Tendencies for the amounts of chemical material used for cloud seeding in Serbia

Weather modification activities are performed predominantly by cloud seeding. Some operational projects have been performed for more than half a century and cover planetary scales. These activities lead to a large amount of deposited chemical materials (seeding agents) at the ground level during precipitation. These deposits depend on the amount of the seeding agent. In the future, increased amounts of seeding agent deposits could be a serious problem due to various negative effects on the human environment. Therefore, the main intent of this paper is to determine trends for the seeding agent amount over certain areas of Serbia. Four areas covered by the Hail Suppression Project in Serbia are considered: the target area in central Serbia and areas in western and central Serbia, which are well-known hailfall regions. The annual seeding agent amounts show a slow decreasing trend because fewer seedings were performed during the last decade of the last century, which was due to economic reasons. In contrast, the annual seeding agent amounts of the other analysed areas indicate an increasing trend induced by the transfer of rockets to these hailfall regions. The main difference among small areas is the mean agent amount and its maximum time position as a consequence of the high spatial and time variability of the hail. However, a sharp decreasing trend that is influenced by the implementation of new methodologies, seeding agents and delivery tools may also be a factor in the implementation of cloud seeding projects. The given method is not only strictly applicable locally and may be applied to any other cloud seeding scenario and seeding area. Dominantly increasing trends in the agent amount indicate that the importance of weather modifications in the future will be greater than ever and will have both positive and negative effects.     

Adapting project management method and ANFIS strategy for variables selection and analyzing wind turbine wake effect

We present a project management methodology designed for the selection of wind turbines wake effect most influential parameters, who need to run wind farm project for large energy conversion. Very frequently, the managers of these projects are not project management professionals, so they need guidance to have autonomy, using minimal time and documentation resources. Therefore, agile method is adapted to assist the project management. Wind energy poses challenges such as the reduction in the wind speed due to the wake effect by other turbines. If a turbine is within the area of turbulence caused by another turbine, or the area behind another turbine, the wind speed suffers a reduction and, therefore, there is a decrease in the production of electricity. In order to increase the efficiency of a wind farm, analyzing the parameters, which have influence on the wake effect, is one of the focal research areas. To maximize the power produced in a wind farm, it is important to determine and analyze the most influential factors on the wake effects or wake wind speeds since the effect has most influence on the produced power. This procedure is typically called variable selection, and it corresponds to finding a subset of the full set of recorded variables that exhibits good predictive abilities. In this study, architecture for modeling complex systems in function approximation and regression was used, based on using adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS). Variable searching using the ANFIS network was performed to determine how the five parameters affect the wake wind speed. Our article answers the call for renewing the theoretical bases of wind farm project management in order to overcome the problems that stem from the application of methods based on decision-rationality norms, which bracket the complexity of action and interactions in projects.     

The chemical composition of the halo and evolutionary problems

The chemical composition of the Milky-Way halo is studied on the basis of a sample of metal-poor (logarithmic metallicity less than –1) globular clusters. The histogram obtained may be interpreted in the terms of the classical galaxy formation theory of Eggen, Lynden-Bell and Sandage. Interestingly enough, this is in a rough agreement with the data on metallicity of high-redshift damped Ly-alpha and Ly-alpha forest systems. This may serve the important purpose of constraining the nature and the formation timescale of MACHOs discovered through gravitational microlensing experiments. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

An inadvertent transport of the seeding material as a result of cloud modification

Successful seeding of clouds in weather modification experiments essentially depends on the seeding time and dynamics, amount of seeding material and location of the initial seeding area. In the present study, we focus on the influence of the initial seeding zone location on the transport of seeding agent material into the target cloud. In addition, the inadvertent transport of seeding material is analysed. During weather modification activities, a lot of seeding material can be transferred far from the seeding zone in a downwind direction. The primary motivation for this research was to prove this statement. We use a three-dimensional, mesoscale cloud-resolving model to achieve our goal. We performed sensitivity tests with respect to the distance between the mass centres of the initial seeding area and the cloud. Different seeding scenarios are analysed. Our principal findings are as follows: (1) For distances between the mass centres of the initial seeding area and the cloud below 2.5 km, all seeding agent material would be activated after a short time. For distances above 10 km, most of the seeding agent would remain inactivated, because horizontal transport of the seeding agent becomes more important than transport induced by the main updraft. For these scenarios, the seeding agent is injected in the cold peripheral part of the cloud. (2) Sensitivity tests show that the inactivated seeding agent would remain close to the seeding area if the seeding is performed below cloud base. This effect occurs even for large distances between the seeding area and the target cloud (>20 km) due to low-level convergence. Thus, this seeding method suppresses the inert seeding material from being transferred far from the seeding zone. (3) The complete seeding material stays inactivated if the seeding is performed between the ?8 and ?12°C isotherms in front of the increased reflectivity zone. As a consequence, it would be transferred far from its initial area. The cloud would not be able to capture the seeding agent even during its greatest lateral extent.     

