Langley Research Center

About: Langley Research Center is a facility organization based out in Hampton, Virginia, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Mach number & Wind tunnel. The organization has 15945 authors who have published 37602 publications receiving 821623 citations. The organization is also known as: NASA Langley & NASA Langley Research Center.

Greenhouse Effect Due to Chlorofluorocarbons: Climatic Implications

Abstract: The infrared bands of chlorofluorocarbons and chlorocarbons enhance the atmospheric greenhouse effect. This enhancement may lead to an appreciable increase in the global surface temperature if the atmospheric concentrations of these compounds reach values of the order of 2 parts per billion.

Characteristics, sources, and transport of aerosols measured in spring 2008 during the aerosol, radiation, and cloud processes affecting Arctic Climate (ARCPAC) Project

Abstract: . We present an overview of the background, scientific goals, and execution of the Aerosol, Radiation, and Cloud Processes affecting Arctic Climate (ARCPAC) project of April 2008. We then summarize airborne measurements, made in the troposphere of the Alaskan Arctic, of aerosol particle size distributions, composition, and optical properties and discuss the sources and transport of the aerosols. The aerosol data were grouped into four categories based on gas-phase composition. First, the background troposphere contained a relatively diffuse, sulfate-rich aerosol extending from the top of the sea-ice inversion layer to 7.4 km altitude. Second, a region of depleted (relative to the background) aerosol was present within the surface inversion layer over sea-ice. Third, layers of dense, organic-rich smoke from open biomass fires in southern Russia and southeastern Siberia were frequently encountered at all altitudes from the top of the inversion layer to 7.1 km. Finally, some aerosol layers were dominated by components originating from fossil fuel combustion. Of these four categories measured during ARCPAC, the diffuse background aerosol was most similar to the average springtime aerosol properties observed at a long-term monitoring site at Barrow, Alaska. The biomass burning (BB) and fossil fuel layers were present above the sea-ice inversion layer and did not reach the sea-ice surface during the course of the ARCPAC measurements. The BB aerosol layers were highly scattering and were moderately hygroscopic. On average, the layers produced a noontime net heating of ~0.1 K day −1 between 3 and 7 km and a slight cooling at the surface. The ratios of particle mass to carbon monoxide (CO) in the BB plumes, which had been transported over distances >5000 km, were comparable to the high end of literature values derived from previous measurements in wildfire smoke. These ratios suggest minimal precipitation scavenging and removal of the BB particles between the time they were emitted and the time they were observed in dense layers above the sea-ice inversion layer.

Run-time parallelization and scheduling of loops

Abstract: The authors study run-time methods to automatically parallelize and schedule iterations of a do loop in certain cases where compile-time information is inadequate. The methods presented involve execution time preprocessing of the loop. At compile-time, these methods set up the framework for performing a loop dependency analysis. At run-time, wavefronts of concurrently executable loop iterations are identified. Using this wavefront information, loop iterations are reordered for increased parallelism. The authors utilize symbolic transformation rules to produce: inspector procedures that perform execution time preprocessing, and executors or transformed versions of source code loop structures. These transformed loop structures carry out the calculations planned in the inspector procedures. The authors present performance results from experiments conducted on the Encore Multimax. These results illustrate that run-time reordering of loop indexes can have a significant impact on performance. >

Comparative inverse analysis of satellite (MOPITT) and aircraft (TRACE-P) observations to estimate Asian sources of carbon monoxide

Abstract: [1] We use an inverse model analysis to compare the top-down constraints on Asian sources of carbon monoxide (CO) in spring 2001 from (1) daily MOPITT satellite observations of CO columns over Asia and the neighboring oceans and (2) aircraft observations of CO concentrations in Asian outflow from the TRACE-P aircraft mission over the northwest Pacific. The inversion uses the maximum a posteriori method (MAP) and the GEOS-CHEM chemical transport model (CTM) as the forward model. Detailed error characterization is presented, including spatial correlation of the model transport error. Nighttime MOPITT observations appear to be biased and are excluded from the inverse analysis. We find that MOPITT and TRACE-P observations are independently consistent in the constraints that they provide on Asian CO sources, with the exception of southeast Asia for which the MOPITT observations support a more modest decrease in emissions than suggested by the aircraft observations. Our analysis indicates that the observations do not allow us to differentiate source types (i.e., anthropogenic versus biomass burning) within a region. MOPITT provides ten pieces of information to constrain the geographical distribution of CO sources, while TRACE-P provides only four. The greater information from MOPITT reflects its ability to observe all outflow and source regions. We conducted a number of sensitivity studies for the inverse model analysis using the MOPITT data. Temporal averaging of the MOPITT data (weekly and beyond) degrades the ability to constrain regional sources. Merging source regions beyond what is appropriate after careful selection of the state vector leads to significant aggregation errors. Calculations for an ensemble of realistic assumptions lead to a range of inverse model solutions that has greater uncertainty than the a posteriori errors for the MAP solution. Our best estimate of total Asian CO sources is 361 Tg yr−1, over half of which is attributed to east Asia.

Optimization with variable-fidelity models applied to wing design

Abstract: This work discusses an approach, the Approximation Management Framework (AMF), for solving optimization problems that involve computationally expensive simulations. AMF aims to maximize the use of lower-fidelity, cheaper models in iterative procedures with occasional, but systematic, recourse to higher-fidelity, more expensive models for monitoring the progress of the algorithm. The method is globally convergent to a solution of the original, high-fidelity problem. Three versions of AMF, based on three nonlinear programming algorithms, are demonstrated on a 3D aerodynamic wing optimization problem and a 2D airfoil optimization problem. In both cases Euler analysis solved on meshes of various refinement provides a suite of variable-fidelity models. Preliminary results indicate threefold savings in terms of high-fidelity analyses in case of the 3D problem and twofold savings for the 2D problem.