The arrival rate of severe storms off the east coast of Canada: Research note

Abstract

Modern structural analysis techniques are heavily dependent upon statistical methods. The determination of design loads involves the calculation of long‐return period environmental parameters such as the 100‐year wind speed or the 100‐year wave height. One way in which to do this is to use the theory of compound distributions rather than the usual extreme value theory. Of critical importance, however, is the determination of which probability distributions to use. It is shown in this paper that the arrival rate of storms on Canada's East Coast is Poisson distributed and, therefore, that compound distributions may be used to calculate long return‐period environmental parameters.     

Thermal Impact on Damaged Boom Clay and Opalinus Clay: Permeameter and Isostatic Tests with μCT Scanning

Within the framework of the TIMODAZ project, permeameter tests and isostatic tests were performed on Boom Clay and Opalinus Clay in order to assess the impact of temperature, pore water composition, and confining stress on the sealing of damaged samples of Boom Clay and Opalinus Clay. A microfocus X-ray computed tomography technique was used to visualize the evolution of the sealing process. Compared to the fast sealing of Boom Clay, the sealing of Opalinus Clay was much slower. The heating showed a significant, favorable impact on the sealing behavior of Opalinus Clay under permeameter test conditions, while the sealing behavior of Boom Clay appeared to be unaffected. Tests performed under isostatic conditions did not reveal a significant influence of a heating–cooling cycle on the sealing behavior of these clays. The reappearance of the fractures or holes in the samples after dismantling confirms earlier observations which showed that after sealing, the original mechanical properties are not recovered. In other words, a heating cycle does not seem to induce healing.     

Sea Surface Salinity Observations from Space with the SMOS Satellite: A New Means to Monitor the Marine Branch of the Water Cycle

While it is well known that the ocean is one of the most important component of the climate system, with a heat capacity 1,100 times greater than the atmosphere, the ocean is also the primary reservoir for freshwater transport to the atmosphere and largest component of the global water cycle. Two new satellite sensors, the ESA Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) and the NASA Aquarius SAC-D missions, are now providing the first space-borne measurements of the sea surface salinity (SSS). In this paper, we present examples demonstrating how SMOS-derived SSS data are being used to better characterize key land–ocean and atmosphere–ocean interaction processes that occur within the marine hydrological cycle. In particular, SMOS with its ocean mapping capability provides observations across the world’s largest tropical ocean fresh pool regions, and we discuss from intraseasonal to interannual precipitation impacts as well as large-scale river runoff from the Amazon–Orinoco and Congo rivers and its offshore advection. Synergistic multi-satellite analyses of these new surface salinity data sets combined with sea surface temperature, dynamical height and currents from altimetry, surface wind, ocean color, rainfall estimates, and in situ observations are shown to yield new freshwater budget insight. Finally, SSS observations from the SMOS and Aquarius/SAC-D sensors are combined to examine the response of the upper ocean to tropical cyclone passage including the potential role that a freshwater-induced upper ocean barrier layer may play in modulating surface cooling and enthalpy flux in tropical cyclone track regions.     

Statistics for Modeling Heavy Tailed Distributions in Geology: Part II. Applications

In this paper, we present three diverse types of applications of extreme value statistics in geology, namely: earthquakes magnitudes, diamond values, and impact crater size distribution on terrestrial planets. Each of these applications has a different perspective toward tail modeling, yet many of these phenomena exhibit heavy or long tails which can be modeled by power laws. It is shown that the estimation of important tail characteristics, such as the extreme value index, is directly linked to the interpretation of the underlying geological process. Only the most extreme data are useful for studying such phenomena, so thresholds must be selected above which the data become power laws. In the case of earthquake magnitudes, we investigate the use of extreme value statistics in predicting large events on the global scale and for shallow intracontinental earthquakes in Asia. Large differences are found between estimates obtained from extreme value statistics and the usually applied standard statistical techniques. In the case of diamond deposits, we investigate the impact of the most precious stones in the global valuation of primary deposits. It is shown that in the case of Pareto-type behavior, the expected value of few extreme stones in the entire deposit has considerable influence on the global valuation. In the case of impact crater distributions, we study the difference between craters distributions on Earth and Mars and distributions occurring on other planets or satellites within the solar system. A striking result is that all planets display the same distributional tail except for Earth and Mars. In a concluding account, we demonstrate the apparent loghyperbolic variation in all of the above-mentioned examples.     

