scholarly journals Latent cooling of atmosphere as an indicator of lowered snow line: Case study from Planica and Vrata valleys

2021 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Danijela Strle ◽  
Matej Ogrin

A lowered snow line in Alpine valleys as a local weather phenomenon often varies from one valley to another. The relief morphology of the valleys and the intensity of precipitation play a crucial role in the variation. In Slovenia certain valleys are more susceptible to this phenomenon than others, one such example being the Planica Valley. This article examines the occurrence of a lowered snow line in the Planica Valley and the Vrata Valley during the winter seasons of 2015/2016 and 2016/2017. Precipitation events accompanying the occurrence of a lowered snow line were analyzed, and data on temperature and precipitation were included in the analysis. Results showed a striking degree of congruence of the phenomenon in both valleys.






2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Staubitz ◽  
Ralf Teusner ◽  
Christoph Meinel ◽  
Nishanth Prakash

Programming tasks are an important part of teaching computer programming as they foster students to develop essential programming skills and techniques through practice.  The design of educational problems plays a crucial role in the extent to which the experiential knowledge is imparted to the learner both in terms of quality and quantity. Badly designed tasks have been known to put-off students from practicing programming. Hence, there is a need for carefully designed problems. Cellular Automata programming lends itself as a very suitable candidate among problems designed for programming practice. In this paper, we describe how various types of problems can be designed using concepts from Cellular Automata and discuss the features which make them good practice problems with regard to instructional pedagogy. We also present a case study on a Cellular Automata programming exercise used in a MOOC on Test Driven Development using JUnit, and discuss the automated evaluation of code submissions and the feedback about the reception of this exercise by participants in this course. Finally, we suggest two ideas to facilitate an easier approach of creating such programming exercises.



1970 ◽  
pp. 29
Author(s):  
Tuuli Lähdesmäki

Monuments are protagonists in many historical narratives. They “tell” fascinating stories of past times and past heroes and “advise” us to commemorate and reminisce. But who is actually doing the telling and to whom? How are the stories formed? In monuments the past and present, memory and history, meet in a complex way and form a structure of meanings reflecting the narratives and values of the so-called imagined community. Discursive and narrative practices play a crucial role in the formation and production of the meanings of monuments. 



2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simone Schauwecker ◽  
Gabriel Palma ◽  
Shelley MacDonell ◽  
Katerina Goubanova

<p>The height of the snow-rain transition during infrequent but high impact precipitation events, closely related to the 0⁰C-isotherm, is a crucial variable for snow cover extent, high discharge flows and flash floods in semi-arid northern Chile. Estimations of the snow-rain transition zone and its past and future changes are therefore fundamental for adaptation strategies and might eventually serve to develop early warning systems in this region. However, there are important challenges that hinder the assessment of the snow-rain transition zone in semi-arid environments and little is known about past and future changes under different global warming scenarios. For example, there are few radiosonde observations along the Andes and most weather stations are located in valley bottoms, influenced by local conditions and the assumption of free-air temperature lapse rates contributes to the uncertainty. We combine different data sets to estimate the past snow-rain transition zone of our study site, the semi-arid Elqui river catchment. Pictures of the snow line after precipitation events - available from social networks - are used to visually estimate the snow line elevation. These values are in high agreement with vertically extrapolated temperature from meteorological stations. Furthermore, we identified considerable biases between the extrapolated 0⁰C-isotherm from meteorological stations and ERA5 reanalysis data. These large biases are probably due to the lowering of the freezing level over complex terrain and need further analysis. Our results contribute to an improved understanding of the snow-rain transition in this region, but also serve to derive a climatology of this key variable along the Andes mountain range, needed for future projections.</p>



2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Livia Serrao ◽  
Lorenzo Giovannini ◽  
Luz Elita Balcazar Terrones ◽  
Hugo Alfredo Huamaní Yupanqui ◽  
Dino Zardi

<p>Climatic characteristics and weather events have always conditioned the success of a harvest. Climate change and the associated increase in intense weather phenomena in recent years are making it clearer than ever that agriculture is among the sectors most at risk. Although problems in agriculture are found all over the world, the most vulnerable contexts are those where agriculture is low-tech and rainfed. Here, adaptation strategies are even more urgent to secure the food production. Assuming that the awareness of climate change is the basis for the adoption of adaptation and mitigation strategies, it is interesting to correlate the degree of perception of local inhabitants with their willingness to adopt bottom-up initiatives.</p><p>The current study focuses on banana producers’ perceptions of climate change in a tropical valley, and the initiatives that farmers adopt to cope with recent intense weather events. The banana plant (Musa Musacae) grows in tropical climates with annual rainfall around 2000 mm and average temperatures around 27°C. The species’ threadlike root system and the weak pseudostem make it particularly vulnerable to wind gusts, which, at speeds higher than 15 m/s, can bend and knock over entire plantations. The increased frequency of convective thunderstorms observed in connection with climate change has made downburst phenomena more frequent and caused greater crop loss.</p><p>The aim of the present work is to estimate the correlation between banana producers’ perceptions of climate change and their bottom-up initiatives for adaptation. To achieve this goal, the case study of the Upper Huallaga valley, which is located in the Peruvian Amazon region as shown in Figure 1, is analysed. The work was carried out at two levels: (i) we interviewed 73 banana producers in the valley, (ii) we estimated the alterations and trends in temperature and precipitation recorded by the only three available meteorological stations within the valley. Finally, we compared the two databases to evaluate if the perception of the population was confirmed by the data. Most of the surveyed population observed an increase in temperature, consistent with the results of the data analysis, and an increase in precipitation, which was not consistent with observations as these showed a cyclic variation without a clear trend. With regards to the adaptation measures, it was observed that, although a clear majority of the sample surveyed (around 82%) agreed with the existence of climate change, only 46% of them had taken any initiative to counteract adverse events in some way. However, it is important to note that the strategies implemented were all devised and implemented by the farmers themselves. Funding and coordinating the dissemination of these adaptation practices by the local authority through a rural development plan could certainly strengthen the population’s effort.</p><p><img src="https://contentmanager.copernicus.org/fileStorageProxy.php?f=gnp.34e8e7df2cff59382630161/sdaolpUECMynit/12UGE&app=m&a=0&c=59f620ca81f3a3bb7bb44139d499513c&ct=x&pn=gnp.elif&d=1" alt=""></p><p><em>Figure 1, On the left side: the Upper Huallaga basin. </em><em>On the right side: the study area</em></p>



Author(s):  
Jill Owen ◽  
Frada Burstein

This chapter explores how an engineering consulting company creates, manages, and reuses knowledge within its projects. It argues that the informal transfer and reuse of knowledge plays a more crucial role than formal knowledge in providing the greatest benefit to the organization. The culture of the organization encourages a reliance on networks (both formal and informal) for the exchange of tacit knowledge, rather than utilizing explicit knowledge. This case study highlights the importance of understanding the drivers of knowledge transfer and reuse in projects. This will provide researchers with an insight into how knowledge management integrates with project management.



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