Researchers are making increasing use of machine learning to improve accuracy, efficiency and consistency. During such a study of the aurora, it was noted that biases or distortions had crept into the data because of the conditions (or ergonomics) of the human trainers. As using machine-learning techniques in auroral research is relatively new, it is critical that such biases are brought to the attention of the academic and citizen science communities.

Heat pulse probes are widely used to monitor soil thermal and physical properties for agricultural and hydrological monitoring related to crop productivity, drought, snowmelt, and evapotranspiration. Changes in the effective probe spacing distance can cause measurement inaccuracy. This paper uses a novel heat pulse probe and theory to compensate for changes in effective distance, thereby enabling more accurate sensor outputs useful for forecasts and predictions of drought and flooding.

In times of global warming, permafrost is starting to degrade at alarming rates, requiring new and improved characterization approaches. We describe the design and test installation, as well as detailed data quality assessment, of a monitoring system used to capture natural electrical potentials in the subsurface. These self-potential signals are of great interest for the noninvasive investigation of water flow in the non-frozen or partially frozen subsurface.

This paper describes GRUAN's strategy for a network-wide change of the operational radiosonde from Vaisala RS92 to RS41. GRUAN's main goal is to provide long-term data records that are free of inhomogeneities due to instrumental effects, which requires proper change management. The approach is to fully characterize differences between the two radiosonde types using laboratory tests, twin soundings, and ancillary data, as well as by drawing from the various fields of expertise available in GRUAN.

Bidirectional muographic measurements were taken at an ancient burial mound built in the beginning of the 6th century which later collapsed after a landslide caused by the 1596 Fushimi earthquake, one of the largest earthquakes over the last few centuries in Japan. The result indicated large-scale vertical cracks at the top of the mound which caused its collapse, and thus an intrinsic problem was suggested about the stability of the basic foundation of the mound before this earthquake.

In this paper, a low-cost, computer-aided, and geophone-based system designed to record, monitor, and analyze three-component microtremor data is presented. This system has several features such as a 200 Hz sampling frequency, text data format, and data analysis tools. The developed software undertakes many tasks such as communication between the external hardware and computer, transferring, monitoring, and recording the seismic data to a computer, and interpretation of the recorded data.

Geographic coordinates (latitude and longitude) are widely used in geospatial applications, and terrains are often defined by regular grids in geographic coordinates. However, because of convergence of lines of longitude near the poles there is oversampling in the latitude (zonal) direction. Also, there is no standard way of defining a hierarchy of grids to consistently deal with data having different spatial resolutions. The proposed global geographic grid system solves both problems.

We developed a method to acquire dense point clouds with a low-cost Velodyne Puck lidar system, without using expensive Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) positioning or IMU. We mounted the lidar on a motor to continuously change the scan direction, leading to a significant increase in the point cloud density. The system was compared with a more expensive system based on IMU registration and a SLAM algorithm. The alignment between acquisitions with those two systems is within 2 m.

Combining short-time forecast models, standardized interfaces to a wide range of environment detectors and a flexible user access interface, CITYZER provides decision-making authorities and private citizens with reliable information about the near-future development of critical environmental parameters like air quality and rain. The system can be easily adapted to different areas or different parameters. Alarms for critical situations can be set and used to support authority decisions.

In this paper, we present a compilation of the different radiation transport codes for the Martian surface that are currently used by various space agencies and institutions. In addition, as the execution of the tasks necessary to process all of these radiation data requires a high computational processing capacity, we link it to cloud computing, which is found to be an appropriate tool regarding the required resources.

Aerosol optical depth (AOD) is a parameter widely used in remote sensing for the characterization of atmospheric aerosol particles. AERONET was created by NASA for aerosol monitoring as well as satellite and model validation. The University of Valladolid (UVa) has managed an AERONET calibration center since 2006. The CÆLIS software tool, developed by UVa, was created to manage the data generated by AERONET photometers. The AOD algorithm in CÆLIS is developed and validated in this work.

GPS drifters that float down rivers are important tools in studying rivers, but they can be expensive. Recently, both GPS receivers and cellular modems have become available at lower prices to tinkering scientists due to the rise of open hardware and the Arduino. We provide detailed instructions on how to build a low-power GPS drifter with local storage and a cellular model that we tested in a fieldwork in Myanmar. These instructions allow fellow geoscientists to recreate the device.

The baseline wander has special characteristics, such as being low frequency, large amplitude, non-periodic, and non-stationary. It is caused by the receiving coil motion and always exists in the process of data acquisition. The proposed method can be used to solve similar problems. This paper has the following highlights: (1) the method can be used to process non-periodic and non-stationary signals; (2) the method is adaptive to satisfy the stopping criterion based on the measured signal.

We propose a gradiometer-based technique for cleaning multi-sensor magnetic field data acquired on board spacecraft. The technique takes advantage on the fact that the maximum-variance direction of many AC disturbances on board spacecraft does not change over time. We apply the proposed technique to the SOSMAG instrument on board GeoKompsat-2A. We analyse the performance and limitations of the technique and discuss in detail how various disturbances are removed.

The Capon method serves as a powerful and robust data analysis tool when working on various kinds of ill-posed inverse problems. Besides the analysis of waves, the method can be used in a generalized way to compare actual measurements with theoretical models, such as Mercury's magnetic field analysis. In view to the BepiColombo mission this work establishes a mathematical basis for the application of Capon's method to analyze Mercury's internal magnetic field in a robust and manageable way.

Soil gas flux describes the movement of various gases either to or from the ground. Identifying changes in soil gas flux can lead to a better understanding and detection of leakage from carbon capture and storage (CCS) schemes, diffuse degassing in volcanic and geothermal areas, and greenhouse gas emissions. Traditional chamber-based techniques may require weeks of fieldwork to assess a site. We present a new method to speed up the assessment of diffuse leakage.

In this research, we applied a ground-penetrating radar (GPR) approach for excavating the ancient archeological baptism site of the Jordan River. The GPR survey was carried out at representative locations along parallel profiles using a subsurface interface radar system. The GPR profiles revealed multiple subsurface anomalies across the study area. Many features were detected in the study area, such as a buried wall, channels and a pottery pipe at the Elijah's Hill site.

One of the four Galilean moons of Jupiter, Europa, is one of the most promising places in the solar system to find life outside Earth. For this reason, the space science community is currently focused on exploring it. One of the main difficulties of such a task is the harsh radiation environment caused by the radiation belts of Jupiter. In this paper, we present results for a magnetic field sensor being exposed to radiation levels similar to those expected at the surface of Europa.