Thermally induced wind patterns in the Sahelian city of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso

The urban surface wind field in the dry-tropical city of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso was studied based on data collected at one urban and one suburban station during early dry season. An intra-urban thermal breeze, creating almost opposite wind directions at the two sites, was found during nights with high atmospheric stability. The high atmospheric stability suggests a decoupling of the surface wind layer from the layer above, allowing the wind system to develop due to the strong intra-urban temperature gradients in the city. Frequent temporary breakdowns of the thermal wind system were noticed, generally generating a turn in wind direction towards that of the regional wind, thus indicating a re-coupling with a stronger wind flow in the wind layer above.     

Quantifying internal variability in a regional climate model: a case study for Southern Africa

This study aims at presenting various methodologies to separate the reproducible and irreproducible components of seasonal and intraseasonal climate variability simulated by a regional climate model over Southern Africa (south of 15°S), during an austral summer rainy season representative of the climatology. To that end, a 30-member ensemble simulation is performed using WRF laterally forced by the ERA40 reanalyses. Retained metrics include the analysis of weather regimes, signal-to-noise ratio, inter-member standard deviation and coefficient of variation. At the seasonal timescale, simulated rainfall amounts generally show a strong reproducibility, except in the subtropics and over the southern part of the Mozambique Channel. There, the number of rainy days is roughly similar in all members, while their average intensity varies extensively. At the intraseasonal timescale, the chronology of weather regimes, derived from the 500?hPa geopotential height, is highly reproducible. Rainfall variability is much less reproducible, especially in the central parts of the domain and near its outflow boundaries. Analysis of a South African regional index nonetheless indicates that both wet and dry spells tend to be accurately simulated and occur in phase in most members, demonstrating that they are embedded in large-scale variability patterns. Internal variability is lastly related to the lateral forcings along the domain boundaries. An objective classification of inflow/outflow mass fluxes allows identification of the recurrent synoptic configurations that favor strong or weak regional reproducibility. The main uncertainties concern the basic morphological features of rain-bearing systems (i.e., their spatial extension, location and propagation speed). Consequences for tropical-temperate interactions are then discussed.     

Rotational atmospheric circulation during North Atlantic-European winter: the influence of ENSO

The dominant variability modes of the North Atlantic-European rotational flow are examined by applying a principal component analysis (PCA/EOF) to the 200?hPa streamfunction mid-winter anomalies (Jan?CFeb monthly means). The results reveal that, when this norm is used, the leading mode (EOF1) does not correspond to the traditional North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO, which appears in our analysis as the second leading mode, EOF2) but is the local manifestation of the leading hemispheric streamfunction EOF. The regression of this regional mode onto the global SST field exhibits a clear El Ni?o signature, with no signal over the Atlantic, while the associated upper height anomalies resemble the Tropical/Northern Hemisphere (TNH) pattern. East of North America, this TNH-like wavetrain produces a meridional dipole-like pattern at lower levels. Although in some ways this pattern resembles the NAO (EOF2), the dynamics of these two modes are very different in that only EOF2 is associated with a latitudinal shift of the North Atlantic stormtrack. Thus, the choice of the streamfunction norm in the EOF analysis allows the separation of two different phenomena that can produce similar dipolar surface pressure anomalies over the North Atlantic but that have different impact on European climate. These two modes also differ on their contribution to variability at lower levels: while NAO-EOF2 is mostly confined to the North Atlantic, TNH-EOF1 has a more annular, global character. At upper levels NAO-EOF2 also produces a global pattern but with no annular structure, reminiscent of the ??circumglobal?? teleconnection.     

High-resolution subtropical summer precipitation derived from dynamical downscaling of the NCEP/DOE reanalysis: how much small-scale information is added by a regional model?

This study assesses the regional-scale summer precipitation produced by the dynamical downscaling of analyzed large-scale fields. The main goal of this study is to investigate how much the regional model adds smaller scale precipitation information that the large-scale fields do not resolve. The modeling region for this study covers the southeastern United States (Florida, Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, and North Carolina) where the summer climate is subtropical in nature, with a heavy influence of regional-scale convection. The coarse resolution (2.5° latitude/longitude) large-scale atmospheric variables from the National Center for Environmental Prediction (NCEP)/DOE reanalysis (R2) are downscaled using the NCEP/Environmental Climate Prediction Center regional spectral model (RSM) to produce precipitation at 20?km resolution for 16 summer seasons (1990?C2005). The RSM produces realistic details in the regional summer precipitation at 20?km resolution. Compared to R2, the RSM-produced monthly precipitation shows better agreement with observations. There is a reduced wet bias and a more realistic spatial pattern of the precipitation climatology compared with the interpolated R2 values. The root mean square errors of the monthly R2 precipitation are reduced over 93% (1,697) of all the grid points in the five states (1,821). The temporal correlation also improves over 92% (1,675) of all grid points such that the domain-averaged correlation increases from 0.38 (R2) to 0.55 (RSM). The RSM accurately reproduces the first two observed eigenmodes, compared with the R2 product for which the second mode is not properly reproduced. The spatial patterns for wet versus dry summer years are also successfully simulated in RSM. For shorter time scales, the RSM resolves heavy rainfall events and their frequency better than R2. Correlation and categorical classification (above/near/below average) for the monthly frequency of heavy precipitation days is also significantly improved by the RSM.     

