Search results for "Weather"
showing 10 items of 360 documents
Do soils exist outside Earth?
2010
Abstract On Earth, soils form thanks to the combined action of at least five factors: parent rock, climate, topography, biota, and time. However, the necessity of biota as unavoidable soil forming factor is debated, as important parts of our planet experiencing extreme climates host virtually life-free soils with advanced horizonation. Now that space exploration has greatly expanded our understanding of the Solar System, providing consistent evidences that the loose, unconsolidated "skin" of some nearby rocky bodies is lifeless, it is time to establish if the latter can be considered to be soil in a pedological sense. Our feeling is that, since the concept of soil chiefly bases on the occur…
Sediment yield from glacio-lacustrine calcareous deposits during the postglacial period in the Combe d’Ain (Jura, France)
1998
The middle valley of the river Ain (Jura) cuts through glacio-lacustrine deposits laid down in an ice-dammed lake during the most recent glacial advance. The total volume eroded is about 6·21 ×10 8 m 3 for a surface area of 3·7 ×10 7 m 2 . Erosion occurred between 18 ka BP and 6 ka BP, i.e. over a duration of some 12 ka. Sediment yield from the area was of the order of 2500 t km -2 a -1 , which is comparable with modern-day sediment yield from NW African badlands. These high values are ascribed to the amenability of glacio-lacustrine deposits to mechanical weathering and to the rapid geomorphological changes that affected glacial and paraglacial sedimentary cover after the retreat of the ic…
Knowing is half the battle: Seasonal forecasts, adaptive cropping systems, and the mediating role of private markets in Zambia
2019
Abstract This paper examines how smallholders living in regions where a drought is forecasted adapt their farm practices in response to receiving seasonal forecast information. The article draws on a unique longitudinal dataset in Zambia, which collected information from farm households before and after a significant drought caused by the 2015/2016 El-Nino Southern Oscillation. It finds that farmers residing in areas forecasted to be drought-affected and receiving seasonal forecast information are significantly more likely to integrate drought tolerant crops into their cropping systems compared to similar households not receiving this information. Moreover, the probability that a farmer imp…
Model Based Monte Carlo Pricing of Energy and Temperature Quanto Options
2010
Weather derivatives have become very popular tools in weather risk management in recent years. One of the elements supporting their diffusion has been the increase in volatility observed on many energy markets. Among the several available contracts, Quanto options are now becoming very popular for a simple reason: they take into account the strong correlation between energy consumption and certain weather conditions, so enabling price and weather risk to be controlled at the same time. These products are more efficient and, in many cases, significantly cheaper than simpler plain vanilla options. Unfortunately, the specific features of energy and weather time series do not enable the use of …
Temperature and seasonality influences on Spanish electricity load
2002
Abstract Deregulation of the Spanish electricity market in 1998 and the possible listing of electricity or weather derivative contracts have encouraged the study of the relationship between electricity demand and weather in Spain. In this paper, a transfer function intervention model is developed for forecasting daily electricity load from cooling and heating degree–days. The influence of weather and seasonality is proved, and is significant even when the autoregressive effects and the dynamic specification of the temperature are taken into account. The estimated general model shows a high predictive power. The results and information presented in this paper could be of interest for current…
Uncertainties in polarimetric 3D reconstructions of coronal mass ejections
2015
P.P. acknowledges STFC for financial support. Date of Acceptance: 21/01/2015 Aims. The aim of this work is to quantify the uncertainties in the three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction of the location of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) obtained with the so-called polarization ratio technique. The method takes advantage of the different distributions along the line of sight of total (tB) and polarized (pB) brightnesses emitted by Thomson scattering to estimate the average location of the emitting plasma. This is particularly important to correctly identify of CME propagation angles and unprojected velocities, thus allowing better capabilities for space weather forecastings. Methods. To this end, …
Reduced weather data for building climatization and application to 29 European locations
1995
Abstract A method for setting up a reference year of reduced temperature data, proposed by Klein and Erbs, has been applied by us to 29 European locations for which an official test-reference year is available. This reference year of reduced temperatures may be utilized in computer programs for analysis of the thermal behaviour of buildings. The effectiveness of the method has been tested by calculating the annual energy demand in 29 European locations for three modules with different thermophysical characteristics.
Short-term prediction of household electricity consumption: assessing weather sensitivity in a Mediterranean area
2008
Abstract Urban microclimatic variations, along with a rapid reduction of unit cost of air-conditioning (AC) equipments, can be addressed as some of the main causes of the raising residential energy demand in the more developed countries. This paper presents a forecasting model based on an Elman artificial neural network (ANN) for the short-time prediction of the household electricity consumption related to a suburban area. Due to the lack of information about the real penetration of electric appliances in the investigated area and their utilization profiles it was not possible to implement a statistical model to define the weather and climate sensitivities of appliance energy consumption. F…
A multi-agent system for managing adverse weather situations on the road network
2010
The development of traffic management and control strategies to improve traffic flows and road safety is necessary due to the high dynamism of traffic flows. The use of distributed intelligent systems can help the traffic organizations and the road operators to cope with possible incidents on the road network, especially when the incidents are related to adverse meteorological conditions. In that case, the probability of road accidents is increased due to the difficulty of driving under bad weather conditions. So, if the operators detect any meteorological incident, they must decide how to deal with it in order to improve traffic safety. In this paper we introduce a new multiagent system (M…
Agent-based test-bed for road information systems
2012
Road safety is one of the most important concerns of road authorities. In order to improve road safety, traffic managers develop traffic management and control strategies. The use of advanced traffic management systems is to support road managers in daily traffic management tasks. However, it is important to test in advance, the traffic strategies to evaluate the results and their suitability to the current situation. In this study, a test-bed based on multi-agent is presented. The purpose of this test-bed is to be able to test several traffic information strategies in case of adverse weather situations. It consists in a knowledge model implemented by a set of basic agents. These agents are…