Monsoonal precipitation variation in the East Asia since A.D. 1840 ——Tree-ring evidences from China and Korea

The main characteristic of the East Asian climate is the monsoon system. Plenty of studies have demonstrated that the Asian monsoon system plays a crucial role in the global climate sys- tem [1-4]. The Asian summer monsoon can be divided into two parts, t…     

Different thermal preferences for brooding and larval dispersal of two neighboring shrimps in deep‐sea hydrothermal vent fields

Temperature is an important factor affecting the distributions and life‐history traits of marine animals. Deep‐sea hydrothermal vents are suitable environments to examine ecologic differences related to temperature, due to the steep temperature gradients around the vents. Rearing experiments under various temperature conditions (5–30 °C) at atmospheric pressure demonstrated a difference in thermal effects on egg hatching and larva in two co‐occurring, vent‐associated alvinocaridid shrimps – the peripherally distributed Alvinocaris longirostris and the centrally distributed Shinkaicaris leurokolos. The duration before hatching became shorter as temperature increased, while the maximum hatching rate occurred at higher temperatures in S. leurokolos (10–20 °C) than in A. longirostris (10 °C). Hatched larvae of both species were negatively buoyant, and larva with normal abdominal length could actively swim and stay suspended in the mid‐ or surface water layers of the culture plates under our experimental conditions. However, no larvae settled or metamorphosed into juveniles under the rearing conditions used in this study. Larvae with shortened abdomens occurred under most of the experimental conditions, although they were less frequent at 10 °C in A. longirostris and 20 °C in S. leurokolos. The maximum survival periods at these temperatures were 88 days in A. longirostris and 30 days in S. leurokolos. These characteristics may cause differences in the distributional ranges of the two species. The present results indicate that temperature is an important factor controlling life‐history traits of vent shrimps.     

Numerical Studies on Piled Gravity Base Foundation for Offshore Wind Turbine

This study aims to investigate a hybrid gravity base foundation to support offshore wind tower. A new hybrid gravity base foundation considered in this study has five component piles, referred to as ‘piled gravity base foundation’. The three-dimensional finite element analyses were carried out for the piled gravity base foundation subjected to a combined load with a lateral load and overturning moment. The parametric analyses were undertaken varying the loading height and direction, the rigidity of the piled gravity base foundation, the field soil layers, and the clay strength. Overall, the response of the piled gravity base foundation was significantly influenced by the interaction between the cone base piles and the surrounding soil. The increased strength of the soil led to a significant reduction of the pile and gravity base foundation responses, in terms of the bending moments, axial forces, lateral displacements, and rotations.     

Effect of connecting rain barrels on the storage size reduction

In this article, the possibility of sharing rain barrels and the potential benefit of reducing storage size through physical and non‐physical connections of rain barrels in a community are investigated. Using the concepts of homogeneous/heterogeneous users in rainwater harvesting systems (RWHS), two simple cases of a community composed of four prospective users are examined. The first is performed with the users who have the same mean and variance in water demands (homogeneous users), and the second is with the users with different means and variances (heterogeneous users). To take account for the rainfall characteristics in different places, historical records from six cities in the USA are used for storage–reliability–yield analysis. The result indicates that required total storage can be reduced by connecting multiple rain barrels. In addition, a significant difference is found between homogeneous and heterogeneous user groups. Homogeneous users do not achieve a substantial benefit from connecting their rain barrels; these users may even be disadvantaged by sharing. In contrast, heterogeneous users receive benefit by reducing the total required storage. Most benefit is expected between users with maximum difference in mean water demands. The reduction in storage size was as considerable as 37% in this study. The quantity of storage reduction depends on locations and target reliabilities. Knowledge of the benefits and limitations of rain barrel connections can improve RWHS performance through ability to customize a network plan for individual users. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Spatial rainfall estimation by linear and non-linear co-kriging of radar-rainfall and raingage data