Site effects of the Roio basin, L��Aquila

During the microzonation studies of the April 6th, 2009 L??Aquila earthquake, we observed local seismic amplifications in the Roio area??a plane separated from L??Aquila city center by mount Luco. Six portable, digital instruments were deployed across the plain from 15 April to mid-May 2009. This array recorded 152 aftershocks. We analyzed the ground motion from these events to determine relative site amplification within the plain and on surrounding ridges. Horizontal over vertical spectral ratio on noise data (HVSRN), aftershock recordings (HVEQ) and standard spectral ratio (SSR) showed amplifications at 1.3 and 4.0?Hz on quaternary deposits. Seismic amplifications in the frequency range of 4 and 6?Hz were also observed on a carbonate ridge of Colle di Roio, on the northwestern border of the plateau. A small amplification was noticed near the top of mount Luco, another rocky site. Large discrepancies in the amplification levels between methods have been observed for these sites, but the HVSRN, HVEQ and SSR gave similar results at the stations located in the Roio plain. On the rocky sites, the SSR was more reliable than the HVSRN at estimating the transfer function of the site, even if the resonance frequency seemed to be well detected by the latter method.     

Response of the topside ionosphere over Arecibo to a moderate geomagnetic storm

We analyze the data obtained using the Arecibo incoherent scatter radar to examine the response of the topside ionosphere to a moderate geomagnetic storm that occurred during the period March 7–11, 2008. During this time period a magnetic storm with a non-monotonic main phase decrease in the Dst index occurred. The recovery phase also exhibited a secondary Dst decrease. During the initial phase of the storm, Te and Ti increased coincident with the arrival of the solar wind. The main phase registered an increase in proton concentration proportional to Ne while temperatures reached the lowest values. Variations in O⁺ concentration were not significant but a reduction in helium fraction was observed. Soon after the peak of the storm, the transition height between the topside ionosphere and the protonosphere, where H⁺ ions dominate composition, was lower than would be expected during quiet conditions and this behavior lasted for approximately 12 h.     

Compositional Bayesian indicator estimation

Indicator kriging is widely used for mapping spatial binary variables and for estimating the global and local spatial distributions of variables in geosciences. For continuous random variables, indicator kriging gives an estimate of the cumulative distribution function, for a given threshold, which is then the estimate of a probability. Like any other kriging procedure, indicator kriging provides an estimation variance that, although not often used in applications, should be taken into account as it assesses the uncertainty of the estimate. An alternative approach to indicator estimation is proposed in this paper. In this alternative approach the complete probability density function of the indicator estimate is evaluated. The procedure is described in a Bayesian framework, using a multivariate Gaussian likelihood and an a priori distribution which are both combined according to Bayes theorem in order to obtain a posterior distribution for the indicator estimate. From this posterior distribution, point estimates, interval estimates and uncertainty measures can be obtained. Among the point estimates, the median of the posterior distribution is the maximum entropy estimate because there is a fifty-fifty chance of the unknown value of the estimate being larger or smaller than the median; that is, there is maximum uncertainty in the choice between two alternatives. Thus in some sense, the latter is an indicator estimator, alternative to the kriging estimator, that includes its own uncertainty. On the other hand, the mode of the posterior distribution estimator, assuming a uniform prior, is coincidental with the simple kriging estimator. Additionally, because the indicator estimate can be considered as a two-part composition which domain of definition is the simplex, the method is extended to compositional Bayesian indicator estimation. Bayesian indicator estimation and compositional Bayesian indicator estimation are illustrated with an environmental case study in which the probability of the content of a geochemical element in soil being over a particular threshold is of interest. The computer codes and its user guides are public domain and freely available.     

Adapting a texture synthesis algorithm for conditional multiple point geostatistical simulation

Computer vision provides several tools for analyzing and simulating textures. The principles of these techniques are similar to those in multiple-point geostatistics, namely, the reproduction of patterns and consistency in the results from a perceptual point of view, thus, ensuring the reproduction of long range connectivity. The only difference between these techniques and geostatistical simulation accounting for multiple-point statistics is that conditioning is not an issue in computer vision. We present a solution to the problem of conditioning simulated fields while simultaneously honoring multiple-point (pattern) statistics. The proposal is based on a texture synthesis algorithm where a fixed search (causal) pattern is used. Conditioning is achieved by adding a non-causal search neighborhood that modifies the conditional distribution from which the simulated category is drawn, depending on the conditioning information. Results show an excellent reproduction of the features from the training image, while respecting the conditioning information. Some issues related to the data structure and to the computer efficiency are discussed.     

Evidence for Century-Timescale Acceleration in Mean Sea Levels and for Recent Changes in Extreme Sea Levels

Two of the most important topics in Sea Level Science are addressed in this paper. One is concerned with the evidence for the apparent acceleration in the rate of global sea level change between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and, thereby, with the question of whether the twentieth century sea level rise was a consequence of an accelerated climate change of anthropogenic origin. An acceleration is indeed observed in both tide gauge and saltmarsh data at different locations around the world, yielding quadratic coefficients ??c?? of order 0.005 mm/year², and with the most rapid changes of rate of sea level rise occurring around the end of the nineteenth century. The second topic refers to whether there is evidence that extreme sea levels have increased in recent decades at rates significantly different from those in mean levels. Recent results, which suggest that at most locations rates of change of extreme and mean sea levels are comparable, are presented. In addition, a short review is given of recent work on extreme sea levels by other authors. This body of work, which is focused primarily on Europe and the Mediterranean, also tends to support mean and extreme sea levels changing at similar rates at most locations.