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Atmospheric Disturbances: Detecting, Modelling and Influences on Natural Phenomena and Propagation of Telecommunication, GNSS and EO Signal Propagation

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A special issue of Atmosphere (ISSN 2073-4433). This special issue belongs to the section "Atmospheric Techniques, Instruments, and Modeling".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (5 March 2021) | Viewed by 33259

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. Aleksandra Nina

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Guest Editor

Institute of Physics Belgrade, University of Belgrade, Pregrevica 118, 11080 Belgrade, Serbia
Interests: ionosphere; VLF/LF signals; remote sensing; natural hazards
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Dr. Giovanni Nico

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Guest Editor

Institute for Applied Mathematics "Mauro Picone" IAC, Italian National Research Council, 7 - 00185 Roma, Italy
Interests: GNSS meteorology; (In)SAR meteorology; numerical weather prediction models; assimilation; Ionosphere; VLF/LF; radio occultation
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Prof. Dr. Vladimir Sreckovic

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Guest Editor

The Astrophysics and Ionospheric Laboratory, Institute of Physics Belgrade, University of Belgrade, 11080 Belgrade, Serbia
Interests: space weather studies of upper atmosphere; astrogeoinformatics; astroinformatics; databases; data-mining; natural hazards
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Research on atmospheric disturbances is significant for science, as well as for technological applications, including telecommunications, global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) and earth observation (EO). As the terrestrial outer layer, the atmosphere is under permanent influences from the outer space. Furthermore, a coupling exists between the different atmosphere regions and the Earth’s crust.

Changes in atmospheric parameters due to extra-terrestrial and terrestrial phenomena affect the propagation of electromagnetic signals in the atmosphere. The analysis of these changes and the study of their relationships with the aforementioned phenomena is becoming increasingly interesting for Earth scientists. The multidisciplinary character of these studies and the need for different kinds of data, both in situ measurements and Earth observation datasets acquired by satellite and ground-based infrastructures, require the collaboration of researchers working in different scientific fields and the collection and processing heterogeneous datasets.

This Special Issue will present new advances in techniques to detect atmospheric disturbances, models, investigations of their relationship with natural phenomena (e.g., earthquakes, hurricanes, etc.) and mitigation of their impact on the propagation of telecommunication, GNSS and EO signals.

We encourage submissions of new researches related, but not limited, to the following topics:

Techniques for detection of atmospheric disturbance;
Modelling of atmospheric disturbances;
Relationship between natural phenomena (e.g., earthquakes, hurricanes, etc.) and atmospheric disturbances;
Databases and Earth observation datasets useful for studies on atmospheric disturbances;
Influences of atmospheric disturbances on telecommunication, GNSS and Earth observation signal propagation.

Dr. Aleksandra Nina
Dr. Giovanni Nico
Dr. Vladimir Srećković
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Atmosphere is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

atmospheric disturbances
earth observations
modelling
data processing
SAR
GNSS
space weather
natural hazards

Published Papers (7 papers)

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Research

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34 pages, 10822 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Comparisons of Different Methods to Determine Starting Altitudes for Dry Air Atmosphere by GNSS-RO Data

by Andrea Andrisani and Francesco Vespe

Atmosphere 2021, 12(10), 1276; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/atmos12101276 - 30 Sep 2021

