scholarly journals Projection and Detection Procedures for Long-Term Wave Climate Change Impact on Fatigue Damage of Offshore Floating Structures

Author(s):  
Tao Zou ◽  
Miroslaw Lech Kaminski ◽  
Hang Li ◽  
Longbin Tao

Abstract The climate change may affect the long-term wave statistics and consequently affect the cumulative fatigue damage. This paper aims to project the trend of annual fatigue damage of offshore floating structures and to detect the climate change impact on the future fatigue damage by coupling a conventional fatigue design method with climate and wave models. Firstly, climate scenarios are selected to project the global radiative forcing level over decadal or century time scales. Secondly, climate models are used to simulate atmosphere circulations and to obtain the wind field data. Thirdly, wave conditions are simulated by coupling wind driven wave models to climate models. Fourthly, stress analysis and fatigue assessments are conducted to project the annual fatigue damage. At last, control simulations are carried out in order to identify the range of natural variability and to detect the human-induced change. A case study is presented in the Sable field offshore South Africa. The results indicate that the significant wave height is considerably influenced by the human-induced climate change. However, this change induced by human activities is still partially masked by the dominant natural variability. In addition, both the significant wave height and the annual fatigue damage increase over century time-scales.

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 7621-7655 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Stoll ◽  
H. J. Hendricks Franssen ◽  
R. Barthel ◽  
W. Kinzelbach

Abstract. Future risks for groundwater resources, due to global change are usually analyzed by driving hydrological models with the outputs of climate models. However, this model chain is subject to considerable uncertainties. Given the high uncertainties it is essential to identify the processes governing the groundwater dynamics, as these processes are likely to affect groundwater resources in the future, too. Information about the dominant mechanisms can be achieved by the analysis of long-term data, which are assumed to provide insight in the reaction of groundwater resources to changing conditions (weather, land use, water demand). Referring to this, a dataset of 30 long-term time series of precipitation dominated groundwater systems in northern Switzerland and southern Germany is collected. In order to receive additional information the analysis of the data is carried out together with hydrological model simulations. High spatio-temporal correlations, even over large distances could be detected and are assumed to be related to large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns. As a result it is suggested to prefer innovative weather-type-based downscaling methods to other stochastic downscaling approaches. In addition, with the help of a qualitative procedure to distinguish between meteorological and anthropogenic causes it was possible to identify processes which dominated the groundwater dynamics in the past. It could be shown that besides the meteorological conditions, land use changes, pumping activity and feedback mechanisms governed the groundwater dynamics. Based on these findings, recommendations to improve climate change impact studies are suggested.


2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (12) ◽  
pp. 3861-3875 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Stoll ◽  
H. J. Hendricks Franssen ◽  
R. Barthel ◽  
W. Kinzelbach

Abstract. Future risks for groundwater resources, due to global change are usually analyzed by driving hydrological models with the outputs of climate models. However, this model chain is subject to considerable uncertainties. Given the high uncertainties it is essential to identify the processes governing the groundwater dynamics, as these processes are likely to affect groundwater resources in the future, too. Information about the dominant mechanisms can be achieved by the analysis of long-term data, which are assumed to provide insight in the reaction of groundwater resources to changing conditions (weather, land use, water demand). Referring to this, a dataset of 30 long-term time series of precipitation dominated groundwater systems in northern Switzerland and southern Germany is collected. In order to receive additional information the analysis of the data is carried out together with hydrological model simulations. High spatio-temporal correlations, even over large distances could be detected and are assumed to be related to large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns. As a result it is suggested to prefer innovative weather-type-based downscaling methods to other stochastic downscaling approaches. In addition, with the help of a qualitative procedure to distinguish between meteorological and anthropogenic causes it was possible to identify processes which dominated the groundwater dynamics in the past. It could be shown that besides the meteorological conditions, land use changes, pumping activity and feedback mechanisms governed the groundwater dynamics. Based on these findings, recommendations to improve climate change impact studies are suggested.


2009 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 443-451 ◽  
Author(s):  
O. M. Thorne ◽  
R. A. Fenner

In response to a rapidly changing and highly variable climate, engineers are being asked to perform climate-change impact assessments on existing water industry systems. There is currently no single method of best practice for engineers to interpret output from global climate models (GCMs) and calculate probabilistic distributions of future climate changes as required for risk-based impact assessments. The simplified climate change impact assessment tool (SCIAT) has been developed to address the specific needs of the water industry and provides a tool to translate climate change projections into ‘real world’ impacts or for detailed statistical analysis. Through the use of SCIAT, water system operators are provided with knowledge of potential impacts and an associated probability of occurrence, enabling them to make informed, risk-based adaptation and planning decisions. This paper demonstrates the application of SCIAT to the consideration of the impacts of climate change on reservoir water quality under future climate scenarios.


Author(s):  
Yacouba Yira ◽  
Tariro Cynthia Mutsindikwa ◽  
Aymar Yaovi Bossa ◽  
Jean Hounkpè ◽  
Seyni Salack

Abstract. This study evaluates the impact of future climate change (CC) on the hydropower generation potential of the Bamboi catchment (Black Volta) in West Africa using a conceptual rainfall-runoff model (HBV light) and regional climate models (RCMs)–global climate models (GCMs). Two climate simulation datasets MPI-ESM-REMO (CORDEX) and GFDL-ESM2M-WRF (WASCAL) under RCP4.5 were applied to the validated hydrological model to simulate the catchment runoff. Based on reference and future simulated discharges, a theoretical 1.3 MW run of river hydro power plant was designed to evaluate the hydropower generation. Hydrological and hydropower generation changes were expressed as the relative difference between two future periods (2020–2049 and 2070–2099) and a reference period (1983–2005). The climate models' ensemble projected a mean annual precipitation increase by 8.8 % and 7.3 % and discharge increase by 11.4 % and 9.735 % for the 2020–2049 and 2070–2099 periods respectively (for bias corrected data). On the contrary an overall decrease of hydropower generation by −9.1 % and −8.4% for the 2020–2049 and 2070–2099 periods was projected respectively. The results indicate that projected increases in discharge should not solely be considered as leading to an increase in hydropower potential when prospecting climate change impact on hydropower.


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