Toward a physically plausible upper bound of sea-level rise projections   总被引：3，自引：1，他引：2  

Ryan L. Sriver  Nathan M. Urban  Roman Olson  Klaus Keller 《Climatic change》2012,115(3-4):893-902

Anthropogenic sea-level rise (SLR) causes considerable risks. Designing a sound SLR risk-management strategy requires careful consideration of decision-relevant uncertainties such as the reasonable upper bound of future SLR. The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Fourth Assessment reported a likely upper SLR bound in the year 2100 near 0.6 m (meter). More recent studies considering semi-empirical modeling approaches and kinematic constraints on glacial melting suggest a reasonable 2100 SLR upper bound of approximately 2 m. These recent studies have broken important new ground, but they largely neglect uncertainties surrounding thermal expansion (thermosteric SLR) and/or observational constraints on ocean heat uptake. Here we quantify the effects of key parametric uncertainties and observational constraints on thermosteric SLR projections using an Earth system model with a dynamic three-dimensional ocean, which provides a mechanistic representation of deep ocean processes and heat uptake. Considering these effects nearly doubles the contribution of thermosteric SLR compared to previous estimates and increases the reasonable upper bound of 2100 SLR projections by 0.25 m. As an illustrative example of the effect of overconfidence, we show how neglecting thermosteric uncertainty in projections of the SLR upper bound can considerably bias risk analysis and hence the design of adaptation strategies. For conditions close to the Port of Los Angeles, the 0.25 m increase in the reasonable upper bound can result in a flooding-risk increase by roughly three orders of magnitude. Results provide evidence that relatively minor underestimation of the upper bound of projected SLR can lead to major downward biases of future flooding risks.  相似文献   

Variability of carbon dioxide flux from tropical (Cerrado) hydroelectric reservoirs   总被引：4，自引：0，他引：4  

Fábio Roland  Luciana O. Vidal  Felipe S. Pacheco  Nathan O. Barros  Arcilan Assireu  Jean P. H. B. Ometto  André C. P. Cimbleris  Jonathan J. Cole 《Aquatic Sciences - Research Across Boundaries》2010,72(3):283-293

Hydroelectric reservoirs generate energy without significant combustion of fossil fuels. However, these systems can, potentially, emit greenhouse gases (GHG’s) at a rate which may be significant at the global scale, and, possible, co-equal, per kilowatt-hour, to that from conventional coal or oil-fired systems. Although much of the new construction of hydroelectric reservoirs is in the tropics, most of the data on GHG emissions comes from temperate regions. Further, much of the existing data on reservoir gas emissions comes from single sites, usually near the terminal dams. Large tropical reservoirs often involve the impoundments of river systems with complex morphology which in turn can cause spatial heterogeneity in gas flux. We evaluated spatial and seasonal variability in CO₂ concentrations and gas flux for five large (50–1,400 km²) reservoirs in the Cerrado region of Brazil. Most of data set (87% of all measurements) showed CO₂ supersaturation and net efflux to the atmosphere. There was as much or more variation in pCO₂ over space and among seasons. The large studied reservoirs showed different zones in terms of CO₂ emission because those fluxes are dependent on flooded biomass, watershed input of organic matter and dam operation regime. Here we demonstrate that the reservoirs in the Brazilian Cerrado have low rates of CO₂ emissions compared to existing global comparisons. Our results suggest that ignoring the spatial variability can lead to more than 25% error in total system gas flux.  相似文献   

Bank erosion of legacy sediment at the transition from vertical to lateral stream incision          下载免费PDF全文

Nathan J. Lyons  Michael J. Starek  Karl W. Wegmann  Helena Mitasova 《地球表面变化过程与地形》2015,40(13):1764-1778

