|
Chesapeake Light
Chesapeake Light is an offshore lighthouse marking the entrance to the Chesapeake Bay. The structure was first marked with a lightship in the 1930s, and was later replaced by a " Texas Tower" in 1965. The lighthouse was eventually automated and was used for supporting atmospheric measurement sites for NASA and NOAA. Due to deteriorating structural conditions, the lighthouse was deactivated in 2016. At the time it was the last remaining "Texas Tower" still in use due to obsolescence. History Chesapeake Light was first established in 1930 using a lightship dubbed United States lightship Chesapeake (LV-116). It remained on station (except during World War II) until it was replaced by the present structure in 1965. The current light is also referred to as a "Texas Tower", one of six nearly identical lights on the East Coast which were built at the time. At some point the former lightship was moved to the Inner Harbor in Baltimore, Maryland where it is now on display. The light was au ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cape Henry, Virginia
Cape Henry is a cape on the Atlantic shore of Virginia located in the northeast corner of Virginia Beach. It is the southern boundary of the entrance to the long estuary of the Chesapeake Bay. Across the mouth of the bay to the north is Cape Charles the opposite point of the Bay's gateway. Named for two sons of King James I of England in 1607, together Cape Henry and Cape Charles form the Virginia Capes. History Cape Henry was named on April 26, 1607 in honor of Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, the elder of two sons of King James I of England to survive to the age of 18 and heir-apparent to the throne of the Kingdom of England (later united in 1707 with neighboring Scotland as the Kingdom of Great Britain), by an expedition of the London Company branch of the proprietary Virginia Company headed by Captain Christopher Newport. After an unusually long voyage of 144 days from England, it was their first landfall, an event which has come to be called "The First Landing". Soon after ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National Data Buoy Center
The National Data Buoy Center (NDBC) is a part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Weather Service (NWS). NDBC designs, develops, operates, and maintains a network of data collecting buoys and coastal stations. The NDBC is located in southern Mississippi as a tenant at the John C. Stennis Space Center, a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) facility. Operations NDBC employs engineers, meteorologists, oceanographers, computer scientists, and other professionals. NDBC provides hourly observations from a network of about 90 buoys and 60 Coastal Marine Automated Network (C-MAN) stations to help meet these needs. All stations measure wind speed, direction, and gust; atmospheric pressure; and air temperature. In addition, all buoy stations, and some C-MAN stations, measure sea surface temperature and wave height and period. Conductivity and water current are measured at selected stations. A new task is the operation of the DART ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lighthouses Completed In 1965
A lighthouse is a tower, building, or other type of physical structure designed to emit light from a system of lamps and lenses and to serve as a beacon for navigational aid, for maritime pilots at sea or on inland waterways. Lighthouses mark dangerous coastlines, hazardous shoals, reefs, rocks, and safe entries to harbors; they also assist in aerial navigation. Once widely used, the number of operational lighthouses has declined due to the expense of maintenance and has become uneconomical since the advent of much cheaper, more sophisticated and effective electronic navigational systems. History Ancient lighthouses Before the development of clearly defined ports, mariners were guided by fires built on hilltops. Since elevating the fire would improve the visibility, placing the fire on a platform became a practice that led to the development of the lighthouse. In antiquity, the lighthouse functioned more as an entrance marker to ports than as a warning signal for reefs and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Baseline Surface Radiation Network
Baseline Surface Radiation Network (BSRN) is a project of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) and the Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment (GEWEX) and as such is aimed detecting important changes in the Earth's radiation field at the Earth's surface which may be related to climate changes. The central archive of the BSRN is the World Radiation Monitoring Center (WRMC) which was initiated by Atsumu Ohmura in 1992 and operated at ETH until 2007. Since 2008 the WRMC is operated by the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), Germany. Objectives * To monitor the background (least influenced by immediate human activities which are regionally concentrated) shortwave and longwave radiative components and their changes with the best methods currently available. * To provide data for the calibration of satellite-based estimates of the surface radiative fluxes. * To produce high quality observational data to be used for validating the theoretical computations ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ground Truth
Ground truth is information that is known to be real or true, provided by direct observation and measurement (i.e. empirical evidence) as opposed to information provided by inference. Etymology The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (s.v. "ground truth") records the use of the word "Groundtruth" in the sense of a "fundamental truth" from Henry Ellison's poem "The Siberian Exile's Tale", published in 1833. Statistics and machine learning "Ground truth" may be seen as a conceptual term relative to the knowledge of the truth concerning a specific question. It is the ideal expected result. This is used in statistical models to prove or disprove research hypotheses. The term "ground truthing" refers to the process of gathering the proper objective (provable) data for this test. Compare with gold standard. For example, suppose we are testing a stereo vision system to see how well it can estimate 3D positions. The "ground truth" might be the positions given by a laser rangefinder whi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Energy Budget