Viewed by 1503

Abstract

Boundary profile evaluation (BPV) is an approach proposed in order to estimate water vapor content in the atmosphere. It exploits radio occultation (RO) observations of the signals emitted by the satellites of global navigation systems (GNSS) which are eclipsing (rising) as viewed by a low earth orbit satellite (LEO). BPV requires, as a preliminary step, the estimation of the dry background atmosphere model of refractivity (i.e., obtained from bending angle profiles) to be subtracted from the real observations in order to extract water vapor profiles. The determination of the lowest layer of the atmosphere over which the concentration of water vapor can be deemed negligible is particularly crucial for a correct application of the BPV method. In this study, we have applied three methods to set the starting altitudes for the dry air layers of the atmosphere: (1) by air temperature below some threshold values (for example, 250 K); (2) by “smooth” bending angle profiles in ROs; (3) by saturated water vapor pressure. These methods were tested with thermodynamic and bending angle profiles from 912 radiosonde excursions colocated with RO observations. For every dry air starting altitude we determined the best estimator from each of the three methods. In particular, by comparing those estimators with the quantiles and momenta of the dry air starting altitude distributions, we achieved improvements of up to 50% of the humidity profiles. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Atmospheric Disturbances: Detecting, Modelling and Influences on Natural Phenomena and Propagation of Telecommunication, GNSS and EO Signal Propagation)

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15 pages, 1032 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Numerical Modeling of Coseismic Tropospheric Disturbances Arising from the Unstable Acoustic Gravity Wave Energetics

by Esfhan A. Kherani, Saul A. Sanchez and Eurico R. de Paula

Atmosphere 2021, 12(6), 765; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/atmos12060765 - 13 Jun 2021

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2054

Abstract

Numerous recent studies report the Coseismic Tropospheric Disturbances (CTDs) during large earthquakes. Their presence suggests the importance of atmospheric seismology in a possible earthquake forecasting scenario. The origin mechanism and associated energetics of CTDs are not well understood though the observations associate them with the atmospheric waves. We present the numerical modeling of coupled dynamics of Gravity waves (GWs) and convective instability (CI) in the dry troposphere that produces the CTDs, in the form of pressure disturbances, of observed magnitudes. The study reveals the altitude and epicentral distribution of CTDs and elaborates the relative role of GWs and CI in the generation and intensification of CTDs. The study finds that mega and strong earthquakes disturb the troposphere to a similar level as the severe meteorological weather. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Atmospheric Disturbances: Detecting, Modelling and Influences on Natural Phenomena and Propagation of Telecommunication, GNSS and EO Signal Propagation)

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13 pages, 1973 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Reduction of the VLF Signal Phase Noise Before Earthquakes

by Aleksandra Nina, Pier Francesco Biagi, Srđan T. Mitrović, Sergey Pulinets, Giovanni Nico, Milan Radovanović and Luka Č. Popović

Atmosphere 2021, 12(4), 444; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/atmos12040444 - 31 Mar 2021

Cited by 6 | Viewed by 1841

Abstract

In this paper we analyse temporal variations of the phase of a very low frequency (VLF) signal, used for the lower ionosphere monitoring, in periods around four earthquakes (EQs) with magnitude greater than 4. We provide two analyses in time and frequency domains. First, we analyse time evolution of the phase noise. And second, we examine variations of the frequency spectrum using Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) in order to detect hydrodynamic wave excitations and attenuations. This study follows a previous investigation which indicated the noise amplitude reduction, and excitations and attenuations of the hydrodynamic waves less than one hour before the considered EQ events as a new potential ionospheric precursors of earthquakes. We analyse the phase of the ICV VLF transmitter signal emitted in Italy recorded in Serbia in time periods around four earthquakes occurred on 3, 4 and 9 November 2010 which are the most intensive earthquakes analysed in the previous study. The obtained results indicate very similar changes in the noise of phase and amplitude, and show an agreement in recorded acoustic wave excitations. However, properties in the obtained wave attenuation characteristics are different for these two signal parameters. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Atmospheric Disturbances: Detecting, Modelling and Influences on Natural Phenomena and Propagation of Telecommunication, GNSS and EO Signal Propagation)

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17 pages, 5658 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Effect of Boreal Summer Intraseasonal Oscillation on Evaporation Duct and Electromagnetic Propagation over the South China Sea

by Wentao Jia, Weimin Zhang, Jiahua Zhu and Jilin Sun

Atmosphere 2020, 11(12), 1298; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/atmos11121298 - 30 Nov 2020

