Instituto Nacional De Pesquisas Espaciais Research Articles

Variability of the equatorial ionization anomaly over the South American sector: Effects of electric field and effective meridional wind

Vertical Total Electron Content (VTEC) Maps over the South American Continent were utilized to investigate the temporal and longitudinal climatology of Equatorial Ionization Anomaly (EIA) using more than 350 Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) receivers. At a temporal resolution of 10 min, the EIA motions, morphologies, and evolutions were mapped using VTEC keogram along magnetic meridians lines. Between 2014 and 2019, characteristics of the EIA were studied at two different South American magnetic meridians (i.e., 3.36° E and 7.58° E) separated by ∼555 km at an altitude of 300 km. The aim of this study is to examine the EIA’s variability, monthly variations and occurrences at evenly spaced longitudinal sectors. The effects of effective meridional winds component and E × B drift velocity on the daytime asymmetry of EIA anomalies were studied using a physics-based numerical model, Sheffield University Plasmasphere-Ionosphere model at Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (SUPIM-INPE). We found that the EIA parameters such as strength, shape, intensity, and latitudinal positions are affected by the eastward electric field and effective meridional wind. The monthly variations in the EIA over two magnetic meridian sectors demonstrate a semiannual variation. The EIA crests were more symmetric in equinox than in solstice seasons. The asymmetries of the EIA observed during the December solstice are more intense than during the June solstice, whereas September equinox is less symmetric than March equinox seasons. Moreover, this study indicates that the vertical drift and the meridional neutral wind plays a very significant role in the development of the EIA asymmetry by transporting the plasma up the field lines. There was a notable contraction of the EIA southern hemispheric (SH) crests from the December solstice to the June solstice. Meanwhile, the EIA crest positions in the northern hemisphere (NH) expand from the December solstice to the June solstice. According to our observations, the March equinox season had the most EIA occurrences, which were then followed by the September equinox, the December and June solstices. The intensities of the EIA crests also considerably decreased with solar descending phases. Through modeling, this work provides the scientific community with new insights into the evolution/development of EIA and their latitudinal asymmetry, as well as the role of E × B drift and thermospheric neutral wind in assessing the statistical analysis of EIA variability using the largest VTEC database over the South American sector.

Feasibility of Using Topographic Data by TOPODATA Image in Urban Drainage Projects

In general, the urbanization process in cities increases the impermeabilization of the soil, increasing surface runoff, leading the population to suffer from risks of flooding. In this context, the design of the drainage system is fundamental, which depends on the terrain characteristics. The total station is one of the most used equipment in topographic survey in field service. With the technological advance, it is possible to obtain this information remotely, as through satellite image with the aid of geoprocessing software. Thus, the objective of this research was to carry out a feasibility study on the use of topographic data obtained by TOPODATA Project images generated by Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais - INPE in an urban drainage project. The seat of the municipality of Ipixuna do Pará was adopted as study area, where altimetry information was obtained by total station and by TOPODATA images. The interpolation kriging method was used to generate the contour lines and the Digital Terrain Model (DTM). To evaluate the performance of the TOPODATA data, the Pearson correlation coefficient test (R) and the Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) were used. For the microdrainage project, an area of approximately 14 hectares was delimited within the municipality's seat. From the statistical analysis, satisfactory results were obtained with R of 0.81, a “very high” correlation; and the RMSE of 1.27 m in the project area. Therefore, it was verified that it is feasible to use the TOPODATA image in the altimetry survey for areas considered small, with good correlation, considering the agility in obtaining the data, allowing access to information in places of difficult access, in addition to the economic aspect.

