Monsoon rainfall extreme indices and tendencies from 1954–2003 in Kerala,India

Climate change has the potential ability to alter the occurrence and severity of extreme events. Though predicting changes of such extreme events is difficult, understanding them is important to determine the impacts of climate change in various sectors. This paper presents the change in rainfall extremes in the monsoon season in south-west Indian peninsula. Daily rainfall data were analysed for the entire Kerala state in India to determine if the extreme rainfall had changed over the 50-year period. Several indices were derived from the data to identify the extreme rainfalls. The trends of all the extreme indices were assessed by parametric ordinary least square regression technique, which were tested for significance at 95% level. Results showed significant decrease in monsoon rainfall extremes in Kerala that would affect the tendency of change in seasonal total rainfall. This study provides a comprehensive knowledge on extreme monsoon precipitation in Kerala, which could also be employed to study changing climate at local scale in other regions.     

Characteristics of aerosol optical depth and Ångström parameters over Mohal in the Kullu Valley of Northwest Himalayan Region,India

The measurements using a ground based multi wavelength radiometer (MWR) at Mohal (31°54′N, 77°07′E, 1154 m AMSL) in the Kullu valley of Northwestern Himalayan region show that the spectral aerosol optical depth (AOD) and turbidity coefficient, β, are high in summer, moderate in monsoon season, low in winter and lowest in autumn, while wavelength exponent, α, has an opposite trend. Average annual value of AOD at 500 nm is 0.24±0.01, 0.43±0.02, and 0.28±0.02; that of β is 0.14±0.01, 0.22±0.02, and 0.17±0.03; and that of α is 1.06±0.09, 1.16±0.10, and 0.86±0.13, respectively, for clear, hazy and partially clear sky days. The considerably greater value of β on hazy days indicates more coarse particles in mountain haze. The fractional asymmetry factor (AF) is more negative in summer and autumn months. The AOD and β have significantly positive correlation with temperature and wind speed, suggesting high AODs and turbidity on hot and windy days.     

Lidar observations of subvisual atmospheric phenomena: Research note

Abstract

The systematic error of a large ensemble of 72 ‐h forecasts, as produced by the Canadian Meteorological Centre's spectral model, is studied with particular emphasis on its seasonal and spatial character. By decomposing the error into wavenumber space, we show that most of the error manifests itself in the long planetary waves. We find that the model displays a large systematic error in zonal wavenumber one, which systematically moves westward during each integration.     

Support vector machines‐based modelling of seismic liquefaction potential

This paper investigates the potential of support vector machines (SVM)‐based classification approach to assess the liquefaction potential from actual standard penetration test (SPT) and cone penetration test (CPT) field data. SVMs are based on statistical learning theory and found to work well in comparison to neural networks in several other applications. Both CPT and SPT field data sets is used with SVMs for predicting the occurrence and non‐occurrence of liquefaction based on different input parameter combination. With SPT and CPT test data sets, highest accuracy of 96 and 97%, respectively, was achieved with SVMs. This suggests that SVMs can effectively be used to model the complex relationship between different soil parameter and the liquefaction potential. Several other combinations of input variable were used to assess the influence of different input parameters on liquefaction potential. Proposed approach suggest that neither normalized cone resistance value with CPT data nor the calculation of standardized SPT value is required with SPT data. Further, SVMs required few user‐defined parameters and provide better performance in comparison to neural network approach. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Nonradial oscillations of low-mass stars in the presence of a magnetic field

Nonradial oscillations of a partially degenerate standard model, approximating a class of low-mass stars, have been studied in the presence of a weak poloidal magnetic field. The magnetic field in the interior of the configuration is taken to be continuous across the equilibrium surface and is matched with an external dipole field. Using a variational formulation, corrections to the oscillation frequencies of the Kelvin mode have been found for different values of the central degeneracy. It has been noted that the effect of the magnetic field is to increase the frequency of nonradial (l=2) mode of pulsation.     

Identification of landslide susceptibility zones in Gish River basin,West Bengal,India

The occurrence of landslide in the hilly region of Darjeeling during monsoon season is a matter of serious concern. Every year this natural hazard damages the major roads at several places and thus disrupts the transport and communication system in this region. This paper tries to prepare a landslide susceptibility zone (LSZ) map for the Gish River basin. A total number of 16 spatial parameters have been taken for this study and these are categorised under six factor clusters or groups for example, triggering factors, protective factor, lithological factors, morphometric factors, hydrological factors and anthropogenic factors. The LSZ map is prepared by integrating all the parameters adopting the weighting base as logistic regression. The landslide susceptibility map shows that nearly 9.11% of the area falls under the very high landslide-susceptible zone while 40.28% of the area of the total basin lies under the very low landslide-susceptible zone. The landslide-susceptible model is validated through the receiver operating characteristic curve. This curve shows 86% success rate in defining landslide-susceptible zones and 83.40% prediction rate for the occurrence of landslides. The spatial relationship between the landslide susceptibility model and other factors’ groups shows that the morphometric factors’ cluster (mainly slope) is the focalone for the determination of landslide-susceptible zone.     

Detection of 2009 Leonid,Perseid and Geminid Meteor Showers through its effects on Transmitted VLF Signals

The detection of 2009 Leonid, Perseid and Geminid meteor showers over Agartala, Tripura, India (Lat: 23.0° N, Long: 91.4° E) will be reported here by using two VLF receivers tuned to subionospheric transmitted VLF signals at the frequency 16.4 kHz from Aldra Island, Norway (Lat: 66.42° N, Long: 13.13° E) and the other at 18.2 kHz from Vijayananarayanam, India (Lat: 8.4° N; Long: 77.7° E). The received signals exhibited their peak values on November 17, 2009 when ZHR (Zenithal Hourly Rate) was highest. Some typical variations which are observed in the records of amplitude during the 2009 Leonid, Perseid and Geminid meteor showers will be presented in this paper.     

Expanding universe: thermodynamical aspects from different models

The pivotal point of the paper is to discuss the behavior of temperature, pressure, energy density as a function of volume along with determination of caloric EoS from following two model: w(z)=w ₀+w ₁ln(1+z) & . The time scale of instability for this two models is discussed. In the paper we then generalize our result and arrive at general expression for energy density irrespective of the model. The thermodynamical stability for both of the model and the general case is discussed from this viewpoint. We also arrive at a condition on the limiting behavior of thermodynamic parameter to validate the third law of thermodynamics and interpret the general mathematical expression of integration constant U ₀ (what we get while integrating energy conservation equation) physically relating it to number of micro states. The constraint on the allowed values of the parameters of the models is discussed which ascertains stability of universe. The validity of thermodynamical laws within apparent and event horizon is discussed.