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ARCHIVE - EES Division Highlights/Accomplishments
September 25, 2006 WIPP Received 5000th Shipment On the weekend of September 9, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plan (WIPP) received it 5000th waste shipment. The first shipment of transuranic waste (TRU) departed Los Alamos for WIPP on March 25, 1999 and arrived at WIPP on March 26, 1999. EES-12 management received a letter of congratulations and thank you from the DOE Carlsbad Field Office manager, for their participation in achieving “this remarkable milestone” and for performing “a great service to this nation.” September 18, 2006 LANL awarded grant to develop computer model for studying subsurface processesA team of LANL scientists together with scientists at ANL, PNNL, and ORNL were recently awarded a $4 million Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing, or SciDAC, grant to develop a powerful new massively parallel computer model PFLOTRAN for studying subsurface processes. The team will implement dynamically evolving adaptive mesh refinement techniques and incorporate multiscale processes using multiple interacting continua. The goal is to handle billions of degrees of freedom on petascale computing machines. The model will enable geoscience researchers to obtain more accurate predictive capabilities for underground contaminant transport. Los Alamos members of the team include Peter Lichtner (EES-6, PI), J. David Moulton (T-7), and Bobby Philips (CCS-3). Applications will include CO2 sequestration at various locations and uranium migration at the Hanford 300 Area. The model is already being applied to CO2 injection at the SACROC Unit in West Texas using a 9 million node grid with more than 10 degrees of freedom per node in collaboration with New Mexico Tech. SACROC is one of the oldest and largest oil fields in the U.S. utilizing CO2 injection technology to enhance recovery. (http://<http://www.scidac.gov/groundwater/gwflow.html>www.scidac.gov/groundwater/gwflow.html UNICORN Subcritical Experiment (SCE) marks milestone in sub-crits and test readiness The Unicorn SCE was executed at 11:00 AM PDT at the Nevada Test Site on 30 August 2006. Unicorn represents the culmination event in the LANL series of subcritical experiments. Many members from EES have been involved with the successful completion of UNICORN. Members from EES-11 were involved with the containment (Chris Bradley, David Coblentz, Tom Kunkle, and David Steedman) and transparency exercises (Ken Wohletz and Aviva Sussman). Rod Whitaker (EES-2) and Allen Cogbill (EES-11) fielded an infrasound array in support of the transparency exercises. UNICORN employed the fielding of a full-scale nuclear emplacement rack in an approximately 600 foot deep emplacement borehole. This experiment represents both an advance in test readiness and in the gathering of equation of state data for special nuclear materials. Equation of state data from this experiment will be used to validate the LANL hydrodynamic codes in modeling nuclear explosions as part of the Laboratory mission in Stockpile Stewardship. USSSTATCOM Awards Gene Schroeder (EES-11), who is currently on assignment to the United States Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) in the Global Strike Capabilities Division (J87), recently received two awards. At the 74th Military Operations Research Society (MORS) Symposium, hosted by the United States Air Force Academy, Gene’s paper, “Evaluation of Future Global Strike Force Requirements,” was selected as the best paper in Working Group 1—Strategic Operations. MORS, formed to enhance the quality and usefulness of military operations research annually hosts the largest classified symposium in the United States. As a member of the USSTRATCOM team working the Presidential Memorandum III effort, Schroeder was recognized as a member of the Large Team receiving both the J8 and the USSTRATCOM-wide Quarterly awards. In presenting the award, GEN Cartwright commented that he thought this effort resulted in one of the most fundamental changes in U.S. forces and their direction since the conclusion of the Cold War. September 11, 2006 Event Classification Matrix Workshop George Randall (EES-11), of the LANL Ground-based Nuclear Explosion Monitoring Research and Engineering (GNEM R&E) project, hosted the second in a series of explosion Event Classification Matrix (ECM) Workshops Aug 30 and 31. The NNSA/NA-22 ECM project is a next generation mathematical framework designed