The impact of climate change on extreme precipitation in Sicily,Italy

Increasing precipitation extremes are one of the possible consequences of a warmer climate. These may exceed the capacity of urban drainage systems, and thus impact the urban environment. Because short‐duration precipitation events are primarily responsible for flooding in urban systems, it is important to assess the response of extreme precipitation at hourly (or sub‐hourly) scales to a warming climate. This study aims to evaluate the projected changes in extreme rainfall events across the region of Sicily (Italy) and, for two urban areas, to assess possible changes in Depth‐Duration‐Frequency (DDF) curves. We used Regional Climate Model outputs from Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment for Europe area ensemble simulations at a ~12 km spatial resolution, for the current period and 2 future horizons under the Representative Concentration Pathways 8.5 scenario. Extreme events at the daily scale were first investigated by comparing the quantiles estimated from rain gauge observations and Regional Climate Model outputs. Second, we implemented a temporal downscaling approach to estimate rainfall for sub‐daily durations from the modelled daily precipitation, and, lastly, we analysed future projections at daily and sub‐daily scales. A frequency distribution was fitted to annual maxima time series for the sub‐daily durations to derive the DDF curves for 2 future time horizons and the 2 urban areas. The overall results showed a raising of the growth curves for the future horizons, indicating an increase in the intensity of extreme precipitation, especially for the shortest durations. The DDF curves highlight a general increase of extreme quantiles for the 2 urban areas, thus underlining the risk of failure of the existing urban drainage systems under more severe events.     

Large-sample hydrology: recent progress,guidelines for new datasets and grand challenges

ABSTRACT

Large-sample hydrology (LSH) relies on data from large sets (tens to thousands) of catchments to go beyond individual case studies and derive robust conclusions on hydrological processes and models. Numerous LSH datasets have recently been released, covering a wide range of regions and relying on increasingly diverse data sources to characterize catchment behaviour. These datasets offer novel opportunities, yet they are also limited by their lack of comparability, uncertainty estimates and characterization of human impacts. This article (i) underscores the key role of LSH datasets in hydrological studies, (ii) provides a review of currently available LSH datasets, (iii) highlights current limitations of LSH datasets and (iv) proposes guidelines and coordinated actions to overcome these limitations. These guidelines and actions aim to standardize and automatize the creation of LSH datasets worldwide, and to enhance the reproducibility and comparability of hydrological studies.     

The Little Ice Age climate of New Zealand reconstructed from Southern Alps cirque glaciers: a synoptic type approach

Little Ice Age (LIA) austral summer temperature anomalies were derived from palaeoequilibrium line altitudes at 22 cirque glacier sites across the Southern Alps of New Zealand. Modern analog seasons with temperature anomalies akin to the LIA reconstructions were selected, and then applied in a sampling of high-resolution gridded New Zealand climate data and global reanalysis data to generate LIA climate composites at local, regional and hemispheric scales. The composite anomaly patterns assist in improving our understanding of atmospheric circulation contributions to the LIA climate state, allow an interrogation of synoptic type frequency changes for the LIA relative to present, and provide a hemispheric context of the past conditions in New Zealand. An LIA summer temperature anomaly of ?0.56 °C (±0.29 °C) for the Southern Alps based on palaeo-equilibrium lines compares well with local tree-ring reconstructions of austral summer temperature. Reconstructed geopotential height at 1,000 hPa (z1000) suggests enhanced southwesterly flow across New Zealand occurred during the LIA to generate the terrestrial temperature anomalies. The mean atmospheric circulation pattern for summer resulted from a crucial reduction of the ‘HSE’-blocking synoptic type (highs over and to the west of NZ; largely settled conditions) and increases in both the ‘T’- and ‘SW’-trough synoptic types (lows passing over NZ; enhanced southerly and southwesterly flow) relative to normal. Associated land-based temperature and precipitation anomalies suggest both colder- and wetter-than-normal conditions were a pervasive component of the base climate state across New Zealand during the LIA, as were colder-than-normal Tasman Sea surface temperatures. Proxy temperature and circulation evidence were used to corroborate the spatially heterogeneous Southern Hemisphere composite z1000 and sea surface temperature patterns generated in this study. A comparison of the composites to climate mode archetypes suggests LIA summer climate and atmospheric circulation over New Zealand was driven by increased frequency of weak El Niño-Modoki in the tropical Pacific and negative Southern Annular Mode activity.     

