Vulnerability assessment in a volcanic risk evaluation in Central Mexico through a multi-criteria-GIS approach

The Valley of Toluca is a major industrial and agricultural area in Central Mexico, especially the City of Toluca, the capital of The State of Mexico. The Nevado de Toluca volcano is located to the southwest of The Toluca Basin. Results obtained from the vulnerability assessment phase of the study area (5,040 km² and 42 municipalities) are presented here as a part of a comprehensive volcanic risk assessment of The Toluca Basin. Information has been gathered and processed at a municipal level including thematic maps at 1:250,000 scale. A database has been built, classified and analyzed within a GIS environment; additionally, a Multi-Criteria Evaluation (MCE) approach was applied as an aid for the decision-making process. Cartographic results were five vulnerability maps: (1) Total Population, (2) Land Use/Cover, (3) Infrastructure, (4) Economic Units and (5) Total Vulnerability. Our main results suggest that the Toluca and Tianguistenco urban and industrial areas, to the north and northeast of The Valley of Toluca, are the most vulnerable areas, for their high concentration of population, infrastructure, economic activity, and exposure to volcanic events.     

Long-term effects of anthropogenic CO<Subscript>2</Subscript> emissions simulated with a complex earth system model

A new complex earth system model consisting of an atmospheric general circulation model, an ocean general circulation model, a three-dimensional ice sheet model, a marine biogeochemistry model, and a dynamic vegetation model was used to study the long-term response to anthropogenic carbon emissions. The prescribed emissions follow estimates of past emissions for the period 1751–2000 and standard IPCC emission scenarios up to the year 2100. After 2100, an exponential decrease of the emissions was assumed. For each of the scenarios, a small ensemble of simulations was carried out. The North Atlantic overturning collapsed in the high emission scenario (A2) simulations. In the low emission scenario (B1), only a temporary weakening of the deep water formation in the North Atlantic is predicted. The moderate emission scenario (A1B) brings the system close to its bifurcation point, with three out of five runs leading to a collapsed North Atlantic overturning circulation. The atmospheric moisture transport predominantly contributes to the collapse of the deep water formation. In the simulations with collapsed deep water formation in the North Atlantic a substantial cooling over parts of the North Atlantic is simulated. Anthropogenic climate change substantially reduces the ability of land and ocean to sequester anthropogenic carbon. The simulated effect of a collapse of the deep water formation in the North Atlantic on the atmospheric CO₂ concentration turned out to be relatively small. The volume of the Greenland ice sheet is reduced, but its contribution to global mean sea level is almost counterbalanced by the growth of the Antarctic ice sheet due to enhanced snowfall. The modifications of the high latitude freshwater input due to the simulated changes in mass balance of the ice sheet are one order of magnitude smaller than the changes due to atmospheric moisture transport. After the year 3000, the global mean surface temperature is predicted to be almost constant due to the compensating effects of decreasing atmospheric CO₂ concentrations due to oceanic uptake and delayed response to increasing atmospheric CO₂ concentrations before.     

Sea/land breeze climatological characteristics along the northern Croatian Adriatic coast

Summary Climatological characteristics along the northern Croatian Adriatic coast have been examined for nine meteorological stations for the summertime sea/land breeze circulation. The stations considered are Pula-airport, Opatija, Rijeka, Senj, Malinska, Rijeka-airport, Mali Lošinj, Rab and Zadar. The hourly surface measurements at each station from June to September for the period 1991–2004 as well as the radiosoundings in Zadar (from 2002 to 2004) were used for the analysis. A dataset with the sea/land breeze days was formed according to the several criteria. The mean daily maxima of both air and sea surface temperatures were more influenced by the large scale disturbances toward north (e.g. in Rijeka or Opatija) compared to the values for e.g. Zadar. Furthermore, the influence of the large scale disturbances diminished toward the south concerning the sea–land temperature difference only at the stations placed at Rijeka Bay and Velebit channel. The strongest sea breeze was found at Pula-airport and the most frequent ones at Opatija and Zadar. At Senj the rarest, the weakest and the shortest sea breeze was observed. The climatological records of wind speed and air-sea temperature difference (ΔT) showed for Opatija, Malinska and Zadar that the maximum measured wind speed is around 4.5 °C confirming the nonlinear relationship between the sea breeze speeds and the ΔT during the day. At most stations, the clockwise rotation of the hodographs prevails which is typical for the Northern hemisphere due to Coriolis force, with the exception at Senj and Malinska. While the hodographs for Pula, Rijeka-airport and Mali Lošinj display a later onset of the prevailing sea breeze because of the interaction among several sea breeze circulations, the results for Opatija, Zadar and Senj show considerably distorted hodographs because of the nearby channeling of the air flow.     

