Future projections of temperature-related climate change impacts on the railway network of Great Britain   总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1  

Erika J. Palin  Hazel E. Thornton  Camilla T. Mathison  Rachel E. McCarthy  Robin T. Clark  John Dora 《Climatic change》2013,120(1-2):71-93

Great Britain’s main line railway network is known to experience various temperature-related impacts, e.g. track buckling and overhead power line sag at high ambient temperatures. Climate change could alter the frequency of occurrence of these impacts. We have therefore investigated the climate change impact on various temperature-related issues, identified during workshops with rail industry specialists, using a perturbed physics ensemble (PPE) of the Met Office’s regional climate model (RCM), HadRM3. We have developed novel approaches to combine RCM data with railway industry knowledge, typically by identifying key meteorological thresholds of interest and analysing exceedance of these out to the 2040s. We performed a statistical analysis of the projected changes for each issue, via bootstrapping of the unperturbed PPE member. Although neither the PPE nor the bootstrapping analysis samples the full range of uncertainty in the projections, they nonetheless provide complementary perspectives on the suitability of the projections for use in decision-making. Our main findings include projected increases in the summertime occurrence of temperature conditions associated with (i) track buckling, (ii) overhead power line sag, (iii) exposure of outdoor workers to heat stress, and (iv) heat-related delays to track maintenance; and (v) projected decreases in the wintertime occurrence of temperatures conditions associated with freight train failure owing to brake problems. For (i), the statistical significance varied with track condition and location; for (ii) and (iii), with location; and for (iv) and (v), projected changes were significant across Great Britain. As well as assessing the changes in climate-related hazard, information about the vulnerability of the network to past temperature-related incidents has been summarised. Combining the hazard and vulnerability elements will eventually support a climate risk assessment for the industry.  相似文献   

Systematic errors in weak lensing: application to SDSS galaxy–galaxy weak lensing     

Rachel Mandelbaum  Christopher M. Hirata  Uro&#; Seljak  Jacek Guzik  Nikhil Padmanabhan  Cullen Blake  Michael R. Blanton  Robert Lupton  Jonathan Brinkmann 《Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society》2005,361(4):1287-1322

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A dearth of planetary transits in the direction of NGC 6940     

Ben Hood  rew Collier Cameron  Stephen R. Kane  D. M. Bramich  Keith Horne  Rachel A. Street  I. A. Bond  A. J. Penny  Y. Tsapras  A. Quirrenbach  N. Safizadeh  D. Mitchell  J. Cooke 《Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society》2005,360(2):791-800

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The nature of high-redshift galaxies     

Rachel S. Somerville  Joel R. Primack  S. M. Faber 《Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society》2001,320(4):504-528

Using semi-analytic models of galaxy formation set within the cold dark matter (CDM) merging hierarchy, we investigate several scenarios for the nature of the high-redshift     ) Lyman-break galaxies (LBGs). We consider a 'collisional starburst' model in which bursts of star formation are triggered by galaxy–galaxy mergers, and find that a significant fraction of LBGs are predicted to be starbursts. This model reproduces the observed comoving number density of bright LBGs as a function of redshift and the observed luminosity function at     and     with a reasonable amount of dust extinction. Model galaxies at     have star formation rates, half-light radii,     colours and internal velocity dispersions that are in good agreement with the data. Global quantities such as the star formation rate density and cold gas and metal content of the Universe as a function of redshift also agree well. Two 'quiescent' models without starbursts are also investigated. In one, the star formation efficiency in galaxies remains constant with redshift, while in the other, it scales inversely with disc dynamical time, and thus increases rapidly with redshift. The first quiescent model is strongly ruled out, as it does not produce enough high-redshift galaxies once realistic dust extinction is accounted for. The second quiescent model fits marginally, but underproduces cold gas and very bright galaxies at high redshift. A general conclusion is that star formation at high redshift must be more efficient than locally. The collisional starburst model appears to accomplish this naturally without violating other observational constraints.  相似文献   

Results from the Wide-Angle Search for Planets prototype (WASP0) – I. Analysis of the Pegasus field     

Stephen R. Kane  rew Collier Cameron  Keith Horne  David James  Tim A. Lister  Don L. Pollacco  Rachel A. Street  Yiannis Tsapras 《Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society》2004,353(2):689-696

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Galaxy halo occupation at high redshift     

James S. Bullock  Risa H. Wechsler  Rachel S. Somerville 《Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society》2002,329(1):246-256

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Multi-object spectroscopy of the field surrounding PKS 2126−158: discovery of a z= 0.66 galaxy group     

Matthew T. Whiting  Rachel L. Webster  Paul J. Francis 《Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society》2006,368(1):341-350

The high-redshift radio-loud quasar PKS 2126−158 is found to have a large number of red galaxies in close apparent proximity. We use the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS) on Gemini South to obtain optical spectra for a large fraction of these sources. We show that there is a group of galaxies at   z ∼ 0.66  , coincident with a metal-line absorption system seen in the quasar's optical spectrum. The multiplexing capabilities of GMOS also allow us to measure redshifts of many foreground galaxies in the field surrounding the quasar.
The galaxy group has five confirmed members, and a further four fainter galaxies are possibly associated. All confirmed members exhibit early-type galaxy spectra, a rare situation for a Mg  ii absorbing system. We discuss the relationship of this group to the absorbing gas, and the possibility of gravitational lensing of the quasar due to the intervening galaxies.  相似文献   

Near-IR Integral Field Spectroscopy of High-z Galaxies     

Andrew Bunker  Annette Ferguson  Rachel Johnson  Richard McMahon  Ian Parry  Max Pettini  Alfonso Aragón-Salamanca  Rachel Somerville  Nicole Vogt 《Astrophysics and Space Science》2002,281(1-2):529-529

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Galaxy halo masses and satellite fractions from galaxy–galaxy lensing in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: stellar mass, luminosity, morphology and environment dependencies     

Rachel Mandelbaum  Uro&#; Seljak  Guinevere Kauffmann  Christopher M. Hirata  Jonathan Brinkmann 《Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society》2006,368(2):715-731

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Incidence of plastic fragments among burrow-nesting seabird colonies on offshore islands in northern New Zealand     

Rachel T. Buxton  Caitlin A. Currey  Philip O’B. Lyver  Christopher J. Jones 《Marine pollution bulletin》2013

Marine plastic pollution is ubiquitous throughout the world’s oceans, and has been found in high concentrations in oceanic gyres of both the northern and southern hemispheres. The number of studies demonstrating plastic debris at seabird colonies and plastic ingestion by adult seabirds has increased over the past few decades. Despite the recent discovery of a large aggregation of plastic debris in the South Pacific subtropical gyre, the incidence of plastics at seabird colonies in New Zealand is unknown. Between 2011 and 2012 we surveyed six offshore islands on the northeast coast of New Zealand’s North Island for burrow-nesting seabird colonies and the presence of plastic fragments. We found non-research related plastic fragments (0.031 pieces/m²) on one island only, Ohinau, within dense flesh-footed shearwater (Puffinus carneipes) colonies. On Ohinau, we found a linear relationship between burrow density and plastic density, with 3.5 times more breeding burrows in areas with plastic fragments found. From these data we conclude that plastic ingestion is a potentially a serious issue for flesh-footed shearwaters in New Zealand. Although these results do not rule out plastic ingestion by other species, they suggest the need for further research on the relationship between New Zealand’s pelagic seabirds and marine plastic pollution.  相似文献