Credibility of design rainfall estimates for drainage infrastructures: extent of disregard in Nigeria and proposed framework for practice

Natural Hazards - Rainfall intensity or depth estimates are vital input for hydrologic and hydraulic models used in designing drainage infrastructures. Unfortunately, these estimates are...     

Upper-Level Winds over Southern Ontario: O-QNet Wind Profiler and NARR Comparisons

Upper-level winds are primarily measured by tracking the position of radiosonde balloons as they rise through the atmosphere. Radiosondes are released from a global network at 0000 utc and 1200 utc each day, and data are quickly available to the world's weather services, as well as to the public. The network is relatively coarse spatially, and there are normally only two soundings per day. In an endeavour to provide better spatial and temporal upper-level regional wind measurements, the O-QNet (a demonstration very high frequency wind profiler network for Ontario and Quebec) was installed and has been operated by York, Western, and McGill Universities with support from Mardoc Inc., The Weather Network, and Environment and Climate Change Canada. Initial funding was provided by the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the Ontario Innovation Trust, and Mardoc Inc. The present paper reports primarily on comparisons between winds measured by the O-QNet profilers and the winds reported in the North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR). There is good agreement between the two, which provides support for the use of NARR data to investigate longer term variations in upper-level winds associated with climate change for this region.     

Load Settlement Behaviour of Fly ash Mixed with Waste Sludge and Cement

One of the effective utilization strategies for fly ash and waste sludge is to use it as a fill material to raise low lying areas. Bearing capacity and settlement are the required input for the design of foundations on such fills. To determine the bearing capacity, plate load tests were carried out on the compacted beds of fly ash, fly ash-waste sludge and fly ash-waste sludge–cement. The tests were conducted by keeping 90, 95 and 100 % relative compaction, fresh and fresh submerged conditions, aged (28 days) and aged (28 days) submerged conditions as variables of the tests. The load-settlement curves were plotted for fly ash and mix blends. The minimum load was obtained for fly ash under submerged condition, further the test results show that the fly ash becomes flowable on submergence. On the other hand when the fly ash was mixed with waste sludge and cement, the load carrying capacity was found to improve to a greater extent. Test beds prepared with fly ash–cement-waste sludge under as compacted condition (fresh) show very high load carrying capacity (1600–2180 kN/m²). An analytical method has also been validated for fly ash–cement-waste sludge mix which was developed to estimate the settlement of footing resting on fly ash taking into account the pre-consolidation stresses. The non linearity of load-settlement behavior was appropriately modeled, on the basis of available plate load test data incorporated in the method. The method requires as input, the pre-consolidation stress and Young’s modulus of compacted mix of fly ash-waste sludge–cement. A comparison of load-settlement values observed in plate load tests and predicted values for the mix 47 %FA + 45 %S + 8 %C, using the proposed method shows good agreement. Hence, this relationship may also be useful to the field engineers to check the reported load-settlement values for such types of mixes in the field.     

Radiative transfer code: Application to the calculation of PAR

The production of carbon in the ocean, the so-called primary production, depends on various physicobiological parameters: the biomass and nutrient amounts in oceans, the salinity and temperature of the water and the light available in the water column. We focus on the visible spectrum of the solar radiation defined as the Photosynthetically Active Radiation (PAR). We developed a model (Chamiet al. 1997) to simulate the behavior of the solar beam in the atmosphere and the ocean. We first describe the theoretical basis of the code and the method we used to solve the radiative transfer equation (RTE): the successive orders of scattering (SO). The second part deals with a sensitivity study of the PAR just above and below the sea surface for various atmospheric conditions. In a cloudy sky, we computed a ratio between vector fluxes just above the sea surface and spherical fluxes just beneath the sea surface. When the optical thickness of the cloud increases this ratio remains constant and around 1.29. This parameter is convenient to convert vector flux at the sea surface as retrieved from satellite to PAR. Subsequently, we show how solar radiation as vector flux rather than P A R leads to an underestimate of the primary production up to 40% for extreme cases.     