Spectral analysis of the “Koshava” wind

Summary “Koshava” is a gusty wind of changeable intensity, blowing from a south-easterly direction, over Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria. It is caused by the interaction between the synoptic circulation and the orography of the Carpathian and the Balkan mountains. This paper analyzes wind data measured at the Belgrade-Observatory during the longest period of consecutive days of “Koshava” which occurred from 14 January to 13 February 1972. Mean hourly wind speed data has been examined using spectral analysis. The power spectra are calculated using autocorrelation spectral analysis, the multi-taper method and wavelet transform. The maximum of which is about 122 h (5 days) corresponds to the time span of synoptic processes.     

Risk analysis of possible impacts of climate change on South Australian wheat production

This study presents a model-based risk assessment of wheat production under projected climate change by 2080 in eight locations of South Australia. The vulnerability of wheat production under future climate change was quantitatively evaluated via a risk analysis in which the identification of critical yield thresholds applies. Research results show that risk (conditional probability of not exceeding the critical yield thresholds) increased more or less across all locations under the most likely climate change. Wheat production in drier areas such as Minnipa, Orroroo and Wanbi will not be economically viable under the most likely climate change. Intensive studies on adaptation are now required.     

Economic consequences of consideration of permanence, leakage and additionality for soil carbon sequestration projects

This paper introduces, explains, and describes methods for addressing the issues of permanence, leakage, and additionality (PLA) of agricultural soil carbon sequestration (ASCS) activities at the project level. It is important to cast these as project-level issues, because they relate to the integrity and consistency of using location-specific ASCS projects as an offset against GHG emissions generated in other sectors (e.g., energy). The underlying objective is to understand and quantify what the net carbon benefits of an ASCS project are once we account for the fact that (1) the sequestered carbon may be stored impermanently, (2) the project may displace emissions outside the project boundaries (leakage), and (3) the project’s carbon sequestration may not be entirely additional to what would have occurred anyway under business-as-usual (no project) conditions. This article evaluates methods for identifying and estimating PLA and gauges the potential magnitude of these effects on the economic returns to a project. This work reflects ongoing collaborative efforts of the authors and Bruce McCarl (Texas A&M University), Allan Sommer, Jui-Chen Yang, and Laurel Clayton (RTI International), Sandra Brown (Winrock International), Ken Andrasko and Ben DeAngelo (US EPA), and various participants in the World Resources Institute/World Business Council workgroup to develop GHG project reporting protocols. All opinions, errors and omissions are those of the authors only.     

Thermochronology and exhumation rates of granitic intrusions at Mesa Central,Mexico

