scholarly journals A reconstruction of the August 1st 1674 thunderstorms over Holland

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerard van der Schrier ◽  
Rob Groenland

Abstract. On August 1st 1674 an active cold front moved over the low countries. The accompanying thunderstorms along the squall line were abnormally active, leading to large-scale damage in Europe, from northern France to the northern parts of Holland where damages were particularly severe. Using reported and pictured observations of damages, a reconstruction of this storm is made and an interpretation using modern meteorological concepts is given. The velocity of this exceptionally severe squall line and its orientation, including a developed bow-echo structure, are reconstructed. An estimate of the wind speeds associated with this event and an estimate of the return time of this event is given. This storm is compared to a more recent storm which was similar in dynamics but much less devastating. Special attention is given to the city of Utrecht which was hit hardest, and where the impact of this storm is still recognisable in the cityscape.

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerard van der Schrier ◽  
Rob Groenland

Abstract. On 1 August 1674 an active cold front moved over the Low Countries. The accompanying thunderstorms along the squall line were abnormally active, leading to large-scale damage in Europe, from northern France to the northern parts of Holland where damages were particularly severe. Using reported and pictured observations of damages and modern meteorological concepts, the reconstruction of the storm points to an exceptionally severe squall line. The orientation and the velocity of the squall line are reconstructed and shows a developed bow-echo structure. An estimate of the strength of the strongest wind gusts is ≈ 55–90 m s−1 and is based on an assessment of the damages caused by this event. A rough estimate of the return time of this event, based on observed hail size, is between 1000 and 10 000 years. This storm is compared to a more recent storm which was similar in dynamics but much less devastating. Special attention is given to the city of Utrecht which was hit hardest, and where the impact of this storm is still recognizable in the cityscape.


2015 ◽  
Vol 28 (17) ◽  
pp. 6743-6762 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine M. Naud ◽  
Derek J. Posselt ◽  
Susan C. van den Heever

Abstract The distribution of cloud and precipitation properties across oceanic extratropical cyclone cold fronts is examined using four years of combined CloudSat radar and CALIPSO lidar retrievals. The global annual mean cloud and precipitation distributions show that low-level clouds are ubiquitous in the postfrontal zone while higher-level cloud frequency and precipitation peak in the warm sector along the surface front. Increases in temperature and moisture within the cold front region are associated with larger high-level but lower mid-/low-level cloud frequencies and precipitation decreases in the cold sector. This behavior seems to be related to a shift from stratiform to convective clouds and precipitation. Stronger ascent in the warm conveyor belt tends to enhance cloudiness and precipitation across the cold front. A strong temperature contrast between the warm and cold sectors also encourages greater post-cold-frontal cloud occurrence. While the seasonal contrasts in environmental temperature, moisture, and ascent strength are enough to explain most of the variations in cloud and precipitation across cold fronts in both hemispheres, they do not fully explain the differences between Northern and Southern Hemisphere cold fronts. These differences are better explained when the impact of the contrast in temperature across the cold front is also considered. In addition, these large-scale parameters do not explain the relatively large frequency in springtime postfrontal precipitation.


2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-44
Author(s):  
Diana Mihnea

During the 1920s, the city of Sibiu expanded by approximately 250 hectares, with an area that was three times larger than its historical core. This great expansion was the result of the application of the agrarian reform, whose laws allowed and encouraged the creation of new building plots in the cities of Transylvania, Banat, Crișana and Maramureș. Although this was the largest territorial growth of the city up until that time, it was not controlled by the municipality and its Technical Office. In fact, the city authorities were excluded from most stages of the decision-making process. All the decisions were taken by the central and local institutions of the Ministry of Agriculture and Domains that were in charge with the application of the agrarian reform. The territorial expansion was not based on any large-scale studies regarding the needs of the city or the impact on its future development. In fact, the proportions and the directions of the city’s expansion were dictated mostly by the number of accepted requests for building plots and by the position of the areas that could be expropriated and that were suitable to be parcelled. The creation of the large new allotments was simultaneous with the efforts of the municipality to draft a systematisation plan that was now urgently necessary, given the rapidly changing situation of the city, and it was imposed by the new administrative legislation of Romania. So, shortly after the parceling plans were issued and the new building plots were distributed to those entitled, a preliminary systematization plan – drafted between 1926 and 1928 – proposed the revision of the new allotments and the modification of the procedure for assigning the building plots according to a system that would allow a gradual territorial growth of the city. Hence, during the second half of the 1920s and the beginning of the 1930s there were ample negotiations over the new urban territory, involving not only the Ministry of Agriculture and Domains, but also the Ministry of Interior and the Superior Technical Council. In the end, after almost a decade of negotiations, only minor adjustments were made to the allotments and the provisions of the systematisation plan were only partly applied.