to integrate teleseismic and regional identification features to produce a unified decision. The mathematics have been validated with teleseismic measurements and are currently being integrated into user operations for Regions of Interest (ROI). This integration effort will fully utilize GNEM R&E regional discrimination products. There were presentations on the results and techniques used for the initial ROI. Current GNEM R&E development plans identify six ROIs for calibration products to be delivered to the user and subsequently for full integration into the National Data Center. Priorities and timelines were developed for the next two ROIs. Representatives from LANL, LLNL, PNNL, SNL, and the Air Force Technical Applications Center attended the Workshop. Paper on vadose-zone liquid and vapor flux estimates published A paper titled “Multiphase, Multicomponent Parameter Estimation for Liquid and Vapor Fluxes in Deep Arid Systems Using Hydrologic Data and Natural Environmental Tracers,” by Ed Kwicklis, Andy Wolfsberg, and Phil Stauffer (EES-6); M. Walvoord (USGS); and M. Sully (Neptune and Assoc.); was published in a special issue of Vadose Zone Journal on Parameter Identification and Uncertainty Assessment in the Unsaturated Zone. Subsidence craters created from underground nuclear weapons tests in Area 3 of the Nevada Test Site (NTS) are being used to dispose of low-level radioactive waste generated at the NTS (Figure 1). To help evaluate the long-term potential for migration of these wastes from the disposal areas, estimates of liquid and vapor fluxes are necessary. If liquid and vapor fluxes could be readily measured in deep vadose zones, then predictions for contaminant migration (to ground surface and to the water table) and groundwater recharge would be much easier. However, because they are not, novel methods using measurements of naturally occurring tracers that move in the gas phase, liquid phase, or both phases, in conjunction with numerical models simulating tens of thousands of years of hydrologic disequilibrium affected by climate change and the associated shifts in vegetation, are combined to provide estimates of the controlling parameters and the subsurface fluid fluxes. The numerical models were calibrated using borehole hydrologic and environmental tracer data from the site. The environmental tracer data include naturally occurring tracers that migrate in both liquid and vapor phases (isotopes of hydrogen or oxygen that become part of the water molecule) and tracers that migrate solely as dissolved solutes (chloride), thus enabling the estimation of some gas-phase as well as liquid-phase transport parameters (Figure 2). This work has practical applications for shallow waste disposal performance assessment as well as for hydrogeochronology as related to climate change analysis. The paper can be found at: http://vzj.scijournals.org/cgi/reprint/5/3/934 . NNSA, Nevada Site Office supported the research.
Fig. 2: Comparison of pore-water delta oxygen-18 (d18O) data from Area 3 at the NTS with model results
Fig. 1: Low-level radioactive waste buried in a subsidence crater at Nevada Test Site September 5, 2006 Paper on Seismic Interferometry Published in Geophysics A paper titled “Green’s functions extraction and surface-wave tomography from microseisms in southern California,” coauthored by Michael Fehler of EES Division, was recently published in the journal, Geophysics. The paper was an invited paper that was part of a special issue on Seismic Interferometry. Seismic Interferometry is a new term used to describe the broad application of phase correlation of seismic waveforms to a number of types of studies. Fehler and others in EES Division have worked in the area of Seismic Interferometry for several years, long before it became popular. They have a patent* on a technique derived from the approach. In the current paper, Fehler and his colleagues show how deterministic seismic waveforms can be derived using a correlation technique applied to seismic noise. They apply their method to data from Southern California and show that sufficient surface wave waveforms can be derived from noise to allow them to do tomography of the shallow crust in the region. They also analyze the noise field and discuss how biases in the noise field influence the derived deterministic waveforms. *Patent: Peter M. Roberts, Michael C. Fehler, Paul A. Johnson , and W. Scott Phillips, Active doublet method for measuring small changes in physical properties, Patent Number: 