Two‐Way Assessment of Ionospheric Maps Performance Over the Brazilian Region: Global Versus Regional Products

AbstractVertical total electron content (VTEC) has great importance in describing the ionosphere. VTEC values are commonly distributed in regular grids by means of so‐called global ionospheric maps (GIMs) and regional ionospheric maps (RIMs). Although considerable research has been conducted to develop regional and global models, there is no clear understanding of the benefits of using RIMs over GIMs. Aiming to contribute to this discussion, our investigation presents a comparison between seven global and regional ionospheric maps considering two approaches: (a) ionosonde data‐based assessment and (b) global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) positioning assessment. A challenging low latitude ionosphere scenario, the Brazilian region, was selected during a week with an active geomagnetic storm. The assessment results with ionosonde data have shown better performance of the RIM products named OTHR and OTRG. Among the global products, CODG and UQRG have shown the best performances. The worst results were obtained with the RIM named Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais. The assessment with GNSS positioning led to larger and noisier errors close to the equatorial anomaly. Two of the analyzed RIMs presented expected large errors in stations at the edges of the coverage area. To overcome this issue, a hybrid product was proposed to extend the RIM covered region. The proposed hybrid product (OTRG) presented the best results in the GNSS positioning domain.

"Cities in the forest" and "cities of the forest": an environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) spatial approach to analyzing the urbanization-deforestation relationship in a Brazilian Amazon state

Contemporary urbanization has been reorganizing the territories and the socioeconomic relations in the Brazilian Amazon as a whole. We seek to identify a general typology of relationships between urbanization and deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, in the light of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) theory. We have applied this approach to the 144 municipalities of Pará, in the Brazilian Amazon, in the inter-census interval from 2000 to 2010. The EKC approach included the spatial analysis method of geographically weighted regressions (GWR). Deforestation, measured by the PRODES program by Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE), was used as a measure of environmental degradation and the urbanization has been restricted to a socioeconomic characterizing, based on a set of 22 variables from the national census database, aggregated at the municipalities level. The results showed two main typologies: (1) the decreasing monotonic and (2)

Weather Forecasting in Brazil: A Concise Historical Review

The main objective of this article is to describe the factors and issues responsible for the evolution of the weather forecast in Brazil.This is done based on a historical review of the formation and evolution of the national meteorological services in the last 170 yearsand on the development of weather forecasting methods. Changes in the routines of weather forecasting services in two centenaryBrazilian institutions, the National Institute of Meteorology and the Brazilian Navy, since the creation of the first subjective forecaststo the present day, are highlighted. Information about the 14 undergraduate courses in Meteorology in Brazil is given, which supportthe technological development of this science, through scientific research and training of human resources. The introduction ofmeteorological radar in the 1970s, and its current networks, as well as the elaboration of the first numerical weather predictions (NWP)by the Center for Weather Forecasting and Climate Studies (Centro de Previsão do Tempo e Estudos Climáticos do Instituto Nacionalde Pesquisas Espaciais – CPTEC/INPE), in 1995, are also described. To complement, a survey is presented, showing the currentworking conditions of weather forecasters. The survey results reveal that 45% of the 102 meteorologists interviewed use the CzechRepublic Windy application to prepare their weather forecasts operationally and almost 60% use the Wyoming University website toobtain data from radiosondes launched in Brazil. It is important to highlight that, since the introduction of NWP by CPTEC/INPE, at theend of the 1990s, there has been a great advance in the field of weather forecasting. Moreover, observational networks have undergonea great expansion, with a significant increase in the number of weather stations in recent decades. Despite all the progress achieved,there is still a need for the integration of observational networks and databases of various institutions. Finally, the development ofapplications that meet the demand of young meteorologists in the operational centers is advisable.

Machine Learning for Climate Precipitation Prediction Modeling over South America

Many natural disasters in South America are linked to meteorological phenomena. Therefore, forecasting and monitoring climatic events are fundamental issues for society and various sectors of the economy. In the last decades, machine learning models have been developed to tackle different issues in society, but there is still a gap in applications to applied physics. Here, different machine learning models are evaluated for precipitation prediction over South America. Currently, numerical weather prediction models are unable to precisely reproduce the precipitation patterns in South America due to many factors such as the lack of region-specific parametrizations and data availability. The results are compared to the general circulation atmospheric model currently used operationally in the National Institute for Space Research (INPE: Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais), Brazil. Machine learning models are able to produce predictions with errors under 2 mm in most of the continent in comparison to satellite-observed precipitation patterns for different climate seasons, and also outperform INPE’s model for some regions (e.g., reduction of errors from 8 to 2 mm in central South America in winter). Another advantage is the computational performance from machine learning models, running faster with much lower computer resources than models based on differential equations currently used in operational centers. Therefore, it is important to consider machine learning models for precipitation forecasts in operational centers as a way to improve forecast quality and to reduce computation costs.

