An integrated approach for tracking climate-driven changes in treeline environments on different time scales in the Valle d’Aosta, Italian Alps

Both biotic and abiotic components, characterizing the mountain treeline ecotone, respond differently to climate variations. This study aims at reconstructing climate-driven changes by analyzing soil evolution in the late Holocene and by assessing the climatic trends for the last centuries and years in a key high-altitude climatic treeline (2515 m a.s.l.) on the SW slope of the Becca di Viou mountain (Aosta Valley Region, Italy). This approach is based on soil science and dendrochronological techniques, together with daily air/soil temperature monitoring of four recent growing seasons. Direct measurements show that the ongoing soil temperatures during the growing season, at the treeline and above, are higher than the predicted reference values for the Alpine treeline. Thus, they do not represent a limiting factor for tree establishment and growth, including at the highest altitudes of the potential treeline (2625 m a.s.l.). Dendrochronological evidences show a marked sensitivity of tree-ring growth to early-summer temperatures. During the recent 10-year period 2006–2015, trees at around 2300 m a.s.l. have grown at a rate that is approximately 1.9 times higher than during the 10-year period 1810–1819, one of the coolest periods of the Little Ice Age. On the other hand, soils show only an incipient response to the ongoing climate warming, likely because of its resilience regarding the changeable environmental conditions and the different factors influencing the soil development. The rising air temperature, and the consequent treeline upward shift, could be the cause of a shift from Regosol to soil with more marked Umbric characteristics, but only for soil profiles located on the N facing slopes. Overall, the results of this integrated approach permitted a quantification of the different responses in abiotic and biotic components through time, emphasizing the influence of local station conditions in responding to the past and ongoing climate change.

A decision-making model of railway tourist dedicated train operation plan

The rapid increase of China’s railway mileage and the effective release of transport capacity provide a basis for the development of tourist-dedicated train. Considering the decision-making between the railway enterprises and the local government on whether the tourist-dedicated train stops at the local station, the length of stay and the market price, the model of its operation plan is designed to solve algorithm problem and provide foundation for railway enterprises to improve the efficiency of operation. Based on the results of experiments, we found that the price sensitivity of consumers is negatively correlated with the pricing and income of tourist-dedicated train. The higher the sensitivity of prices is, the lower the fares and profits of the tourist railways service will realize. In addition, the initial scale of tourism demand of each region along the railway has a direct impact on whether to build a stop in the area. A larger demand scale will increase the possibility of the tourist-dedicated train stopping. In this case, to develop the Mid-and High Tier tourist-dedicated train, the close contact and strategic cooperation with local governments before its opening should be traded-off and considered as important factors for the China National Rail.

Is Trans-Korean Railway Solely a Symbol of Peace in the Korean Peninsula?

The islandic geopolitical situation of South Korea led the road-centered development and the road freight share reached 97% in 2015. Trans-Korean Railway, thus, is the key to low carbon development of South Korea. With the Trans-Korean Railway, the export freights for Eurasia can be loaded at a local station for a direct rail transport instead of current d-touring road-ship intermodal transport. This will trigger domestic rail facilitation and reduce road externalities. The corresponding reduction of the shuttle shipment among South Korea–China–Russia may further contribute towards the environmental sustainability of the Yellow and East Seas. Yet, Trans-Korean Railway is considered as a symbol of “peace in Korean Peninsula” that there has not been a sufficient research on the environmental, social, and economic impacts of the Trans-Korean Railway connection. This paper, accounting on various phenomenal evidence including air pollution (environmental), public health risks and high fatality (social) and logistics inefficiency (economic), argues for the needs to change the discussion perspective on the Trans-Korean Railway from traditional politics to its environmental, social, and economic values.