5,369,997, issued Dec. 6, 1994. August 28, 2006 Meeting on Transuranic (TRU) Waste Shipments to WIPP A two-day National TRU Waste Corporate Board meeting was held in Oak Ridge, TN in Jully. Approximately 100 DOE headquarters and DOE transuranic (TRU) waste managers from more than 12 sites attended the meetings. In 2001 the DOE Office of Environmental Management (EM) and the Carlsbad Field Office (CBFO) instituted the board to integrate DOE TRU waste sites into one corporate entity in order to optimize resources and expedite TRU waste disposition. The board consists of senior DOE and contractor representatives from sites shipping TRU waste to WIPP and is led by Inés Triay, chief operating officer for the DOE EM program and Dave Moody, CBFO manager. EES-12 is the manager of the corporate board and provides technical direction, strategic analysis, facilitation, and logistical support for all activities of the board. Board meetings are held at least twice a year at sites shipping, or planning to ship, TRU waste to WIPP, and there are also periodic videoconferences. At the meetings, action items are developed to focus efforts on solutions to TRU waste issues, and participants have the opportunity to network and tour sites to capitalize on lessons learned. A focus of the July meeting was identifying a path forward for implementation of pending New Mexico hazardous waste facility permit modifications that would change characterization requirements as well as allow the shipment of remote-handled TRU waste to WIPP. A key emphasis was sustaining shipment rates during implementation in order to meet site cleanup agreements. Another important facet of the meeting was sessions on the development of a DOE standard for TRU waste authorization basis, which will bring consistency to hazard identification and analysis around the complex. EES-12 is leading this effort, called Re-engineering of TRU Waste Authorization Basis. Sheila Lott (EES-12) described the effort to update TRU waste inventory information. Congressional Tour of Yucca Mountain Recently, Richard Kovach (EES-7) conducted a Congressional fact finding tour of the Yucca Mountain Project at the Nevada Test Site. Edward (Ward) F. Sproat [Director, DOE Office of Civilian Radioacive Waste Management (OCRWM)]; Jon Porter (Nevada U.S. Congressional District 3); Shannon Meade (Professional Staff Member, Government Reform Committee); Russel Dyer (OCRWM Chief Scientist); and Trevor Kolego (Legislative Director) attended. Allen Benson (Director of Office of External Affairs, OCRWM); Michael Hesse (Chief of Staff to Jon Porter); Brooke Allmon (District Office Staff); John Min (District Office Staff); Shawn Jones (Legislative Assistant); Green William (OCRWM); Kathryn Howard (Reporter, Las Vegas Review Journal; and Christina Brown (Reporter, KVBC) also participated. "Tours" at Yucca Mountain consist of a general briefing of the tunnel/repository layout and experiments (both completed and ongoing). The briefings are conducted in an underground excavation off the main tunnel called an Alcove. This Alcove has been customized for tours, including maps/displays and is about 160 meters (175 yards) underground.
EES scientist gives invited presentation at Near Earth Objects international symposium Symposium 236, Near Earth Objects (NEO), Our Celestial Neighbors: Opportunity and Risk, was held in Prague (Czech Republic) and focused on fireballs. The Symposium, hosted by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), brings together astronomers from all over the world. Douglas ReVelle (EES-2) is a member of the IAU—membership is by invitation only. Observations of fireballs reveal that a number of very different types of materials are routinely entering the atmosphere over a very large height and corresponding mass and energy range. The NEOs can strongly interact with the terrestrial planets and are the physical cause of major evolutionary processes on the planetary surfaces and in the atmospheres, thus producing meteor phenomena and delivery of meteorites. NEOs with orbits crossing that of the Earth are a source of impact risk. The NEOs are also an essential tool to understand the overall populations of asteroids and comets and to constrain the formation of the planetary system. The Symposium focused on the specific techniques of observation and modeling which are effective for NEOs, including radar, in situ exploration by spacecraft, and measurement of very subtle dynamical effects such as non-gravitational perturbations.
