Improving GSMaP V06 precipitation products over the Upper Tocantins River basin in the Brazilian Cerrado,based on local rain-gauge network

Theoretical and Applied Climatology - Gridded precipitation products from remote sensing are currently available and could potentially enhance the use of precipitation data in regions with sparse...     

Intense drought and flooding events in the Rio Negro and relation with the tropical Pacific and Atlantic variability modes

The relationship of the hydrological variability of the Rio Negro in Manaus and the dominant large-scale climate variability patterns for the 1902–2007 period is investigated using the quantile method and composite analyses. Variations of the Rio Negro Level (RNL) during its 3-month high (May to July—MJJ) and low (October to December—OND) phases are examined separately. The El Niño (La Niña) related maximum warming (cooling) in the central tropical Pacific during its mature and decaying stages modulates the atmospheric circulation in the tropics and displaces the Walker circulation cell eastward (westward), so that its sinking (rising) branch occurs over western Amazon and causes negative (positive) precipitation anomalies in this region. These anomalous climate conditions occur before the Rio Negro high phase (MJJ) and contribute to reduce (increase) the RNL and lead to a very low (very high) event in the river. On the other hand, the SST variability modes in the tropical Atlantic mainly during the transition from wet to dry season modulate the precipitation variations over western Amazon in OND. The very high events are more frequent after the 1960’s decade and the very low events, before the 1930’s decade. Therefore, the occurrence of these events contains a multidecadal scale variability. The results also indicate that the variations in the rainfall in western Amazon occur up to 9 months in advance and modulate the RNL in Manaus. The results presented here might be useful for monitoring purposes of the RNL.

     

An attempt to reconstruct the rainfall regime of andalusia (southern Spain) from 1601 A.D. to 1650 A.D. using historical documents

This study attempts to reconstruct the rainfall conditions of southern Spain from 1600 A.D. to 1650 A.D. during the so-called Little Ice Age. Weather information was taken from original documentary sources (urban annals, local and religious histories, municipal documents, letters) in two cities in the region, Seville and Granada. A numerical index was established to characterize the rainfall, its conditions, evolution and geographical distribution. Results were compared with modern precipitation data and with the results of other studies on historical climate.     

Similar potential ATP-P production and enzymatic activities in the microplankton community off Concepción (Chile) under oxic and suboxic conditions

The effects of the oxygen minimum zone on the metabolism of the heterotrophic microplankton community (0.22-100 μm) in the Humboldt Current System, as well as the factors controlling its biomass production, remain unknown. Here we compare the effect of four sources of dissolved organic carbon (glucose, oxaloacetate, glycine, leucine) on microbial biomass production (such as ATP-P) and the potential enzymatic activities involved in catabolic pathways under oxic and suboxic conditions. Our results show significant differences (p < 0.05) in the ATP-P production when induced by the different substrates that are used as dissolved organic carbon herein. The induction of ATP-P production is enhanced from glucose < oxaloacetate < glycine < leucine. Nevertheless, for individual substrates, no significant differences were found between incubation under oxic and suboxic conditions except in the case of leucine. For this amino acid, the induction of ATP-P synthesis was higher under suboxic than oxic conditions. The data sets of all the substrates used showed greater potential ATP-P production under suboxic than oxic conditions. The results of the potential enzymatic activities suggest that malate dehydrogenase has the highest signal of NADH oxidization activity in the microbial assemblage. Furthermore, for all experiments, the malate dehydrogenase activity data set had a significant relationship with ATP-P production. These findings suggest that the microbial community inhabiting the oxygen minimum zone has the same or greater potential growth than the community inhabiting more oxygenated strata of the water column and that malate dehydrogenase is the activity that best represents the metabolic potential of the community.     

Modeling of storm-induced coastal flooding for emergency management

This paper describes a model package that simulates coastal flooding resulting from storm surge and waves generated by tropical cyclones. The package consists of four component models implemented at three levels of nested geographic regions, namely, ocean, coastal, and nearshore. The operation is automated through a preprocessor that prepares the computational grids and input atmospheric conditions and manages the data transfer between components. The third generation spectral wave model WAM and a nonlinear long-wave model calculate respectively the wave conditions and storm surge over the ocean region. The simulation results define the water levels and boundary conditions for the model SWAN to transform the storm waves in coastal regions. The storm surge and local tides define the water level in each nearshore region, where a Boussinesq model uses the wave spectra output from SWAN to simulate the surf-zone processes and runup along the coastline. The package is applied to hindcast the coastal flooding caused by Hurricanes Iwa and Iniki, which hit the Hawaiian Island of Kauai in 1982 and 1992, respectively. The model results indicate good agreement with the storm-water levels and overwash debris lines recorded during and after the events, demonstrating the capability of the model package as a forecast tool for emergency management.     