The feasibility of linear and nonlinear geostatistical estimation techniques for optimal merging of rainfall data from raingage and radar observations is investigated in this study by use of controlled numerical experiments. Synthetic radar and raingage data are generated with their hypothetical error structures that explicitly account for sampling characteristics of the two sensors. Numerically simulated rainfall fields considered to be ground-truth fields on 4×4 km grids are used in the generation of radar and raingage observations. Ground-truth rainfall fields consist of generated rainfall fields with various climatic characteristics that preserve the space-time covariance function of rainfall events in extratropical cyclonic storms. Optimal mean areal precipitation estimates are obtained based on the minimum variance, unbiased property of kriging techniques under the second order homogeneity assumption of rainfall fields. The evaluation of estimated rainfall fields is done based on the refinement of spatial predictability over what would be provided from each sensor individually. Attention is mainly given to removal of measurement error and bias that are synthetically introduced to radar measurements. The influence of raingage network density on estimated rainfall fields is also examined.     

Rainfall estimation using raingages and radar — A Bayesian approach: 1. Derivation of estimators

Procedures for estimating rainfall from radar and raingage observations are constructed in a Bayesian framework. Given that the number of raingage measurements is typically very small, mean and variance of gage rainfall are treated as uncertain parameters. Under the assumption that log gage rainfall and log radar rainfall are jointly multivariate normal, the estimation problem is equivalent to lognormal co-kriging with uncertain mean and variance of the gage rainfall field.The posterior distribution is obtained under the assumption that the prior for the mean and inverse of the variance of log gage rainfall is normal-gamma 2. Estimate and estimation variance do not have closed-form expressions, but can be easily evaluated by numerically integrating two single integrals. To reduce computational burden associated with evaluating sufficient statistics for the likelihood function, an approximate form of parameter updating is given. Also, as a further approximation, the parameters are updated using raingage measurements only, yielding closed-form expressions for estimate and estimation variance in the Gaussian domain.With a reduction in the number of radar rainfall data in constructing covariance matrices, computational requirements for the estimation procedures are not significantly greater than those for simple co-kriging. Given their generality, the estimation procedures constructed in this work are considered to be applicable in various estimation problems involving an undersampled main variable and a densely sampled auxiliary variable.     

Surface Soil Effects Study Using Short-period Microtremor Observations in Almería City, Southern Spain

—?In Almería city large earthquakes occurred and many buildings were completely destroyed in these historical earthquakes. The actual population of Almería city is about 200,000 people. This population is rapidly increasing and new urbanizing areas are growing to the eastern part of the city where they are located in softer soil conditions. Consequently, the evaluation of surface soil conditions is very important from a standpoint of earthquake disaster mitigation. We have obtained a landform classification map developed by analysing aerial photos, large-scale topographic maps and 80 borehole data. Eleven unit areas, which have different soil conditions, were inferred from this research. Also, S-wave velocity prospecting tests were carried out at several sites within the city. The shear-velocity values of the ground vary from 1689?m/s in hard rock to 298?m/s in soft soil. These results are useful for understanding the uppermost soil characteristics and are used for soil classification. Finally, short-period microtremor observations were densely carried out in the research area and NAKAMURA's method (1989) was applied for determining predominant periods. Microtremors were observed at about 173 sites with mainly 400?m interval in rock sites and 200?m interval in relatively soft soil sites. From the result of these microtremor measurements, the predominant period determined at rock site, in the western part of the city and historic area, is very short, about 0.1?s, and very stable. However at soft soil sites, in the center of the city, near Zapillo Beach and in the newly developed urban area, the predominant period is about 1.0?s and even larger in concordance with the geological conditions. Finally, at medium soil sites, in the eastern part of the city, the predominant period is about 0.4?s and it appears very stable in the whole region. The difference of predominant periods between hard rock and soft soil sites is very clear and it has been observed that the distribution of predominant periods depends heavily on the surface soil conditions.