Political activity in social media induces forest fires in the Brazilian Amazon

Authors have presented several discussions and they suggest that Google Trends data did not only reflect the current state of events, but may have also been able to anticipate certain future trends. A major peak of devastation and fire occurred on August-2019 in Brazilian Amazon forest and messages were spread out in social media and on the Internet announcing protests over “the day of fire”. Investigations of journalists indicate that a group formed by producers, land grabbers and prospectors set fire to roads in the Brazilian Amazon. Social media is part of the routine of statements by presidents and political representatives with a high impact on actions that directly affect the population. Our goal is to use Google Trends as an indicator or predictor of actions as that were part of the fires in the Amazon in 2019. In this article we investigate what is a possible influence of President of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro in the increase of fire outbreaks due their speeches, using cross-correlations between the President's speech with keywords in Google Trends and current data of fires alerted by INPE– Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (National Space Research Institute). We found a cross-correlation of 55.73% that support this fact after looking up keywords related in Goggle Trends. The cross-correlation indicates that the maximum value is seven days from the peak of the search for the keyword, on the same date of "day of fire". When data are observed hour by hour, the cross-correlation between keywords and the beginning of "day of fire" is 53.96%, with a lag between 10 h and 32 h until the increase of fires in Legal Amazon. The cross-correlation for Google Trends between the keyword “Germany” and the keyword “Altamira+Fires+BR-163″ was of 72.87%, showing high relationship in the attacks to Mrs. Angela Merkel (Germany) and Altamira (region of Amazon) with highest fires outbreaks appearing along the BR-163 highway.

The technical optimization of Na-K lidar and to measure mesospheric Na and K over Brazil

This paper reports that the sodium–potassium (Na–K) lidar was completed in November 2016 at São José Dos Compose, Brazil (23°S, 45°W), by the joint effort of the National Space Science Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences (NSSC) and Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE). This system realized the Na and K metal layers simultaneously observe in Brazil, and this is the first instance of K layer detection in South America. Some of the key parameters and technologies have been optimized based on the Na and K layer dual-wave lidar in Beijing Yanqing station, such as improve technical parameters for receiving telescope, the narrow linewidth, efficient laser frequency doubling, the wavelength automatic locking techniques. By adopting these technologies, the output were 589 nm and 770 nm lasers, with high emission powers of 75 mJ and 83 mJ, respectively, and backscattered signals of Na and K layers with high signal quality were obtained. Observation data showed that the original echo photon count of the Na layer was approximately 42,486 (time resolution: 200 s, spatial resolution: 96 m) and the number of noise photons was 286 in a single data acquisition. The signal-to-noise ratio was up to 205:1. At the same spatiotemporal resolution, the original echo photon count of the K layer was approximately 1633, the noise photons were 38, and the signal-to-noise ratio was up to 40:1. The initial photocounts received has demonstrated that the Brazil K lidar has produced high quality signal with signal-to-noise level required by intended science studies. Moreover, the simultaneous phenomena of sporadic Na (Nas) and sporadic K (Ks), and the highly concentrated layers of atomic K have been observed, the K density in these narrow layers exceeds 1019 cm−3.