Effects of Explicit Urban-Canopy Representation on Local Circulations Above a Tropical Mega-City

The Advanced Regional Prediction System (ARPS) is coupled with the tropical town energy budget (tTEB) scheme to analyze the effects of the urban canopy circulation over the metropolitan area of São Paulo and its interactions with the sea breeze and mountain-valley circulation in the eastern state of São Paulo, Brazil. Two experiments are carried out for the typical sea-breeze event occurring on 22 August 2014 under weak synoptic forcing and clear-sky conditions: (a) a control run with the default semi-desert surface parametrization and; (b) a tTEB run for the urban canopy of São Paulo. A realistic land-use database over the south-eastern domain of Brazil is used in the downscaling simulation to a horizontal grid resolution of 3 km. Our results indicate that ARPS effectively simulates features of the nighttime and early morning land-breeze circulation, which is affected by the surrounding hills and the nocturnal heat island of São Paulo. By early afternoon, the south-eastern sea-breeze circulation moves inland perpendicular to the upslope of the Serra do Mar scarp, which generates a line of moisture convergence and updrafts further inland. Later, the convergence line reaches São Paulo and interacts with the circulation arising from the urban heat island (UHI), which increases the moisture convergence and strength of updrafts. The surface energy balance indicates that the UHI is caused by large sensible heat storage within the urban canopy during the day, which is later released in the afternoon and at night. The simulations are verified with available radiosonde and surface weather station data, land-surface-temperature estimates from the moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer, as well as the National Center for Atmospheric Research reanalysis databases. The three-dimensional geometry of the urban canyons within the tTEB scheme consistently improves the thermodynamically-induced circulation over São Paulo.     

A quadrature-free method for simulation and inversion of 1.5D direct current (DC) borehole measurements

Resistivity inverse problems are routinely solved in order to characterize hydrocarbon bearing formations. They often require a large number of forward problems simulations. When considering a one dimensional (1D) planarly layered media, semi-analytical methods can be employed in order to solve a single forward problem in a fraction of a second. However, in some situations, a large number of (over one million) simulations is required, preventing this method to be used as a real time (logging) alternative. In this paper, we propose a novel semi-analytical method that dramatically reduces the total computational time, so it can be employed for real time inversion. In our proposed method, we select an ad hoc basis representation for the spectral solution such that its inverse Hankel transform can be computed analytically. The proposed method requires a pre-process that is expensive when compared with a single evaluation in classical semi-analytical methods. However, subsequent evaluations can be rapidly obtained, decreasing thus the total computational time by orders of magnitude when the number of required forward simulations is large.     

The Aguacaliente Fault,source of the Cartago 1910 destructive earthquake (Costa Rica)

On 4 May 1910, the most destructive earthquake in the history of Costa Rica (Ms 6.4) destroyed the city of Cartago, a major city located in the Valle Central of Costa Rica. Using both palaeo‐seismological and morphotectonic analyses, we have found evidence that points to the Aguacaliente Fault (AF) as the source of this earthquake. This structure is a N100° E trending, strike‐slip fault situated to the south of Cartago and within a wide band of deformation. We excavated two trenches near Bermejo, south of Cartago. We found evidence of three surface ruptures within the last 1000 years on this fault. The age of the most recent rupture is consistent with the Cartago 1910 earthquake. The AF is a seismogenic source capable of producing large earthquakes (Mw 6.5–6.9) with an estimated recurrence interval of about 500 years.     

Heterogeneity and homogeneity of Southern Brazilian beaches: A morphodynamic and statistical approach

The characterization and beach morphodynamic differentiation along 620 km of Rio Grande do Sul state (RS) coastline has been principally done using beach profiles and their resulting morphometric parameters from the early 1990s through the present. The objective of the present work is to make a regional characterization, grouping the beaches with similar morphodynamic behavior along the RS coastline using multivariate statistical tools. For such purpose, a database containing topographic profiles and environment characteristics of 32 sites along the state coastline was built. A clustering analysis followed by a multidimensional scaling (MDS) analysis and an analysis of similarities (ANOSIM) was performed. The clustering and MDS results suggest that the data could be merged into six groups, one with dissipative tendencies, another with intermediate to reflective tendencies and three groups with intermediate characteristics. Each group showed distinct morphodynamic characteristics. Such differences are shown by the ANOSIM to be statistically significant. The three intermediate groups were differentiated in terms of beach mobility and percentage of medium-size sand, with higher mobility related to higher amounts of medium-size sand. The use of multivariate statistical techniques allowed a good differentiation between the RS beaches. Based on the results, it is suggested that the RS coastline can be segmented into seven different morphodynamic sectors. This approach can be used by management agencies to reduce potential oil spill impacts as well as decrease other beach hazards as well as for differentiate morphodynamical stages.