During recent years, great interest has grown within the operational weather community on the adaptable component of observational networks. Decisions regarding where to deploy new observations of special value under threatening weather, or regarding permanent changes in observational strategies need support from sensitivity studies that determine areas where the addition of observations would ...

It has often been suggested that the period of the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation (QBO) has a tendency to synchronize with the Semi-Annual Oscillation (SAO). Using 45 years of ERA-40 data of the equatorial stratosphere up to the stratopause, we demonstrate that this synchronization is not just a tendency but indeed holds quite well in the upper stratosphere. A QBO period starts when a SAO westerly ...

Computer-synthesized speech is emerging as a mainstream human-computer interface in post-PC devices. However, there is limited research on its effect on the user experience. We contribute to this emerging stream by focusing on online review persuasiveness. The current presentation standard is the text review accompanied by images and numeric ratings. We review the limited theory on the effect o...

The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) provides global analyses of atmospheric humidity from the ground to the lower mesosphere. Unlike in the troposphere, in the stratosphere no humidity observations are assimilated. Humidity analyses here are essentially the results of a free-running model constrained by the ECMWF’s analysed wind fields. So far only the broad-scale fea...

Direct interaction with touchscreens has become a primary way of using a device. This work seeks to devise interaction methods for editing textual source code on touch-enabled devices. With the advent of the “Post-PC Era”, touch-centric interaction has received considerable attention in both research and development. However, various limitations have impeded widespread adoption of programming e...

This paper proposes the hypothesis that the low-frequency variability of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) arises as a result of variations in the occurrence of upper-level Rossby wave–breaking events over the North Atlantic. These events lead to synoptic situations similar to midlatitude blocking that are referred to as high-latitude blocking episodes. A positive NAO is envisaged as being a...

The flow of Marxism was one of the most powerful social-political currents of the Pahlavi opposition which, despite the progress of political upheavals and internal splits, reached the threshold of the Islamic Revolution. One of the main reasons for the success of this flow, compared to other rival currents, was the presence of numerous symbols in the context of this adventure. The symbols of t...