An Employing Embedded Weather System for Self-driving Vehicles

In the past few decades we have been improving our understanding of the weather system and exploring ways to modify it. Over sixty countries have experimented with modifying the weather. The new technology of weather and climate modification will raise important political problems which will demand new responses from the international community. Whether states will be able to establish the cooperative measures necessary to develop and manage new technology depends upon whether there are sufficient incentives to do so. This article analyzes the historical patterns of international cooperation in meteorology, and then plots against several time horizons projected developments and capabilities in weather modification technology and the potential problems emerging from using the technology. It derives a tentative picture of the responsibilities demanded, compares the likely responses with those needed, and assesses whether they will be adequate for the problems projected.

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Regional landslide forecasting in Piemonte (Italy) and in Norway: experiences from 2013 late spring

10.5194/nhess-2017-411 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Davide Tiranti ◽

Graziella Devoli ◽

Roberto Cremonini ◽

Monica Sund ◽

Søren Boje

Keyword(s):

National Level ◽

Daily Rainfall ◽

Landslide Hazard ◽

Weather Type ◽

Late Spring ◽

Large Area ◽

Pressure System ◽

Weather System ◽

Landslide Forecasting ◽

Hazard Assessments

Abstract. A few countries in the world operate systematically national and regional forecasting services for rainfall-induced landslides (i.e. shallow landslides, debris flows and debris avalanches), among them: Norway and Italy. In Norway, the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE) operates a landslide forecasting service at national level. A daily national hazard assessment is performed, describing both expected awareness level and type of landslide hazard for a selected warning region. In Italy, each administrative region has its own regional environmental agency (Regional Agency for Environmental Protection, ARPA) that is responsible of the daily landslide hazard assessments and emission of landslide warnings for one or more catchments within the region. One of these agencies, the ARPA Piemonte, is responsible for issuing landslide warnings for the Piemonte region, located in Northwestern Italy. Both services provide regular landslide hazard assessments founded on a combination of quantitative thresholds and daily rainfall forecasts together with qualitative expert analysis. Daily warning reports are published at http://www.arpa.piemonte.gov.it/rischinaturali and www.varsom.no. On spring 2013, the ARPA Piemonte, and the NVE issued warnings for hydro-meteorological hazards due to the arrival of a deep and large low-pressure system, called herein Vb cyclone. This kind of weather system is known to produce the largest floods in Europe. Less known is that the weather type can trigger landslides as well. In this study, we present the experiences acquired in late spring 2013 by NVE and ARPA Piemonte. From 27th April to 19nd May 2013, more than 400 mm rain in Piemonte caused severe floods and diffused landslides. In Norway, the same weather type lasted from 15th May to 2nd June 2013 and brought warm winds with high temperatures that caused intense snow melt over a large area, and brought a lot of rain in the Southeastern Norway, initiating large flood along Glomma river and several landslides. Floods and landslides produced significant damages to roads and railways along with buildings and other infrastructure in both countries.

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Investigating the role of dust in ice nucleation within clouds and further effects on regional weather system over East Asia – Part I: model development and validation

10.5194/acp-2017-754 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Lin Su ◽

Jimmy C.H. Fung

Keyword(s):

East Asia ◽

Source Region ◽

Model Development ◽

Ice Nucleation ◽

Dust Particles ◽

Weather System ◽

Microphysics Scheme ◽

Ice Nuclei ◽

Cloud Ice ◽

Ice Water

Abstract. The GOCART–Thompson microphysics scheme, which couples the Goddard Chemistry Aerosol Radiation and Transport (GOCART) model and aerosol-aware Thompson microphysics scheme, has been implemented in the Weather Research and Forecast model coupled with Chemistry (WRF-Chem), to quantify and evaluate the effect of dust on the ice nucleation process in the atmosphere by serving as ice nuclei. The performance of the GOCART-Thompson microphysics scheme in simulating the effect of dust in atmospheric ice nucleation is then evaluated over East Asia during spring in 2012, a typical dust-intensive season. Based upon the dust emission reasonably reproduced by WRF-Chem, the effect of dust on atmospheric cloud ice water content is well reproduced. With abundant dust particles serving as ice nuclei, the simulated ice water mixing ratio and ice crystal number concentration increases by one order of magnitude over the dust source region and downwind areas during the investigated period. The comparison with ice water path from satellite observations demonstrated that the simulation of cloud ice profile is substantially improved by applying the GOCART–Thompson microphysics scheme in the simulations. Additional sensitivity experiments are carried out to optimize the parameters in the ice nucleation parameterization in the GOCART–Thompson microphysics scheme, and the results suggest that the calibration factor in the ice nucleation scheme should be set to 3 or 4. Lowering the threshold relative humidity with respect to ice to 100 % for the ice nucleation parameterization leads to further improvement in cloud ice simulation.