An energy budget is a balance sheet of energy income against expenditure. It is studied in the field of Energetics which deals with the study of energy transfer and transformation from one form to another. Calorie is the basic unit of measurement. An organism in a laboratory experiment is an open thermodynamic system, exchanging energy with its surroundings in three ways - heat, work and the potential energy of biochemical compounds. Organisms use ingested food resources (C=consumption) as building blocks in the synthesis of tissues (P=production) and as fuel in the metabolic process that power this synthesis and other physiological processes (R=respiratory loss). Some of the resources are lost as waste products (F=faecal loss, U=urinary loss). All these aspects of metabolism can be represented in energy units. The basic model of energy budget may be shown as: P = C - R - U - F or P = C - (R + U + F) or C = P + R + U + F All the aspects of metabolism can be represen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Solar Radiation
Solar irradiance is the power per unit area ( surface power density) received from the Sun in the form of electromagnetic radiation in the wavelength range of the measuring instrument. Solar irradiance is measured in watts per square metre (W/m2) in SI units. Solar irradiance is often integrated over a given time period in order to report the radiant energy emitted into the surrounding environment ( joule per square metre, J/m2) during that time period. This integrated solar irradiance is called solar irradiation, solar exposure, solar insolation, or insolation. Irradiance may be measured in space or at the Earth's surface after atmospheric absorption and scattering. Irradiance in space is a function of distance from the Sun, the solar cycle, and cross-cycle changes.Michael Boxwell, ''Solar Electricity Handbook: A Simple, Practical Guide to Solar Energy'' (2012), p. 41–42. Irradiance on the Earth's surface additionally depends on the tilt of the measuring surface, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
COVE Instrumentation
A cove is a small type of bay or coastal inlet. Coves usually have narrow, restricted entrances, are often circular or oval, and are often situated within a larger bay. Small, narrow, sheltered bays, inlets, creeks, or recesses in a coast are often considered coves. Colloquially, the term can be used to describe a sheltered bay. Geomorphology describes coves as precipitously-walled and rounded cirque-like openings as in a valley extending into or down a mountainside, or in a hollow or nook of a cliff or steep mountainside. A cove can also refer to a corner, nook, or cranny, either in a river, road, or wall, especially where the wall meets the floor. A notable example is Lulworth Cove on the Jurassic Coast in Dorset, England. To its west, a second cove, Stair Hole, is forming. Formation Coves are formed by differential erosion Weathering is the deterioration of rocks, soils and minerals as well as wood and artificial materials through contact with water, atmospheric gases ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hampton, Virginia
Hampton () is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 137,148. It is the 7th most populous city in Virginia and 204th most populous city in the nation. Hampton is included in the Hampton Roads Metropolitan Statistical Area (officially known as the Virginia Beach–Norfolk–Newport News, VA–NC MSA) which is the 37th largest in the United States, with a total population of 1,799,674 (2020). This area, known as "America's First Region", also includes the independent cities of Chesapeake, Virginia Beach, Newport News, Norfolk, Portsmouth, and Suffolk, as well as other smaller cities, counties, and towns of Hampton Roads. Hampton traces its history to the city's Old Point Comfort, the home of Fort Monroe for almost 400 years, which was named by the 1607 voyagers, led by Captain Christopher Newport, who first established Jamestown as an English colonial settlement. Since consolidation in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Langley Research Center
The Langley Research Center (LaRC or NASA Langley), located in Hampton, Virginia, United States of America, is the oldest of NASA's field centers. It directly borders Langley Air Force Base and the Back River on the Chesapeake Bay. LaRC has focused primarily on aeronautical research, but has also tested space hardware such as the Apollo Lunar Module. In addition, many of the earliest high-profile space missions were planned and designed on-site. Langley was also considered a potential site for NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center prior to the eventual selection of Houston, Texas. Established in 1917 by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), the research center devotes two-thirds of its programs to aeronautics and the rest to space. LaRC researchers use more than 40 wind tunnels to study and improve aircraft and spacecraft safety, performance, and efficiency. Between 1958 and 1963, when NASA (the successor agency to NACA) started Project Mercury, LaRC served a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aerosol
An aerosol is a suspension of fine solid particles or liquid droplets in air or another gas. Aerosols can be natural or anthropogenic. Examples of natural aerosols are fog or mist, dust, forest exudates, and geyser steam. Examples of anthropogenic aerosols include particulate air pollutants, mist from the discharge at hydroelectric dams, irrigation mist, perfume from atomizers, smoke, steam from a kettle, sprayed pesticides, and medical treatments for respiratory illnesses. When a person inhales the contents of a vape pen or e-cigarette, they are inhaling an anthropogenic aerosol. The liquid or solid particles in an aerosol have diameters typically less than 1 μm (larger particles with a significant settling speed make the mixture a suspension, but the distinction is not clear-cut). In general conversation, ''aerosol'' often refers to a dispensing system that delivers a consumer product from a can. Diseases can spread by means of small droplets in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
