Search results for "ECONOMICS"
showing 10 items of 14389 documents
Heavy daily precipitation distribution in east-central Franceand west European meteorological patterns
2000
Principal Component Analysis is used to link the spatial distribution of Heavy Daily Precipitation (HDP) in East-Central France with meteorological patterns of the Meteo-France automatic classification, which takes into account 15 different meteorological parameters (e.g. geopotential heights at different levels, humidities, pseudo-adiabatic temperatures) over Western Europe. Every parameter is classified in 10 classes, or synoptic patterns. The annual PCA shows 3 dominant modes of HDP distribution, explaining more than 90% of the total variance. Associated atmospheric situations are obtained by using the scores of the 150 classes (10 per meteorological parameter). Other PCAs (i.e., half-an…
Integrated remote sensing approach to global agricultural drought monitoring
2018
Abstract This study explores the use of the Soil Moisture Agricultural Drought Index (SMADI) as a global estimator of agricultural drought. Previous research presented SMADI as a novel index based on the joint use of remotely sensed datasets of land surface temperature (LST) and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) together with the surface soil moisture (SSM) from the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission. This study presents the results of applying SMADI at the global scale with a spatial resolution of 0.05° every 15 days. The period of the study spanned from 2010 to 2015. Three spatial scales (local, region…
Daily air temperature and electricity load in Spain
2001
Abstract Weather has a significant impact on different sectors of the economy. One of the most sensitive is the electricity market, because power demand is linked to several weather variables, mainly the air temperature. This work analyzes the relationship between electricity load and daily air temperature in Spain, using a population-weighted temperature index. The electricity demand shows a significant trend due to socioeconomic factors, in addition to daily and monthly seasonal effects that have been taken into account to isolate the weather influence on electricity load. The results indicate that the relationship is nonlinear, showing a “comfort interval” of ±3°C around 18°C and two sat…
The Added-Value of Remotely-Sensed Soil Moisture Data for Agricultural Drought Detection in Argentina
2021
In countries where the economy relies mostly on agricultural-livestock activities, such as Argentina, droughts cause significant economic losses. Currently, the most-used drought indices by the Argentinian National Meteorological and Hydrological Services are based on field precipitation data, such as the standardized precipitation index (SPI) and the standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI). In this article, we explored the performance of the satellite-based soil moisture agricultural drought index (SMADI) for agricultural drought detection in Argentina during 2010-2015, and compared it with the one from the standardized soil moisture anomalies (SSMA), SPI and SPEI (at on…
A new hybrid procedure for the definition of seismic vulnerability in Mediterranean cross-border urban areas
2016
Assessment of seismic vulnerability of urban areas provides fundamental information for activities of planning and management of emergencies. The main difficulty encountered when extending vulnerability evaluations to urban contexts is the definition of a framework of assessment appropriate for the specific characteristics of the site and providing reliable results with a reasonable duration of surveys and post-processing of data. The paper proposes a new procedure merging different typologies of information recognized on the territories investigated and for this reason called “hybrid.” Knowledge of historical events influencing urban evolution and analysis of recurrent building technologie…
Examining the effect of adverse weather on road transportation using weather and traffic sensors.
2018
Adverse weather related to reduced visibility caused by fog and rain can seriously affect the mobility and safety of drivers. It is meaningful to develop effective intelligent transportation system (ITS) strategies to mitigate the negative effects of these different types of adverse weather related to reduced visibility by investigating the effect of rain and fog on traffic parameters. A number of previous researches focused on analyzing the effect of adverse weather related to reduced visibility by using simulated traffic and weather data. There are few researchers that addressed the impact of adverse weather instances using real-time data. Moreover, this paper conducts comprehensive inves…
Sudan-Sahel rainfall onset: Definition of an objective index, types of years, and experimental hindcasts
2006
Using rainfall estimates from the 5-day version of CPC Merged Analysis of Precipitation (CMAP) and Global Precipitation Climatology Project data along with multiscale spatial key descriptors of atmospheric dynamics from National Center for Environmental Prediction/Department of Energy reanalysis 2 (NCEP/DOE), we first define a West African monsoon onset index to determine its successive dates of occurrence over the period 1979-2004 (28-29 June in mean with a standard deviation of 8.5 days). Then we focus on the three main types of time evolutions of that index at the moment of the monsoon onset in terms of precipitation, pressure, temperature, and winds at different levels to detect the mos…
Analysis of the impact of intermittent distribution by modelling the network-filling process
2010
In many countries, users acquire private tanks to reduce their vulnerability to water scarcity. In such conditions, water managers often apply intermittent distribution in order to reduce the water volumes supplied to the users. This practice modifies the hydraulic behaviour of the network and determines competition among users that need to collect enough water resource for their uses. Intermittent distribution is thus responsible for the inequality that can occur among users: those located in advantaged positions of the network are able to obtain water resources soon after the service period begins, while others have to wait much longer, after the network is full. This paper analyses the i…
The erythemal clearness index for Valencia, Spain
2009
The values of three clearness indices have been measured for the city of Valencia: kt, the clearness index for the whole solar spectrum, ktUV the clearness index for the ultraviolet range, and the erythemal clearness index for the erythemal radiation ktUVER, corresponding to the solar radiation weighted by the erythemal action spectrum on human skin, normalized with respect to the solar constant corresponding to that spectrum. The measurements of ktUV reached values that were approximately 54% of that corresponding to kt, while those of ktUVER were much smaller. Some statistics of the erythemal clearness index have been calculated both for monthly as well as hourly means. The shape of the d…
Fine-scale estimations of bioclimatic change in the Valencia region, Spain
2016
Recent advances in statistical downscaling have allowed the reconstruction of temperatures for the complete 1948–2011 period in a spatial resolution of 90 m and without gaps for the Valencian Community (Spain) and bordering areas. It presently enables analyses in this region, which allows the determination of recent temperature changes at subregional and local scales. The present work focuses on obtaining the thermicity index according to Rivas-Martínez, a well-known indicator of different thermotypes associated with bioclimatic horizons. The change in this index, which has happened in the region between 1948 and 2011, was calculated by generating fine-scale maps of the potential extension …