scholarly journals Seasonal Forecasting of Onset of Summer Rains over South Africa

2018 ◽  
Vol 57 (12) ◽  
pp. 2697-2711 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. V. Ratnam ◽  
Takeshi Doi ◽  
Willem A. Landman ◽  
Swadhin K. Behera

AbstractIn this study, we attempted to forecast the onset of summer rains over South Africa using seasonal precipitation forecasts generated by the Scale Interaction Experiment–Frontier Research Center for Global Change, version 2 (SINTEX-F2), seasonal forecasting system. The precipitation forecasts of the 12-member SINTEX-F2 system, initialized on 1 August and covering the period 1998–2015, were used for the study. The SINTEX-F2 forecast precipitation was also downscaled using dynamical and statistical techniques to improve the spatial and temporal representation of the forecasts. The Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model with two cumulus parameterization schemes was used to dynamically downscale the SINTEX-F2 forecasts. The WRF and SINTEX-F2 precipitation forecasts were corrected for biases using a linear scaling method with a 31-day moving window. The results indicate the onset dates derived from the raw and bias-corrected model precipitation forecasts to have realistic spatial distribution over South Africa. However, the forecast onset dates have root-mean-square errors of more than 30 days over most parts of South Africa except over the northeastern province of Limpopo and over the Highveld region of Mpumalanga province, where the root-mean-square errors are about 10–15 days. The WRF Model with Kain–Fritsch cumulus scheme (bias-corrected SINTEX-F2) has better performance in forecasting the onset dates over Limpopo (the Highveld region) compared to other models, thereby indicating the forecast of onset dates over different regions of South Africa to be model dependent. The results of this study are important for improving the forecast of onset dates over South Africa.

Foods ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 885
Author(s):  
Sergio Ghidini ◽  
Luca Maria Chiesa ◽  
Sara Panseri ◽  
Maria Olga Varrà ◽  
Adriana Ianieri ◽  
...  

The present study was designed to investigate whether near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy with minimal sample processing could be a suitable technique to rapidly measure histamine levels in raw and processed tuna fish. Calibration models based on orthogonal partial least square regression (OPLSR) were built to predict histamine in the range 10–1000 mg kg−1 using the 1000–2500 nm NIR spectra of artificially-contaminated fish. The two models were then validated using a new set of naturally contaminated samples in which histamine content was determined by conventional high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) analysis. As for calibration results, coefficient of determination (r2) > 0.98, root mean square of estimation (RMSEE) ≤ 5 mg kg−1 and root mean square of cross-validation (RMSECV) ≤ 6 mg kg−1 were achieved. Both models were optimal also in the validation stage, showing r2 values > 0.97, root mean square errors of prediction (RMSEP) ≤ 10 mg kg−1 and relative range error (RER) ≥ 25, with better results showed by the model for processed fish. The promising results achieved suggest NIR spectroscopy as an implemental analytical solution in fish industries and markets to effectively determine histamine amounts.


Symmetry ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 23
Author(s):  
Yuping Li ◽  
Brady K. Quinn ◽  
Johan Gielis ◽  
Yirong Li ◽  
Peijian Shi

Many natural radial symmetrical shapes (e.g., sea stars) follow the Gielis equation (GE) or its twin equation (TGE). A supertriangle (three triangles arranged around a central polygon) represents such a shape, but no study has tested whether natural shapes can be represented as/are supertriangles or whether the GE or TGE can describe their shape. We collected 100 pieces of Koelreuteria paniculata fruit, which have a supertriangular shape, extracted the boundary coordinates for their vertical projections, and then fitted them with the GE and TGE. The adjusted root mean square errors (RMSEadj) of the two equations were always less than 0.08, and >70% were less than 0.05. For 57/100 fruit projections, the GE had a lower RMSEadj than the TGE, although overall differences in the goodness of fit were non-significant. However, the TGE produces more symmetrical shapes than the GE as the two parameters controlling the extent of symmetry in it are approximately equal. This work demonstrates that natural supertriangles exist, validates the use of the GE and TGE to model their shapes, and suggests that different complex radially symmetrical shapes can be generated by the same equation, implying that different types of biological symmetry may result from the same biophysical mechanisms.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (17) ◽  
pp. 2671
Author(s):  
Carlo Scotto ◽  
Dario Sabbagh

A total of 4991 ionograms recorded from April 1997 to December 2017 by the Millstone Hill Digisonde (42.6°N, 288.5°E) were considered, with simultaneous Ne(h)[ISR] profiles recorded by the co-located Incoherent Scatter Radar (ISR). The entire ionogram dataset was scaled with both the Autoscala and ARTIST programs. The reliability of the hmF2 values obtained by ARTIST and Autoscala was assessed using the corresponding ISR values as a reference. Average errors Δ and the root mean square errors RMSE were computed for the whole dataset. Data analysis shows that both the Autoscala and ARTIST systems tend to underestimate hmF2 values with |Δ| in all cases less than 10 km. For high magnetic activity ARTIST offers better accuracy than Autoscala, as evidenced by RMSE[ARTIST] < RMSE[Autoscala], under both daytime and nighttime conditions, and considering all hours of the day. Conversely, under low and medium magnetic activity Autoscala tends to estimate hmF2 more accurately than the ARTIST system for both daytime and nighttime conditions, when RMSE[Autoscala] < RMSE[ARTIST]. However, RMSE[Autoscala] slightly exceeds RMSE[ARTIST] for the day as a whole. RMSE values are generally substantial (RMSE > 16 km in all cases), which places a limit on the results obtainable with real-time models that ingest ionosonde data.


