A radar-based verification of precipitation forecast for local convective storms

Local flash flood storms with a rapid hydrological response are a real challenge for quantitative precipitation forecasting (QPF). It is relevant to assess space domains, to which the QPF approaches are applicable. In this paper an attempt is made to evaluate the forecasting capability of a high-resolution numerical weather prediction (NWP) model by means of area-related QPF verification. The results presented concern two local convective events, which occurred in the Czech Republic (CR) on 13 and 15 July 2002 and caused local flash floods. We used the LM COSMO model (Lokall Model of the COSMO consortium) adapted to the horizontal resolution of 2.8 km over a model domain covering the CR. The 18 h forecast of convective precipitation was verified by using radar rainfall totals adjusted to the measured rain gauge data. The grid point-related root mean square error (RMSE) value was calculated over a square around the grid point under the assumption that rainfall values were randomly distributed within the square. The forecast accuracy was characterized by the mean RMSE over the whole verification domain. We attempt to show a dependence of both the RMSE field and the mean RMSE on the square size. The importance of a suitable merger between the radar and rain gauge datasets is demonstrated by a comparison between the verification results obtained with and without the gauge adjustment. The application of verification procedure demonstrates uncertainties in the precipitation forecasts. The model was integrated with initial conditions shifted by 0.5° distances. The four verifications, corresponding to the shifts in the four directions, show differences in the resulting QPF, which depend on the size of verification area and on the direction of the shift.     

Rapid biotic molecular transformation of fulvic acids in a karst aquifer

The study of molecular transformation processes of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) in the environment significantly contributes to a better understanding of the global biogeochemical organic matter cycle. In an oxic karst groundwater system, in which the most powerful abiotic DOC degradative reactions, photodegradation and metal-mediated redox chemistry, are at best marginal contributors, a near complete turnover of fulvic acids (FAs) has been observed within decades (∼60 years). Depletion of oxygen for a very extensive range of aliphatic and aromatic carbon chemical environments has been confirmed as well as the formation of novel classes of compounds, suggesting a major contribution from biotic processes. From these results we infer that FAs must be perceived as a rather active participant in the global carbon cycle. Molecular-level alterations of such magnitude and rapidity on such short-time scales ought to be considered as widespread in the processing of “refractory” DOC in the environment.     

Do We Really Need Mantle Components to Define Mantle Composition?

We discuss the concept of components in the Earth's mantle startingfrom a petrological and geochemical approach, but adopting anew method of projection of geochemical and isotopic data. Thisallows the compositional variability of magmatic associationsto be evaluated in multi-dimensional space, thus simultaneouslyaccounting for a large number of compositional variables. Wedemonstrate that ocean island basalts (OIB) and mid-ocean ridgebasalts (MORB) are derived from a marble-cake mantle, in whichdifferent degrees of partial melting of recycled lithosphere,which are heterogeneous in age and composition, contribute tothe magma genesis. This view is supported by the variabilityin the geochemical and isotopic signatures of OIB that are observedon the scale of a single ocean island as well as on that ofan ocean, mostly varying between two extreme compositions, thatare not strictly related to the commonly accepted mantle components(DMM, EMI, EMII, HIMU). Rather they are a distinctive featureof the mantle source sampled at each ocean island and are stronglydependent on the Pb isotope system. We recommend a change inperspective in studies of MORB–OIB geochemistry from onebased on physically distinct mantle components to a model basedon the existence of a marble-cake-like upper mantle. Althoughresembling the statistical upper mantle, this model impliesthat geochemical homogenization can be attained only withinthe limits of local mantle composition, so that a world-wideuniform depleted reservoir cannot be sampled by simply extendingthe volume of the region undergoing partial melting. KEY WORDS: geochemistry; isotope; mantle; OIB     

Gibbs sampler by sampling-importance-resampling

Among the Markov chain Monte Carlo methods, the Gibbs sampler has the advantage that it samples from the conditional distributions for each unknown parameter, thus decomposing the sample space. In the case the conditional distributions are not tractable, the Gibbs sampler by means of sampling-importance-resampling is presented here. It uses the prior density function of a Bayesian analysis as the importance sampling distribution. This leads to a fast convergence of the Gibbs sampler as demonstrated by the smoothing with preserving the edges of 3D images of emission tomography.     

