Hydrologic projections for Australia: understanding future changes to water availability and extremes

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulrike Bende-Michl ◽  
Wendy Sharples ◽  
Chantal Donnelly ◽  
Elisabeth Vogel ◽  
Justin Peter ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Impact Assessment ◽  
Water Availability ◽  
Bias Correction ◽  
Temporal Scales ◽  
Australian Water ◽  
Spatial And Temporal Scales ◽  
Landscape Water ◽  
Hydrological Impact ◽  
Regional Downscaling ◽  
The Impact

<p>Australia's large natural hydro-climatic variability has already seen many changes, such as declining rainfall in the southern part of the country. Understanding these shifts and associated impacts on water availability is an important issue for Australia, as water supply is dependent on the generation of surface water resources. Sustainable future urban and agriculture developments will depend on best available knowledge about the risks and vulnerabilities of future water availability.</p><p>To understand those risks and vulnerabilities and to mitigate the impact of a changing climate, Australia's water policy, management and infrastructure decision making needs detailed high-resolution climate and water information. This includes information on multi-decadal timescales from future projections in the context of past climate variabilities. In Australia, currently, hydrologic change information exists in various forms, ranging from multiple regional downscaling efforts, bias-correction methods and different interpretation methods for hydrologic impact assessment – all limiting a national, consistent impact assessment across multiple spatial and temporal scales. These regional downscaling and hydrological impact data collections are either not application-ready or are tailored for specific purposes only, which poses additional barriers to their use across the water and other sectors.</p><p>To overcome these barriers, the Bureau of Meteorology is soon to release a seamless national landscape water service known as the Australian Water Outlook (AWO), combining historical data on water availability with forecast products, as well as hydrological impact projections. This system's core is the Australian Landscape Water Balance model (AWRA-L) modelling hydrologic variables consistently across a large range of spatial and temporal scales. The AWRA-L model is underpinned by substantial scientific development including data assimilation approaches for model calibration as well as model evaluation approaches for past and present time scales. Additionally, consistent downscaling and bias-correction approaches are integrated for the hydrologic projections in the operational framework.</p><p>This presentation will share an overview of the soon to be released Australian Water Outlook seamless service with an emphasis on the Hydrologic Projections part: the methodology, the user centred-design, as well as the development of guidance material containing confidence statements and uncertainty assessments to help decision makers in understanding the service. The presentation will also provide an overview of the tactics we applied to ensure the applicability of the new service including demonstration cases developed in partnership with users.</p>

Measuring temporal and spatial scales of compound events in the United Kingdom

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aloïs Tilloy ◽  
Bruce Malamud ◽  
Hugo Winter ◽  
Amelie Joly-Laugel
Keyword(s):  
Natural Hazards ◽  
Clustering Algorithm ◽  
Spatial Scales ◽  
Wind Gust ◽  
Temporal Scales ◽  
Spatial And Temporal Scales ◽  
Extreme Wind ◽  
Compound Events ◽  
Temporal And Spatial ◽  
The Impact

<p>Multi-hazard events have the potential to cause damages to infrastructures and people that may differ greatly from the associated risks posed by singular hazards. Interrelations between natural hazards also operate on different spatial and temporal scales than single natural hazards. Therefore, the measure of spatial and temporal scales of natural hazard interrelations still remain challenging. The objective of this study is to refine and measure temporal and spatial scales of natural hazards and their interrelations by using a spatiotemporal clustering technique. To do so, spatiotemporal information about natural hazards are extracted from the ERA5 climate reanalysis. We focus here on the interrelation between two natural hazards (extreme precipitation and extreme wind gust) during the period 1969-2019 within a region including Great Britain and North-West France. The characteristics of our input data (i.e. important size, high noise level) and the absence of assumption about the shape of our hazard clusters guided the choice of a clustering algorithm toward the DBSCAN clustering algorithm. To create hazard clusters, we retain only extreme values (above the 99% quantile) of precipitation and wind gust. We analyse the characteristics (eg., size, duration, season, intensity) of single and compound events of rain and wind impacting our study area. We then measure the impact of the spatial and temporal scales defined in this study on the nature of the interrelation between extreme rainfall and extreme wind in the UK. We therefore demonstrate how this methodology can be applied to a different set of natural hazards.</p>

scholarly journals Breath-Figures Self-Assembly, the Versatile Method of Manufacturing Membranes and Porous Structures: Physical, Chemical and Technological Aspects

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Bormashenko
Keyword(s):  
Self Assembly ◽  
Interfacial Phenomena ◽  
Physical Parameters ◽  
Porous Structures ◽  
Temporal Scales ◽  
Breath Figures ◽  
Spatial And Temporal Scales ◽  
Multi Scale ◽  
Physical Chemical ◽  
The Impact