A framework to quantify uncertainties of seafloor backscatter from swath mapping echosounders

Multibeam echosounders (MBES) have become a widely used acoustic remote sensing tool to map and study the seafloor, providing co-located bathymetry and seafloor backscatter. Although the uncertainty associated with MBES-derived bathymetric data has been studied extensively, the question of backscatter uncertainty has been addressed only minimally and hinders the quantitative use of MBES seafloor backscatter. This paper explores approaches to identifying uncertainty sources associated with MBES-derived backscatter measurements. The major sources of uncertainty are catalogued and the magnitudes of their relative contributions to the backscatter uncertainty budget are evaluated. These major uncertainty sources include seafloor insonified area (1–3 dB), absorption coefficient (up to >?6 dB), random fluctuations in echo level (5.5 dB for a Rayleigh distribution), and sonar calibration (device dependent). The magnitudes of these uncertainty sources vary based on how these effects are compensated for during data acquisition and processing. Various cases (no compensation, partial compensation and full compensation) for seafloor insonified area, transmission losses and random fluctuations were modeled to estimate their uncertainties in different scenarios. Uncertainty related to the seafloor insonified area can be reduced significantly by accounting for seafloor slope during backscatter processing while transmission losses can be constrained by collecting full water column absorption coefficient profiles (temperature and salinity profiles). To reduce random fluctuations to below 1 dB, at least 20 samples are recommended to be used while computing mean values. The estimation of uncertainty in backscatter measurements is constrained by the fact that not all instrumental components are characterized and documented sufficiently for commercially available MBES. Further involvement from manufacturers in providing this essential information is critically required.     

Photometry and spectroscopy of Ⅱ Peg,IM Peg and UX Ari

V band photometry of three RS CVn stars, II Peg, IM Peg and UX Ari, is carried out to study the physical properties of these variables. We verified the significant and regular optical photometric variability to be present in all three stars. The strong photometric variability and emission of Hα and Ca II H K using high resolution optical spectroscopy with the Hanle Echelle Spectrograph(HESP),which operates in conjunction with the Himalayan Chandra Telescope, verify the strong chromospheric activity which is present in RS CVn stars. The photometric studies of II Peg, UX Ari and IM Peg were subjected to light curve analysis for spot parameters using a two-starspot model.     

The December 24, 2006 eruption of Bezymyannyi Volcano,Kamchatka

An explosive eruption occurred on Bezymyannyi Volcano December 24, 2006. The distribution of ashfall deposits over the peninsula was studied. The tephra was investigated for its chemical, mineral, and grain-size composition, its water-soluble complex was studied. About 30 000 tons of water-soluble substances along with 7 million tons of ash entered the environment over an area of over 8000 km². Information is supplied for this eruption from various sources and its geological impact has been estimated. The total volume of erupted pyroclastics was 0.01–0.014 km³, of which 0.004 km³ consisted of ash and 0.006–0.01 km³ were pyroclastic flow deposits.     

Spatio-temporal trend analysis of rainfall using parametric and non-parametric tests: case study in Uttarakhand,India

Theoretical and Applied Climatology - This study investigates the spatial and temporal patterns of trends and magnitude of rainfall on monthly, seasonal and annual time scales of 13 districts of...     

Nonlinear dispersive waves on the surface of a self-gravitating fluid layer

The evolution of two dimensional wave packets on the surface of a self-gravitating fluid layer is investigated and shown to be governed by a nonlinear Schrödinger equation. The wave train of finite amplitude is modulationally unstable. Obtained also are the dynamical equations for the second harmonic resonance. The analysis reveals that the general motion consists of both amplitude and phase modulated waves of which the pure phase and amplitude modulated waves, solitary waves, and phase jump are just the special cases.     

Adaptive state estimation of groundwater contaminant boundary input flux in a 2-dimensional aquifer

In many circumstances involving heat and mass transfer issues, it is considered impractical to measure the input flux and the resulting state distribution in the domain. Therefore, the need to develop techniques to provide solutions for such problems and estimate the inverse mass flux becomes imperative. Adaptive state estimator (ASE) is increasingly becoming a popular inverse estimation technique which resolves inverse problems by incorporating the semi-Markovian concept into a Bayesian estimation technique, thereby developing an inverse input and state estimator consisting of a bank of parallel adaptively weighted Kalman filters. The ASE is particularly designed for a system that encompasses independent unknowns and /or random switching of input and measurement biases. The present study describes the scheme to estimate the groundwater input contaminant flux and its transient distribution in a conjectural two-dimensional aquifer by means of ASE, which in particular is because of its unique ability to efficiently handle the process noise giving an estimation of keeping the relative error range within 10% in 2-dimensional problems. Numerical simulation results show that the proposed estimator presents decent estimation performance for both smoothly and abruptly varying input flux scenarios. Results also show that ASE enjoys a better estimation performance than its competitor, Recursive Least Square Estimator (RLSE) due to its larger error tolerance in greater process noise regimes. ASE’s inherent deficiency of being slower than the RLSE, resulting from the complexity of algorithm, was also noticed. The chosen input scenarios are tested to calculate the effect of input area and both estimators show improved results with an increase in input flux area especially as sensors are moved closer to the assumed input location.