CDM and international technology transfer: empirical evidence on wind power

This article examines the effect of the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) on the international transfer of wind power technologies. The analysis is conducted using patent data from over 100 countries during the period 1988–2008. It is found that transfers from Annex I countries to non-Annex I countries are significantly affected by the contemporaneous establishment of projects under the CDM. However, when taking into account the cumulative effect of CDM projects, the effect is negative. Finally, the effect of domestic absorptive capacity in the host country is positive and significant. Because involvement with the CDM may increase the latter, this is an important area for further research.     

Triggered earthquake study in Tranh River No. 2 (Vietnam) Hydropower Reservoir

This article presents the results of investigating triggered earthquakes in the vicinity of Tranh River No.2 Hydropower Reservoir in recent years. It is found that earthquakes occurred in the vicinity of Tranh River Hydropower Reservoir, probably associated with the Trà My — Trà BÓng fault zone. It is estimated that this fault is capable of hosting an earthquake of M~6.1. The ‘b’ value for this earthquake sequence is 0.83, which is higher than the regional ‘b’ value of 0.60. We estimate that the return period of earthquakes of M=4.5, 5.0, 5.5 and 6.0 is 11, 29, 76 and 198 months respectively. On October 22, 2012 an earthquake M_S=4.6, I₀=6.0 (MSK-64) occurred at 13:41:28 hrs GMT. The epicenter of the earthquake was located at a distance of 5.5 km away from the center of the dam towards the west. The focal depth is about 4.5 km, and the rupture length is about 1.8 km.     

A new SPH-based approach to simulation of granular flows using viscous damping and stress regularisation

The smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) method was recently extended to simulate granular materials by the authors and demonstrated to be a powerful continuum numerical method to deal with the post-flow behaviour of granular materials. However, most existing SPH simulations of granular flows suffer from significant stress oscillation during the post-failure process, despite the use of an artificial viscosity to damp out stress fluctuation. In this paper, a new SPH approach combining viscous damping with stress/strain regularisation is proposed for simulations of granular flows. It is shown that the proposed SPH algorithm can improve the overall accuracy of the SPH performance by accurately predicting the smooth stress distribution during the post-failure process. It can also effectively remove the stress oscillation issue in the standard SPH model without having to use the standard SPH artificial viscosity that requires unphysical parameters. The predictions by the proposed SPH approach show very good agreement with experimental and numerical results reported in the literature. This suggests that the proposed method could be considered as a promising continuum alternative for simulations of granular flows.     

Impact of the western North Pacific subtropical high on the East Asian monsoon precipitation and the Indian Ocean precipitation in the boreal summertime

The western North Pacific subtropical high (WNPSH) is a crucial component of the East Asian summer monsoon (EASM) system and significantly influences the precipitation in East Asia. In this study, distinguished role of WNPSH on the EASM and Indian Ocean monsoon (IOM) are investigated. Based on the boreal summer mean field of 850-hPa geopotential height and its interannual variability, the WNPSH index (WNPSHI) is defined by the areaaveraged geopotential height over the region [110°–150°E, 15°–30°N]. The WNPSHI is significantly related to the precipitation over the East Asian monsoon (EAM) region [105°–150°E, 30°–40°N] and IOM region [70°–105°E, 5°–15°N]. Rainfalls over these two regions have good correlation with WNPSH developments and the geopotential height fields at 850 hPa related to the EAM precipitation and IOM precipitation have remarkably different teleconnection patterns in boreal summer. These features exhibit that EAM and IOM precipitations have different type of development processes associated with different type of WNPSH each other. Focusing on the relationships among the EAM precipitation, IOM precipitation, and the WNPSH variabilities, we assume that WNPSH and EAM precipitation are usually fluctuated simultaneously through the sea surface temperature (SST)-subtropical ridge-monsoon rainfall feedback, whereas the IOM precipitation varies through the different process. To clarify the relationships among WNPSH, EAM, and IOM, two cases are selected. The first one is the case that all of WNPSH, EAM, and IOM are in phase (WE(+)I(+)), and the second one is the case that WNPSH and EAM are in phase and WNPSH/EAM and IOM is out of phase (WE(+)I(?)). These two cases are connected to the thermal forcing associated with SST anomalies over the eastern Pacific and Indian Ocean. This different thermal forcing induces the change in circulation fields, and then anomalous circulation fields influence the moisture convergence over Asian monsoon regions interactively. Therefore, the monsoon rainfall may be changed according to the thermal conditions over the tropics.     

