ALBERT

Description: This article investigates an extreme rainfall event occurred over wide areas of central Europe on August 11-13, 2002. By using a synergistic approach that includes regional modeling, air mass tracking, and observational data sets, the importance of moisture accumulation processes in the Western Mediterranean basin (WMB) is acknowledged as an important mechanism responsible for the magnitude of this event. The RAMS-HYPACT modeling system is used to track air masses from potential marine sources of evaporation. MODIS water vapor products, wind profilers and surface rain gauge measurements are used to substantiate our simulations. Results show that most of the precipitation occurring in central Europe during the initiation of the rainfall episode (August 11) came from vapor accumulated over 4 days (August 6-9) within the WMB: the vapor was transported, after the irruption of the Vb cyclone Ilse, through the Italian Peninsula and the Adriatic Sea, into the target area, causing the precipitation episode. On August 12 and 13 the marine sources of evaporation changed to include the north-Atlantic region. The north-African convergence region, the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea are revealed to be sources more related to the intense rainfall experienced in eastern Europe. The subsidence-related processes through which pollutants and water vapor can accumulate for several days in the WMB are shown to be very relevant for this event. The quantification of the evaporative sources, responsible for the extreme rainfall events in central Europe, and the relative importance of marine and terrestrial sources within a chosen regional domain are discussed in the companion following article.

Description: The NASA Deep Space Network is unique among space communication systems.

Description: MIPAS observations of temperature, water vapor, and ozone in October 2009 as derived with the scientific level-2 processor run by Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Institute for Meteorology and Climate Research (IMK) and CSIC, Instituto de Astrofsica de Andaluca (IAA) and retrieved from version 4.67 level-1b data have been compared to co-located field campaign observations obtained during the MOHAVE-2009 campaign at the Table Mountain Facility near Pasadena, California in October 2009. The MIPAS measurements were validated regarding any potential biases of the profiles, and with respect to their precision estimates. The MOHAVE-2009 measurement campaign provided measurements of atmospheric profiles of temperature, water vapor/relative humidity, and ozone from the ground to the mesosphere by a suite of instruments including radiosondes, ozonesondes, frost point hygrometers, lidars, microwave radiometers and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectrometers. For MIPAS temperatures (version V4O_T_204), no significant bias was detected in the middle stratosphere; between 22 km and the tropopause MIPAS temperatures were found to be biased low by up to 2 K, while below the tropopause, they were found to be too high by the same amount. These findings confirm earlier comparisons of MIPAS temperatures to ECMWF data which revealed similar differences. Above 12 km up to 45 km, MIPAS water vapor (version V4O_H2O_203) is well within 10% of the data of all correlative instruments. The well-known dry bias of MIPAS water vapor above 50 km due to neglect of non-LTE effects in the current retrievals has been confirmed. Some instruments indicate that MIPAS water vapor might be biased high by 20 to 40% around 10 km (or 5 km below the tropopause), but a consistent picture from all comparisons could not be derived. MIPAS ozone (version V4O_O3_202) has a high bias of up to +0.9 ppmv around 37 km which is due to a non-identified continuum like radiance contribution. No further significant biases have been detected. Cross-comparison to co-located observations of other satellite instruments (Aura/MLS, ACE-FTS, AIRS) is provided as well.

Description: The Santi Petri dome (western Betics, southern Spain) shows a core-complex-like structure, where migmatitic gneisses and schists outcrop below low-grade slates and phyllites, all of which form the basement of the Neogene Málaga basin. The migmatites and schists suffered a coaxial-flattening event during isothermal decompression and were later exhumed by ductile ESE non-coaxial stretching. Further exhumation was achieved by W- to SW-transport brittle low-angle normal faulting. Subsequently these extensional structures were gently folded in the core of a NE/SW-oriented antiform during the Tortonian. Finally the Santi Petri domal geometry was accentuated by the interference of orthogonal high-angle faults with ENE–WSW and NNW–SSE orientation. This core-complex-like structure, formed by superposition of extensional and compressive tectonic events, does not represent a classical, purely extensional core complex, which shows that metamorphic structure and geometry are not decisive criteria to define a core-complex.