Burden of schistosomiasis‐related mortality in Brazil: epidemiological patterns and spatial–temporal distribution, 2003–2018

To characterise the epidemiological patterns and the spatial-temporal distribution of schistosomiasis-related mortality in Brazil from 2003 to 2018. A national population-based ecological study that used official data from the Mortality Information System. The data included all deaths recorded in Brazil from 2003 to 2018 in which schistosomiasis was mentioned in the death certificate as an underlying or associated cause of death (multiple causes). The municipalities of residence were used as units of geographic analysis, and standardised and smoothed mortality rates (per 100000 inhabitants) were calculated using the local empirical Bayes method. Spatial autocorrelation was evaluated using global and local Moran indexes. To analyse the spatial dependence, the Getis-Ord G and Gi* statistics were used. During the study period, 18421113 deaths were recorded in Brazil. Schistosomiasis was mentioned in 11487 deaths (proportional mortality: 0.06%); for 8141 deaths (70.87%), it was listed as the underlying cause, and for 3346 deaths (29.13%), it was listed as an associated cause. The mean mortality rate was 0.38 deaths/100000 inhabitants. Individuals≥70years of age (RR: 115.34, 95% CI: 68.56-194.03) and residents in the Northeast region (RR: 10.81, 95% CI: 5.95-19.66) presented higher risks related to schistosomiasis. Municipalities with high mortality rates were identified in all regions, and high-risk clusters were found in municipalities located in the Northeast and Southeast regions of the country. Schistosomiasis remains an important cause of death in persistently endemic areas in Brazil, particularly in those with a high prevalence of the disease and a marked parasite load.

First Report of an Eclipse From Chilean Ionosonde Observations: Comparison With Total Electron Content Estimations and the Modeled Maximum Electron Concentration and Its Height

AbstractThe ionospheric responses to the total solar eclipse on 2 July 2019 over low latitudes in southern South America are presented. Ionosonde observations were used within the totality path at La Serena (LS: 29.9°S, 71.3°W) and at Tucumán (TU: 26.9°S, 65.4°W) and Jicamarca (JI: 12.0°S, 76.8°W), with 85% and 52% obscuration, respectively. Total electron content (TEC) estimations over the South American continent were analyzed. The ionospheric impact of the eclipse was simulated using the Sheffield University Plasmasphere‐Ionosphere Model (SUPIM) at the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE). The significant variability of the diurnal variations of the various ionospheric characteristics over equatorial and low latitudes on geomagnetically quiet days makes it difficult to unambiguously determine the ionospheric responses to the eclipse. Nonetheless, some specific issues can be derived, mainly using simulation results. The E and F1 layer critical frequencies and densities below 200 km are found to consistently depend on decreasing solar radiation. However, the F1 layer stratification observed at both TU and LS cannot be related to the eclipse or other processes. The F2 layer does not follow the changes in direct solar radiation during the eclipse. The SUPIM‐INPE‐modeled F region critical frequency and TEC are overestimated before the eclipse at LS and particularly at TU. However, these overestimations are within the observed large day‐to‐day variability. When an artificial prereversal enhancement is added, the simulations during the eclipse better reproduce the observations at JI, are qualitatively better for LS, and are out of phase for TU. The simulations are consistent with conjugate location effects.

Evapotranspiração de canaviais em diferentes fases fenológicas por sensoriamento remoto no vale do submédio do São Francisco.

The study aimed to estimate the reference evapotranspiration of sugarcane using the Priestley-Taylor method, comparing with the standard Penman-Monteith-FAO 56 method in the region of the São Francisco Submiddle Valley in the period from 2013 to 2016. Images of the Landsat-8 satellite of the OLI and TIRS sensors acquired from the North American space Agency (NASA) and meteorological data from the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE) were used, along with the Sistema de Organização Nacional de Dados Ambientais (SONDA) and the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INMET). The instantaneous radiation balance, soil heat flow, latent heat flow, crop coefficient (Kc) and Priestley-Taylor coefficient were estimated to obtain the reference evapotranspiration, which ranged from 0.00 to 3.65 mm d-1. The validation proceeded through the correlation between method of crop coefficient applied for Priestley-Taylor and Penman-Monteith. The value of R² 0.75, Pearson coefficient (R) 0.88 (strong correlation) and the mean error found in 1.81 mm d-1 were considered satisfactory. The Priestley-Taylor method was able to estimate the reference evapotranspiration in sugarcane production areas in the region of the São Francisco Submiddle Valley in a satisfactory way.

