Effects of Land-Sea Distribution, Topography and Diurnal Change on Summer Monsoon Modeling

The effects of the land-sea distribution, the topography and the diurnal change of the solar radiation on the summer monsoon modelings are studied by use of a coupled modeling system with a 5-layer primitive equation model of the atmosphere and a 2-layer soil or ocean thermodynamic model which are all solved in a zonal model domain between 60°S and 60°N. The results of numerical simulations show that the quasi-stationary patterns of the mean monsoon circulations are mainly affected by the land-sea distribution and the topography, the effect of the diurnal change is the secondary. However, the inclusion of the diurnal change into the model system may improve the intensity of the simulated monsoon circulation, it can influence the distributive pattern of precipitation to a larger extent,without the diurnal change precipitation in the interior of land would decrease and in the coastal regions it would increase.

Temperature Controlled Lateral Pattern Formation in Confined Polymer Thin Films

The thermal induced topography change in a model system consisting of a polymer film on a Si substrate capped by a thin metal layer has been studied by using AFM. Regular lateral patterns over large areas were observed on the surface when the system was heated to a sufficiently high temperature. 2D-FFT analysis to the AFM images indicates that the patterns are isotropic and have well defined periodicities. The periodicities of the characteristic patterns are found to depend strongly on the annealing temperature. The study of the kinetics of the formation reveals that such a topography forms almost instantaneously once the critical temperature is reached. It is suggested that this wave-like surface morphology is driven by the thermal expansion coefficient mismatch of the different layers. This method for generating regular wave-like patterns could be used as a general method for patterning various organic materials into micro/nanostructures.

Localized temporal variation of Earth's inner-core boundary from high-quality waveform doublets

The topography of the inner core is crucial to understand its growth process and interaction with the geodynamo. With the accuracy of teleseismic waveform doublets in determining the travel-time shifts between PKPcd and PKPdf inner-core phases, we examined the temporal change of the inner-core boundary sampled by new earthquake doublets that occurred in the Western Pacific and those previously found from the South Sandwich Islands. The receiver stations are those within the distance range of 128°–142° from the hypocenters of the waveform doublets. Our results suggest that temporal changes in PKPcd-PKPdf differential times are very subtle except some isolated regions under central America and Africa. The observations may indicate localized topography of the inner core and/or the inner-core boundary as transient slurry in isolated regions.

FLOW STRUCTURE AND SEDIMENT TRANSPORT WITH IMPACTS OF AQUATIC VEGETATION

Aquatic vegetation plays an important role in the flow structure of open channels and thus changes the fate and the transport of sediment. This article proposes a three-dimensional turbulence model by introducing vegetation density and drag force into the control equations of water flow in the presence of vegetation. The model was used to calculate the impacts of submerged vegetation on the vertical profiles of longitudinal flow velocities, the changes of the depth-averaged flow velocities in a compound channel with emergent vegetation in the floodplain, the removal of suspended sediment from the channels by emergent vegetation, and the bed changes around and in a vegetated island. Numerical investigations show that aquatic vegetation retards flow in the vegetation zone, reduces the sediment transport capacity, and contributes to erosion on both sides of the vegetated island. Calculated results agree well with experimental results.