Cited by 6 | Viewed by 2144

Abstract

Intraseasonal oscillation of the evaporation duct, lasting 30–60 days, has been identified over the South China Sea (SCS) summer monsoon region based on multiple reanalyses and observational data. The boreal summer intraseasonal oscillation (BSISO) causes anomalies at the air–sea boundary and thus plays a dominant role in modulating the variation of the evaporation duct. The height and strength of the duct enhance/suppress during the negative/positive phase of the BSISO over the SCS. This results from the fact that active BSISO convection reduces solar radiation reaching the sea surface by increasing cumulus cloud cover, whereupon precipitation and water vapor transported by the enhanced southwest jet increase humidity over the air–sea boundary. Reduced air–sea temperatures and humidity differences lead to a weaker evaporation duct. Usually, the temporal evolution of the evaporation duct lags 2–4 days behind the BSISO, with the center of evaporation duct anomalies farther south than the BSISO. Simulated electromagnetic fields substantively influence the condition of the evaporation duct, with obvious over-the-horizon and radar blind spot effects in the typical negative phase of the BSISO, which is very different from standard atmospheric conditions. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Atmospheric Disturbances: Detecting, Modelling and Influences on Natural Phenomena and Propagation of Telecommunication, GNSS and EO Signal Propagation)

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12 pages, 4468 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Statistical Approach to Observe the Atmospheric Density Variations Using Swarm Satellite Data

by Md Wahiduzzaman, Alea Yeasmin, Jing-Jia Luo, Md. Arfan Ali, Muhammad Bilal and Zhongfeng Qiu

Atmosphere 2020, 11(9), 897; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/atmos11090897 - 24 Aug 2020

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 4195

Abstract

Over time, the initial algorithms to derive atmospheric density from accelerometers have been significantly enhanced. In this study, we discussed one of the accurate accelerometers—the Earth’s Magnetic Field and Environment Explorers, more commonly known as the Swarm satellites. Swarm satellite–C level 2 (measurements from the Swam accelerometers) density, solar index (F_10.7), and geomagnetic index (Kp) data have been used for a year (mid 2014–2015), and the different types of temporal (the diurnal, multi–day, solar–rotational, semi–annual, and annual) atmospheric density variations have been investigated using the statistical approaches of correlation coefficient and wavelet transform. The result shows the density varies due to the recurrent geomagnetic force at multi–day, solar irradiance during the day, appearance and disappearance of the Sun’s active region, Sun–Earth distance, large scale circulation, and the formation of an aurora. Additionally, a correlation coefficient was used to observe whether F_10.7 or Kp contributes strongly or weakly to annual density, and the result found a strong (medium) correlation with F_10.7 (Kp). Accurate density measurement can help to reduce the model’s bias correction, and monitoring the physical mechanisms for the density variations can lead to improvements in the atmospheric density models. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Atmospheric Disturbances: Detecting, Modelling and Influences on Natural Phenomena and Propagation of Telecommunication, GNSS and EO Signal Propagation)

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Review

Jump to: Research

21 pages, 3790 KiB

Open AccessReview

Sound Propagation Modelling for Manned and Unmanned Aircraft Noise Assessment and Mitigation: A Review

by Rohan Kapoor, Nicola Kloet, Alessandro Gardi, Abdulghani Mohamed and Roberto Sabatini

Atmosphere 2021, 12(11), 1424; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/atmos12111424 - 28 Oct 2021