ReVelle (EES-2) gave an invited talk at the Symposium titled, “NEO Fireball Diversity: Detection, Location and Energetics Analysis Techniques.” ReVelle has reinterpreted observations of fireball end-heights in the earth’s atmosphere in terms of the properties of porous meteoroids, using the degree to which the observational data can be reproduced via a modern hypersonic aerodynamic entry dynamics approach for porous as well as for homogeneous bodies. These data and modeled parameters include the standard properties of drag, deceleration, ablation and fragmentation as well as a recent a model of the panchromatic luminous emission from the fireball during progressive atmospheric penetration. Employing a recently developed bolide entry modeling code, ReVelle has systematically examined the behavior of meteoroids using their semi-well known physical properties. When ReVelle investigated a sampling of four of the five possible extremes within the NEO bolide population, he found that in addition to the entry properties, each of these events (except possibly Tagish Lake) also had mechanical, acoustic-gravity waves generated that were subsequently detected following their entry into the atmosphere. Because these waves can also be used to identify key physical properties of these unusual objects, he also modeled such wave events with these data. ReVelle has connected the entry dynamics modeling to the acoustic-gravity wave detections utilizing the new differential acoustic efficiency concept.
August 21, 2006 Invited talk at international conference Xiaoning (David) Yang of EES-GEO attended the Western Pacific Geophysics Meeting held in Beijing, China and gave an invited talk about developing surface-wave attenuation models for Eurasia. The meeting attracted some 1600 participants, twice the normal size of this meeting. Interesting topics presented at the meeting include initiatives to install dense and regular regional broadband networks in China similar to the US Array and detailed geology and tectonic studies of parts of China, particularly the Tibetan Plateau. The meeting provided an opportunity to glean useful knowledge about the research efforts within China for the region. Papers help form the basis for volcanic risk assessment to the proposed radioactive waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada An ongoing series of papers by the Yucca Mountain Project's volcanic hazards team (in EES Division) addresses both the "plumbing" that feeds volcanoes in southern Nevada and the eruption and geomorphic processes that characterize the volcanoes. Valentine and Perry (2006,Geophys. Res. Lett., doi:10.1029/2006GL026743) show that as overall magma flux in southern Nevada has decreased through time, so have the volume, volume flux, and fissure length of individual volcanoes. These in turn relate to systematic changes in the length scale of the source region in the Earth's mantle that produces the magmas. Valentine and Krogh (2006,Earth Planet. Sci. Lett., doi:10.1016/j.epsl2006.04.031) demonstrate that the ascent of basaltic magma is strongly controlled by pre-existing structures such as faults and strong material property contrasts in the upper several hundred meters of the Earth's crust. The young volcanoes in southern Nevada are small in volume and have relatively constant magma compositions (and rheological properties), yet demonstrate a range of eruption processes from highly explosive to weak effusions of lava—often simultaneously within a single volcano (Valentine, Perry, Krier, Keating, Kelley, and Cogbill, 2006,Geol. Soc. America Bull., doi:10.1130/B25956.1 in press). This points to the important role of multiphase fluid dynamics in determining volcanic processes. This paper, along with Valentine and Harrington (2006,Geology, doi:10.1130/G22481.1), also describes the importance of volcanic emplacement processes on subsequent geomorphic evolution of the volcanoes as they are subjected to modification by wind and water.
Figure 2. Air photos of Lathrop Wells (~80,000 years old) and Red Cone (~1,000,000 years old) volcanoes in southern Nevada, illustrating the development of drainage on the older volcano. From Valentine and Harrington (2006). August 14, 2006 EES-Division/Yucca Mtn. Project cosponsor and participate in international conference on zeolites. The 7th International Conference on the Occurrence, Properties, and Utilization of Natural Zeolites was held in Socorro, NM. LANL, through the Yucca Mountain Project, was one of the sponsors for the conference. This meeting is held approximately every four years, and has convened in Arizona, Hungary, Cuba, Idaho, Italy, and Greece. Over 150 people from more that thirty different countries attended. LANL scientists gave eight presentations at this meeting. Steve Chipera (EES-6) and Jeri Sullivan (C-ADI) were part the local organizing committee. David Vaniman (EES-6) was on the international scientific board and organized the symposium "Zeolites in Radioactive Waste Control". Chipera served as one of the field trip leaders to the St-Cloud zeolite mine by Winston, NM. Mei Ding (EES-6) also participated.