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Investigating the role of dust in ice nucleation within clouds and further effects on the regional weather system over East Asia – Part II: modification of the weather system

10.5194/acp-2017-755 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Lin Su ◽

Jimmy C.H. Fung

Keyword(s):

Surface Temperature ◽

East Asia ◽

South China ◽

Indirect Effects ◽

Convective Precipitation ◽

Wave Radiation ◽

Direct And Indirect Effects ◽

Weather System ◽

Near Surface ◽

Atmospheric Instability

Abstract. An updated version of the Weather Research and Forecast model coupled with Chemistry (WRF-Chem) was applied to quantify and discuss the full effects of dust on the meteorological field over East Asia during March and April 2012. The performances of the model in simulating the short-wave and long-wave radiation, surface temperature, and precipitation over East Asia are improved by incorporating the effects of dust in the simulations. The radiative forcing induced by the dust-enhanced cloud radiative effect is over one order of magnitude larger than that induced by the direct effect of dust. The semi-direct and indirect effects of dust result in a substantial increase in mid- to high clouds, and a significant reduction in low clouds, leading to a decrease of near-surface temperature and an increase of temperature at the mid- to upper troposphere over East Asia. The spatial redistribution of atmospheric water vapor and modification of the vertical temperature profile over East Asia lead to an inhibition of atmospheric instability over most land areas, but an enhancement of atmospheric instability over South China and the ocean, resulting in a significant inhibition of convective precipitation in areas from central to East China, and a substantial enhancement of convective precipitation over South China. Meanwhile, non-convective precipitation is also reduced significantly over East Asia, as cloud droplets are hindered from growing large enough to form rain droplets, due to the semi-direct and indirect effects of dust. The total precipitation can be reduced or increased by up to 20 % or more.

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A Method to Extract Essential Information from Meteorological Facsimile Charts

International Journal of Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence ◽

10.1142/s0218001419540016 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 33 (01) ◽

pp. 1954001

Author(s):

Kefeng Mao ◽

Xi Chen ◽

Kelan Zhu ◽

Dong Hu ◽

Yan Li

Keyword(s):

Template Matching ◽

Weather Forecasting ◽

Contour Detection ◽

Connected Region ◽

Good Effect ◽

Weather System ◽

Essential Information ◽

The Us ◽

Different Types ◽

Other Information

Using image processing technology to extract important information, such as isoline and weather system of the meteorological facsimile chart, is conducive to integration with other information, and has important practical value in navigation operations, marine weather forecasting, target recognition, and image retrieval. In meteorological facsimile charts, there are many types of medium-value lines, dense lines in some areas, superimposition and presence of multiple information, such as isolines and isoline characters, intersection of specific weather system symbols, etc. For different types of contours, numeric characters, weather system symbols and other object characteristics, the corresponding object extraction and recognition methods are proposed: Remove the latitude and longitude lines and coastline in the meteorological facsimile map by basemap matching; According to the position and shape features of the figure box, extract the meteorological fax figure box, separate and remove the different character tagging information; On the basis of identifying triangles and semicircles in weather symbols of the frontal system, the frontal symbols are extracted based on the circumscribed triangles and template matching. First the contour character on the fax image is expanded into a block connected region. Determine the position of the character information by judging the number of pixels in the connected region, and then use rotation and template matching to identify the numeric character. Using the meteorological facsimile maps of the US Meteorological Center and the Japan Meteorological Center for the main information extraction, experiments show that the method of this paper has a good effect on the complete and accurate symbol extraction of frontal weather systems, and reduces the computational complexity of contour detection, isoline extraction and numerical recognition. The methods can detect some information from weather charts properly and the error rate is very low.

