| 1. |
- Roueff, Antoine, et al.
(författare)
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Bias versus variance when fitting multi-species molecular lines with a non-LTE radiative transfer model: Application to the estimation of the gas temperature and volume density
- 2024
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Ingår i: Astronomy and Astrophysics. - 0004-6361 .- 1432-0746. ; 686
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Context. Robust radiative transfer techniques are requisite for efficiently extracting the physical and chemical information from molecular rotational lines. Aims. We study several hypotheses that enable robust estimations of the column densities and physical conditions when fitting one or two transitions per molecular species. We study the extent to which simplifying assumptions aimed at reducing the complexity of the problem introduce estimation biases and how to detect them. Methods. We focus on the CO and HCO+ isotopologues and analyze maps of a 50 square arcminutes field. We used the RADEX escape probability model to solve the statistical equilibrium equations and compute the emerging line profiles, assuming that all species coexist. Depending on the considered set of species, we also fixed the abundance ratio between some species and explored different values. We proposed a maximum likelihood estimator to infer the physical conditions and considered the effect of both the thermal noise and calibration uncertainty. We analyzed any potential biases induced by model misspecifications by comparing the results on the actual data for several sets of species and confirmed with Monte Carlo simulations. The variance of the estimations and the efficiency of the estimator were studied based on the Cramér-Rao lower bound. Results. Column densities can be estimated with 30% accuracy, while the best estimations of the volume density are found to be within a factor of two. Under the chosen model framework, the peak 12CO (1 -0) is useful for constraining the kinetic temperature. The thermal pressure is better and more robustly estimated than the volume density and kinetic temperature separately. Analyzing CO and HCO+ isotopologues and fitting the full line profile are recommended practices with respect to detecting possible biases. Conclusions. Combining a non-local thermodynamic equilibrium model with a rigorous analysis of the accuracy allows us to obtain an efficient estimator and identify where the model is misspecified. We note that other combinations of molecular lines could be studied in the future.
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| 2. |
- Sjöberg, Karin, et al.
(författare)
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Multi-decadal surface ozone trends at globally distributed remote locations.
- 2020
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Ingår i: Elementa. - : University of California Press. - 2325-1026. ; 8:23
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Extracting globally representative trend information from lower tropospheric ozone observations is extremely difficult due to the highly variable distribution and interannual variability of ozone, and the ongoing shift of ozone precursor emissions from high latitudes to low latitudes. Here we report surface ozone trends at 27 globally distributed remote locations (20 in the Northern Hemisphere, 7 in the Southern Hemisphere), focusing on continuous time series that extend from the present back to at least 1995. While these sites are only representative of less than 25% of the global surface area, this analysis provides a range of regional long-term ozone trends for the evaluation of global chemistry-climate models. Trends are based on monthly mean ozone anomalies, and all sites have at least 20 years of data, which improves the likelihood that a robust trend value is due to changes in ozone precursor emissions and/or forced climate change rather than naturally occurring climate variability. Since 1995, the Northern Hemisphere sites are nearly evenly split between positive and negative ozone trends, while 5 of 7 Southern Hemisphere sites have positive trends. Positive trends are in the range of 0.5–2 ppbv decade–1, with ozone increasing at Mauna Loa by roughly 50% since the late 1950s. Two high elevation Alpine sites, discussed by previous assessments, exhibit decreasing ozone trends in contrast to the positive trend observed by IAGOS commercial aircraft in the European lower free-troposphere. The Alpine sites frequently sample polluted European boundary layer air, especially in summer, and can only be representative of lower free tropospheric ozone if the data are carefully filtered to avoid boundary layer air. The highly variable ozone trends at these 27 surface sites are not necessarily indicative of free tropospheric trends, which have been overwhelmingly positive since the mid-1990s, as shown by recent studies of ozonesonde and aircraft observations.
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