Posts Tagged 'Geophysics'

Inertial Oscillations and Phugoid Flight

Published July 13, 2017 Occasional Leave a Comment
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The English aviation pioneer Frederick Lanchester (1868–1946) introduced many important contributions to aerodynamics. He analysed the motion of an aircraft under various consitions of lift and drag. He introduced the term “phugoid” to describe aircraft motion in which the aircraft alternately climbs and descends, varying about straight and level flight. This is one of the basic modes of aircraft dynamics, and is clearly illustrated by the flight of gliders.

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Glider in phugoid loop [photograph by Dave Jones on website of Dave Harrison]. 

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The Water is Rising Fast

Published April 20, 2017 Irish Times Leave a Comment
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Seventy percent of the Earth is covered by water and three quarters of the world’s great cities are on the coast. Ever-rising sea levels pose a real threat to more than a billion people living beside the sea. As the climate warms, this is becoming a greater threat every year [TM113 or search for “thatsmaths” at irishtimes.com].

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Mean Sea level in Seattle from 1900 to 2013

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Mercator’s Marvellous Map

Published May 21, 2015 Irish Times Leave a Comment
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Try to wrap a football in aluminium foil and you will discover that you have to crumple up the foil to make it fit snugly to the ball. In the same way, it is impossible to represent the curved surface of the Earth on a flat plane without some distortion.  [See this week’s That’s Maths column (TM068):  search for “thatsmaths” at irishtimes.com].

Mercator projection of the Earth, truncated at 75 degrees North and South [Wikimedia Commons, author: Strebe].

Mercator projection of the Earth, truncated at 75 degrees North and South [Wikimedia Commons, author: Strebe].

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The Hodograph

Published April 9, 2015 Occasional Leave a Comment
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The Hodograph is a vector diagram showing how velocity changes with position or time. It was made popular by William Rowan Hamilton who, in 1847, gave an account of it in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. Hodographs are valuable in fluid dynamics, astronomy and meteorology.

Hodograph plot of wind vectors at five heights in the troposphere. This indicates vertical wind shear and also horizontal temperature gradients. Since the wind veers with height between V2 and V3, it is blowing warmer air north-eastwards to a colder region (image source: NOAA).

Hodograph plot of wind vectors at five heights in the troposphere. This indicates vertical wind shear and also horizontal temperature gradients. Since the wind veers with height between V2 and V3, it is blowing warmer air north-eastwards to a colder region (image source: NOAA).

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Mode-S: Aircraft Data improves Weather Forecasts

Published April 2, 2015 Irish Times Leave a Comment
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A simple application of vectors yields valuable new wind observations for weather forecasting [see this week’s That’s Maths column (TM065) or search for “thatsmaths” at irishtimes.com].

The air speed is A (blue), the wind speed is W (black) and the ground speed is G (red). Since the ground speed is the resultant (vector sum) of air speed and wind speed, a simple vector subtraction gives the wind speed: W= G – A.

The air speed is A (blue), the wind speed is W (black) and the ground speed is G (red). Since the ground speed is the resultant (vector sum) of air speed and wind speed, a simple vector subtraction gives the wind speed: W= G – A.

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Falling Bodies [1]: Sky-diving

Published November 13, 2014 Occasional Leave a Comment
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Aristotle was clear: heavy bodies fall faster than light ones. He arrived at this conclusion by pure reasoning, without experiment. Today we insist on a physical demonstration before such a conclusion is accepted. Galileo tested Aristotle’s theory: he dropped bodies of different weights simultaneously from the Leaning Tower of Pisa and found that, to a good approximation, they hit the ground at the same time.

Aristotle and Galileo.

Aristotle and Galileo.

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El Niño likely this Winter

Published November 6, 2014 Irish Times Leave a Comment
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This week’s That’s Maths column in The Irish Times (TM056 or search for “thatsmaths” at irishtimes.com) is about El Niño and the ENSO phenomenon.

In 1997-98, abnormally high ocean temperatures off South America caused a collapse of the anchovy fisheries. Anchovies are a vital link in the food-chain and shortages can bring great hardship. Weather extremes associated with the event caused 2000 deaths and 33 million dollars in damage to property. One commentator wrote that the warming event had “more energy than a million Hiroshima bombs”.

Patterns of sea surface temperature during El Niño and La Niña episodes. Image courtesy of Climate.gov.

Patterns of Pacific Ocean sea surface temperature during El Niño and La Niña episodes. Image courtesy of Climate.gov.

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