Paleolimnological significance of spinose and non-spinose morphs of Pyrgophorus hibbardi (Leonard and Franzen, 1944)

The basal portion of the Ogallala Formation (=Laverne Formation) (Lower Pliocene) Beaver County, Oklahoma, contains an interesting assemblage of non-marine fossil molluscs that include both spinose and non-spinose forms of the aquatic gastropod species Pyrgophorus hibbardi. The origin and paleolimnological significance of the spinose morph has been a source of much conjecture that has influenced environmental reconstructions of this assemblage. In one hypothesis the spinose forms of P. hibbardi are assumed to be associated with brackish water conditions by analogy with some populations of a related hydrobiid Potamopyrgus jenkinsi. To test the hypothesis that the spinose forms lived under different water conditions than the non-spinose morphs, we analyzed 10 specimens each of the two varieties for stable oxygen and carbon isotope ratios in the shell aragonite.The mean isotope ratios for the smooth and spinose morphs show no significant difference (oxygen: t = 0.28, df = 18, P (T t) 0.78 n.s.; carbon: t = 0.96, df = 18, P (T t) 0.35 n.s). We conclude that the lack of a statistically significant difference between the means of the oxygen and carbon isotope values for the smooth and spinose morphs suggests that the two forms lived in waters having similar isotope signatures. The considerable range in oxygen isotope values recorded by both morphs of P. hibbardi, including values as high as 5–6, suggest that both morphs were associated with waters which were periodically evaporatively enriched in ¹⁸O.     

Fractal generation of surface area of porous media

Many natural porous geological rock formations, as well as engineered porous structures, have fractal properties, i.e., they are self-similar over several length scales. While there have been many experimental and theoretical studies on how to quantify a fractal porous medium and on how to determine its fractal dimension, the numerical generation of a fractal pore structure with predefined statistical and scaling properties is somewhat scarcer. In the present paper a new numerical method for generating a three-dimensional porous medium with any desired probability density function (PDF) and autocorrelation function (ACF) is presented. The well-known Turning Bands Method (TBM) is modified to generate three-dimensional synthetic isotropic and anisotropic porous media with a Gaussian PDF and exponential-decay ACF. Porous media with other PDF's and ACF's are constructed with a nonlinear, iterative PDF and ACF transformation, whereby the arbitrary PDF is converted to an equivalent Gaussian PDF which is then simulated with the classical TBM. Employing a new method for the estimation of the surface area for a given porosity, the fractal dimensions of the surface area of the synthetic porous media generated in this way are then measured by classical fractal perimeter/area relationships. Different 3D porous media are simulated by varying the porosity and the correlation structure of the random field. The performance of the simulations is evaluated by checking the ensemble statistics, the mean, variance and ACF of the simulated random field. For a porous medium with Gaussian PDF, an average fractal dimension of approximately 2.76 is obtained which is in the range of values of actually measured fractal dimensions of molecular surfaces. For a porous medium with a non-Gaussian quadratic PDF the calculated fractal dimension appears to be consistently higher and averages 2.82. The results also show that the fractal dimension is neither strongly dependent of the porosity nor of the degree of anisotropy assumed.     

Organohalogene als Karzinogene im Trinkwasser

Ausgehend von bekannten Untersuchungsergebnissen über die Belastung von Trinkwässern mit Organohalogenen und den Ergebnissen tierexperimenteller Untersuchungen sowie epidemiologischen Studien wird versucht, den gegenwärtigen Kenntnisstand hinsichtlich eines Zusammenhanges zwischen Krebshäufigkeit und Belastung von Trinkwasser mit Organohalogenen darzustellen. Es ist nicht Ziel dieser Literaturstudie, eine Risikoeinschätzung für spezifische Karzinogene oder karzinogen suspekte Verbindungen zu geben, bzw. eine endgültige Bewertung der Substanzen unter den Aspekten der Umweltkarzinogenese vorzunehmen.