2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 193-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xin Gu

This paper deals with the development of ’art clusters’ and their relocation in the city of Shanghai. It first looks at the revival of the city’s old inner city industrial area (along banks of Suzhou River) through ’organic’ or ’alternative’ artist-led cultural production; second, it describes the impact on these activities of the industrial restructuring of the wider city, reliant on large-scale real estate development, business services and global finance; and finally, outlines the relocation of these arts (and related) cultural industries to dispersed CBD locations as a result of those spatial, industrial and policy changes.


Energies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 810 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Barragán-Escandón ◽  
Esteban Zalamea-León ◽  
Julio Terrados-Cepeda

Previous research has assessed the potential of solar energy against possible demand; however, the sustainability issues associated with the use of large-scale photovoltaic deployment in urban areas have not been jointly established. In this paper, the impact of photovoltaic energy in the total urban energy mix is estimated using a series of indicators that consider the economic, environmental and social dimensions. These indicators have been previously applied at the country level; the main contribution of this research is applying them at the urban level to the city of Cuenca, Ecuador. Cuenca is close to the equatorial line and at a high altitude, enabling this area to reach the maximum self-supply index because of the high irradiation levels and reduced demand. The solar potential was estimated using a simple methodology that applies several indexes that were proven reliable in a local context considering this particular sun path. The results demonstrate that the solar potential can meet the electric power demand of this city, and only the indicator related to employment is positive and substantially affected. The indicators related to the price of energy, emissions and fossil fuel dependency do not change significantly, unless a fuel-to-electricity transport system conversions take place.


2018 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
pp. 05010
Author(s):  
Brian Perry ◽  
Colin Rennie ◽  
Andrew Cornett ◽  
Paul Knox

Due to excessive rainfall in June of 2013, several rivers located in and near the City of Calgary, Canada experienced significant flooding events. These events caused severe damage to infrastructure throughout the city, precipitating a renewed interest in flood control and mitigation strategies for the area. A major potential strategy involves partial diversion of Elbow River flood water to the proposed Springbank Off-Stream Storage Reservoir. A large scale physical model study was conducted to optimize and validate the design of a portion of the new project. The goals of the physical model were to investigate diversion system behaviors such as flow rates, water levels, sediment transport and, debris accumulation, and optimize the design of new flow control structures to be constructed on the Elbow River. In order to accurately represent the behavior of debris within the system due to flooding, large woody debris created from natural sources was utilized in the physical model and its performance was compared to that of debris of the same size fabricated from pressed cylindrical wood dowels. In addition to comparing the performance of these two debris types, the impact of root wads on debris damming was also investigated. Significant differences in damming behavior was shown to exist between the natural debris and the fabricated debris, while the impact of root wad on damming affected the dam structure and formation. The results of this experiment indicate that natural debris is preferred for studies involving debris accumulation.


Radiocarbon ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 579-600 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guy De Mulder ◽  
Mark van Strydonck ◽  
Mathieu Boudin

Since the publication of the first article (Lanting and van der Plicht 2001/2002) about the possibilities of dating cremated bones, the number of dated cremation remains has grown exponentially. The success of this dating technique lies in the fact that an absolute date now can be attributed to archaeological phenomena that previously were only datable indirectly. When archaeological artifacts where present, the cremation burials were dated based on the typology of ceramics and metals. An absolute date could be attributed if charcoal from the pyre were present. Unfortunately, these items were not omnipresent at the burial sites. Consequently, a complete site was dated by means of the few datable burials present. This implies that the internal chronology of the site could not be studied. Furthermore, the typochronology of the ceramics and the metals remains questionable. A series of dating projects on urnfield cemeteries in the Low Countries (northern France, Belgium, and the Netherlands) have shown that the classical chronology of these sites must be revised.


