Fronts and thermohaline structure of the Brazil–Malvinas Confluence System

Fronts and thermohaline structure of the Brazil–Malvinas Confluence System (BMCS) are studied from climatic data, “Marathon Exp. Leg.8, 1984” data, and Sea surface temperature (SST) data base “ds277-Reynolds” (1981–2000). The South Atlantic Central Water (SACW) is divided in two main types: tropical (TW) and subtropical water (ST). Water masses, Fronts, Inter-Frontal and Frontal Zones are analysed and classified: (a) the water masses: Tropical Low-Salinity Water, Tropical Surface Water, Tropical Tropospheric Water, Subtropical Low-Salinity Water, Subtropical Surface Water, Subtropical Tropospheric Water. T,S characteristics of intermediate, deep and bottom water defined by different authors are confirmed and completed; (b) the Inter-Frontal Zones: Tropical/Brazil Current Zone, Subtropical Zone and Subantarctic Zone; (c) the Frontal Zones: Subtropical, Subantarctic and Polar, and (d) the Fronts: Subtropical Front of the Brazil Current, Principal Subtropical Front, North Subtropical Front, Subtropical Surface Front, South Subtropical Front, Subantarctic Surface Front, Subantarctic Front and Polar Front. Several stable T–S relationships are found below the friction layer and at the Fronts. The maximum gradient of the oceanographic characteristics occurs at the Brazil Current Front, which can be any of the subtropical Fronts, depending on season. Minimum mean depth of the pycnocline coincides with the Fronts of the BMCS, indicating the paths of low-salinity shelf waters into the open ocean. In the work it is shown how to recover the horizontal and vertical thermohaline structure of waters from satellite data RSMAS SST.     

Magnetic Reconnection in Extreme Astrophysical Environments

Magnetic reconnection is a fundamental plasma physics process in which ideal-MHD??s frozen-in constraints are broken and the magnetic field topology is dramatically re-arranged, which often leads to a violent release of the free magnetic energy. Most of the magnetic reconnection research done to date has been motivated by the applications to systems such as the solar corona, Earth??s magnetosphere, and magnetic confinement devices for thermonuclear fusion. These environments have relatively low energy densities and the plasma is adequately described as a mixture of equal numbers of electrons and ions and where the dissipated magnetic energy always stays with the plasma. In contrast, in this paper I would like to introduce a different, new direction of research??reconnection in high energy density radiative plasmas, in which photons play as important a role as electrons and ions; in particular, in which radiation pressure and radiative cooling become dominant factors in the pressure and energy balance. This research is motivated in part by rapid theoretical and experimental advances in High Energy Density Physics, and in part by several important problems in modern high-energy astrophysics. I first discuss some astrophysical examples of high-energy-density reconnection and then identify the key physical processes that distinguish them from traditional reconnection. Among the most important of these processes are: special-relativistic effects; radiative effects (radiative cooling, radiation pressure, and radiative resistivity); and, at the most extreme end??QED effects, including pair creation. The most notable among the astrophysical applications are situations involving magnetar-strength fields (10¹⁴?C10¹⁵ G, exceeding the quantum critical field B _??4×10¹³ G). The most important examples are giant flares in soft gamma repeaters (SGRs) and magnetic models of the central engines and relativistic jets of Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs). The magnetic energy density in these environments is so high that, when it is suddenly released, the plasma is heated to ultra-relativistic temperatures. As a result, electron-positron pairs are created in copious quantities, dressing the reconnection layer in an optically thick pair coat, thereby trapping the photons. The plasma pressure inside the layer is then dominated by the combined radiation and pair pressure. At the same time, the timescale for radiation diffusion across the layer may, under some conditions, still be shorter than the global (along the layer) Alfvén transit time, and hence radiative cooling starts to dominate the thermodynamics of the problem. The reconnection problem then becomes essentially a radiative transfer problem. In addition, the high pair density makes the reconnection layer highly collisional, independent of the upstream plasma density, and hence radiative resistive MHD applies. The presence of all these processes calls for a substantial revision of our traditional physical picture of reconnection when applied to these environments and thus opens a new frontier in reconnection research.     

Geomagnetic Tracing of the Inner Heliosphere

Historical data of the geomagnetic activity records in St. Petersburg since 1841 do not show any ‘doubling’ of the total magnetic field at the Sun as claimed recently by Lockwood et al. (1999). However, recurrent patterns of the geomagnetic activity variations display ‘secular’ trend of the solar wind near ecliptic plane resulting from gradual change of the topological structure of the solar corona (Ponyavin, 1997). By comparing geomagnetic and eclipse observations we found ‘typical’ coronal shapes, which correspond better to periods of extremely low and high geomagnetic activity level rather than standard sunspot activity referencing as ‘Corona at Solar Maximum or Minimum’. Using geomagnetic records as proxies it has been suggested that the maximum of the sunspot activity was in July 2000. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.