Temperature and precipitation in the context of the annual cycle over Asia: Model evaluation and future change

Since the early or late arrival of monsoon rainfall can be devastating to agriculture and economy, the prediction of the onset of monsoon is a very important issue. The Asian monsoon is characterized by a strong annual cycle with rainy summer and dry winter. Nevertheless, most of monsoon studies have focused on the seasonal-mean of temperature and precipitation. The present study aims to evaluate a total of 27 coupled models that participated in phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) for projection of the time evolution and the intensity of Asian monsoon on the basis of the annual cycle of temperature and precipitation. And future changes of onset, retreat, and intensity of monsoon are analyzed. Four models for good seasonal-mean (GSM) and good harmonic (GH) groups, respectively, are selected. GSM is based on the seasonal-mean of temperature and precipitation in summer and winter, and GH is based on the annual cycle of temperature and precipitation which represents a characteristic of the monsoon. To compare how well the time evolution of the monsoon is simulated in each group, the onset, retreat, and duration of Asian monsoon are examined. The highest pattern correlation coefficient (PCC) of onset, retreat, and duration between the reanalysis data and model outputs demonstrates that GH models’ MME predicts time evolution of monsoon most precisely, with PCC values of 0.80, 0.52, and 0.63, respectively. To predict future changes of the monsoon, the representative concentration pathway 4.5 (RCP 4.5) experiments for the period of 2073-2099 are compared with historical simulations for the period of 1979-2005 from CMIP5 using GH models’ MME. The Asian monsoon domain is expanded by 22.6% in the future projection. The onset date in the future is advanced over most parts of Asian monsoon region. The duration of summer Asian monsoon in the future projection will be lengthened by up to 2 pentads over the Asian monsoon region, as a result of advanced onset. The Asian monsoon intensity becomes stronger with the passage of time. This study has important implication for assessment of CMIP5 models in terms of the prediction of time evolution and intensity of Asian monsoon based on the annual cycle of temperature and precipitation.     

Teleconnections associated with Northern Hemisphere summer monsoon intraseasonal oscillation

The boreal summer intraseasonal oscillation (BSISO) has strong convective activity centers in Indian (I), Western North Pacific (WNP), and North American (NA) summer monsoon (SM) regions. The present study attempts to reveal BSISO teleconnection patterns associated with these dominant intraseasonal variability centers. During the active phase of ISM, a zonally elongated band of enhanced convection extends from India via the Bay of Bengal and Philippine Sea to tropical central Pacific with suppressed convection over the eastern Pacific near Mexico. The corresponding extratropical circulation anomalies occur along the waveguides generated by the North African-Asian jet and North Atlantic-North European jet. When the tropical convection strengthens over the WNPSM sector, a distinct great circle-like Rossby wave train emanates from the WNP to the western coast of United States (US) with an eastward shift of enhanced meridional circulation. In the active phase of NASM, large anticyclonic anomalies anchor over the western coast of US and eastern Canada and the global teleconnection pattern is similar to that during a break phase of the ISM. Examination of the evolution of the BSISO teleconnection reveals quasi-stationary patterns with preferred centers of teleconnection located at Europe, Russia, central Asia, East Asia, western US, and eastern US and Canada, respectively. Most centers are embedded in the waveguide along the westerly jet stream, but the centers at Europe and Russia occur to the north of the jet-induced waveguide. Eastward propagation of the ISO teleconnection is evident over the Pacific-North America sector. The rainfall anomalies over the elongated band near the monsoon domain over the Indo-western Pacific sector have an opposite tendency with that over the central and southern China, Mexico and southern US, providing a source of intraseasonal predictability to extratropical regions. The BSISO teleconnection along and to the north of the subtropical jet provides a good indication of the surface sir temperature anomalies in the NH extratropics.     

