Winds and temperatures of the Arctic middle atmosphere during January measured by Doppler lidar
Abstract. We present an extensive data set of simultaneous temperature and wind measurements in the Arctic middle atmosphere. It consists of more than 300 h of Doppler Rayleigh lidar observations obtained during three January seasons (2012, 2014, and 2015) and covers the altitude range from 30 km up to about 85 km. The data set reveals large year-to-year variations in monthly mean temperatures and winds, which in 2012 are affected by a sudden stratospheric warming. The temporal evolution of winds and temperatures after that warming are studied over a period of 2 weeks, showing an elevated stratopause and the reformation of the polar vortex. The monthly mean temperatures and winds are compared to data extracted from the Integrated Forecast System of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) and the Horizontal Wind Model (HWM07). Lidar and ECMWF data show good agreement of mean zonal and meridional winds below  ≈ 55 km altitude, but we also find mean temperature, zonal wind, and meridional wind differences of up to 20 K, 20 m s−1, and 5 m s−1, respectively. Differences between lidar observations and HWM07 data are up to 30 m s−1. From the fluctuations of temperatures and winds within single nights we extract the potential and kinetic gravity wave energy density (GWED) per unit mass. It shows that the kinetic GWED is typically 5 to 10 times larger than the potential GWED, the total GWED increases with altitude with a scale height of  ≈ 16 km. Since temporal fluctuations of winds and temperatures are underestimated in ECMWF, the total GWED is underestimated as well by a factor of 3–10 above 50 km altitude. Similarly, we estimate the energy density per unit mass for large-scale waves (LWED) from the fluctuations of nightly mean temperatures and winds. The total LWED is roughly constant with altitude. The ratio of kinetic to potential LWED varies with altitude over 2 orders of magnitude. LWEDs from ECMWF data show results similar to the lidar data. From the comparison of GWED and LWED, it follows that large-scale waves carry about 2 to 5 times more energy than gravity waves.
Simultaneous and co-located wind measurements in the middle atmosphereby lidar and rocket-borne techniques
Abstract. We present the first comparison of a new lidar technique to measure winds in the middle atmosphere, called DoRIS (Doppler Rayleigh Iodine Spectrometer), with a rocket-borne in situ method, which relies on measuring the horizontal drift of a target (“starute”) by a tracking radar. The launches took place from the Andoya Space Center (ASC), very close to the ALOMAR observatory (Arctic Lidar Observatory for Middle Atmosphere Research) at 69° N. DoRIS is part of a steerable twin lidar system installed at ALOMAR. The observations were made simultaneously and with a horizontal distance between the two lidar beams and the starute trajectories of typically 0–40 km only. DoRIS measured winds from 14 March 2015, 17:00 UTC, to 15 March 2015, 11:30 UTC. A total of eight starute flights were launched successfully from 14 March, 19:00 UTC, to 15 March, 00:19 UTC. In general there is excellent agreement between DoRIS and the in situ measurements, considering the combined range of uncertainties. This concerns not only the general height structures of zonal and meridional winds and their temporal developments, but also some wavy structures. Considering the comparison between all starute flights and all DoRIS observations in a time period of ±20 min around each individual starute flight, we arrive at mean differences of typically ±5–10 m s−1 for both wind components. Part of the remaining differences are most likely due to the detection of different wave fronts of gravity waves. There is no systematic difference between DoRIS and the in situ observations above 30 km. Below ∼ 30 km, winds from DoRIS are systematically too large by up to 10–20 m s−1, which can be explained by the presence of aerosols. This is proven by deriving the backscatter ratios at two different wavelengths. These ratios are larger than unity, which is an indication of the presence of aerosols.
On Fascist Ideology
Fascism is a political ideology that encompassed totalitarianism, state terrorism, imperialism, racism and, in the German case, the most radical genocide of the last century: the Holocaust. Fascism, in its many forms did not hesitate to kill its own citizens as well as its colonial subjects in its search for ideological and political closure. Millions of civilians perished on a global scale during the apogee of fascist ideologies in Europe and beyond. In historical terms, fascism can be defined as a movement and a regime. Emilio Gentile – who, with Zeev Sternhell and George Mosse,2 is the most insightful historian of fascism – presents fascism as a modern revolutionary phenomenon that was nationalist and revolutionary, anti-liberal and anti-Marxist. Gentile also presents fascism as being typically organized in a militaristic party that had a totalitarian conception of state politics, an activist and antitheoretical ideology as well as a focus on virility and anti-hedonistic mythical foundations. For Gentile a defining feature of fascism was its character as a secular religion which affirms the primacy of the nation understood as an organic and ethnically homogenous community. Moreover, this nation was to be hierarchically organized in a corporativist state endowed with a war-mongering vocation that searches for a politics of national expansion, potency and conquest. Fascism, in short, was not a mere reactionary ideology. Rather, fascism aimed at creating a new order and a new civilization.3 The word fascism derives from the Italian word fascio and refers to a political group (such as the political group lead by Giuseppe Garibaldi during the time of Italian unification.) Fascism also refers visually and historically to a Roman imperial symbol of authority. Its place of birth as a modern political ideology was northern Italy, the year was 1919, and its founder was Benito Mussolini. Thus, fascism as a term as well as a political movement was born on the Italian peninsula. Its ideological origins, however, predated its name. The fact that fascism was born as a concept before its explicit birth as a movement is central to any understanding of fascism. The ideology of radical nationalism that made it possible was part of a larger intellectual reaction to the Enlightenment.4 This tradition was both European and, in the Latin American case, “non-European” as well. To be sure, the original ideology behind fascism was born as a reaction to the progressive European revolutions of the long nineteenth century (from the French revolution of 1789 to the American and Latin American revolutions of 1776 and the 1810s). Fascism represented a post-revolutionary attack against equality. The ideology of the anti-Enlightenment is the major root of the longstanding ideological tradition that created fascism. Its branches constituted a reaction against liberal politics and a rejection of democracy. And yet fascism did not oppose the market economy and put forward a corporatist organization that aimed to be functional to capitalist accumulation. Equally important, fascism is a philosophy of political action that ascribes value to absolute violence in the political realm. This ascription was boosted by one radical outcome of the