兰新高铁烟墩风区戈壁近地表风沙流跃移质垂直分布特性

跃移质作为风沙流的主体,其近地表垂直分布规律是风沙物理学的重要研究内容,对防沙工程具有重要的指导意义。受研究条件与观测仪器限制,戈壁特别是极端大风区近地表风沙流结构特性研究较为薄弱。利用多梯度风蚀传感器与阶梯式集沙仪对兰新高铁烟墩风区戈壁近地表风沙流跃移质的垂直分布特性进行了观测研究。结果表明：兰新高铁烟墩风区戈壁沙粒发生跃移运动的2 m高临界风速达12 m·s^-1;戈壁近地表风沙流具有明显的阵性特征,沙粒跃移发生的时间比例在50%以下,与平均风速成正相关关系,与风速脉动强度无显著相关关系;2 m高阵风7级风速下,戈壁跃移沙粒主要集中于地表50 cm范围内,近地表风沙流结构呈"象鼻效应",跃移质最大质量通量出现在地表2.5~5 cm高度处,沙粒最大跃移高度可达2 m,且沙粒跃移高度随2 m高风速的增加呈指数规律递增。因此,兰新高铁烟墩风区2 m高阻沙栅栏不足以完全阻截戈壁风沙流,是造成烟墩风区兰新高铁轨道积沙的重要原因之一。     

Effect of zero measurements on the spatial correlation structure of rainfall

In this study, the effect of zero measurements on the spatial correlation function of rainfall is analyzed for the quantification of a rainfall field. The use of a bivariate mixed distribution function made it possible to analyze and compare the spatial correlation functions for these three different data sets: only the positive measurements at both gauge locations, positive measurements at either one or both gauge locations, and all measurements including zero at both locations. As an example, the spatial correlation functions are derived for the Geum River Basin, Korea and evaluated for the wet and dry seasons, respectively. Results show that the effect of zero measurements on spatial correlation structures is significant during the wet season, when the inter-station correlations were estimated significantly lower than those during the dry season. It was also found that only the case considering positive measurements are valid for the quantification of rainfall field. Even during the wet season, the inter-station correlation coefficients derived by considering the zero measurements show their high variability along with many abnormally looking high estimates, which made the quantification of the spatial correlation function become very ambiguous.     

The effect of flood intermittency on bifurcations in fluviodeltaic systems: Experiment and theory

The dimensions and organization of deltaic islands and channels dictate delta morphology. This study presents experimental results modelling deposition at a river mouth and flow bifurcation around delta islands. Mouth bar formation and channel bifurcation is achieved in a laboratory setting by alternating input of suspended load transport and bedload transport. These two modes of transport produce two characteristic deposits with different advection lengths. Suspended load transport creates a steep deposit far from the inlet, while bedload creates a low angle, levéed deposit near the inlet. This study found that flow bifurcations occur where the proximal and distal deposits encroach on one another; and determined that there is a relationship between the frequency of suspended load transport and the length to channel bifurcation. Frequent flooding causes shorter length to bifurcations, whereas infrequent flooding causes greater length to bifurcations. This work overturns the hitherto understood mechanism of bifurcation location as a function of only high-transport conditions. Instead, the interactions between the sediment transport and deposition from normal flow and large-scale flooding events dictate delta island morphology.     

Impact of physico-geographical factors and climate variability on flow intermittency in the rivers of water surplus zone

Climate change is inevitably altering the hydrological regime of water bodies. The interest in changing behaviour of intermittent rivers is increasing in many countries. This research was focused on intermittent rivers (rivers which naturally, periodically cease to flow) in Lithuania. The purpose of this research was to provide an overview of flow intermittency phenomena according to available data in a historical period and to evaluate the impact of catchment geographical features and climate variability on zero-flow events. The calculated indices of flow intermittency showed that the selected rivers had very different flow regimes. The threshold for the separation of typically intermittent rivers from only occasionally intermittent ones was suggested. Multiple linear regression analysis defined the crucial role of catchment size and watercourse slope on the river cessation process in Lithuania. The applied non-parametric Wilcoxon–Mann–Whitney test revealed the significance of the relationship between precipitation (in June–September) and zero-flow duration. Flow intermittency phenomena in Lithuanian rivers were linked to a low-frequency teleconnection pattern (SCAND index). A methodology of estimating the relation between river intermittency and large-scale atmospheric circulation pattern (based on SCAND index) was created. The generated regression equations between flow intermittency indices and catchment characteristics might be useful for the estimation of zero-flows in ungauged river catchments. The main aspect of future investigations might be related to forecasting flow intermittency using modern hydrological models and climate scenarios as well as the defined relationships between zero-flow indices and physico-geographical features of river catchments.     