August 7, 2006 Invited Presentation at NASA WorkshopDouglas ReVelle (EES-2) gave an invited talk at the NASA Re-entry Emission Signatures II Workshop at the NASA Ames Research Center, SETI Institute, CA. The workshop focused on the investigation of the Stardust Sample Return Capsule reentry on January 15, 2006. During the session on Stardust Wakes and Infrasound, ReVelle gave anoverview and summary of work completed on the Genesis and Stardust re-entries. This work included entry modeling of light and sound production, a summary of the monitoring and modeling of the infrasound and seismic wave data, including the "hypersonic booms" as well as optical video of the entry, digital signal analyses of the data, line source ray-tracing of the source signals to the ground and an analysis of the implications of kinetic energy density conservation of the infrasonic waves and its connection to the physical properties.A special issue of the journal Science devoted to the results from the Stardust space mission campaign is planned for later this year or early next year. It will contain science articles about the direct connections to the contents of the capsule (cometary debris collected from Comet Wild 2), reentry experiments that took place in an airborne field campaign directed by Peter Jenniskens (NASA Ames Research Center/SETI), and a field campaign conducted by ground-based investigators (largely an effort by ReVelle and a few NASA investigators). A special session is now being planned, focused on the Stardust reentry hypersonic boom signatures predicted and recorded in Nevada, for the annual fall Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America. Earth and Environmental Sciences Division's SAGE School Success Twenty-seven students from around the U.S. and eight other countries completed the 2006 Summer of Applied Geophysical Experience (SAGE) school. With support from the U.S. National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy Offices of Basic Energy Sciences and Fossil Energy, LANL, and several companies, SAGE operated for the 24th consecutive year to train undergraduate and graduate students in geophysical field methods. For the third year, students (three) from Cochiti Pueblo and (one) from the Navajo Nation were also involved in the field geophysical work, assisting and learning about applications of geophysical exploration. The school includes several days of lectures about various aspects of exploration geophysics followed by the collection of a range of geophysical data. The data collected are processed and interpreted to address geological problems. This year's field work was conducted at several locations including an abandoned pueblo archeological site and sites on Cochiti and Santo Domingo Pueblos, south of Santa Fe. The summer school is housed at the College of Santa Fe. SAGE, sponsored by the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, was held from June 19 to July 14. Participating from EES Division, were Scott Baldridge, SAGE Codirector for 19 years, and Aviva Sussman. In addition to training and education, SAGE also provides students with career opportunities, including an introduction to opportunities at Los Alamos. Several former SAGE students work at the Laboratory this summer as student interns. International Meeting on Electrokinetic PhenomenaELKIN is the only international meeting devoted to Electrokinetic Phenomena. This bi-annual meeting hosts between 120-150 selected scientists. This year's meeting was held in Nancy, France, and was organized by Nancy University - CNRS. The main purpose of ELKIN is to present the latest advances in Electrokinetic phenomena and closely related fields. Amr Abdel-Fattah (EES-6) gave a talk, "Colloid Deposition and Removal at an Acoustically Stimulated Surface," that covered some interesting research findings on colloid attachment to and detachment from a solid-liquid interface under different acoustic energy inputs. These studies are part of an ongoing effort in collaboration with Peter Roberts (EES-11, PI) funded by DOE Office of Basic Energy Science, Geosciences Division. During the meeting, Amr was invited by the meeting's organization chair and the chairman of the International Advisory Board to join the board's annual meeting, at which he was offered the vacant U.S. seat on the board. The board members also approved his proposal