Streambank erosion is a primary source of suspended sediments in many waterways of the US Atlantic Piedmont. This problem is exacerbated where banks are comprised of fine sediment produced by the intensive land use practices of early European settlers. A stream in this region, Richland Creek incises into banks comprised of three stratigraphic layers associated with historic land use: pre‐European settlement, early European agriculture and development, and water‐powered milldam operation. This study aims to identify the bank processes along a reach of Richland Creek that is eroding towards its pre‐disturbance elevation. The volume of material that has eroded along this stream since the milldam breached was calculated by differencing a reconstructed surface of the pond bed and an aerial lidar digital terrain model (DTM). Immediately downstream from the study reach, the channel is floored by bedrock and immediately upstream the rate of channel erosion approximately doubled along the longitudinal profile of Richland Creek, which indicate that the study reach spans the transition from a channel dominated by vertical incision in the upstream direction to horizontal widening in the downstream direction. The combined hydrometeorological conditions and dominant processes causing reach‐scale cut bank erosion were investigated with analyses of stream stage, precipitation, and streambank volumetric and surfaces change that was measured during nine terrestrial lidar surveys in 2010–2012. The spatial variability of erosion during a simulated precipitation event was examined in a field‐based experiment. Erosion was greatest where mill pond sediment columns detached along vertical desiccation and horizontal seepage cracks. This sediment accumulated on the bank toe throughout the study and was a source of readily‐entrained fine sediment contrary to the upper reaches where depositional accommodation space is more limited. Findings suggest that hotspots of sediment excavation progress upstream, indicating that restoration efforts should focus upon stabilizing banks at these locations. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.  相似文献   

Burning molten metallic spheres: One class of ball lightning?     

Karl D. Stephan  Nathan Massey   《Journal of Atmospheric and Solar》2008,70(11-12):1589-1596

Abrahamson and Dinniss [2000. Ball lightning caused by oxidation of nanoparticle networks from normal lightning strikes on soil. Nature 403, 519–521] proposed a theory of ball lighting in which silicon nanoparticles undergo slow oxidation and emit light. Paiva et al. [2007. Production of ball-lightning-like luminous balls by electrical discharges in silicon. Physical Review Letters 98, 048501] reported that an electric arc to silicon produced long-lasting luminous white spheres showing many characteristics of ball lightning. We show experimentally that these consist of burning molten silicon spheres with diameters in the 0.1–1 mm range. The evidence of our experiments leads us to propose that a subset of ball lightning events may consist of macro-scale molten spheres of burning metallic materials likely to be ejected from a conventional lightning strike to earth.  相似文献   

Simulating vegetation effects on flows in 3D using an unstructured grid model: model development and validation     

Zhang  Yinglong J.  Gerdts  Nathan  Ateljevich  Eli  Nam  Kijin 《Ocean Dynamics》2020,70(2):213-230

Ocean Dynamics - Prevalence of vegetation (either submerged or emergent) in shallow water significantly affects the flow and turbulence structure in this environment. In this paper, we develop a...  相似文献   

IMAGE: a multivariate multi-site stochastic weather generator for European weather and climate     

Nathan?J.?SparksEmail authorView author&#;s OrcID profile  Stephen?R.?Hardwick  Matthias?Schmid  Ralf?Toumi 《Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment (SERRA)》2018,32(3):771-784

Capturing the spatial and temporal correlation of multiple variables in a weather generator is challenging. A new massively multi-site, multivariate daily stochastic weather generator called IMAGE is presented here. It models temperature and precipitation variables as latent Gaussian variables with temporal behaviour governed by an auto-regressive model whose residuals and parameters are correlated through resampling of principle component time series of empirical orthogonal function modes. A case study using European climate data demonstrates the model’s ability to reproduce extreme events of temperature and precipitation. The ability to capture the spatial and temporal extent of extremes using a modified Climate Extremes Index is demonstrated. Importantly, the model generates events covering not observed temporal and spatial scales giving new insights for risk management purposes.  相似文献   

FracKfinder: A MATLAB Toolbox for Computing Three-Dimensional Hydraulic Conductivity Tensors for Fractured Porous Media     

Nathan L. Young  Jacqueline E. Reber  William W. Simpkins 《Ground water》2019,57(1):75-80