Legitimacy issues in public participation in coastal decision making processes: Case studies from Belgium and France

Public participation is one of the central principles of Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM). However, within current public participation practice in coastal decision making there remain questions regarding whether or not the project leaders or participation processes can be considered legitimate. The paper explores the issue of legitimacy, examining case studies of coastal decision making processes from Belgium and France, focusing on the legal constraints for public participation including degree of formality and government style. It reveals that there are legitimacy issues in public participation related to the legal and institutional framework of the project, as well as to the knowledge base, and characteristics of the stakeholders and their interests. This study concludes that legitimacy issues in an ICZM process cannot be solved entirely through an institutional framework and associated legislation.     

Diffusion-driven transport in clayrock formations

Clay mineral-rich sedimentary formations are currently under investigation to evaluate their potential use as host formations for installation of deep underground disposal facilities for radioactive waste (e.g. Boom Clay (BE), Opalinus Clay (CH), Callovo–Oxfordian argillite (FR)). The ultimate safety of the corresponding repository concepts depends largely on the capacity of the host formation to limit the flux towards the biosphere of radionuclides (RN) contained in the waste to acceptably low levels. Data for diffusion-driven transfer in these formations shows extreme differences in the measured or modelled behaviour for various radionuclides, e.g. between halogen RN (³⁶Cl, ¹²⁹I) and actinides (^238,235U, ²³⁷Np, ²³²Th, etc.), which result from major differences between RN of the effects on transport of two phenomena: diffusion and sorption. This paper describes recent research aimed at improving understanding of these two phenomena, focusing on the results of studies carried out during the EC Funmig IP on clayrocks from the above three formations and from the Boda formation (HU).     

Studying the migration behaviour of selenate in Boom Clay by electromigration

For the disposal of high-level waste (HLW) in a deep geological formation as Boom Clay, safety assessment studies have shown that long lived ⁷⁹Se is one of the more critical fission products. Therefore, the knowledge of its migration properties (diffusion, retention) through the geological barrier (Boom Clay) is of paramount importance. The migration behaviour of selenium strongly depends on its speciation. Under reducing conditions, selenide would be the dominant species and selenium migration would mainly be controlled by the low solubility of Se(−II)-bearing minerals. However Se species are often found in redox disequilibrium and more oxidized species might also coexist. Therefore, the study of selenate migration requires attention, as it might be the most mobile selenium species in the host rock. Electromigration experiments performed with a ⁷⁵Se-labeled selenate in Boom Clay indicate a high mobility for this species. The apparent diffusion coefficient (D_app) of selenate in Boom Clay is estimated from electromigration experiments performed under different electric fields. Using two independent approaches, the value of D_app for selenate is shown to fall in the range from 1.7×10⁻¹¹ to 6.2×10⁻¹¹ m² s⁻¹. Moreover, no reduction of selenate in Boom Clay was observed.     

Statistics for Modeling Heavy Tailed Distributions in Geology: Part I. Methodology

Many natural phenomena exhibit size distributions that are power laws or power law type distributions. Power laws are specific in the sense that they can exhibit extremely long or heavy tails. The largest event in a sample from such distribution usually dominates the underlying physical or generating process (floods, earthquakes, diamond sizes and values, incomes, insurance). Often, the practitioner is faced with the difficult problem of predicting values far beyond the highest sample value and designing his system either to profit from them, or to protect against extreme quantiles. In this paper, we present a novel approach to estimating such heavy tails. The estimation of tail characteristics such as the extreme value index, extreme quantiles, and percentiles (rare events) is shown to depend primarily on the number of extreme data that are used to model the tail. Because only the most extreme data are useful for studying tails, thresholds must be selected above which the data are modeled as power laws. The mean square error (MSE) is used to select such thresholds. A semiparametric bootstrap method is developed to study estimation bias and variance and to derive confidence limits. A simulation study is performed to assess the accuracy of these confidence limits. The overall methodology is applied to the Harvard Central Moment Tensor catalog of global earthquakes.