Orion: A 1–5 Micron Focal Plane for the 21st Century

The Orion program is a project to develop a 2K × 2K infrared focal plane using InSb p-on-n diodes for detectors. It is the natural follow-up to the successful Aladdin 1K × 1K program started in the early 90's. The work is being done at the Raytheon Infrared Operations Division (RIO, previously known as the Santa Barbara Research Center) by many of the same people who created the Aladdin focal plane. The design is very similar to the successful Aladdin design with the addition of reference pixels, whole array readout (no quadrants), two-adjacent-side buttability, and a packaging design that includes going directly to the ultimate focal plane size of 4K × 4K. So far we have successfully made a limited number of hybrid modules with InSb detectors. In this paper we will describe the design features and test data taken from some of these devices. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Levels of chlorinated hydrocarbons and trace metals in bivalves and nearshore sediments from the Dominican Republic

Bivalves (Crassostrea rizhophorae, Isognomon alatus, Codakia orbicularis Linné, and Tellina fausta) and sediment samples collected from 12 locations along the Dominican Republic coastline were used to assess the degree of nearshore contamination by selected chlorinated hydrocarbons and heavy metals. Concentrations of total chlordanes, DDTs and PCBs ranged from 0.51 to 7.47 ng/g, < MDL to 30.9 ng/g and 11.3 to 82.3 ng/g, and from < MDL to 1.73 ng/g, 0.21 to 12.5 ng/g and 0.46 to 41.9 ng/g in bivalves and surface sediments, respectively. The concentration ranges of predominantly anthropogenic Cu, Pb and Zn were 3.08–866 μg/g, 0.08–1.46 μg/g and 22.9–4380 μg/g in bivalve soft parts and 1.01–111 mg/g, 0.420–134 μg/g and 1.96–277 μg/g in surface sediments, respectively. Mercury concentrations ranged from 0.290 to 7.02 μg/g and from 0.096 to 0.565 μg/g in both matrices. The relatively high Hg concentrations found in bivalves from two stations in Bahia Samana, near to a known source of past Hg contamination in the sediments, require a more in-depth survey of the area. In general the concentrations of selected chlorinated hydrocarbons and trace metals, compared with those reported for the same matrices in the Caribbean and west Atlantic coastal areas, show at present the existence of only very localized contamination problems in the Dominican Republic.     

Mathematical Analysis of a Model of River Channel Formation

The study of overland flow of water over an erodible sediment leads to a coupled model describing the evolution of the topographic elevation and the depth of the overland water film. The spatially uniform solution of this model is unstable, and this instability corresponds to the formation of rills, which in reality then grow and coalesce to form large-scale river channels. In this paper we consider the deduction and mathematical analysis of a deterministic model describing river channel formation and the evolution of its depth. The model involves a degenerate nonlinear parabolic equation (satisfied on the interior of the support of the solution) with a super-linear source term and a prescribed constant mass. We propose here a global formulation of the problem (formulated in the whole space, beyond the support of the solution) which allows us to show the existence of a solution and leads to a suitable numerical scheme for its approximation. A particular novelty of the model is that the evolving channel self-determines its own width, without the need to pose any extra conditions at the channel margin.     

Endogenous growth in channelized komatiite lava flows: evidence from spinifex-textured sills at Pyke Hill and Serpentine Mountain,Western Abitibi Greenstone Belt,Northeastern Ontario,Canada