ABSTRACT

The Mesa Central of Mexico (MC) is an elevated plateau located 2000 m above sea level in central Mexico, where intrusions outcrop that register the history of exhumation-erosion occurring during the Late Cretaceous-Paleogene. The tectonic history of the region records formation of the Late Cretaceous-Paleogene ‘Mexican orogen’; this was followed by extension of the entire region and several plutons were then exhumed. The age and magnitude of the crustal uplift and erosion occurring during exhumation has not been addressed to date. Therefore, this study reports the crystallization and cooling ages of two plutons, the Tesorera Granodiorite and the Comanja Granite, and estimates their emplacement depths. Based on these data, the exhumation age of the Tesorera Granodiorite is estimated to be between ~73 Ma and ~63 Ma at an exhumation rate of ~528 m/m. y. and that of the Comanja Granite is 52 Ma and 48 Ma at an exhumation rate of ~2500 m/m. y. Exhumation-erosion event of the Tesorera Granodiorite was located on the trace of the San Luis-Tepehuanes Fault System and that of the Comanja Granite on the a trace of the El Bajío Fault System. Furthermore, the high exhumation rate in the Comanja Granite suggests that gravitational collapse played an important role during exhumation.     

Diffusive-Shock-Accelerated Interplanetary Ions At Several Energies During the Solar Cycle 21 Maximum

The most intense energetic particle (mainly proton) events in the energy range 36–1600 keV, during the years of maximum activity of solar cycle 21 (1978 to 1982), have been studied with regard to their spectra, temporal profiles, source location at the Sun, interplanetary plasma parameters and interplanetary magnetic field topology. In all the events, the particles were accelerated by the 'Diffusive Shock' acceleration mechanism, because all the events were 'long-duration events', shock-associated, and their spectra fitted to a power-law energetic particle spectrum dJ/dE E^-\gamma with the exponent values ranging from 1.25 up to 1.94, with a mean value of 1.60 ± 0.06. We also show that the spectral indexes are related to the shock properties by a linear expression. The solar sources were located on a wide longitudinal belt extending from 50^ W up to 73^ E. Neither the spectral indexes nor the shock parameters present any dependence on the source location at the Sun. Finally, only one event showed the complete set of properties that characterize the presence of a magnetic cloud associated with the event.     

A Method to Determine the Solar Synodic Rotation Rate and the Height of Tracers

The dependence of the measured apparent synodic solar rotation rate on the height of the chosen tracer is studied. A significant error occurs if the rotation rate is determined by tracing the apparent position of an object above the photospheric level projected on the solar disc. The centre-to-limb variation of this error can be used to determine simultaneously the height of the object and the true synodic rotation rate. The apparent (projected) heliographic coordinates are presented as a function of the height of the traced object and the coordinates of its footpoint. The relations obtained provide an explicit expression for the apparent rotation rate as a function of the observed heliographic coordinates of the tracer, enabling an analytic least-squares fit expression to determine simultaneously the real synodic rotation rate and the height of the tracer.     

High-redshift galaxies, their active nuclei and central black holes

We demonstrate that the luminosity function of the recently detected population of actively star-forming galaxies at redshift z  = 3 and the B -band luminosity function of quasi-stellar objects (QSOs) at the same redshift can both be matched with the mass function of dark matter haloes predicted by standard variants of hierarchical cosmogonies for lifetimes of optically bright QSOs anywhere in the range 10⁶ to 10⁸ yr. There is a strong correlation between the lifetime and the required degree of non-linearity in the relation between black hole and halo mass. We suggest that the mass of supermassive black holes may be limited by the back-reaction of the emitted energy on the accretion flow in a self-gravitating disc. This would imply a relation of black hole to halo mass of the form M _bh ∝  v ⁵_halo ∝  M ^5/3_halo and a typical duration of the optically bright QSO phase of a few times 10⁷ yr. The high integrated mass density of black holes inferred from recent black hole mass estimates in nearby galaxies may indicate that the overall efficiency of supermassive black holes for producing blue light is smaller than previously assumed. We discuss three possible accretion modes with low optical emission efficiency: (i) accretion at far above the Eddington rate, (ii) accretion obscured by dust, and (iii) accretion below the critical rate leading to an advection-dominated accretion flow lasting for a Hubble time. We further argue that accretion with low optical efficiency might be closely related to the origin of the hard X-ray background and that the ionizing background might be progressively dominated by stars rather than QSOs at higher redshift.