An efficient dynamic volume rendering for large-scale meteorological data in a virtual globe

2019 ◽  
Vol 126 ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xuequan Zhang ◽  
Peng Yue ◽  
Yumin Chen ◽  
Lei Hu
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moctar Dembélé ◽  
Bettina Schaefli ◽  
Grégoire Mariéthoz

<p>The diversity of remotely sensed or reanalysis-based rainfall data steadily increases, which on one hand opens new perspectives for large scale hydrological modelling in data scarce regions, but on the other hand poses challenging question regarding parameter identification and transferability under multiple input datasets. This study analyzes the variability of hydrological model performance when (1) a set of parameters is transferred from the calibration input dataset to a different meteorological datasets and reversely, when (2) an input dataset is used with a parameter set, originally calibrated for a different input dataset.</p><p>The research objective is to highlight the uncertainties related to input data and the limitations of hydrological model parameter transferability across input datasets. An ensemble of 17 rainfall datasets and 6 temperature datasets from satellite and reanalysis sources (Dembélé et al., 2020), corresponding to 102 combinations of meteorological data, is used to force the fully distributed mesoscale Hydrologic Model (mHM). The mHM model is calibrated for each combination of meteorological datasets, thereby resulting in 102 calibrated parameter sets, which almost all give similar model performance. Each of the 102 parameter sets is used to run the mHM model with each of the 102 input datasets, yielding 10404 scenarios to that serve for the transferability tests. The experiment is carried out for a decade from 2003 to 2012 in the large and data-scarce Volta River basin (415600 km2) in West Africa.</p><p>The results show that there is a high variability in model performance for streamflow (mean CV=105%) when the parameters are transferred from the original input dataset to other input datasets (test 1 above). Moreover, the model performance is in general lower and can drop considerably when parameters obtained under all other input datasets are transferred to a selected input dataset (test 2 above). This underlines the need for model performance evaluation when different input datasets and parameter sets than those used during calibration are used to run a model. Our results represent a first step to tackle the question of parameter transferability to climate change scenarios. An in-depth analysis of the results at a later stage will shed light on which model parameterizations might be the main source of performance variability.</p><p>Dembélé, M., Schaefli, B., van de Giesen, N., & Mariéthoz, G. (2020). Suitability of 17 rainfall and temperature gridded datasets for large-scale hydrological modelling in West Africa. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (HESS). https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-24-5379-2020</p>


Revista CERES ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 63 (6) ◽  
pp. 754-760 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ricardo Guimarães Andrade ◽  
Antônio Heriberto de Castro Teixeira ◽  
Janice Freitas Leivas ◽  
Sandra Furlan Nogueira

ABSTRACT The objective of this study was to apply the Simple Algorithm For Evapotranspiration Retrieving (SAFER) with MODIS images together with meteorological data to analyze evapotranspiration (ET) and biomass production (BIO) according to indicative classes of pasture degradation in Upper Tocantins River Basin. Indicative classes of degraded pastures were obtained from the NDVI time-series (2002-2012). To estimate ET and BIO in each class, MODIS images and data from meteorological stations of the year 2012 were used. The results show that compared to not-degraded pastures, ET and BIO were different in pastures with moderate to strong degradation, mainly during water stress period. Therefore, changes in energy balance partition may occur according to the degradation levels, considering that those indicatives of degradation processes were identified in 24% of the planted pasture areas. In this context, ET and BIO estimates using remote sensing techniques can be a reliable indicator of forage availability, and large-scale aspects related to the degradation of pastures. It is expected that this knowledge may contribute to initiatives of public policies aimed at controlling the loss of production potential of pasture areas in the Upper Tocantins River Basin in the state of Goiás, Brazil.


Rangifer ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-119
Author(s):  
Henrik Lundqvist ◽  
Öje Danell