The review is devoted to the physical, chemical and technological aspects of the breath-figures self-assembly process. Main stages of the process and the impact of the polymer architecture and physical parameters of the breath-figures self-assembly on the eventual pattern are covered. The review is focused on the hierarchy of spatial and temporal scales inherent for the breath-figures self-assembly. Multi-scale patterns arising from the process are addressed. The characteristic spatial lateral scales of patterns vary from nanometers to dozens of micrometers. The temporal scales of the process span from micro-seconds to seconds. The qualitative analysis performed in the paper demonstrates that the process is mainly governed by the interfacial phenomena, whereas the impact of inertia and gravity is negligible. Characterization and applications of polymer films manufactured with breath-figures self-assembly are discussed.

scholarly journals Implications of satellite swath width on global aerosol optical thickness statistics

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 2795-2820 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. R. Colarco ◽  
L. A. Remer ◽  
R. A. Kahn ◽  
R. C. Levy ◽  
E. J. Welton
Keyword(s):  
Optical Thickness ◽  
Aerosol Optical Thickness ◽  
Temporal Scales ◽  
Spatial And Temporal Scales ◽  
Moderate Resolution ◽  
Direct Forcing ◽  
Resolution Imaging ◽  
Sun Photometer ◽  
Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer ◽  
The Impact

Abstract. We assess the impact of swath width on the statistics of aerosol optical thickness (AOT) retrieved by satellite, as inferred from observations made by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). Using collocated AERONET sun photometer observations we develop a correction to the MODIS data to account for calibration and algorithmic view angle dependency in the retrieved AOT. We sub-sample and correct the AOT data from the MODIS Aqua instrument along several candidate swaths of various widths for the years 2003–2011. We find that over ocean the global, annual mean AOT is within ± 0.01 of the full swath AOT for all of our sub-samples. Over land, however, most of our sub-samples are outside of this criterion range in the global, annual mean. Moreover, at smaller spatial and temporal scales we find wide deviation in the sub-sample AOT relative to the full swath over both land and ocean. In all, the sub-sample AOT is within ± 0.01 of the full swath value less than 25% of the time over land, and less than 50% of the time over ocean (less than 35% for all but the widest of our sub-sample swaths). These results suggest that future aerosol satellite missions having only narrow swath views may not sample the true AOT distribution sufficiently to reduce significantly the uncertainty in aerosol direct forcing of climate.

Climate services for water resources – the Australian experience

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise Wilson ◽  
Chantal Donnelly ◽  
Pandora Hope ◽  
Elisabeth Vogel ◽  
Wendy Sharples ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Water Resources ◽  
Climate Services ◽  
Australian Water ◽  
Water Service ◽  
The Past ◽  
Hydrological Impact ◽  
Operational Decision Making ◽  
Regional Downscaling

<p>Climate change is already impacting on Australian water resources with step changes in rainfall regimes, changes in catchment functioning and drier, hotter conditions creating major challenges for water resource management.  Water resources in most parts of the country are influenced by high interannual variability. Thus Australia's operational water management, as well as water policy and infrastructure development decisions require high resolution information that realistically defines this variability both for the past, at seasonal scales, and into the future.</p><p>In Australia, water information accounting for climate change that is available to planners and resource managers, exists for limited geographical regions such as single catchments, urban regions or states. It is typically sourced from multiple regional downscaling efforts and using different methods to interpret this data for hydrological impacts. These regional downscaling and hydrological impact data collections are either not application-ready or tailored for specific purposes only, which poses additional barriers to their use across the water and other sectors. The needs of the water sector in managing this resource over vast river basins which cross jurisdictional boundaries, such as the Murray Darling Basin, have provided a challenge for providers of climate projection information and climate services. Consistent, agreed upon approaches across impacts at the national scale are yet to be developed. However, an accessible and consistent set of climate projections for water will help ensure that climate change risks are properly factored into decision-making in the water sector.</p><p>The Australian Bureau of Meteorology is developing a seamless national landscape water service, combining historical data on water availability with forecast products, as well as hydrological impact projections. This system uses a consistent methodology based upon the Australian Water resources Assessment (AWRA-L) hydrological model across all time scales. Once delivered, these new products will contribute towards comparable water services for the water, agricultural, energy, and other sectors, providing data across timescales. From a user's perspective the service will facilitate understanding of both past and future variability across multiple timescales of interest including the associated impacts of a changing climate. Providing a seamless service will improve operational decision making by putting short- and medium-term forecasts in the context of the past and future climate variability. Operational decision making can therefore be better integrated with longer-term strategic decision making on climate change.</p><p>For services to meet user needs they must be designed in consultation with these users. An extensive user centred design (UCD) process underpins the scope and nature of the new service. Insights will be shared from the UCD outcomes including user-defined data requirements of past and future variability. Users clearly expressed needs for guidance material and information about skill, confidence and uncertainty to accompany and contextualise climate information which is a major focus of this seamless water service. To engage users and ensure useful outputs, co-design principles are being employed as part of the confidence and uncertainty assessment process to be undertaken as part of the hydrological projections service, which will underpin development of guidance to assist users navigate multiple datasets.</p>

scholarly journals Analysis of future land use changes and water availability in the Nicaraguan Southwest as a result of the construction of the Nicaragua Interoceanic Canal