Fractures in porous media have been documented extensively. However, they are often omitted from groundwater flow and mass transport models due to a lack of data on fracture hydraulic properties and the computational burden of simulating fractures explicitly in large model domains. We present a MATLAB toolbox, FracKfinder, that automates HydroGeoSphere (HGS), a variably saturated, control volume finite-element model, to simulate an ensemble of discrete fracture network (DFN) flow experiments on a single cubic model mesh containing a stochastically generated fracture network. Because DFN simulations in HGS can simulate flow in both a porous media and a fracture domain, this toolbox computes tensors for both the matrix and fractures of a porous medium. Each model in the ensemble represents a different orientation of the hydraulic gradient, thus minimizing the likelihood that a single hydraulic gradient orientation will dominate the tensor computation. Linear regression on matrices containing the computed three-dimensional hydraulic conductivity (K) values from each rotation of the hydraulic gradient is used to compute the K tensors. This approach shows that the hydraulic behavior of fracture networks can be simulated where fracture hydraulic data are limited. Simulation of a bromide tracer experiment using K tensors computed with FracKfinder in HGS demonstrates good agreement with a previous large-column, laboratory study. The toolbox provides a potential pathway to upscale groundwater flow and mass transport processes in fractured media to larger scales.  相似文献   

Effects of Wormhole Configurations on Performance of Cyclic Solvent Injection in Heavy Oil Systems     

David  Nathan Abraham  Torabi  Farshid 《Natural Resources Research》2019,28(3):1021-1035

Natural Resources Research - In this study, the effect of three different wormhole configurations: single-linear, single-branched, and double-branched wormholes on the performance of cyclic solvent...  相似文献   

Slab dehydration and basalt petrogenesis in subduction systems involving very young oceanic lithosphere     

Dennis L. Harry  Nathan L. Green 《Chemical Geology》1999,160(4):1-333

Compositions of post-Miocene basalts erupted in the Garibaldi and Central America volcanic arcs exhibit significant correlations with the age of the subducted plate. In general, SiO₂, Al₂O₃, CaO, V, and (Sr/P)_N decrease and FeO, MgO, TiO₂ and Na₂O increase as the age of the subducted plate decreases. Variations in CaO/Al₂O₃, SiO₂, (Sr/P)_N, and Ba are compatible with lesser slab input, and hence less hydrous melting conditions in the mantle wedge in segments of the arcs overlying the youngest oceanic lithosphere. This interpretation is supported by comparison with peridotite melting experiments, which suggest higher melt pressures and temperatures in the mantle wedge above very young oceanic lithosphere. These observations point to a model in which dehydration of the downgoing slab occurs at shallow depths in subduction systems involving oceanic lithosphere younger than about 20 Ma. Because young oceanic lithosphere is relatively warm, little post-subduction heating is required to produce metamorphic reactions that release slab volatiles. Geodynamic models indicate most volatile-liberating reactions will occur within the seismogenic zone in oceanic lithosphere younger than 20 Ma, thus limiting the volatile flux beneath the arc and encouraging drier, higher temperature and higher pressure melting conditions in the mantle wedge in comparison to typical arc systems. Liberation of volatiles in the downgoing plate is strongly dependant on the shear stress on the fault, but is predicted to occur within the seismogenic zone for shear stresses greater than 33 MPa. Similarly, early loss of volatiles is predicted over a wide range of convergence rates, plate dips, and convergence angles. These results are shown to be robust for realistic ranges of slab dip, convergence angle, and shear stress, suggesting that volatile-poor melt generation is a characteristic of modern and ancient arc systems that involve subduction of young oceanic lithosphere.  相似文献   

Erratum to “A descriptive analysis of temporal and spatial patterns of variability in Puget Sound oceanographic properties” [Estuarine,Coastal and Shelf Science 80 (2008) 545–554]     

Stephanie K. Moore  Nathan J. Mantua  Jan A. Newton  Mitsuhiro Kawase  Mark J. Warner  Jonathan P. Kellogg 《Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science》2010

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