The 51 reindeer herding districts in Sweden vary in productivity and prerequisites for reindeer herding. In this study we characterize and group reindeer herding districts based on relevant factors affecting reindeer productivity, i.e. topography, vegetation, forage value, habitat fragmentation and reachability, as well as season lengths, snow fall, ice-crust probability, and insect harassment, totally quantified in 15 variables. The herding districts were grouped into seven main groups and three single outliers through cluster analyses. The largest group, consisting of 14 herding districts, was further divided into four subgroups. The range properties of herding districts and groups of districts were characterized through principal component analyses. By comparisons of the suggested grouping of herding districts with existing administrative divisions, these appeared not to coincide. A new division of herding districts into six administrative sets of districts was suggested in order to improve administrative planning and management of the reindeer herding industry. The results also give possibilities for projections of alterations caused by an upcoming global climate change. Large scale investigations using geographical information systems (GIS) and meteorological data would be helpful for administrative purposes, both nationally and internationally, as science-based decision tools in legislative, economical, ecological and structural assessments. Abstract in Swedish / Sammanfattning: Multivariat gruppering av svenska samebyar baserat på renbetesmarkernas grundförutsettningar Svenska renskötselområdet består av 51 samebyar som varierar i produktivitet och förutsättningar för renskötsel. Vi analyserade variationen mellan samebyar med avseende på 15 variabler som beskriver topografi, vegetation, betesvärde, fragmentering av betesmarker, klimat, skareförekomst och aktivitet av parasiterande insekter och vi föreslår en indelning av samebyar i tio grupper. Den största gruppen, som bestod av 14 samebyar, delades vidare in i 4 undergrupper. Klusteranalyser med 4 olika linkage-varianter användes till att gruppera samebyarna. Principalkomponentsanalys användes för att kartlägga undersökta variabler och de resulterande samebygruppernas karaktär. Samebygrupperna följde inte länsgränser och tre samebyar föll ut som enskilda grupper. Denna undersökning ger underlag för jämförelser mellan samebyar med beaktande av likheter och olikheter i fråga om produktivitet och funktionella särdrag istället för länsgränser och historik. Vi föreslår en ny administrativ indelning i sex områden som skulle kunna fungera som ett alternativt underlag för planering och beslut som rör produktionsaspekter i rennäringen. Resultaten ger också underlag för förutsägelser av förändringar i samebyars produktionsförutsättningar till följd av klimatförändringar.


2012 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 305-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
I. Haddeland ◽  
J. Heinke ◽  
F. Voß ◽  
S. Eisner ◽  
C. Chen ◽  
...  

Abstract. Due to biases in the output of climate models, a bias correction is often needed to make the output suitable for use in hydrological simulations. In most cases only the temperature and precipitation values are bias corrected. However, often there are also biases in other variables such as radiation, humidity and wind speed. In this study we tested to what extent it is also needed to bias correct these variables. Responses to radiation, humidity and wind estimates from two climate models for four large-scale hydrological models are analysed. For the period 1971–2000 these hydrological simulations are compared to simulations using meteorological data based on observations and reanalysis; i.e. the baseline simulation. In both forcing datasets originating from climate models precipitation and temperature are bias corrected to the baseline forcing dataset. Hence, it is only effects of radiation, humidity and wind estimates that are tested here. The direct use of climate model outputs result in substantial different evapotranspiration and runoff estimates, when compared to the baseline simulations. A simple bias correction method is implemented and tested by rerunning the hydrological models using bias corrected radiation, humidity and wind values. The results indicate that bias correction can successfully be used to match the baseline simulations. Finally, historical (1971–2000) and future (2071–2100) model simulations resulting from using bias corrected forcings are compared to the results using non-bias corrected forcings. The relative changes in simulated evapotranspiration and runoff are relatively similar for the bias corrected and non bias corrected hydrological projections, although the absolute evapotranspiration and runoff numbers are often very different. The simulated relative and absolute differences when using bias corrected and non bias corrected climate model radiation, humidity and wind values are, however, smaller than literature reported differences resulting from using bias corrected and non bias corrected climate model precipitation and temperature values.


2009 ◽  
Vol 9 (19) ◽  
pp. 7313-7323 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Wang ◽  
D. J. Jacob ◽  
M. Kopacz ◽  
D. B. A. Jones ◽  
P. Suntharalingam ◽  
...  

Abstract. Inverse modeling of CO2 satellite observations to better quantify carbon surface fluxes requires a chemical transport model (CTM) to relate the fluxes to the observed column concentrations. CTM transport error is a major source of uncertainty. We show that its effect can be reduced by using CO satellite observations as additional constraint in a joint CO2-CO inversion. CO is measured from space with high precision, is strongly correlated with CO2, and is more sensitive than CO2 to CTM transport errors on synoptic and smaller scales. Exploiting this constraint requires statistics for the CTM transport error correlation between CO2 and CO, which is significantly different from the correlation between the concentrations themselves. We estimate the error correlation globally and for different seasons by a paired-model method (comparing GEOS-Chem CTM simulations of CO2 and CO columns using different assimilated meteorological data sets for the same meteorological year) and a paired-forecast method (comparing 48- vs. 24-h GEOS-5 CTM forecasts of CO2 and CO columns for the same forecast time). We find strong error correlations (r2>0.5) between CO2 and CO columns over much of the extra-tropical Northern Hemisphere throughout the year, and strong consistency between different methods to estimate the error correlation. Application of the averaging kernels used in the retrieval for thermal IR CO measurements weakens the correlation coefficients by 15% on average (mostly due to variability in the averaging kernels) but preserves the large-scale correlation structure. We present a simple inverse modeling application to demonstrate that CO2-CO error correlations can indeed significantly reduce uncertainty on surface carbon fluxes in a joint CO2-CO inversion vs. a CO2-only inversion.


Atmosphere ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
pp. 1099
Author(s):  
Sabina Ștefan ◽  
Bogdan Antonescu ◽  
Ana Denisa Urlea ◽  
Livius Buzdugan ◽  
Meda Daniela Andrei ◽  
...  