Comparison of atmospheric water vapor profiles obtained by GPS, MWR, and radiosonde

In studies of weather changes and, especially, in enhancing the performance of rainfall prediction, it is important to measure the water vapor distribution in the atmosphere. We estimated atmospheric water vapor profiles for fourteen days, including periods of severe weather conditions, by processing ground-based Global Positioning System (GPS) measurements and compared our results with microwave radiometer (MWR) and radiosonde (RAOB) observations. As a result, we found that the standard deviation (STD) of wet refractivity profiles between GPS with MWR was smaller than the STD between RAOB and MWR refractivities; the average STD was 9.3 mm km^?1. In particular, we found that GPS-based wet refractivities detected inversion layers close to those from MWR when the observed GPS satellites were well distributed in the azimuth and elevation angle directions. When the satellite geometry was better, the mean error of GPS wet refractivities with respect to MWR was reduced to 0.4 from 3.2 mm km^?1 for altitudes lower than 3 km. In some cases, however, the precision of GPS refractivities are lower than that of RAOB ones relative to MWR results.     

Diurnal and spatial variabilities of monsoonal CG lightning and precipitation and their association with the synoptic weather conditions over South Korea

The spatial and temporal variations in cloud-to-ground (CG) lightning and precipitation during the summer monsoon months in Korea have been analyzed in relation to the regional synoptic weather conditions. The lightning data used in this study were collected from a lightning detection network installed by the Korean Meteorological Administration, while the precipitation data were collected from 386 Automatic Weather Stations spread over the entire Korean Peninsula during 2000 to 2001. A distinctive morning peak of precipitation is observed over the midwest region of Korea. Along the east coast, little precipitation and CG flash counts are found. Despite the strong afternoon peaks of convective rainfall due to the high elevation over the southern inland region, the south coast shows nocturnal or early morning peaks, which represents a common oceanic pattern of flash counts. In 2000, the nighttime peak for lightning counts dominates over the southern area, while the afternoon peak was strong in the midland during the summer, mainly due to the northward transportation of moisture to the Korean Peninsula. Conversely, the strong afternoon peak for the southern region was confronted with early morning peaks in the midwestern region during 2001. The eastward transport of moisture has been analyzed and was considered to be dominant in 2001. The study of several warm and cold type fronts in 2000 and 2001 indicate that the warm type fronts in 2000 were associated with very little lightning, while the cold type fronts appeared to be responsible for the occurrence of abundant lightning in 2001, thereby, indicating that the warm and cold type fronts were representative of the local lightning distribution in the respective years.     

Interdecadal change in the Northern Hemisphere seasonal climate prediction skill: part I. The leading forced mode of atmospheric circulation

Using observations and 1-month lead hindcast data from six coupled atmosphere–ocean climate models, this study investigates the interdecadal change in the leading maximum covariance analysis mode (MCA1) of atmospheric circulation in response to the changes in the El Niño and Southern Oscillation (ENSO) occurred around late 1970s. We focus on boreal winter climate variability and predictability over the North Pacific–North American (NPNA) region using December–January–February prediction initiated from November 1st in the period of 1960–1980 (P1) and 1981–2001 (P2). Observed analysis reveals that ENSO variability, the related tropical convective activity, and thus the MCA1 are considerably enhanced from P1 to P2. As a result, surface climate anomalies over the NPNA are more significantly correlated with the MCA1 in P2 than P1, particularly over North America. The six coupled models and their multi-model ensemble not only are capable of capturing the interdecadal change of the MCA1 and its relationship with surface air temperature and precipitation over the NPNA regions but also have significantly higher forecast skills for the MCA1 and the surface climate anomalies in P2 than P1. However, models have systematic biases in the spatial distribution of the MCA1. It is demonstrated that the interdecadal change in the MCA1 should contribute to the improved forecast skill of the NPNA climate during recent epoch.