scholarly journals Pre-collapse motion of the February 2021 Chamoli rock-ice avalanche, Indian Himalaya

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maximillian Van Wyk de Vries ◽  
Shashank Bhushan ◽  
Mylène Jacquemart ◽  
César Deschamps-Berger ◽  
Etienne Berthier ◽  
...  

Abstract. On the 7th of February 2021, a large rock-ice avalanche triggered a debris flow in Chamoli district, Uttarakhand, India, leaving over 200 dead or missing. The rock-ice avalanche originated from a steep, glacierized north-facing slope. In this work, we assess the precursory signs exhibited by this slope prior to the catastrophic collapse. We evaluate monthly slope motion from 2015 to 2021 through feature tracking of high-resolution optical satellite imagery. We then combine these data with a time series of pre- and post-event DEMs, which we use to evaluate elevation change over the same area. Both datasets show that the 26.9 Mm3 collapse block moved over 10 m horizontally and vertically in the five years preceding collapse, with particularly rapid motion occurring in the summers of 2017 and 2018. We propose that the collapse results from a combination of snow-loading in a deep headwall crack and permafrost degradation in the heavily jointed bedrock. Our observation of a clear precursory signal highlights the potential of satellite imagery for monitoring the stability of high-risk slopes. We find that the timing of the Chamoli rock-ice avalanche could likely not have been forecast from satellite data alone.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maximillian Van Wyk de Vries ◽  
Shashank Bhushan ◽  
David Shean ◽  
Etienne Berthier ◽  
César Deschamps-Berger ◽  
...  

<p>On the 7<sup>th</sup> of February 2021, a large rock-ice avalanche triggered a debris flow in Chamoli district, Uttarakhand, India, resulting in over 200 dead or missing and widespread infrastructure damage. The rock-ice avalanche originated from a steep, glacierized north-facing slope with a history of instability, most recently a 2016 ice avalanche. In this work, we assess whether the slope exhibited any precursory displacement prior to collapse. We evaluate monthly slope motion over the 2015 and 2021 period through feature tracking of high-resolution optical satellite imagery from Sentinel-2 (10 m Ground Sampling Distance) and PlanetScope (3-4 m Ground Sampling Distance). Assessing slope displacement of the underlying rock is complicated by the presence of glaciers over a portion of the collapse area, which display surface displacements due to internal ice deformation. We overcome this through tracking the motion over ice-free portions of the slide area, and evaluating the spatial pattern of velocity changes in glaciated areas. Preliminary results show that the rock-ice avalanche bloc slipped over 10 m in the 5 years prior to collapse, with particularly rapid slip occurring in the summer of 2017 and 2018. These results provide insight into the precursory conditions of the deadly rock-ice avalanche, and highlight the potential of high-resolution optical satellite image feature tracking for monitoring the stability of high-risk slopes.</p>


Author(s):  
Ondrej Ledvinka ◽  
◽  
Pavel Coufal ◽  

The territory of Czechia currently suffers from a long-lasting drought period which has been a subject of many studies, including the hydrological ones. Previous works indicated that the basin of the Morava River, a left-hand tributary of the Danube, is very prone to the occurrence of dry spells. It also applies to the development of various hydrological time series that often show decreases in the amount of available water. The purpose of this contribution is to extend the results of studies performed earlier and, using the most updated daily time series of discharge, to look at the situation of the so-called streamflow drought within the basin. 46 water-gauging stations representing the rivers of diverse catchment size were selected where no or a very weak anthropogenic influences are expected and the stability and sensitivity of profiles allow for the proper measurement of low flows. The selected series had to cover the most current period 1981-2018 but they could be much longer, which was considered beneficial for the next determination of the development direction. Various series of drought indices were derived from the original discharge series. Specifically, 7-, 15- and 30-day low flows together with deficit volumes and their durations were tested for trends using the modifications of the Mann– Kendall test that account for short-term and long-term persistence. In order to better reflect the drivers of streamflow drought, the indices were considered for summer and winter seasons separately as well. The places with the situation critical to the future water resources management were highlighted where substantial changes in river regime occur probably due to climate factors. Finally, the current drought episode that started in 2014 was put into a wider context, making use of the information obtained by the analyses.