Clear air turbulence (CAT) poses a significant threat to aviation. CAT usually occurs in the lower stratosphere and the upper troposphere. It is generally associated with large scale waves, mountain waves, jet streams, upper-level fronts and tropopause folds. Aircraft can experience CAT when flying in proximity of a tropopause fold. To better understand and diagnose tropopause fold- associated CAT we selected a series of cases from among those reported by pilots between June 2017 and December 2018 in the Romanian airspace. Data on turbulence were used in conjunction with meteorological data, satellite imagery, and vertical profiles. Additionally, a set of indices as Ellrod, horizontal temperature gradient, Dutton, and Brown were computed to diagnose CAT associated with tropopause folding. These indices were also analyzed to test the physics mechanisms that may explain the occurrence of severe turbulence. Results show that out of the 420 cases announced by pilots, severe turbulence was reported in 80 cases of which 13 were associated with tropopause folding.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lihua Zhou ◽  
Jing Zhang ◽  
Xiaohui Zheng ◽  
Siguang Zhu ◽  
Yueming Hu

Abstract Atmospheric fine particulate matter (PM2.5) pollutions are of particular concern because of their direct and indirect harm to humans and organisms. China has suffered from severe air pollution for the past ten years, related to heavy pollution emissions and compounded by the effects of atmospheric circulation. This study applied statistical methods, observational data of ground pollutants, and meteorological data to analyze the impact of large-scale atmospheric circulations on PM2.5 pollution over China. Empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis was used to evaluate the main PM2.5 patterns and total contributions of the leading four EOFs. The results indicate that the total contributions of the leading four EOFs accounted for 50.5% of the total variance, reflecting four main types of PM2.5 pollution, namely, overall pollution phase, north–south phase, east–west phase and north–center–south phase, with contributions of 28.4%, 9.7%, 6.5% and 5.9%, respectively. We selected indices of the Asian Polar Vortex (APV) to analyze the impact of large-scale atmospheric circulations on PM2.5 pollution over China. The most pronounced APV control occurred in Beijing and its surroundings, specifically, along the Bohai Sea and the Northeast Plain.


Atmosphere ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 544 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan Pedro García-Garrido ◽  
María Cruz Gallego ◽  
Teodoro Palacios ◽  
Ricardo M. Trigo ◽  
José Manuel Vaquero

In this work, a landslide event that took place on January 1831 at the Pedregoso Mountains, Cabeza del Buey, SW Spain, is described. This landslide had not been documented to date and was only described in the local press. This event involved an estimated amount of dislodged material in the order of 104 m3. The amount of meteorological data is very scarce as the event occurred before the setting up of the national meteorological service in Spain. However, data from the relatively near location of SW Iberia suggest that the landslide was preceded by a prolonged period of unusually high precipitation totals and that this intense wet period is compatible with the large-scale atmospheric configuration in the winter of 1829–1830. In fact, the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) index for that winter achieved one of the most negative values observed in the bicentennial period spanning 1821 to 2019. This multidisciplinary work represents the first attempt to report and describe the main triggering mechanism for an historical landslide in the Extremadura region that is similar to other great historical landslides which have already been documented for other locations in Spain.


Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (21) ◽  
pp. 5527
Author(s):  
Ali M. Eltamaly ◽  
Mohamed A. Ahmed ◽  
Majed A. Alotaibi ◽  
Abdulrahman I. Alolah ◽  
Young-Chon Kim

The grid integration of large scale photovoltaic (PV) power plants represents many challenging tasks for system stability, reliability and power quality due to the intermittent nature of solar radiation and the site accessibility issues where most PV power plants are located over a wide area. In order to enable real-time monitoring and control of large scale PV power plants, reliable two-way communications with low latency are required which provide accurate information for the electrical and environmental parameters as well as enabling the system operator to evaluate the overall performance and identify any abnormal conditions and faults. This work aims to design a communication network architecture for the remote monitoring of large-scale PV power plants based on the IEC 61850 Standard. The proposed architecture consists of three layers: the PV power system layer, the communication network layer, and the application layer. The PV power system layer consists of solar arrays, inverters, feeders, buses, a substation, and a control center. Monitoring parameters are classified into different categories including electrical measurements, status information, and meteorological data. This work considers the future plan of PV power plants in Saudi Arabia. In order to evaluate the performance of the communication network for local and remote monitoring, the OPNET Modeler is used for network modeling and simulation, and critical parameters such as network topology, link capacity, and latency are investigated and discussed. This work contributes to the design of reliable monitoring and communication of large-scale PV power plants.


2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 16-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Christen ◽  
Stephan Nebiker ◽  
Benjamin Loesch

In this paper, the authors present the OpenWebGlobe project (http://www.openwebglobe.org). The authors also discuss the OpenWebGlobe SDK. OpenWebGlobe SDK is an open source framework for creating massive 3D virtual globe environments and interactively exploiting them in web browsers using HTML5 and WebGL, allowing for the creation of large scale virtual 3D globes with detailed contents and their interactive visualization directly within a broad spectrum of Web browsers.


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