2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 28
Author(s):  
Yong Jung ◽  
Yuh-Lang Lin

<p class="1Body">In this study, a regional numerical weather prediction (NWP) model known as the Weather Research Forescasting (WRF) model was adopted to improve the quantitative precipitation forecasts (QPF) by optimizing combined microphysics and cumulus parameterization schemes. Four locations in two regions (plain region for Sangkeug and Imsil; mountainous region for Dongchun and Bunchun) in Korean Peninsula were examined for QPF for two heavy rainfall events 2006 and 2008. The maximum Index of Agreement (IOA) was 0.96 at Bunchun in 2006 using the combined Thompson microphysics and the Grell cumulus parameterization schemes. Sensitivity of QPF on domain size at Sangkeug indicated that the localized smaller domain had 55% (from 0.35 to 0.90) improved precipitation accuracy based on IOA of 2008. For the July 2006 Sangkeug event, the sensitivity to cumulus parameterization schemes for precipitation prediction cannot be ignored with finer resolutions. In mountainous region, the combined Thompson microphysics and Grell cumulus parameterization schemes make a better quantitative precipitation forecast, while in plain region, the combined Thompson microphysics and Kain-Frisch cumulus parameterization schemes are the best.</p>


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (14) ◽  
pp. 1649 ◽  
Author(s):  
María Ángeles Obregón ◽  
Gonçalo Rodrigues ◽  
Maria Joao Costa ◽  
Miguel Potes ◽  
Ana Maria Silva

This study presents a validation of aerosol optical thickness (AOT) and integrated water vapour (IWV) products provided by the European Space Agency (ESA) from multi-spectral imager (MSI) measurements on board the Sentinel-2 satellite (ESA-L2A). For that purpose, data from 94 Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) stations over Europe and adjacent regions, covering a wide geographical region with a variety of climate and environmental conditions and during the period between March 2017 and December 2018 have been used. The comparison between ESA-L2A and AERONET shows a better agreement for IWV than the AOT, with normalized root mean square errors (NRMSE) of 5.33% and 9.04%, respectively. This conclusion is also reflected in the values of R2, which are 0.99 and 0.65 for IWV and AOT, respectively. The study period was divided into two sub-periods, before and after 15 January 2018, when the Sentinel-2A spectral response functions of bands 1 and 2 (centered at 443 and 492 nm) were updated by ESA, in order to investigate if the lack of agreement in the AOT values was connected to the use of incorrect spectral response functions. The comparison of ESA-L2A AOT with AERONET measurements showed a better agreement for the second sub-period, with root mean square error (RMSE) values of 0.08 in comparison with 0.14 in the first sub-period. This same conclusion was attained considering mean bias error (MBE) values that decreased from 0.09 to 0.01. The ESA-L2A AOT values estimated with the new spectral response functions were closer to the correspondent reference AERONET values than the ones obtained using the previous spectral response functions. IWV was not affected by this change since the retrieval algorithm does not use bands 1 and 2 of Sentinel-2. Additionally, an analysis of potential uncertainty sources to several factors affecting the AOT comparison is presented and recommendations regarding the use of ESA-L2A AOT dataset are given.


2009 ◽  
Vol 21 (02) ◽  
pp. 81-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wensheng Hou ◽  
Xiaolin Zheng ◽  
Yingtao Jiang ◽  
Jun Zheng ◽  
Chenglin Peng ◽  
...  

Force production involves the coordination of multiple muscles, and the produced force levels can be attributed to the electrophysiology activities of those related muscles. This study is designed to explore the activity modes of extensor carpi radialis longus (ECRL) using surface electromyography (sEMG) at the presence of different handgrip force levels. We attempt to compare the performance of both the linear and nonlinear models for estimating handgrip forces. To achieve this goal, a pseudo-random sequence of handgrip tasks with well controlled force ranges is defined for calibration. Eight subjects (all university students, five males, and three females) have been recruited to conduct both calibration and voluntary trials. In each trial, sEMG signals have been acquired and preprocessed with Root–Mean–Square (RMS) method. The preprocessed signals are then normalized with amplitude value of Maximum Voluntary Contraction (MVC)-related sEMG. With the sEMG data from calibration trials, three models, Linear, Power, and Logarithmic, are developed to correlate the handgrip force output with the sEMG activities of ECRL. These three models are subsequently employed to estimate the handgrip force production of voluntary trials. For different models, the Root–Mean–Square–Errors (RMSEs) of the estimated force output for all the voluntary trials are statistically compared in different force ranges. The results show that the three models have different performance in different force ranges. Linear model is suitable for moderate force level (30%–50% MVC), whereas a nonlinear model is more accurate in the weak force level (Power model, 10%–30% MVC) or the strong force level (Logarithmic model, 50%–80% MVC).