1973 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 409-425 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert E. Berney ◽  
Bernard H. Frerichs

The concept of income elasticity of tax revenues has been used in numerous studies with little concern about its theoretical foundations. Income elasticities have also been used for revenue estimation with limited concern about stability over time or about the accuracy of the forecasts. This paper explores the development of the tax elasticity measure and, using revenue data from Washington, compares year-to-year elasticity measures with those established by regression analysis. The length of the time series is varied to check on the stability of the coefficients. Finally, the elasticities are used to predict revenues for three years to check on their accuracy for revenue estimation.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2083 (3) ◽  
pp. 032036
Author(s):  
Linlin Su

Abstract This paper qualitatively analyzes the stability of the equilibrium solution of a class of fractional chaotic financial systems and the conditions for the occurrence of Hopf bifurcation, and uses the Adams-Bashford-Melton predictive-correction finite difference method to pass the analysis Bifurcation diagrams, phase diagrams, and time series diagrams are used to simulate the complex evolution behavior of the system.


Author(s):  
Said Kharbouche ◽  
Jan-Peter Muller

This work describes our findings about an evaluation of the stability and the consistency of twenty primary PICSs (Pseudo-Invariant Calibration Sites). We present an analysis of 13 years of 8-daily MODIS products of BRDF parameters and white-sky-albedos (WSA) over the shortwave band. This time series of WSA and BRDFs shows the variation of the “stability” varies significantly from site to site. Using a 10x10 km window size over all the sites, the change in of WSA stability is around 4% but the isotropicity, which is an important element in inter-satellite calibration, can vary from 75% to 98%. Moreover, some PICS, especially, Libya-4 which is one of the PICS which is most employed, has significant and relatively fast changes in wintertime. PICS observations of BRDF/albedo shows that the Libya-4 PICS has the best performance but it is not too far from some sites such as Libya-1 and Mali. This study also reveals that Niger-3 PICS has the longest continuous period of high stability per year, and Sudan has the most isotropic surface. These observations have important implications for the use of these sites.


2019 ◽  
Vol 65 (No. 2) ◽  
pp. 67-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chi-Wei Su ◽  
Lu Liu ◽  
Ran Tao ◽  
Oana-Ramona Lobonţ

In this paper, we employ the Generalized Supremum Augmented Dickey-Fuller test in order to identify the existence of multiple bubbles in natural rubber. This approach is practical for the using of time series and identifies the beginning and end points of multiple bubbles. The results reveal that there are five bubbles, where exist the divergences between natural rubber prices and their basic values on account of market fundamentals. The five bubbles are related to imbalance between supply and demand, inefficiencies of smallholders market, oil prices, exchange rate and climatic changes through analyses. Thus, the corresponding authorities are supposed to identify bubbles and consider their evolutions, which is beneficial to the stability of natural rubber price.


Entropy ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 385 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Cuesta-Frau ◽  
Juan Pablo Murillo-Escobar ◽  
Diana Alexandra Orrego ◽  
Edilson Delgado-Trejos

Permutation Entropy (PE) is a time series complexity measure commonly used in a variety of contexts, with medicine being the prime example. In its general form, it requires three input parameters for its calculation: time series length N, embedded dimension m, and embedded delay τ . Inappropriate choices of these parameters may potentially lead to incorrect interpretations. However, there are no specific guidelines for an optimal selection of N, m, or τ , only general recommendations such as N > > m ! , τ = 1 , or m = 3 , … , 7 . This paper deals specifically with the study of the practical implications of N > > m ! , since long time series are often not available, or non-stationary, and other preliminary results suggest that low N values do not necessarily invalidate PE usefulness. Our study analyses the PE variation as a function of the series length N and embedded dimension m in the context of a diverse experimental set, both synthetic (random, spikes, or logistic model time series) and real–world (climatology, seismic, financial, or biomedical time series), and the classification performance achieved with varying N and m. The results seem to indicate that shorter lengths than those suggested by N > > m ! are sufficient for a stable PE calculation, and even very short time series can be robustly classified based on PE measurements before the stability point is reached. This may be due to the fact that there are forbidden patterns in chaotic time series, not all the patterns are equally informative, and differences among classes are already apparent at very short lengths.


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