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Muñoz Ardila ◽  
Angela Rebscher ◽  
Jochen Hack
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Impact Assessment ◽  
Water Availability ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
Land Use Changes ◽  
Social Impact Assessment ◽  
Scientific Debate ◽  
Societal Actors ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Interoceanic Canal

Nicaragua is preparing the construction of an interoceanic canal that will be the longest and largest canal on earth. An environmental and social impact assessment has been published in 2014 supporting a general viability of the canal. Nonetheless, several scientist and societal actors raised serious concerns regarding the social, economic and ecological sustainability. Despite an open dispute within the Nicaraguan society, no independent, transparent and scientifically sound assessment has been carried out. Only the environmental and social impact assessment, charged by the canal constructor, has so far been realized. The aim of this study is to contribute to an open scientific debate through an objective and independent quantification of land use and hydrological impacts. This article presents a transparently documented and comprehensible impact assessment investigation of the West Canal Segment of the Nicaragua Canal. Based on publically available data and scientifically sound and recognized methods land use, hydrological (water availability) and socio-economic impacts (streets, population) are described, quantified and compared with official declarations in the impact assessment. While some results support official declarations other do not. The number of affected population and the water use of the Brito Lock resulted much higher in this study, for instance. Hence, society and water availability could be affected much higher than estimated in the impact assessment.

scholarly journals Soil Moisture Dynamics in Response to Precipitation and Thinning in a Semi-Dry Forest in Northern Mexico

Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 105
Author(s):  
Argelia E. Rascón-Ramos ◽  
Martín Martínez-Salvador ◽  
Gabriel Sosa-Pérez ◽  
Federico Villarreal-Guerrero ◽  
Alfredo Pinedo-Alvarez ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Soil Moisture ◽  
Forest Management ◽  
Water Availability ◽  
Dry Forest ◽  
Rainfall Events ◽  
Rainfall Characteristics ◽  
Northern Mexico ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Moisture Dynamics

Understanding soil moisture behavior in semi-dry forests is essential for evaluating the impact of forest management on water availability. The objective of the study was to analyze soil moisture based in storm observations in three micro-catchments (0.19, 0.20, and 0.27 ha) with similar tree densities, and subject to different thinning intensities in a semi-dry forest in Chihuahua, Mexico. Vegetation, soil characteristics, precipitation, and volumetric water content were measured before thinning (2018), and after 0%, 40%, and 80% thinning for each micro-catchment (2019). Soil moisture was low and relatively similar among the three micro-catchments in 2018 (mean = 8.5%), and only large rainfall events (>30 mm) increased soil moisture significantly (29–52%). After thinning, soil moisture was higher and significantly different among the micro-catchments only during small rainfall events (<10 mm), while a difference was not noted during large events. The difference before–after during small rainfall events was not significant for the control (0% thinning); whereas 40% and 80% thinning increased soil moisture significantly by 40% and 53%, respectively. Knowledge of the response of soil moisture as a result of thinning and rainfall characteristics has important implications, especially for evaluating the impact of forest management on water availability.

scholarly journals Development of a Rapid Risk and Impact Assessment Tool to Enhance Response to Environmental Emergencies in the Early Stages of a Disaster: A Tool Developed by the European Multiple Environmental Threats Emergency NETwork (EMETNET) Project

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma-Jane Goode ◽  
Eirian Thomas ◽  
Owen Landeg ◽  
Raquel Duarte-Davidson ◽  
Lisbeth Hall ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Impact Assessment ◽  
Assessment Tool ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Protection Mechanism ◽  
Environmental Threats ◽  
Environmental Disasters ◽  
Early Stages ◽  
Potential Risks ◽  
The Impact

AbstractEvery year, numerous environmental disasters and emergencies occur across the globe with far-reaching impacts on human health and the environment. The ability to rapidly assess an environmental emergency to mitigate potential risks and impacts is paramount. However, collating the necessary evidence in the early stages of an emergency to conduct a robust risk assessment is a major challenge. This article presents a methodology developed to help assess the risks and impacts during the early stages of such incidents, primarily to support the European Union Civil Protection Mechanism but also the wider global community in the response to environmental emergencies. An online rapid risk and impact assessment tool has also been developed to promote enhanced collaboration between experts who are working remotely, considering the impact of a disaster on the environment and public health in the short, medium, and long terms. The methodology developed can support the appropriate selection of experts and assets to be deployed to affected regions to ensure that potential public health and environmental risks and impacts are mitigated whenever possible. This methodology will aid defensible decision making, communication, planning, and risk management, and presents a harmonized understanding of the associated impacts of an environmental emergency.

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