to host and organize ELKIN 2008 in Santa Fe.Amr also gave an invited talk in Germany at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) entitled, "Studies on Colloid Deposition onto a Solid Surface using the Automated Video Microscopic Imaging and Data Acquisition System (AVMIDAS)," which was hosted by TUM's Institute of Hydrochemistry. In this talk he presented LANL’s colloid visualization capabilities and previous results on colloid deposition at a glass-liquid interface under different physicochemical conditions. Test Readiness and Containment Chris Bradley and Wendee Brunish (EES-11) attended a Test Readiness meeting in Las Vegas, Nevada. Attendees included representatives from LLNL, SNL, USGS, Bechtel Nevada, and the Desert Research Institute. Each organization presented a summary of their accomplishments for FY06 and their plans and budget request for FY07. Bradley and Brunish also briefed the LANL Test Readiness Program Manager, Frank Cverna on this topic. Robert Brownlee, LANL retiree/consultant and chairman of the Containment Evaluation Panel (CEP), visited EES-11 to discuss the future of the CEP. The CEP reports to the Nevada Site Office Manager about containment of underground nuclear tests. Because the US is not currently testing, Brownlee wants to work with LANL and LLNL to rewrite the charter to assure that the CEP expertise is maintained along with other test readiness activities and that it can be quickly revitalized should nuclear testing ever resume. The next meeting on this topic took place at LLNL, with Chris Bradley and Wendee Brunish in attendance. 2006 LANL Student and Postdoctoral Symposium Awards The outstanding achievements of students and postdocs were recognized at the “Symposium 2006: Highlighting Student and Postdoctoral Research,” held at UNM-LA. The annual symposium, organized by Science and Technology Base, Education Program Office, provided an opportunity for students and postdoctoral appointees to present their research. The intent of the symposium was to broaden students' and postdoctoral appointees' expertise and prepare them for careers in science and nontechnical fields. Kevin Claytor (EES-11) received the Best Undergraduate Student Technical Presentation Award in the earth and space category for “A Novel Investigation of Nonlinear Rock Properties.” Emily Schultz’s (EES-9) poster, “Simultaneous Characterization of Structural Kinematics and Paleoearthquakes through Field Investigations: A Case Study from the La Laja Fault System, San Juan Province, Argentina,” received the Best Graduate Student Technical Presentation Award in the earth and space science category. July 31, 2006 NASA WorkshopDouglas ReVelle (EES-ACED) gave an invited talk at the NASA Re-entry Emission Signatures II Workshop (July 6 & 7) at the NASA Ames Research Center, SETI Institute, Mountain View, California. At the Friday morning session on Stardust Wakes and Infrasound, ReVelle gave a one-hour overview and summary of work completed on the Genesis and Stardust re-entries. This work included entry modeling of light and sound production, a summary of the monitoring and modeling of the infrasound and seismic wave data, including the "hypersonic booms" as well as optical video of the entry, digital signal analyses of the data, line source ray-tracing of the source signals to the ground and an analysis of the implications of kinetic energy density conservation of the infrasonic waves and its connection to the physical properties. ReVelle’s talk was well received by all (including NASA/JPL and NASA/ARC-Ames Research Center, Hypersonic Aerodynamicists. was given. The purpose of the workshop focused on the investigation of the Stardust Sample Return Capsule reentry on January 15, 2006. A special issue of the USA journal Science devoted to the results from the Stardust space mission campaign is planned for later this year or early next year with the submission of articles required by August or September (at the latest) of this year. It will contain both science articles about the direct connections to the contents of the capsule (cometary debris collected from Comet Wild 2) as well as the reentry experiments that took place in an airborne field campaign directed by Dr. Peter Jenniskens of the NASA Ames Research Center/SETI and a field campaign conducted by ground-based investigators (largely an effort by