Tensile stresses around boreholes due to transient fluid flow

We present solutions for the effective stress induced by gas flow through a porous solid into a borehole resulting from sudden pressure reduction. Tensile effective stress that exceeds the strength of the solid will lead to borehole failure. This has applications to the intentional creation of cavities, relevant to the efficient recovery of coalbed methane, and the avoidance of borehole stability problems in conventional gas production.     

The University of Durham Southern Hemisphere VHE gamma ray telescope

The design of very high energy (VHE) gamma ray telescopes is discussed and it is shown that a triple-mirror telescope operating in threefold fast coincidence provides an effective instrument. The design, construction and operation of a large VHE gamma ray telescope with an energy threshold of 300 GeV (at the zenith) and incorporating several novel features is described. The use of a coincidence guard ring technique is shown to result in the rejection of about 50% of the off-source (proton) events which form a high background and limit the sensitivity of such telescopes.     

Spectral Simulation and Conditioning to Local Continuity Trends in Geologic Modeling

Spectral simulation has gained application in building geologic models due to the advantage of better honoring the spatial continuity of petrophysical properties, such as reservoir porosity and shale volume. Distinct from sequential simulation methods, spectral simulation is a global algorithm in the sense that a global density spectrum is calculated once and the inverse Fourier transform is performed on the Fourier coefficient also only once to generate a simulation realization. The generated realizations honor the spatial continuity structure globally over the whole field instead of only within a search neighborhood, as with sequential simulation algorithms. However, the disadvantage of global spectral simulation is that it traditionally cannot account for the local information such as the local continuity trends, which are often observed in reservoirs and hence are important to be accounted for in geologic models. This disadvantage has limited wider application of spectral simulation in building geologic models. In this paper, we present ways of conditioning geologic models to the relevant local information. To account for the local continuity trends, we first scale different frequency components of the original model with local-amplitude spectrum ratios that are specific to the local trend. The sum of these scaled frequency components renders a new model that displays the desired local continuity trend. The implementation details of this new method are discussed and examples are provided to illustrate the algorithm.     

Climate‐driven generation of a fluvial sheet sand body at the Paleocene–Eocene boundary in north‐west Wyoming (USA)

An unusually thick and laterally persistent fluvial sand body crops out at the Paleocene–Eocene boundary within the northern part of the Bighorn Basin in northwest Wyoming, USA. The generation of this ‘Boundary Sandstone’ was previously ascribed to a period of reduced subsidence; however, a new carbon isotope record presented herein shows it to be intimately correlated to the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), an extreme global warming event ca. 56 Ma. This study evaluates the impacts of the PETM on fluvial deposition in the basin by integrating sedimentological data with geochemical, palaeoichnological, and palaeobotanical proxy records. Compared to pre‐ and post‐PETM fluvial sand bodies, the Boundary Sandstone is more highly amalgamated, both vertically and laterally, but shows no changes in lithofacies associations, palaeodispersal directions, palaeoflow depths, or palaeochannel widths. At its thickest, the Boundary Sandstone resides entirely within the main body of the PETM, an ca. 113 kyr time interval when global pCO₂ levels and temperatures were at their highest, and local mean annual rainfall low, floodplains well drained and vegetation comparatively sparse. The totality of data sets imply that the Boundary Sandstone is related to the preferential removal of fine‐grained floodplain deposits by either: (i) rapid readjustments in river gradients related to documented short‐term precipitation oscillations or (ii) reductions in the cohesiveness of overbank sediments related to decreased rooting density and water table fluctuations. Hence, short‐term climate perturbations may manifest within large‐scale depositional patterns in ways ostensibly like tectonics.     

The risk to New Zealand shellfish aquaculture from paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) toxins

New Zealand's reputation as a supplier of high quality food products is vital to the national economy; international consumers are acutely aware of food safety issues and markets are increasingly demanding higher standards. Filter feeding bivalves are particularly sensitive to the nature of the environment in which they are grown, and quality assurance is a major preoccupation of the shellfish aquaculture industry. With the exception of a couple of incidents, most notably the Gymnodinium catenatum blooms in 2000–2003, paralytic shellfish toxin (PST) contamination has, to date, not had an important effect on the economics and sustainability of the industry. However, the dinoflagellate species responsible for producing these toxins are not uncommon in New Zealand coastal phytoplankton communities, and it is important that awareness of the potential risk is maintained. This review summarises what we know about the causes and incidence of PST contamination from research and monitoring over the last 20 years, since it was first identified in New Zealand. It describes the dynamics of major events and their consequences, and evaluates what is likely to happen in the future as aquaculture expands into new areas with known histories of this problem.     

