The Tibetan Plateau (TP) has experienced accelerated warming in recent decades, especially in winter. However, a comprehensive quantitative study of its long-term warming processes during daytime and nighttime is lacking. This study quantifies the different processes driving the acceleration of winter daytime and nighttime warming over the TP during 1961-2022 using surface energy budget analysis. The results show that the surface warming over the TP is mainly controlled by two processes: (a) a decrease in snow cover leading to a decrease in albedo and an increase in net downward shortwave radiation (snow-albedo feedback), and (b) a warming in tropospheric temperature (850 - 200 hPa) leading to an increase in downward longwave radiation (air warming-longwave radiation effect). The latter has a greater impact on the spatial distribution of warming than the former, and both factors jointly influence the elevation dependent warming pattern. Snow-albedo feedback is the primary factor in daytime warming over the monsoon region, contributing to about 59% of the simulated warming trend. In contrast, nighttime warming over the monsoon region and daytime/nighttime warming in the westerly region are primarily caused by the air warming-longwave radiation effect, contributing up to 67% of the simulated warming trend. The trend in the near-surface temperature mirrors that of the surface temperature, and the same process can explain changes in both. However, there are some differences: an increase in sensible heat flux is driven by a rise in the ground-atmosphere temperature difference. The increase in latent heat flux is associated with enhanced evaporation due to increased soil temperature and is also controlled by soil moisture. Both of these processes regulate the temperature difference between ground and near-surface atmosphere.

The incident of Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (CNPP) explosion has pioneered a plethora of studies unfolding various biological effects of radiation stress on several living systems. Determining radiation dose rates at which both acute and chronic biological effects occur in different biological systems will aid in the ex-situ generation of radiation-tolerant organisms. So far, the accumulation of data on different radiation doses from Chernobyl area demonstrating various biological impacts has not been documented altogether vastly. Therefore, this review aims to document the recorded doses in CNPP over the years at which different biological changes have been observed in plants, soil, aquatic organisms, birds, and animals. A total of 72 peer-reviewed papers obtained from PubMed, Google Scholar, Scopus, and Research4life were included in this review. A few factors have come under attention in this review. Firstly, plant and soil systems combinedly showed the most published studies after the catastrophe where plants showed a higher frequency of DNA methylation in their genome to resist radiation stress. Secondly, reduced species abundance, chromosomal aberrations, increased sterility, and mortality were mostly observed in the aftermath of Chernobyl catastrophe among plants, soil, aquatic organisms, birds, and small mammals. Furthermore, major scares of data after 2018 were prominently observed. Very few studies on radiation dose levels after 2018 are available. Hence, a major research area has emerged for radiation biologists to study present radiation levels and any genetic changes in the recent generation of the original victim species. This will help provide a standard dataset that can act as a reference resource for radiation biologists and future research on the impact of both acute and chronic radiation on the different biological systems. [GRAPHICS] .

Neutral Ion Mass spectrometer (NIM) is one of the instruments in the Particle Environmental Package (PEP) designed for the JUICE mission of ESA to the Jupiter system. NIM, equipped with a sensitive MCP ion detector, will conduct detailed measurements of the chemical composition of Jovian icy moons exospheres. To achieve high sensitivity of the instrument, radiation effects due to the high radiation background (high-energy electrons and protons) around Jupiter have to be minimised. We investigate the performance of an Al-Ta-Al composite stack as a potential shielding against high-energy electrons. Experiments were performed at the PiM1 beam line of the High Intensity Proton Accelerator Facilities located at the Paul Scherrer Institute, Villigen, Switzerland. The facility delivers a particle beam containing e(-), mu(-) and pi(-) with momentum from 17.5 to 345 MeV/c (Hajdas et al., 2014). The measurements of the radiation environment generated during the interaction of primary particles with the Al-Ta-Al material were conducted with dedicated beam diagnostic methods and with the NIM MCP detector. In parallel, modelling studies using GEANT4 and GRAS suites were performed to identify products of the interaction and predict ultimate fluxes and particle rates at the MCP detector. Combination of experiment and modelling studies yields detailed characterisation of the radiation fields produced by the interaction of the incident e with the shielding material in the range of the beam momentum from 17.5 to 345 MeV/c. We derived the effective MCP detection efficiency to primary and secondary radiation and effective shielding transmission coefficients to incident high-energy electron beam in the range of applied beam momenta. This study shows that the applied shielding attenuates efficiently high-energy electrons. Nevertheless, owing to nearly linear increase of the bremsstrahlung production rate with incident beam energy, above 130 MeV their detection rates measured by the MCP detector compares to the MCP rate of the incident electron beam. We define key performance parameters for the shielding and show direction of its improvements by introducing additional layer of material to attenuate gamma-rays and reduce the MCP sensitivity to the penetrating radiation. The experiments also verify the predictions by modelling tools used currently for optimisation of shielding against high-energy particles. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.