The Southern Hemisphere Westerly Winds (SWW) constitute an important zonal circulation that influences large-scale precipitation patterns and ocean circulation. Variations in their intensity and latitudinal position have been suggested to exert a strong influence on the CO2 budget in the Southern Ocean, thus making them a potential factor affecting the global climate. In the present study, the ...

Solar parabolic concentrating collectors are widely and efficiently used in electrical generation. They were experimentally validated in worldwide pioneer plants. SEGS-VI 30 MW solar power plant built in southern California is one of these plants that was commissioned many years ago. In this work a possibility of installing such plant in Makkah, 21.4 °N located in moderate latitudes is studied....

This paper reports the use of a mathematical model to predict the productivity of a simple solar still under different climatic, design and operational parameters in Oman. The shallow water basin, 23 cover tilt angle, 0.1 m insulation thickness and asphalt coating of the solar still were found to be the optimum design parameters that produced an average annual solar still yield of 4.15 kg/m day...

With dramatic cost declines and performance improvements, both mini-hydropower and solar photovoltaics (PV) now serve as core options to meet the growing demand for electricity in underserved regions worldwide. We compare the net energy return on energy invested (EROI) of mini-hydropower and solar electricity using five existing mini-hydropower installations in northern Thailand with gridconnec...

This paper focuses on three interconnected topics: (1) quantitative relationship between surface shortwave cloud radiative forcing, cloud fraction, and cloud albedo; (2) surface-based approach for measuring cloud albedo; (3) multiscale (diurnal, annual and inter-annual) variations and covariations of surface shortwave cloud radiative forcing, cloud fraction, and cloud albedo. An analytical expr...

Aims. Long-term fluxes or integral fluences of solar energetic particles (SEPs), and their variability within beyond the 11-year cycle, make an important contribution to space physics. However, large uncertainties exist in evaluation average SEP over last few decades, as they have been assessed by different methods from datasets. Here we revisit derivation annual available data based on situ me...

Abstract Earth’s orbit and rotation produces systematic variations in geomagnetic activity, most notably via the changing orientation of dayside magnetospheric magnetic field with respect to heliospheric (HMF). Aside from these geometric effects, it is generally assumed that solar wind near-Earth uniformly sampled. But changes intrinsic conditions space could arise due annual Earth heliocentric...

In this work, we report on fabrication and characterization of dye-sensitized solar cells based on TiO(2) nanotube/nanoparticle (NT/NP) composite electrodes. TiO(2) nanotubes were prepared by anodization of Ti foil in an organic electrolyte. The nanotubes were chemically separated from the foil, ground and added to a TiO(2) nanoparticle paste, from which composite NT/NP electrodes were fabricat...

The total solar eclipse that occurred over the Arctic region on 20 March 2015 was seen as a partial eclipse over much of Europe. Observations of this eclipse were used to investigate the high time resolution (1 min) decay and recovery of the Earth's ionospheric E-region above the ionospheric monitoring station in Chilton, UK. At the altitude of this region (100 km), the maximum phase of the ecl...

We present a revised metallicity distribution of dwarfs in the solar neighbourhood. This distribution is centred on solar metallicity. We show that previous metallicity distributions, selected on the basis of spectral type, are biased against stars with solar metallicity or higher. A selection of G-dwarf stars is inherently biased against metal rich stars and is not representative of the solar ...