the most stringent limits previously set by a pulsar timing array.
Aims. We observationally investigate the relation between the photoelectric heating efficiency in photodissociation regions (PDRs) and the charge of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which are ...considered to play a key role in photoelectric heating. Methods. Using PACS onboard Herschel, we observed six PDRs spanning a wide range of far-ultraviolet radiation fields (G0 = 100−105). To measure the photoelectric heating efficiency, we obtained the intensities of the main cooling lines in these PDRs, i.e., the O i 63 μm, 145 μm, and C ii 158 μm, as well as the far-infrared (FIR) continuum intensity. We used Spitzer/IRS spectroscopic mapping observations to investigate the mid-infrared (MIR; 5.5−14 μm) PAH features in the same regions. We decomposed the MIR PAH emission into that of neutral (PAH0) and positively ionized (PAH+) species to derive the fraction of the positively charged PAHs in each region, and compare it to the photoelectric heating efficiency. Results. The heating efficiency traced by (O i 63 μm + O i 145 μm + C ii 158 μm)/TIR, where TIR is the total infrared flux, ranges between 0.1% and 0.9% in different sources, and the fraction of PAH+ relative to (PAH0+ PAH+) spans from 0 (+11)% to 87 (±10)%. All positions with a high PAH+ fraction show a low heating efficiency, and all positions with a high heating efficiency have a low PAH+ fraction, supporting the scenario in which a positive grain charge results in a decreased heating efficiency. Theoretical estimates of the photoelectric heating efficiency show a stronger dependence on the charging parameter γ = G0T1/2/ne than the observed efficiency reported in this study, and the discrepancy is significant at low γ. The photoelectric heating efficiency on PAHs, traced by (O i 63 μm + O i 145 μm + C ii 158 μm)/(PAH-band emission + O i 63 μm + O i 145 μm + C ii 158 μm), shows a much better match between the observations and the theoretical estimates. Conclusions. The good agreement of the photoelectric heating efficiency on PAHs with a theoretical model indicates the dominant contribution of PAHs to the photoelectric heating. This study demonstrates the fundamental role that PAHs have in photoelectric heating. More studies of their charging behavior are crucial to understand the thermal balance of the interstellar medium.
These "Guidelines for training in Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance" were developed by the Certification Committee of the Society for Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance (SCMR) and approved by the SCMR ...Board of Trustees.