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Ensemble predictions of atmospheric dispersion that account for the meteorological uncertainties in a weather forecast are constructed by propagating the individual members of an ensemble numerical weather prediction forecast through an atmospheric dispersion model. Two event scenarios involving hypothetical atmospheric releases are considered: a near-surface radiological release from a nuclear power plant accident, and a large eruption of an Icelandic volcano releasing volcanic ash into the upper air. Simulations were run twice-daily in real time over a four month period to create a large data set of cases for this study. Performance of the ensemble predictions is measured against retrospective simulations using analysed meteorological fields. The focus of this paper is on comparing the spread of the ensemble members against forecast errors and on the calibration of probabilistic forecasts derived from the ensemble distribution. Results show good overall performance by the dispersion ensembles in both studies, but with simulations for the upper air ash release generally performing better than those for the near-surface release of radiological material. The near-surface results demonstrate a sensitivity to the release location, with good performance in areas dominated by the synoptic-scale meteorology and generally poorer performance at some other sites where, we speculate, the global-scale meteorological ensemble used in this study has difficulty in adequately capturing the uncertainty from local and regional scale influences on the boundary layer. The ensemble tends to be under-spread, or over-confident, for the radiological case in general, especially at earlier forecast steps. The limited ensemble size of 18 members may also affect its ability to fully resolve peak values or adequately sample outlier regions. Probability forecasts of threshold exceedances show a reasonable degree of calibration, though the over-confident nature of the ensemble means that it tends to be too keen on using the extreme forecast probabilities. Ensemble forecasts for the volcanic ash study demonstrate an appropriate degree of spread and are generally well-calibrated, particularly for ash concentration forecasts in the troposphere. The ensemble is slightly over-spread, or under-confident, within the troposphere at the first output time step T+6, thought to be attributable to a known deficiency in the ensemble perturbation scheme in use at the time of this study, but improves with probability forecasts becoming well-calibrated here by the end of the period. Conversely, an increasing tendency towards over-confident forecasts is seen in the stratosphere, which again mirrors an expectation for ensemble spread to fall away at higher altitudes in the met ensemble. Results in the volcanic ash case are also broadly similar between the three different eruption scenarios considered in the study, suggesting that good ensemble performance might apply to a wide range of eruptions with different heights and mass eruption rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Atmospheric dispersion model output is frequently used to provide advice to decision makers, for example, about the likely location of volcanic ash erupted from a volcano or the location of deposits of radioactive material released during a nuclear accident. Increasingly scientists and decision makers are requesting information on the uncertainty of these dispersion model predictions. One source of uncertainty is in the meteorology used to drive the dispersion model and in this study ensemble meteorology from the Met Office ensemble prediction system is used to provide meteorological uncertainty to dispersion model predictions. Two hypothetical scenarios, one volcanological and one radiological, are repeated every 12 hours over a period of 4 months. The scenarios are simulated using ensemble meteorology and deterministic forecast meteorology and compared to output from simulations using analysis meteorology using the Brier skill score. Adopting the practice commonly used in evaluating numerical weather prediction models (NWP) where observations are sparse or non-existent we consider output from simulations using analysis NWP data to be truth. The results show that on average the ensemble simulations per- form better than the deterministic simulations although not all individual ensemble simulations outperform their deterministic counterpart. The results also show that greater skill scores are achieved by the ensemble simulation for later time steps rather than earlier time steps and at those later time steps for deposition than for air concentration. For the volcanic ash scenarios it is shown that the performance of the ensemble at one flight level can be different to that at a different flight level, e.g. a negative skill score might be obtained for FL350-550 and a positive skill score for FL200-350. This study does not take into account any source term uncertainty but it does take the first steps towards demonstrating the value of ensemble dispersion model predictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the discovery of a first-order phase transition in annealed KOH-doped ice at 72 K, which was identified as the order–disorder transition associated with the proton positions, a structural study has now been made. Powder neutron diffraction measurements on KOD-doped D2O above and below the phase transition, together with x-ray diffraction measurements, reveal a partial ordering of the hydrogen atoms at low temperatures. The equilibrium structure of ice at low tempertures has orthorhombic symmetry, space group Cmc21, with the same lattice as the high-temperature Ih (P63/mmc) modification. The structure is polar and there is evidence that the ordered domains are less than about 40 Å in dimension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aerosols have important impacts on air quality and climate, but the processes affecting their removal from the atmosphere are not fully understood and are poorly constrained by observations. This makes modelled aerosol lifetimes uncertain. In this study, we make use of an observational constraint on aerosol lifetimes provided by radionuclide measurements and investigate the causes of differences within a set of global models. During the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant accident of March 2011, the radioactive isotopes cesium-137 (137Cs) and xenon-133 (133Xe) were released in large quantities. Cesium attached to particles in the ambient air, approximately according to their available aerosol surface area. 137Cs size distribution measurements taken close to the power plant suggested that accumulation-mode (AM) sulphate aerosols were the main carriers for the cesium. Hence, 137Cs can be used as a proxy tracer for the AM sulphate aerosol's fate in the atmosphere. In contrast, the noble gas 133Xe behaves almost like a passive transport tracer. Global surface measurements of the two radioactive isotopes taken over several months after the release allow the derivation of a lifetime of the carrier aerosol. We compare this to the lifetimes simulated by 19 different atmospheric transport models initialized with identical emissions of 137Cs that were assigned to an aerosol tracer with each model's default properties of AM sulphate, and 133Xe emissions that were assigned to a passive tracer. We investigate to what extent the modelled sulphate tracer can reproduce the measurements, especially with respect to the observed loss of aerosol mass with time. Modelled 37Cs and 133Xe concentrations sampled at the same location and times as station measurements allow a direct comparison between measured and modelled aerosol lifetime. The e-folding lifetime τe, calculated from station measurement data taken between two and nine weeks after the start of the emissions, is 14.3 days (95% confidence interval 13.1-15.7 days). The equivalent modelled τe lifetimes have a large spread, varying between 4.8 and 26.7 days with a model median of 9.4±2.3 days, indicating too fast removal in most models. Because sufficient measurement data were only available from about two weeks after the release, the estimated lifetimes apply to aerosols that have undergone long-range transport, i.e. not for freshly emitted aerosol. However, modelled instantaneous lifetimes show that the initial removal in the first two weeks was quicker (lifetimes between 1-5 days) due to the emissions occurring at low altitudes and co-location of the fresh plume with strong precipitation. Deviations between measured and modelled aerosol lifetimes are largest for the northernmost stations and at later time periods, suggesting that models do not transport enough of the aerosol towards the Arctic. The models underestimate passive tracer (133Xe) concentrations in the Arctic as well but to a smaller extent than for the aerosol (137Cs) tracer. This indicates that in addition to too fast aerosol removal in the models, errors in simulated atmospheric transport towards the Arctic in most models also contribute to the Arctic aerosol underestimates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compared to demographically matched mothers, maltreating mothers listed fewer friends in their social support networks, reported less contact with friends, and gave lower ratings of quality of support received from friends. Maternal depressive symptoms, quality of current relationships, and social support from friends were each independently associated with maltreatment status in logistic regression analysis. Implications for intervention and research are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]