Extreme climatic events in the Amazon basin

During 2009 the Amazon basin was hit by a heavy flooding with a magnitude and duration few times observed in several decades. Torrential rain in northern and eastern Amazonia during the austral summer of 2008–2009 swelled the Amazon River and its tributaries. By July 2009, water levels of the Rio Negro, a major Amazon tributary, reached at Manaus harbor a new record, the highest mark of the last 107?years. During the 2008–2009 hydrological year, the rainy season on northern and northwestern Amazonia started prematurely, and was followed by a longer-than-normal rainy season. An anomalously southward migration of the ITCZ during May–June 2009, due to the warmer than normal surface waters in the tropical South Atlantic, was responsible for abundant rainfall in large regions of eastern Amazonia and Northeast Brazil from May to July 2009. We also compared the flood of 2009 with other major events recorded in 1989 and 1999. The hydrological consequences of this pattern were earlier than normal floods in Amazon northern tributaries, which peak discharges at their confluences with the main stem almost coincided with the peaks of southern tributaries. Since the time displacement of the contribution to the main stem of northern and southern Amazon tributaries is fundamental for damping flood waves in the main stem, the simultaneous combinations of peak discharges of tributaries resulted in an extreme flood.     

Downscaling of South America present climate driven by 4-member HadCM3 runs

The objective of this work is to evaluate climate simulations over South America using the regional Eta Model driven by four members of an ensemble of the UK Met Office Hadley Centre HadCM3 global model. The Eta Model has been modified with the purpose of performing long-term decadal integrations and has shown to reproduce “present climate”—the period 1961–1990—reasonably well when forced by HadCM3. The global model lateral conditions with a resolution of 2.5° latitude?×?3.75° longitude were provided at a frequency of 6?h. Each member of the global model ensemble has a different climate sensitivity, and the four members were selected to span the range of uncertainty encompassed by the ensemble. The Eta Model nested in the HadCM3 global model was configured with 40-km horizontal resolution and 38 layers in the vertical. No large-scale internal nudging was applied. Results are shown for austral summer and winter at present climate defined as 1961–90. The upper and low-level circulation patterns produced by the Eta-CPTEC/HadCM3 experiment set-up show good agreement with reanalysis data and the mean precipitation and temperature with CRU observation data. The spread in the downscaled mean precipitation and temperature is small when compared against model errors. On the other hand, the benefits in using an ensemble is clear in the improved representation of the seasonal cycle by the ensemble mean over any one realization. El Ni?o and La Ni?a years were identified in the HadCM3 member runs based on the NOAA Climate Prediction Center criterion of sea surface temperature anomalies in the Ni?o 3.4 area. The frequency of the El Ni?o and La Ni?a events in the studied period is underestimated by HadCM3. The precipitation and temperature anomalies typical of these events are reproduced by most of the Eta-CPTEC/HadCM3 ensemble, although small displacements of the positions of the anomalies occur. This experiment configuration is the first step on the implementation of Eta-CPTEC/HadCM3 upcoming experiments on climate change studies that are discussed in a companion paper.     

Assessment of regional seasonal predictability using the PRECIS regional climate modeling system over South America

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the accuracy and skill of the UK Met Office Hadley Center Regional Climate Model (HadRM3P) in describing the seasonal variability of the main climatological features over South America and adjacent oceans, in long-term simulations (30 years, 1961–1990). The analysis was performed using seasonal averages from observed and simulated precipitation, temperature, and lower- and upper-level circulation. Precipitation and temperature patterns as well as the main general circulation features, including details captured by the model at finer scales than those resolved by the global model, were simulated by the model. However, in the regional model, there are still systematic errors which might be related to the physics of the model (convective schemes, topography, and land-surface processes) and the lateral boundary conditions and possible biases inherited from the global model.