ReVelle of Los Alamos and a few other NASA investigators, mainly by Dr. E. Haering of the NASA Dryden Flight Center in California, northeast of Los Angeles). Additionally, a special session is now being planned (directly focused on the Stardust reentry hypersonic boom signatures predicted and recorded in Nevada) for this coming December at Honolulu, Hawaii at the annual fall Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America.Earth and Environmental Sciences Division's SAGE School Success Twenty seven students from around the U.S. and eight other countries completed the 2006 Summer of Applied Geophysical Experience (SAGE) school. With support from the U.S. National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy Offices of Basic Energy Sciences and Fossil Energy, LANL, and several companies, SAGE operated for the 24th consecutive year to train undergraduate and graduate students in geophysical field methods. For the third year, students (three) from Cochiti Pueblo and from the Navajo Nation (one) were also involved in the field geophysical work, assisting and learning about applications of geophysical exploration. The school includes several days of lectures about various aspects of exploration geophysics followed by the collection of a range of geophysical data. The data collected are processed and interpreted to address geological problems. This year's field work was conducted at several locations including an abandoned pueblo archeological site and sites on Cochiti and Santo Domingo Pueblos south of Santa Fe. The summer school is housed at the College of Santa Fe. SAGE, sponsored by the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, was held from June 19 to July 14. Participating from EES Division, were Scott Baldridge, SAGE Codirector for 19 years, and Aviva Sussman. In addition to training and education, SAGE also provides students with career opportunities, including an introduction to opportunities at Los Alamos. Several former SAGE students work at the Laboratory this summer as student interns. July 24, 2006 Researchers Publish in Geophysical Research Letters. A paper by researchers in EES and ISR Divisions using data from the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement/Tropical Western Pacific (ARM/TWP) Program at island stations of Manus and Nauru (stations were established in 1998 and are operated by the Laboratory’s Atmospheric, Climate and Environmental Dynamics group for the DOE ARM Program). The paper combines observations from the Multi-Thermal Imaging (MTI) satellite operated by Los Alamos for DOE with a weather satellite to study the properties of an island cloud formed by the island of Nauru during La Nina and El Nino conditions. The island cloud can persist during La Nina conditions to distances over 100 km and resembles ship trail clouds that often form west of California. This extreme cloud persistence is related in this paper to weakly subsiding air associated with high pressure associated with the La Nina part of the El Nino Southern oscillation. In the Tropics, boundary layer clouds (1 to 2 km in altitude) warm the sea surface (at mid-latitudes clouds tend to cool the sea surface). The observed persistence of low level clouds during the day and their observed dissipation at night from satellite images may add to the cooling effect on the sea surface temperatures in the Tropics associated with La Nina conditions. None of these effects are included in climate models of the Tropical Ocean. EES is currently working on several methods to improve high resolution cloud models so that numerical diffusion and spurious evaporation at the cloud boundary allow us to better understand the nature of island cloud trails and ship trails. This study is designed to improve our understanding of the effect of boundary layer clouds on global climate. Global Climate Models estimate that a 3 percent change in boundary layer clouds is equivalent to a 200 percent change in CO2. The papers authors include, William Porch, Seth Olsen, Petr Chylek, Manvendra Dubey, Brad Henderson, and William Clodius. The full citation follows: Porch, W. M., S. C. Olsen, P. Chylek, M. K. Dubey, B. G. Henderson, and W. Clodius (2006), Satellite and surface observations of Nauru Island clouds: Differences between El Nino and La Nina periods, Geophys. Res. Lett., 33, L13804, doi:10.1029/2006GL026339.