Cache-Enabled Data Rate Maximization for Solar-Powered UAV Communication Systems

Currently, deploying fixed terrestrial infrastructures is not cost-effective in temporary circumstances, such as natural disasters, hotspots, and so on. Thus, we consider a system of caching-based UAV-assisted communications between multiple ground users (GUs) and a local station (LS). Specifically, a UAV is exploited to cache data from the LS and then serve GUs’ requests to handle the issue of unavailable or damaged links from the LS to the GUs. The UAV can harvest solar energy for its operation. We investigate joint cache scheduling and power allocation schemes by using the non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) technique to maximize the long-term downlink rate. Two scenarios for the network are taken into account. In the first, the harvested energy distribution of the GUs is assumed to be known, and we propose a partially observable Markov decision process framework such that the UAV can allocate optimal transmission power for each GU based on proper content caching over each flight period. In the second scenario where the UAV does not know the environment’s dynamics in advance, an actor-critic-based scheme is proposed to achieve a solution by learning with a dynamic environment. Afterwards, the simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed methods, compared to baseline approaches.

Statistical reconstruction of daily precipitation and temperature fields in Switzerland back to 1864

Spatial information on past weather contributes to better understanding the processes behind day-to-day weather variability and to assessing the risks arising from weather extremes. For Switzerland, daily resolved spatial information on meteorological parameters is restricted to the period starting from 1961, whereas prior to that local station observations are the only source of daily long-term weather data. While attempts have been made to reconstruct spatial weather patterns for certain extreme events, the task of creating a continuous spatial weather reconstruction dataset for Switzerland has so far not been addressed. Here, we aim to reconstruct daily high-resolution precipitation and temperature fields for Switzerland back to 1864 with an analogue resampling method (ARM) using station data and a weather type classification. Analogue reconstructions are post-processed with an ensemble Kalman fitting (EnKF) approach and quantile mapping. Results suggest that the presented methods are suitable for daily precipitation and temperature reconstruction. Evaluation experiments reveal excellent skill for temperature and good skill for precipitation. As illustrated with the example of the avalanche winter of 1887/88, these weather reconstructions have great potential for various analyses of past weather and for climate impact modelling.

Statistical Reconstruction of Daily Precipitation and Temperature Fields in Switzerland back to 1864

Spatial information on past weather contributes to better understand the processes behind day-to-day weather variability and to assess the risks arising from weather extremes. For Switzerland, daily-resolved spatial information on meteorological parameters is restricted to the period starting from 1961, whereas prior to that local station observations are the only source of daily, long-term weather data. While attempts have been made to reconstruct spatial weather patterns for certain extreme events, the task of creating a continuous spatial weather reconstruction dataset for Switzerland has so far not been addressed. Here, we aim to reconstruct daily, high-resolution precipitation and temperature fields for Switzerland back to 1864 with an analogue resampling method (ARM) using station data and a weather type classification. Analogue reconstructions are post-processed with an ensemble Kalman fitting (EnKF) approach and quantile mapping. Results suggest that the presented methods are suitable for daily precipitation and temperature reconstruction. Evaluation experiments reveal an excellent skill for temperature and a good skill for precipitation. As illustrated on the example of the avalanche winter 1887/88, these weather reconstructions have a great potential for various analyses of past weather and for climate impact modelling.

Cálculo de Magnitudes e Relação Freqüência-Magnitudes dos Sismos de João Câmara, RN

