Large internal waves may be a great danger to offshore structures. The breaking of such waves may strongly modify the seabed. Their core properties depend on how temperature and salinity vary in the water column. These variations are represented by three vertical locations and four coefficients of the relevant equation. We established how these seven quantities vary in the South China Sea for waves of the second mode (which create compressions or expansions of the intermediate water layer). Hide

Using a nondissipative Lorenz model, we show that the nonlinear feedback loop alone may act a restoring forcing and the heating term alone can produce a saddle point. We illustrate that the nonlinear feedback loop and heating term collectively lead to three critical points and three types of solutions, which may contain a small or big energy cycle. The existence of the homoclinic orbit and two types of oscillatory solutions suggests the appearance of diverged trajectories. Hide

Ocean currents play a key role in Earth’s climate, they are of major importance for navigation and human activities at sea, and impact almost all processes that take place in the ocean. Nevertheless, their observation and forecasting are still difficult. Here, we review the main techniques used to derive surface currents from satellite measurements and the existing approaches to assimilate this information into ocean models. Hide

We examine rainfall-induced change in soil microroughness of bare soil surfaces in agricultural landscapes with initial microroughness length scales of 2 mm or less. Past studies have focused on scales between 5–50 mm. A rainfall simulator is used. Microroughness measurements are obtained via a laser scanner. Findings show a consistent increase in roughness under rainfall action for initial length scales of 2 mm. This contradicts existing literature where a monotonic decay of roughness is recorded. Hide

A method is proposed to determine the temporal decay rate of turbulent fluctuations, and is applied to four-point magnetic field data in interplanetary space. The measured decay or the energy transfer rate is larger than the theoretical estimate from the fluid turbulence theory. The faster decay represents one of the differences in turbulent processes between fluid and plasma media. Hide

It is analytically shown how competing nonlinearities yield new multiscaled (multi humped) structures for internal solitary waves in shallow fluids. These solitary waves only exist for large amplitudes beyond the limit of applicability of the KdV equation or its usual extensions. Multiscaling phenomenon exists or do not exist for almost identical density profiles. Trapped core inside the wave prevents appearance of such multiple scales within the core area. Hide

Here with a simple coupled model that simulates typical scale interactions in the climate system, we study the optimal OTWs for the coupled media so that climate signals can be most accurately recovered by CDA. Results show that an optimal OTW determined from the de-correlation time scale provides maximal observational information that best fits characteristic variability of the coupled medium during the data blending process. Hide