Figure3. MTI of Nauru at 1 pm (LST) on (top left) 13 December 2000 (cloud trail present) and (top right) 12 December 2000 (no cloud trail present) and (bottom) GMS satellite visible image on 13 December at 3:30 pm (LST). Letter of Appreciation from AFTAC Los Alamos received a Letter of Appreciation from Joseph Schrodt, Chief, Research & Evaluation Division for Nuclear Treaty Monitoring at AFTAC for Dr. George Randall's (EES-11) efforts to assist the modeling and analysis of special events in support of this mission critical task. George provided instruction in the use of his synthetic seismogram generation application and seismic source techniques. He provided He offered valuable insight into earth model development, geological influences on seismic signal propagation, and techniques for increasing the computational efficiency of his reflectivity application. Summer Science Camp for Students Nineteen outstanding Cochiti and Pojoaque Middle School students joined with LANL scientists from 5 different divisions (EES, ERSS, ISR, PTLA, CTN) in a week of science exploration June 19-23, 2006 Students and scientists visited several field sites throughout northern New Mexico, including Ghost Ranch, Abiquiu Dam, Rio Chama, Valles Caldera National Preserve, and the mines of Petaca. The students investigated the Earth system through hands-on science projects throughout the week. The goal of this program is to excite these students about science and science careers and to heighten student awareness about the environmental challenges facing our community. With funding from the National Science Foundation to Science Education Solutions, scientists and educators will help students build upon the Summer Science Camp experience by continuing these experiments in the Cochiti and Pojoaque school classrooms over the next year. We will also be preparing for the 2007 Summer Science Camp. For more information go to (http://www.scieds.com/CACOSI/FieldResearch/Field_Research.html) The 2006 Summer Science Camp was made possible by a collaboration between Science Education Solutions, the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Valles Caldera National Preserve, the United States Geologic Survey, the Army Corps of Engineers, Northern New Mexico College, and Ghost Ranch. Scientists that participated/contributed from EES Division were: Chris Bradley and Rick Warren (EES-GEO), Claudia Lewis and Laura Burnett (EES-EGSA), Mike Ebinger, Rosangela Sviercoski and Thom Rahn, (EES-ACED), and Julianna Fessenden (EES-HGG).
July 10, 2006 EES Scientists attend Computational Methods in Water Resources International Conference in Copenhagen 11th International Workshop on Nonlinear Elasticity in Materials (XI IWNEM) July 3, 2006 Paper published in Journal of Geophysics Research and invited talk at CMWR XVI Qinjun Kang, Peter Lichtner (EES-HGG), and Dongxiao Zhang (OU, former EES-HGG staff) published the first pore-scale multicomponent reactive transport model in J. Geophys. Res. (May, 2006). In their model, multiple coupled processes often occurring in geochemical settings are taken into account systematically, including advection, diffusion, homogeneous reactions, heterogeneous reactions, as well as changes in solid and pore geometry. The model provides a framework for first-principle studies of these processes at the pore scale and is useful for validating continuum modeling, choosing the most appropriate continuum model, determining conditions for upscaling, and providing appropriate values for macro-scale properties of the porous medium when upscaling is valid. Qinjun Kang also delivered an invited talk on new developments of their model at the Computational Methods in Water Resources XVI International Conference held in Copenhagen, Denmark, June 19-22 2006. This work has been supported by LDRD/DR 20040042 and by the U.S. Department of Energy, Biological and Environmental Research (BER).
Figure 5: Geometries and concentrations of (a) A, (b) B, and (c) C for t=6.51×105 s for log(K1)= log(K2)=2 and k1= k2=1.0×10-9 mol cm-2 s-1. 11th International Workshop on Nonlinear Elasticity in Materials (XI IWNEM) The XI IWNEM, organized by Michele Meo of the University of Bath (UK) and Paul Johnson of EES-GEO, was held in Sorrento Italy, June 4-11, 2006 (see http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/ees/ees11/geophysics/nonlinear/conference.shtml). The workshop was in part sponsored by IGPP who supported student attendees. The general goals of this annual workshop are to discuss recent findings regarding the elastic nonlinear behavior of solids, including basic research in geomaterials and other solids; applications to NonDestructive Evaluation (NDE) of solids; earthquake strong ground motion; earthquake source properties; medical diagnostic applications; nonlinear imaging; time reversal, nonlinear, elastic wave spectroscopy; as well as other topics. Of note, technology transfer of nonlinear, NonDestructive Evaluation methods was addressed and it was decided by participants that a course devoted to these methods, aimed at industrial participants, will be organized to take place the week before the next workshop. Workshop attendees included participants from the U.S. (including several from Los Alamos), UK, Belgium, France, Estonia, Russia, Germany, and Italy. |
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