Padrões espaciais de desmatamento e a estimativa da exatidão dos mapas do PRODES para Amazônia Legal Brasileira

O Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE) opera desde 1988 o Projeto de Monitoramento do Desmatamento na Amazônia por Satélites (PRODES), cujo principal objetivo é fornecer taxa anual de desmatamento florestal da Amazônia Legal Brasileira utilizando imagens de satélite de sensoriamento remoto. Esse levantamento envolve o mapeamento de mais de quatro milhões de km2 e os resultados obtidos são utilizados pelo governo brasileiro no estabelecimento e acompanhamento das políticas públicas relativas ao controle e combate ao desmatamento. Este dado tem sido produzido e divulgado em base anual desde 1988, porém, uma avaliação sobre a qualidade dos dados nunca foi estabelecida. Assim, o objetivo deste trabalho foi desenvolver uma metodologia para estimar índices de exatidão do mapeamento das áreas desmatadas apontadas pelo PRODES para o ano de 2014, a partir de uma amostragem estratificada de padrões de desmatamento mapeados em células de 50 x 50 km. O mapeamento desses padrões foi realizado a partir do estabelecimento e uso de uma tipologia de padrões de desmatamento, métricas de paisagem e técnica de mineração de dados. Pontos amostrais representativos de cada padrão de desmatamento foram sorteados aleatoriamente e avaliados visualmente por especialistas independentes. Como resultado dessa avaliação foi possível estabelecer o nível exatidão global do mapeamento em questão, estimado em 93% e com índices de omissão e de inclusão estimados em 7% e 1,5%, respectivamente. Padrões como espinha de peixe, multidirecional e consolidado, considerados mais complexos, apresentaram menores índices de acerto, mostrando coerência e indicando que maior atenção deve ser dada ao seu mapeamento. Os resultados apresentados, de uma forma geral, se mostraram consistentes, indicando que a metodologia desenvolvida pode ser replicada em mapeamentos similares.

Ionospheric Response to Disturbed Winds During the 29 October 2003 Geomagnetic Storm in the Brazilian Sector

AbstractModeling the ionosphere during disturbed periods is one of the most challenging tasks due to the complexity of the phenomena that affect the electric fields and the whole thermosphere environment. It is well known that both, prompt penetration electric fields and large amounts of energy deposited in the polar region during disturbed periods, produce significant disturbances in the global electron density distribution, in particular, in the equatorial ionization anomaly development. Besides, the disturbance dynamo, traveling atmospheric disturbances, and traveling ionospheric disturbances also affect the equatorial ionization anomaly density distribution. In this work we use the Sheffield University Plasmasphere‐Ionosphere Model at Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais, to simulate the drastic effects that were observed at the low‐latitude ionosphere in the Brazilian region during a very intense magnetic storm event, the so‐called 2003 Halloween storms. In the absence of measured vertical drift during the storm, a new vertical drift deduced from the interplanetary electric field combined with the time variation of the F region virtual height is used as input. The simulation results showed that, in the case of the disturbed thermospheric wind, the ionospheric observations are better explained when a novel traveling wave‐like disturbance propagating from north to south, at a velocity equal to 300 m/s, is considered.