Seasonal and interannual variations in pigments in the Adriatic Sea

Spatial and temporal variability of pigments was studied from the CZCS satellite data and fromin situ chlorophyll and transparency for the period 1979-1985. The three Adriatic sites, Northern, Middle, and Southern Adriatic are differently influenced by meteorological, hydrological and oceanographic parameters. The differences between seasonalin situ chlorophyll and remotely sensed pigment concentrations (from CZCS satellite data) from the Adriatic are large in winter. Through the correlation analysis, pigments were compared to meteo-oceanographic and hydrological parameters from different Adriatic sites. The PCA (principal component analysis) was applied to the pigment data series and significant components were compared. Different correlations are obtained for warm and cold periods of the year pointing to seasonal differences in the underlying mechanism of pigment variability. The first PC is influenced mainly by temperature. In the warm period more parameters seem to influence the pigment field, than in the cold period. The pigments in the Adriatic are in good correlation to a number of hydrologic and meteo-oceanographic factors.     

Modification of the degree-day formula for diurnal meltwater generation and refreezing

Theoretical and Applied Climatology - The standard degree-day, temperature-index approach to calculating snowmelt generation and refreezing (the SDD method) is convenient and popularly used but...     

Intergalactic Pressure and the Maximal Extent of Gaseous Haloes of Field Galaxies

The problem of influence of the ambiental intergalactic pressure on extended gas associated with normal field galaxies is briefly discussed. An empirically established characteristic radius of absorption can not be explained in the context of simple two-phase halo model as a consequence of pressure equilibrium of the hot halo with the smooth intergalactic medium. This conclusion is based upon the stringent constraints on the temperature and density of the intergalactic plasma obtained through the CMBR measurements. On the other hand, ram-pressure stripping caused by peculiar motions of galaxies does present a viable alternative for the hot halo truncation. It is shown that for a particular set of chosen parameters, a simple model is capable of producing the absolute upper limit on the extent of gas associated with the galaxy. The values obtained are compatible with the results of the recent QSO absorption-line studies, and are significantly higher than the radius at which the cooling timescale of the halo gas equates the dynamical timescale.     

Numerical modeling of thunderstorm

Summary A brief review of numerical models of thunderstorms is presented. The attempts of modeling these clouds have to deal with an extremely broad range of microphysical and dynamic processes. Basic concepts of thunderstorm modeling, 1-D, 2-D and 3-D models are considered. Particular attention is given to the basic equations and to the capability of these models to predict characteristics of the tunderstorms. A brief treatment is also given of hail growth in thunderstorm models.

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Zusammenfassung Im folgenden wird eine knappe Übersicht numerischer Gewittermodelle präsentiert. Bei der Modellierung von Gewitterwolken muß ein ausgesprochen weiter Bereich von mikrophysikalischen und dynamischen Prozessen beachtet werden. Grundkonzepte der Gewittermodellierung, 1-D-, 2-D- und 3-D-Modelle werden hierzu herangezogen. Besondere Aufmerksamkeit gilt dabei den Ausgangsgleichungen sowie den potentiellen Möglichkeiten dieser Modelle, Charakteristika der Gewitter vorherzusagen. Weiters wird auch das Hagelwachstum in Gewittermodellen kurz behandelt.

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With 8 Figures     

Dependence of accumulated precipitation on cloud drop size distribution

Convective precipitation is the main cause of extreme rainfall events in small areas. Its primary characteristics are both large spatial and temporal variability. For this reason, the monitoring of accumulated precipitation fields (liquid and solid components) at the surface is difficult to carry out through the use of rain gauge networks or remote-sensing observations. Alternatively, numerical models seem to be the most powerful tool in simulating convective precipitation for various analyses and predictions. Due to a lack of comparisons between modelled and observed precipitation characteristics over a long period of time, we focus our research on comparisons between observations and three model samples of accumulated convective precipitation over a particular study area. We use a numerical cloud model with two model schemes involving the unified Khrgian–Mazin size distribution of cloud drops and a model scheme involving a monodisperse cloud droplet spectrum and the Marshall–Palmer size distribution for raindrops, respectively. For comparison, we have selected a study area with a sounding site. Our analysis shows that the model version with the Khrgian–Mazin size distribution exhibits a better agreement with the observed mean, median and range of extreme values of accumulated convective precipitation. Model simulations with the Khrgian–Mazin size distribution most closely match observations, with a correlation coefficient of 0.91. Use of the Marshall–Palmer size distribution, on the other hand, systemically underestimates the observed precipitation and has the lowest correlation coefficient among the methods, 0.83. Such an investigation is crucial to improve predictions of accumulated convective precipitation for various climatological and hydrological analyses and predictions.     

Wave height statistics for seakeeping assessment of ships in the Adriatic Sea

The paper presents methodology and results of the development of sea states statistics for the Adriatic Sea. Such statistics is still lacking despite a need of the shipping industry. The presented study is based on the Atlas of Climatology containing statistics of sea states observations in the Adriatic Sea made by merchant ships during the period of 15 years. The results, presented in the Atlas in the form of “wave roses”, are digitalized and empirical frequencies of sea state occurrences are obtained. The 3-parametric Weibull distribution is then fitted through empirical data points enabling the “smoothening” of the histogram. The resulting histogram is compared with other studies for the long-term prediction of the sea states in the Adriatic Sea. The paper concludes with the discussion on the accuracy and applicability of the results.