Spinifex-textured sills (i.e., veins) characterized by komatiitic magmas that have intruded their own volcanic-piles have long been recognized. For instance, in the early 1970s, Pyke and coworkers, in their classic work at Pyke Hill in Munro Township, noted that not all spinifex-bearing ultramafic rocks formed as lava flows, rather some were clearly emplaced as small dikes and sills. Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain spinifex-textured sills: intrusion into a cold host, filter pressing, or drainage of residual liquid. However, these do not satisfactorily explain the phenomenon. Field and petrographic observations at Pyke Hill and Serpentine Mountain demonstrate that spinifex-bearing komatiite sills and dikes were emplaced during channel inflation processes when new magma was intruded into a cooler, semi-consolidated but permeable cumulate material. Komatiitic liquids were intruded into the olivine cumulate rocks near the boundary between the spinifex and the cumulate zones of well-organized to organized komatiite flows. Spinifex-textured sills are generally tabular in morphology, stacked one above another, with curviplanar contacts sub-parallel to stratigraphy. Some sills exhibit complex digitated apophyses. Thinner sills typically have a random olivine spinifex texture similar, though generally composed of coarser crystals, to that of komatiite lava flows. Thicker sills exhibit more complex organization of their constituent crystals characterized by zones of random olivine spinifex, overlying zones of organized coarse spinifex crystals similar to those found in lava flows. They have striking coarse dendritic spinifex zones composed of very large olivine crystals, up to several centimetres long and up to 1 cm wide that are not observed in lava flows. Typically, at the sill margins, the cumulate material of the host flow is composed of euhedral to subhedral olivine crystals that are larger than those distal to the contact. Many of these margin-crystals have either concentric overgrowth shells or dendritic olivine overgrowths that grew from the cumulate-sill contact toward the sill interior. The dendrites grew on pre-existing olivine cumulate at the contact in response to a sharp temperature gradient imposed by the intrusion of hot material, whereas the concentric overgrowths formed as new melt percolated into the unconsolidated groundmass of the host-flow cumulate material. Spinifex-textured sills and dikes occur in well-organized to organized flows that are interpreted to have formed by “breakouts” above and peripheral to lava pathways (channels/conduits) as a result of inflation that accompanied voluminous komatiitic eruptions responsible for the construction and channelization of komatiitic flow fields. The spinifex-textured dikes and sills represent komatiitic lava that was originally emplaced into the channel roof during periods of episodic inflation that resulted in lava breakouts and was subsequently trapped in the “roof rocks” during periods of channel deflation. Accordingly, the occurrence of spinifex-textured sills and dikes may indicate proximity to, and aid in the identification and delineation of lava channel-ways that could potentially host Ni–Cu–(PGE) mineralization within komatiitic lava flow-fields.     

Examination of climate risk using a modified uncertainty matrix framework—Applications in the water sector

Previous climate risk assessments provide important methodological insights into how to derive tractable research questions and the appropriate use of data under uncertainty, as well as identifying steps that benefit from stakeholder involvement. Here we propose the use of a framework for the systematic and objective exploration of climate risk assessments. The matrix facilitates a breakdown of information about aim and context, main results, methodological choices, stakeholder involvement, sources and characteristics of uncertainties and overall weaknesses. We then apply the matrix to three risk assessments in the water sector to explore some methodological strengths and weaknesses of approaches strongly linked to climate model outputs (top-down) versus those that originate from local knowledge of climate exposures (bottom-up), and demonstrate that closer integration with social and physical sciences is more likely to yield robust climate risk assessments.     

A multi-model ensemble of downscaled spatial climate change scenarios for the Dommel catchment, Western Europe

Regional or local scale hydrological impact studies require high resolution climate change scenarios which should incorporate some assessment of uncertainties in future climate projections. This paper describes a method used to produce a multi-model ensemble of multivariate weather simulations including spatial–temporal rainfall scenarios and single-site temperature and potential evapotranspiration scenarios for hydrological impact assessment in the Dommel catchment (1,350 km²) in The Netherlands and Belgium. A multi-site stochastic rainfall model combined with a rainfall conditioned weather generator have been used for the first time with the change factor approach to downscale projections of change derived from eight Regional Climate Model (RCM) experiments for the SRES A2 emission scenario for the period 2071–2100. For winter, all downscaled scenarios show an increase in mean daily precipitation (catchment average change of +9% to +40%) and typically an increase in the proportion of wet days, while for summer a decrease in mean daily precipitation (−16% to −57%) and proportion of wet days is projected. The range of projected mean temperature is 7.7°C to 9.1°C for winter and 19.9°C to 23.3°C for summer, relative to means for the control period (1961–1990) of 3.8°C and 16.8°C, respectively. Mean annual potential evapotranspiration is projected to increase by between +17% and +36%. The magnitude and seasonal distribution of changes in the downscaled climate change projections are strongly influenced by the General Circulation Model (GCM) providing boundary conditions for the RCM experiments. Therefore, a multi-model ensemble of climate change scenarios based on different RCMs and GCMs provides more robust estimates of precipitation, temperature and evapotranspiration for hydrological impact assessments, at both regional and local scale.