Spatial and temporal analysis of tuberculosis in an area of social inequality in Northeast Brazil

BackgroundTuberculosis is an infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis. It is a disease known worldwide for its vulnerability factors, magnitude and mortality. The objective of the study was to analyze the spatial and temporal dynamics of TB in the area of social inequality in northeast Brazil between the years 2001 and 2016.MethodsAn ecological time series study with the use of spatial analysis techniques was carried out from 2001 to 2016. The units of analysis were the 75 municipalities in the state of Sergipe. Data from the Notification of Injury Information System were used. For the construction of the maps, the cartographic base of the state of Sergipe, obtained at the Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística, was used. Georeferenced data were analysed using TerraView 4.2.2 software (Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais) and QGis 2.18.2 (Open Source Geospatial Foundation). Spatial analyses included the empirical Bayesian model and the global and local Moran indices. The time trend analyses were performed by the software Joinpoint Regression, Version 4.5.0.1, with the variables of sex, age, cure and abandonment.ResultsThere was an increasing trend of tuberculosis cases in patients under 20 years old and 20–39 years old, especially in males. Cured cases showed a decreasing trend, and cases of treatment withdrawal were stationary. A spatial dependence was observed in almost all analysed territories but with different concentrations. Significant spatial correlations with the formation of clusters in the southeast and northeast of the state were observed. The probability of illness among municipalities was determined not to occur in a random way.ConclusionThe identification of risk areas and priority groups can help health planning by refining the focus of attention to tuberculosis control. Understanding the epidemiological, spatial and temporal dynamics of tuberculosis can allow for improved targeting of strategies for disease prevention and control.

The BINGO telescope: a new instrument exploring the new 21 cm cosmology window

BINGO is a unique radio telescope designed to make the first detection of Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO) at radio frequencies. This will be achieved by measuring the distribution of neutral hydrogen gas at cosmological distances using a technique called Intensity Mapping. Along with the Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropies, the scale of BAO is one of the most powerful probes of cosmological parameters, including dark energy. The telescope will be built in a very low RFI site in South America and will operate in the frequency range from 0.96 GHz to 1.26 GHz. The telescope design consists of two ∼ 40-m compact mirrors with no moving parts. Such a design will give the excellent polarization performance and very low sidelobe levels required for intensity mapping. With a feedhorn array of 50 receivers, it will map a 15° declination strip as the sky drifts past the field-of-view of the telescope. The BINGO consortium is composed Universidade de Sao Paulo, Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (Brazil), University of Manchester and University College London (United Kingdom), ETH Zurich (Switzerland) and Universidad de La Republica (Uruguay). The telescope assembly and horn design and fabrication are under way in Brazil. The receiver was designed in UK and will be developed in Brazil, with most of the components for the receiver will also be supplied by Brazilian industry. The experience and science goals achieved by the BINGO team will be advantageous as a pathfinder mission for the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project. This paper reports the current status of the BINGO mission, as well as preliminary results already obtained for the instrumentation development.

Can disaster events reporting be used to drive remote sensing applications? A Latin America weather index insurance case study

A new data set was commissioned over Latin America with the goal of supporting decision‐making in various socioeconomic activities and, in particular, for climate insurance products. The Historical Database for Gridded Daily Precipitation Dataset over Latin America (LatAmPrec), based on the combined scheme approach developed at the Centro de Previsão de Tempo e Estudos Climáticos, Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (CPTEC/INPE), provides a new high‐resolution, low‐latency, gauge–satellite‐based analysis of daily precipitation over Latin America for the period March 2000–July 2017. In order to understand the strengths and limitations of the new data set for use in weather index insurance, the present study applies two different validation methodologies. The first focuses on capturing, through a cross‐correlation process, the accuracy and improved characteristics of the new gauge‐merged data set. Second, to gauge the skill of the data set in the context of insurance losses, the study uses a statistical approach, previously applied at a village level and here applied at regional levels, to assess how well the new data set predicts evidence of loss events. This is performed for both farmer interview data and national‐level disaster data sets. The results from both validation methodologies show that LatAmPrec performs well when compared with other data sources and can satisfactorily capture the insurance‐relevant losses on the ground. One main advantage of the new product is its high spatial resolution and low latency compared with other existing products used in the weather index insurance industry.