2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (11) ◽  
pp. 2513-2524 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leila Goodarzi ◽  
Mohammad E. Banihabib ◽  
Abbas Roozbahani ◽  
Jörg Dietrich

Abstract. The purpose of this study is to propose the Bayesian network (BN) model to estimate flood peaks from atmospheric ensemble forecasts (AEFs). The Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model was used to simulate historic storms using five cumulus parameterization schemes. The BN model was trained to compute flood peak forecasts from AEFs and hydrological pre-conditions. The mean absolute relative error was calculated as 0.076 for validation data. An artificial neural network (ANN) was applied for the same problem but showed inferior performance with a mean absolute relative error of 0.39. It seems that BN is less sensitive to small data sets, thus it is more suited for flood peak forecasting than ANN.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 1349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaobin Xu ◽  
Cong Teng ◽  
Yu Zhao ◽  
Ying Du ◽  
Chunqi Zhao ◽  
...  

Industrialization production with high quality and effect on winter is an important measure for accelerating the shift from increasing agricultural production to improving quality in terms of grain protein content (GPC). Remote sensing technology achieved the GPC prediction. However, large deviations in interannual expansion and regional transfer still exist. The present experiment was carried out in wheat producing areas of Beijing (BJ), Renqiu (RQ), Quzhou, and Jinzhou in Hebei Province. First, the spectral consistency of Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (LS8) and RapidEye (RE) was compared with Sentinel-2 (S2) satellites at the same ground point in the same period. The GPC prediction model was constructed by coupling the vegetation index with the meteorological data obtained by the European Center for Medium-range Weather Forecasts using hierarchical linear model (HLM) method. The prediction and spatial expansion of regional GPC were validated. Results were as follows: (1) Spectral information calculated from S2 imagery were highly consistent with LS8 (R2 = 1.00) and RE (R2 = 0.99) imagery, which could be jointly used for GPC modeling. (2) The predicted GPC by using the HLM method (R2 = 0.524) demonstrated higher accuracy than the empirical linear model (R2 = 0.286) and showed higher improvements across inter-annual and regional scales. (3) The GPC prediction results of the verification samples in RQ, BJ, Xiaotangshan (XTS) in 2018, and XTS in 2019 were ideal with root mean square errors of 0.61%, 1.13%, 0.91%, and 0.38%, and relative root mean square error of 4.11%, 6.83%, 6.41%, and 2.58%, respectively. This study has great application potential for regional and inter-annual quality prediction.


2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 2481-2499 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sébastien Le clec'h ◽  
Aurélien Quiquet ◽  
Sylvie Charbit ◽  
Christophe Dumas ◽  
Masa Kageyama ◽  
...  

Abstract. Providing reliable projections of the ice sheet contribution to future sea-level rise has become one of the main challenges of the ice sheet modelling community. To increase confidence in future projections, a good knowledge of the present-day state of ice flow dynamics, which is critically dependent on basal conditions, is strongly needed. The main difficulty is tied to the scarcity of observations at the ice–bed interface at the scale of the whole ice sheet, resulting in poorly constrained parameterisations in ice sheet models. To circumvent this drawback, inverse modelling approaches can be developed to infer initial conditions for ice sheet models that best reproduce available data. Most often such approaches allow for a good representation of the mean present-day state of the ice sheet but are accompanied with unphysical trends. Here, we present an initialisation method for the Greenland ice sheet using the thermo-mechanical hybrid GRISLI (GRenoble Ice Shelf and Land Ice) ice sheet model. Our approach is based on the adjustment of the basal drag coefficient that relates the sliding velocities at the ice–bed interface to basal shear stress in unfrozen bed areas. This method relies on an iterative process in which the basal drag is periodically adjusted in such a way that the simulated ice thickness matches the observed one. The quality of the method is assessed by computing the root mean square errors in ice thickness changes. Because the method is based on an adjustment of the sliding velocities only, the results are discussed in terms of varying ice flow enhancement factors that control the deformation rates. We show that this factor has a strong impact on the minimisation of ice thickness errors and has to be chosen as a function of the internal thermal state of the ice sheet (e.g. a low enhancement factor for a warm ice sheet). While the method performance slightly increases with the duration of the minimisation procedure, an ice thickness root mean square error (RMSE) of 50.3 m is obtained in only 1320 model years. This highlights a rapid convergence and demonstrates that the method can be used for computationally expensive ice sheet models.


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