Dynamical footprints of hurricanes in the tropical dynamics.

Hurricanes-and more broadly tropical cyclones-are high-impact weather phenomena whose adverse socio-economic and ecosystem impacts affect a considerable part of the global population. Despite our reasonably robust meteorological understanding of tropical cyclones, we still face outstanding challenges for their numerical simulations. Consequently, future changes in the frequency of occurrence and intensity of tropical cyclones are still debated. Here, we diagnose possible reasons for the poor representation of tropical cyclones in numerical models, by considering the cyclones as chaotic dynamical systems. We follow 197 tropical cyclones which occurred between 2010 and 2020 in the North Atlantic using the HURDAT2 and ERA5 data sets. We measure the cyclones instantaneous number of active degrees of freedom (local dimension) and the persistence of their sea-level pressure and potential vorticity fields. During the most intense phases of the cyclones, and specifically when cyclones reach hurricane strength, there is a collapse of degrees of freedom and an increase in persistence. The large dependence of hurricanes dynamical characteristics on intensity suggests the need for adaptive parametrization schemes which take into account the dependence of the cyclone's phase, in analogy with high-dissipation intermittent events in turbulent flows.

First results on headspace-solid phase microextraction-gas chromatography/mass spectrometry of volatile organic compounds emitted by wax objects in museums.

Sampling volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitted by a large variety of materials is nowadays a very useful technique for analytical purpose. In the field of cultural heritage, it can be applied to identify some constituents of museum artefacts off-gassing VOCs without sampling on the object itself. In this study, we focused on objects made of wax. First volatiles emitted by a reference beeswax were trapped and identified by headspace-solid phase microextraction (HS-SPME)-gas chromatography and mass spectrometry (GC/MS). This allowed to identify numerous volatile biomarkers, namely saturated n-alkanes from C(10) to C(21), saturated n-carboxylic acids containing 6-12 carbon atoms, benzene and cinnamic derivatives that may be considered as volatile biomarkers of beeswax. The SPME strategy was then performed at the Orsay museum (Paris) in a showcase containing a wax sculpture "Le Mineur de la Loire" by J.-J. Carriès. The use of beeswax in this sculpture was unequivocally confirmed by the VOCs concentrated in the showcase, together with a set of characteristic molecular compounds identified by HT-GC/MS. HS-SPME-GC/MS thus appears to be a powerful in situ and non-invasive analytical technique that allows to identify natural substances in the field of cultural heritage without any sampling of solid matter from the object. The results obtained are promising for orientating the strategy of preventive conservation related to works of art characterised by important emission of VOCs.