2010 ◽  
Vol 75 (5) ◽  
pp. 703-715 ◽  
Author(s):  
Snezana Nenadovic ◽  
Ljiljana Matovic ◽  
Misko Milanovic ◽  
Sava Janicevic ◽  
Jasmina Grbovic-Novakovic ◽  
...  

In this paper, the impacts of some meteorological parameters on the SO2 concentrations in the City of Obrenovac are presented. The City of Obrenovac is located in the north-west part of Serbia on the banks of the River Sava. The observed source emission, the power plants TENT A and TENT B are situated on the bank of the Sava River in the vicinity of Obrenovac. During the period from January to November 2006, the concentrations of sulfur dioxide in the air at 4 monitoring sites in Obrenovac were measured. It was noticed that the maximal measured daily concentrations of sulfur dioxide ranged from 1 ?g/m3 (16th November, 2006) to 98 ?g/m3 (29th January 2006) and lie under the maximal allowed concentration value according to the Serbian Law on Environmental Protection. The measured sulfur dioxide concentrations mostly showed characteristics usual for a daily acidification sulfur dioxide cycle, excluding the specificities influenced by the measuring site itself. Sulfur dioxide transport was recorded at increased wind speeds, primarily from the southeast direction. Based on the impact of meteorological parameters on the sulfur dioxide concentration, a validation of the monitoring sites was also performed from the aspect of their representivity.


Author(s):  
Ahmadreza Faghih Imani ◽  
Chris Harding ◽  
Siva Srikukenthiran ◽  
Eric J. Miller ◽  
Khandker Nurul Habib

Smartphones offer a potential alternative to collect high-quality information on the travel patterns of individuals without burdening the respondents with reporting every detail of their travel. Smartphone apps have recently become a common tool for travel survey data collection around the world, especially for multiday surveys. However, there still exists a lack of systematic assessment of issues related to smartphone app-based surveys, such as the impact of app design or the recruitment method on the collected data. Through a large-scale experiment (named the City Logger), this paper assesses the data produced by the City Logger app, to better understand recruitment avenues (targeted invitation versus crowdsourcing), and examine differences in respondents’ travel behavior recruited through crowdsourcing methods. The paper also examines how app design, and particularly the user input method for trip validation, influences participants’ responses. The results indicate that, while crowdsourcing recruitment is promising, it might not yet be the best way to capture a true representation of the population. For app design, a combination of real-time and travel diary approaches is recommended. An ideal app would prompt users real-time and create a travel diary, so users can validate, edit, or delete the recorded information.


2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (19) ◽  
pp. 27041-27085
Author(s):  
K. Markakis ◽  
M. Valari ◽  
M. Engardt ◽  
G. Lacressonnière ◽  
R. Vautard ◽  
...  

Abstract. Ozone, PM10 and PM2.5 concentrations over Paris, France and Stockholm, Sweden were modeled at 4 and 1 \\unit{km} horizontal resolutions respectively for the present and 2050 periods employing decade-long simulations. We account for large-scale global climate change (RCP-4.5) and fine resolution bottom-up emission projections developed by local experts and quantify their impact on future pollutant concentrations. Moreover, we identify biases related to the implementation of regional scale emission projections over the study areas by comparing modeled pollutant concentrations between the fine and coarse scale simulations. We show that over urban areas with major regional contribution (e.g., the city of Stockholm) the bias due to coarse emission inventory may be significant and lead to policy misclassification. Our results stress the need to better understand the mechanism of bias propagation across the modeling scales in order to design more successful local-scale strategies. We find that the impact of climate change is spatially homogeneous in both regions, implying strong regional influence. The climate benefit for ozone (daily average and maximum) is up to −5 % for Paris and −2 % for Stockholm city. The joined climate benefit on PM2.5 and PM10 in Paris is between −10 and −5 % while for Stockholm we observe mixed trends up to 3 % depending on season and size class. In Stockholm, emission mitigation leads to concentration reductions up to 15 % for daily average and maximum ozone and 20 % for PM and through a sensitivity analysis we show that this response is entirely due to changes in emissions at the regional scale. On the contrary, over the city of Paris (VOC-limited photochemical regime), local mitigation of NOx emissions increases future ozone concentrations due to ozone titration inhibition. This competing trend between the respective roles of emission and climate change, results in an increase in 2050 daily average ozone by 2.5 % in Paris. Climate and not emission change appears to be the most influential factor for maximum ozone concentration over the city of Paris, which may be particularly interesting in a health impact perspective.


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