Cited by 10 | Viewed by 3800

Abstract

This paper addresses one of the recognized barriers to the unrestricted adoption of Unmanned Aircraft (UA) in mainstream urban use—noise—and reviews existing approaches for estimating and mitigating this problem. The aircraft noise problem is discussed upfront in general terms by introducing the sound emission, propagation, and psychoacoustic effects. The propagation of sound in the atmosphere, which is the focus of this paper, is then analysed in detail to isolate the environmental and operational factors that predominantly influence the perceived noise on the ground, especially looking at large-scale low-altitude UA operations, such as in the envisioned Urban Air Mobility (UAM) concepts. The physics of sound propagation are presented, considering all attenuation effects and the anomalies due to Doppler and atmospheric effects, such as wind, thermal inversion, and turbulence. The analysis allows to highlight the limitations of current mainstream aircraft noise modelling and certification approaches and, in particular, their inadequacy in addressing the noise of UA and, more generally, UAM vehicles. This finding is important considering that, although reducing noise at the source has remained a priority for manufacturers to enable the scaling up of UAM and drone delivery operations in the near future, the impact of poorly considered propagation and psychoacoustic effects on the actual perceived noise on the ground is equally important for the same objective. For instance, optimizing the flight paths as a function of local weather conditions can significantly contribute to minimizing the impact of noise on communities, thus paving the way for the introduction of full-scale UAM operations. A more reliable and accurate modelling of noise ground signatures for both manned and unmanned low-flying aircraft will aid in identifying the real-time data stream requirements from distributed sensors on the ground. New developments in surrogate sound propagation models, more pervasive real-time sensor data, and suitable computing resources are expected to both yield more reliable and effective estimates of noise reaching the ground listeners and support a dynamic planning of flight paths. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Atmospheric Disturbances: Detecting, Modelling and Influences on Natural Phenomena and Propagation of Telecommunication, GNSS and EO Signal Propagation)

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47 pages, 7666 KiB

Open AccessReview

Laser Beam Atmospheric Propagation Modelling for Aerospace LIDAR Applications

by Thomas Fahey, Maidul Islam, Alessandro Gardi and Roberto Sabatini

Atmosphere 2021, 12(7), 918; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/atmos12070918 - 17 Jul 2021

Cited by 23 | Viewed by 14818

Abstract

Atmospheric effects have a significant impact on the performance of airborne and space laser systems. Traditional models used to predict propagation effects rely heavily on simplified assumptions of the atmospheric properties and their interactions with laser systems. In the engineering domain, these models need to be continually improved in order to develop tools that can predict laser beam propagation with high accuracy and for a wide range of practical applications such as LIDAR (light detection and ranging), free-space optical communications, remote sensing, etc. The underlying causes of laser beam attenuation in the atmosphere are examined in this paper, with a focus on the dominant linear effects: absorption, scattering, turbulence, and non-linear thermal effects such as blooming, kinetic cooling, and bleaching. These phenomena are quantitatively analyzed, highlighting the implications of the various assumptions made in current modeling approaches. Absorption and scattering, as the dominant causes of attenuation, are generally well captured in existing models and tools, but the impacts of non-linear phenomena are typically not well described as they tend to be application specific. Atmospheric radiative transfer codes, such as MODTRAN, ARTS, etc., and the associated spectral databases, such as HITRAN, are the existing tools that implement state-of-the-art models to quantify the total propagative effects on laser systems. These tools are widely used to analyze system performance, both for design and test/evaluation purposes. However, present day atmospheric radiative transfer codes make several assumptions that reduce accuracy in favor of faster processing. In this paper, the atmospheric radiative transfer models are reviewed highlighting the associated methodologies, assumptions, and limitations. Empirical models are found to offer a robust analysis of atmospheric propagation, which is particularly well-suited for design, development, test and evaluation (DDT&E) purposes. As such, empirical, semi-empirical, and ensemble methodologies are recommended to complement and augment the existing atmospheric radiative transfer codes. There is scope to evolve the numerical codes and empirical approaches to better suit aerospace applications, where fast analysis is required over a range of slant paths, incidence angles, altitudes, and atmospheric conditions, which are not exhaustively captured in current performance assessment methods. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Atmospheric Disturbances: Detecting, Modelling and Influences on Natural Phenomena and Propagation of Telecommunication, GNSS and EO Signal Propagation)

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