7th World Congress on water resources Rabat,Morocco, 13–18 May, 1991

Submitted to United Nations Environment Programme Nairobi, Kenya by International Water Resources Association.     

Density and pressure change in an occluding cyclone

Summary On October 20, 1974, an occluding cyclone, which did not intensify any more crossed central Europe. Considerable pressure tendencies reflecting the displacement of the storm were observed during its passage. Although horizontal density advection contributed least to density and thus pressure changes, it was still of decisive importance for both. The other larger contributors, whose net effect was usually opposed to the effect of horizontal advection, nearly cancelled each other. Thus there was a fair correlation between horizontal advection and density tendency, and the actual density and pressure changes frequently turned out smaller than if caused by advection alone.It has been shown that in the lowest 3 km usually. For the mass divergence this inequality was observed in the frontal zones where horizontal advection was considerable. In particular, warm air advection reduced the effect of horizontal velocity convergence near the warm front. Thus, vertical mass divergence became predominant and caused a density decline. Cold air advection accompanying the cold front was responsible for horizontal divergence to be overcompensated by vertical mass convergence which induced rising density.With 11 Figures     

The effect of moist layer location on the stability of trapped gravity waves in an almost saturated atmosphere

Summary The stability characteristics of trapped gravity waves, generated by an isothermal bounded tanh (z) velocity profile in the presence of a saturated finite layer, are studied. The saturated layer is introduced at different levels above the inlection point and the variations of moisture content, layer thickness and distance from the origin are examined. The growthyrates and phase speeds of the unstable modes are obtained by solving numerically the equations of motion in the linear, inviscid, Boussinesq limit, via the technique of Lalas and Einaudi (1976).It is shown that the presence of the saturated layer can significantly affect the stability characteristics of the waves. inereases in moisture, layer thickness and distance of the layer from the inflection point are found to amplify the wave response because the saturated layer behaves as a top boundtry to the shear flow. The presence of such effective boundaries is found to stabilize short wavelengths and destabilize longer wavelengths. Finally, an application of the results to a rainband case produces values of the wave parameters in good agreement with the observed ones.With II Figures     

Evaluation and application of dialysis porewater samplers for microbiological studies at sediment-water interfaces

The equilibrium diffusion technique has become a valuable tool for ecological and biogeochemical studies in aquatic environments. In sediment ecosystems, changes in concentration of microbial metabolites with increasing depth can be determined dependably and reproducibly with this technique. Since the permeation characteristics of the membranes employed are crucial, selecting the proper membrane requires knowledge about its behavior under conditions which prevail in the natural environment. Thirteen polymer sheets were evaluated comparing permeation terms for biogeochemically relevant solutes, biodegradability, and mechanical strength. Cellulose-based dialysis membranes are most satisfactory when employed in low temperature anoxic environments. For this membrane, correction terms were calculated to account for diffusion losses during retrieval and sampling. Optimal incubation times can now be predicted from experimentally determined permeation coefficients for several porewater solutes. Dialysis porewater samplers (DPS) have been successfully applied during more than 100 independent experiments for the collection of interstitial water from surface sediments. DPS were used for water depths as deep as 290 meters.