Application of a Process Model for the Management of Intellectual Property in a Technology Licensing Office from a Brazilian Research Center

In Brazil, the Technology Licensing Office (TLO) are responsible for managing the innovation policy of Scientific and Technological Institutions (STI). However, when analyzing the functioning of the TLO is possible to observe that these are organizations that still require capacitation to perform with efficiency and efficacy of its functions. Thus, the aim of this paper is to report the application of a model for the management of Intellectual Property (IP) in the TLO of the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE-TLO), in Brazil, which was conducted through an action research. The application of such a model is intended to empower INPE-TLO to perform its functions relating to the protection and commercialization of technologies in order to promote the transfer of technologies created by research and development units of the INPE to the productive sector. As preliminary results, it is possible to highlight the development of an action plan to realignment the flow of activities as well as to customize the model proposed to culture and INPE-TLO structure.

The technopolitics of climate change: climate models, geopolitics, and governmentality.

Based on an empirical study of climate modeling at Brazil's Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais, the article explores how climate modeling represents a pragmatic government approach in the realm of climate change. The discussion begins with how this pragmatic approach serves the purposes of the geopolitical action of the State within the international framework of global climate knowledge production. It then shows how modeling engenders forms of interpretation of climate change phenomena and future impacts on the local scale and finds expression in governmental rationalities of a biopolitical nature. In short, the discussion is how the technoscience of climate modeling is constructed as a governmental technology and rationality (governmentality) of the State, a process I call the technopolitics of climate change.

Equatorial Ionospheric Response to Different Estimated Disturbed Electric Fields as Investigated Using Sheffield University Plasmasphere Ionosphere Model at INPE

AbstractGood ionospheric modeling is important to understand anomalous effects, mainly during geomagnetic storm events. Ionospheric electric fields, thermospheric winds, and neutral composition are affected at different degrees, depending on the intensity of the magnetic disturbance which, in turns, affects the electron density distribution at all latitudes. The most important disturbed parameter for the equatorial ionosphere is the electric field, which is responsible for the equatorial ionization anomaly. Here various electric field measurements and models are analyzed: (1) measured by the Jicamarca incoherent scatter radar (ISR), (2) from Jicamarca Unattended Long‐Term studies of the Ionosphere and Atmosphere (JULIA) radar, (3) deduced from magnetometers, (4) calculated from the time variations of the F layer height (dh′F/dt), and (5) deduced from interplanetary electric field determinations. The response of ionospheric parameters foF2 and hmF2 to the electric fields simulated using the Sheffield University Plasmasphere Ionosphere Model version available at Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais is compared with observations for two locations, during the geomagnetic storm events of 17–18 April 2002 and 7–10 November 2004. Results are found to be consistent with the observations in such a way that a hierarchy among the different types of drifts used can be established. When no ISR measurements are available, the drifts deduced from magnetometers or measured by the JULIA are best when including the contribution derived from dh′F/dt for the 18–24 LT time interval. However, when none of these drifts are available, drifts inferred from the interplanetary electric field seem to be a good alternative for some purposes.

Observing System Experiments in a 3DVAR Data Assimilation System at CPTEC/INPE

Abstract The Center for Weather Forecast and Climate Studies [Centro de Previsão e Tempo e Estudos Climáticos (CPTEC)] at the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research [Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE)] has recently operationally implemented a three-dimensional variational data assimilation (3DVAR) scheme based on the Gridpoint Statistical Interpolation analysis system (GSI). Implementation of the GSI system within the atmospheric global circulation model from CPTEC/INPE (AGCM-CPTEC/INPE) is hereafter referred to as the Global 3DVAR (G3DVAR) system. The results of an observing system experiment (OSE) measuring the impacts of radiosonde, satellite radiance, and GPS radio occultation (RO) data on the new G3DVAR system are presented here. The observational impact of each of these platforms was evaluated by measuring the degradation of the geopotential height anomaly correlation and the amplification of the RMSE of the wind. Losing the radiosonde, GPS RO, and satellite radiance data in the OSE resulted in negative impacts on the geopotential height anomaly correlations globally. Nevertheless, the strongest impacts were found over the Southern Hemisphere and South America when satellite radiance data were withheld from the data assimilation system.