RESUMO. As magnitudes dos principais sismos da série de João Câmara de 1986-1987 foram calculadas com estações regionais e telessísmicas. Correções das estações foram determinadas permitindo obter-se valores de magnitudes mais homogêneos e com menores desvios padrão. De agosto de 1986 a fevereiro de 1987, 30 sismos tiveram magnitudes maiores ou iguais a 3,5. A magnitude do maior sismo da série (30/11/86 às 05:19:48) foi m = 5,03 ± 0,05. Uma relação empírica entre magnitude e duração do sinal (m = c1 log D + c3) na estação JC01, em João Câmara, foi estabelecida permitindo um cálculo mais rápido de magnitude de microtremores. Para durações medidas até 1 mm pico-a-pico no sismograma, c1 = 2,05 e c3 = –1,61 para m ? 2. O exame das relações frequência-magnitude (log N = a – b m) indica que o coeficiente c1 deve ser menor para magnitudes abaixo de 2, aproximadamente. Para a atividade geral de João Câmara, foi encontrado um valor típico do parâmetro b de 1,12 ± 0,04. Não foi observada variação significativa no valor de b antes e depois do maior sismo de 30/11/1986.Palavras-chave: terremoto, onda de cauda, correções de estação, Rio Grande do Norte. DETERMINATION OF MAGNITUDES AND MAGNITUDE-FREQUENCY RELATION FOR THE EARTHQUAKES OF JOÃO CÂMARA, RNABSTRACT. Magnitudes of the major events of the 1986-1987 João Câmara earthquake swarm were calculated with regional and teleseismic stations. Station corrections were determined allowing more homogeneous magnitudes with smaller standard deviations. From August 1986 to February 1987, 30 events had magnitudes greater than 3.5. The largest (November 30, 1986 at 05:19:48) had m = 5.03 ± 0.05. An empirical relation between magnitude, m, and signal duration, D, (m = c1 log D + c3) at the local station JC01 was established allowing quick estimates of magnitudes for microearthquakes. For durations measured from the P arrival to coda amplitude of 1 mm peak-to-peak, c1 = 2.05 and c3 = –1.61 for magnitudes greater than about 2. The study of the frequency-magnitude relation (log N = a – b m) shows that the coefficient c1 must be smaller for magnitudes less than about 2. For the whole activity of João Câmara, a typical b-value of 1.12 ± 0.04 was found. No significant variation was observed in the b-value before and after the main event of November 30, 1986.Keywords: earthquake, coda wave, station corrections, Rio Grande do Norte State.

The photon identification loophole in EPRB experiments: computer models with single-wing selection

Recent Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen-Bohm experiments [M. Giustinaet al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 250401 (2015); L. K. Shalmet al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 250402 (2015)] that claim to be loophole free are scrutinized. The combination of a digital computer and discrete-event simulation is used to construct a minimal but faithful model of the most perfected realization of these laboratory experiments. In contrast to prior simulations, all photon selections are strictly made, as they are in the actual experiments, at the local station and no other “post-selection” is involved. The simulation results demonstrate that a manifestly non-quantum model that identifies photons in the same local manner as in these experiments can produce correlations that are in excellent agreement with those of the quantum theoretical description of the corresponding thought experiment, in conflict with Bell’s theorem which states that this is impossible. The failure of Bell’s theorem is possible because of our recognition of the photon identification loophole. Such identification measurement-procedures are necessarily included in all actual experiments but are not included in the theory of Bell and his followers.

High-Resolution Statistical Downscaling in Southwestern British Columbia

Knowledge from high-resolution daily climatological parameters is frequently sought after for increasingly local climate change assessments. This research investigates whether applying a simple postprocessing methodology to existing statistically downscaled temperature and precipitation fields can result in improved downscaled simulations useful at the local scale. Initial downscaled daily simulations of temperature and precipitation at 10-km resolution are produced using bias correction constructed analogs with quantile mapping (BCCAQ). Higher-resolution (800 m) values are then generated using the simpler climate imprint technique in conjunction with temperature and precipitation climatologies from the Parameter-Elevation Regression on Independent Slopes Model (PRISM). The potential benefit of additional downscaling to 800 m is evaluated using the “Climdex” set of 27 indices of extremes established by the Expert Team on Climate Change Detection and Indices (ETCCDI). These indices are also calculated from weather station observations recorded at 22 locations within southwestern British Columbia, Canada, to evaluate the performance of both the 10-km and 800-m datasets in replicating the observed quantities. In a 30-yr historical evaluation period, Climdex indices computed from 800-m simulated values display reduced error relative to local station observations than those from the 10-km dataset, with the greatest reduction in error occurring at high-elevation sites for precipitation-based indices.