Simulated precipitation fields with variance-consistent interpolation

Abstract

Gridded meteorological data are available for all of Norway as time series dating from 1961. A new way of interpolating precipitation in space from observed values is proposed. Based on the criteria that interpolated precipitation fields in space should be consistent with observed spatial statistics, such as spatial mean, variance and intermittency, spatial fields of precipitation are simulated from a gamma distribution with parameters determined from observed data, adjusted for intermittency. The simulated data are distributed in space, using the spatial pattern derived from kriging. The proposed method is compared to indicator kriging and to the current methodology used for producing gridded precipitation data. Cross-validation gave similar results for the three methods with respect to RMSE, temporal mean and standard deviation, whereas a comparison on estimated spatial variance showed that the new method has a near perfect agreement with observations. Indicator kriging underestimated the spatial variance by 60–80% and the current method produced a significant scatter in its estimates.

Citation Skaugen, T. & Andersen, J. (2010) Simulated precipitation fields with variance-consistent interpolation. Hydrol. Sci. J. 55(5), 676–686.     

Magnetic Fluctuations for Small Magnetic Prandtl Numbers

Numerous studies of magnetic fluctuations with a zero mean-field for small magnetic Prandtl numbers (Pr _m 1) show that magnetic fluctuations cannot be generated by turbulent fluid flow with the Kolmogorov energy spectrum. In addition, the generation of magnetic fluctuations with a zero mean-field for Pr _m 1 were not observed in numerical simulations. However, in astrophysical plasmas the magnetic Prandtl numbers are small and magnetic fluctuations are observed. Thus a mechanism of generation of magnetic fluctuations for Pr _m 1 still remains poorly understood. On the other hand, in astrophysical applications (e.g., solar and stellar convection zones, galaxies, accretion disks) the turbulent velocity field cannot be considered as a divergence-free. The generation of magnetic fluctuations by turbulent flow of conducting fluid with a zero mean magnetic field for Pr _m 1 is studied by means of linear and nonlinear analysis. The turbulent fluid velocity field is assumed to be homogeneous and isotropic with a power law energy spectrum ( k ^–p ) and with a very short scale-dependent correlation time. It is found that magnetic fluctuations can be generated when the exponent p > 3/2. It is shown also that the growth rates of the higher moments of the magnetic field are larger than those of the lower moments, i.e., the spatial distribution of the magnetic field is intermittent. In addition, the effect of compressibility (i.e., u 0) of the low-Mach-number turbulent fluid flow u is studied. It is demonstrated that the threshold for the generation of magnetic fluctuations by turbulent fluid flow with u 0 is higher than that for incompressible fluid. This implies that the compressibility impairs the generation of magnetic fluctuations. Nonlinear effects result in saturation of growth of the magnetic fluctuations. Asymptotic properties of the steady state solution for the second moment of the magnetic field in the case of the Hall nonlinearity for the low-Mach-number compressible flow are studied.     

Power intermittency, redundancy and tidal phasing around the United Kingdom

The tidal resource is large in north-western European waters and a number of axial flow, vertical rotor and oscillating hydroplane schemes are approaching full-scale design and construction. However, the intermittency of the output from such devices that only generate electricity during the flood and ebb suggests that back-up generating capacity would be required with the associated inbuilt redundancy. Basic, shallow water tidal theory is reviewed and it is shown that carefully sized tidal stream installations in the Clyde, Tees, Humber, Severn, Menai Straits and the Mersey can utilise the phase locked occurrence of tidal flow and provide a more or less regular and continuous supply of electrical power to the National Grid. Estimates are given for the required capacity of the installations and a scheme is proposed by which an installed capacity of little more than, for example, 200 MW can provide a continuous supply of about 45 MW from these sites, thus achieving a significant and uninterrupted contribution to the Government's 2010 and 2020 targets.     

Vegetation response to rainfall intermittency in drylands: Results from a simple ecohydrological box model

Vegetation in arid and semi-arid regions is affected by intermittent water availability. We discuss a simple stochastic model describing the coupled dynamics of soil moisture and vegetation, and study the effects of rainfall intermittency. Soil moisture dynamics is described by a ecohydrological box model, while vegetation is represented by site occupancy dynamics in a spatially-implicit model. We show that temporal rainfall intermittency allows for vegetation persistence at low values of annual rainfall volume, whereas it would go extinct if rainfall were constant. Rainfall intermittency also generates long-term fluctuations in vegetation cover, even in the absence of significant inter-annual variations in the statistical properties of precipitation.