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Introduction

Energy and Climate ◽

10.1093/oso/9780190490331.003.0005 ◽

2016 ◽

Author(s):

Michael B. McElroy

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

New York ◽

New Jersey ◽

Global Climate ◽

Low Pressure ◽

Pressure System ◽

Weather System ◽

Beach Communities ◽

Lower Manhattan ◽

Surge Flooding

The risk of disruptive climate change is real and immediate. A low- pressure system forming in the tropics develops into a Category hurricane, 1 making its way slowly up the east coast of the United States. Normally a storm such as this would be expected to make a right- hand turn and move off across the Atlantic. Conditions, however, are not normal. This storm is about to encounter an intense low- pressure weather system associated with an unusual configuration of the jet stream, linked potentially to an abnormally warm condition in the Arctic. Forecasts suggest that rather than turning right, the storm is going to turn left and intensify as it moves over unseasonably warm water off the New Jersey coast. It develops into what some would describe as the storm of the century. New York and New Jersey feel the brunt of the damage. The impact extends as far north as Maine and as far south as North Carolina. Lower Manhattan is engulfed by a 14- foot storm surge, flooding the subway, plunging the city south of 39th Street into darkness. Residents of Staten Island fear for their lives as their homes are flooded, as they lose power, and as their community is effectively isolated from the rest of the world. As many as 23 people are drowned as floodwaters engulf much of the borough. Beach communities of New Jersey are devastated. As much as a week after the storm has passed, more than a million homes and businesses in New York and New Jersey are still without power. Estimates of damage range as high as $60 billion. This is the story of the devastation brought about by Hurricane Sandy in late October of 2012.The encounter with Sandy prompted a number of queries concerning a possible link to human- induced global climate change. Andrew Cuomo, governor of New York, commented: “Part of the learning from this is the recognition that climate change is a reality, extreme weather is a reality.”

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SEDRIS Transmittal Storing and Retrieval System using Relational Databases

Journal of Database Management ◽

10.4018/jdm.2014100103 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 25 (4) ◽

pp. 38-65

Author(s):

Yongkwon Kim ◽

Heejung Yang ◽

Chin-Wan Chung

Keyword(s):

Complex Systems ◽

Relational Database ◽

Relational Databases ◽

Data Representation ◽

Environmental Data ◽

Natural Phenomena ◽

Type Conversion ◽

Weather System ◽

Relational Database System ◽

Efficient Management

Modeling and simulation (M&S) are widely used for design, analysis, and optimization of complex systems and natural phenomena in various areas such as the defense industry and the weather system. In many cases, the environment is a key part of complex systems and natural phenomena. It includes physical aspects of the real world which provide the context for a specific simulation. Recently, several simulation systems are integrated to work together when they have needs for exchanging information. Interoperability of heterogeneous simulations depends heavily on sharing complex environmental data in a consistent and complete manner. SEDRIS (Synthetic Environmental Data Representation and Interchange Specification) is an ISO standard for representation and interchange of environmental data and widely adopted in M&S area. As the size of the simulation increases, the size of the environmental data which should be exchanged between simulations increases. Therefore, an efficient management of the environmental data is very important. In this paper, the authors propose storing and retrieval methods of SEDRIS transmittals using a relational database system in order to be able to retrieve data efficiently in the environmental data server cooperating with many heterogeneous distributed simulations. By analyzing the structure and the content of SEDRIS transmittals, relational database schemas are designed. To reduce query processing time of SEDRIS transmittals, direct storing and retrieval methods which do not require the type conversion of SEDRIS transmittals are proposed. Experimental analyses are conducted to show the efficiency of the proposed approach. The results confirm that the proposed approach greatly reduces the storing time and retrieval time compared to comparison approaches.

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Uncertainty analysis of hydrological ensemble forecasts in a distributed model utilising short-range rainfall prediction

Hydrology and Earth System Sciences ◽

10.5194/hess-13-293-2009 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 13 (3) ◽

pp. 293-303 ◽

Cited By ~ 42

Author(s):

Y. Xuan ◽

I. D. Cluckie ◽

Y. Wang

Keyword(s):

High Resolution ◽

Short Range ◽

River Flow ◽

Hydrological Model ◽

Uncertainty Propagation ◽

Weather Forecast ◽

Distributed Model ◽

Distributed Hydrological Model ◽

Weather System ◽

Considerable Uncertainty

Abstract. Advances in mesoscale numerical weather predication make it possible to provide rainfall forecasts along with many other data fields at increasingly higher spatial resolutions. It is currently possible to incorporate high-resolution NWPs directly into flood forecasting systems in order to obtain an extended lead time. It is recognised, however, that direct application of rainfall outputs from the NWP model can contribute considerable uncertainty to the final river flow forecasts as the uncertainties inherent in the NWP are propagated into hydrological domains and can also be magnified by the scaling process. As the ensemble weather forecast has become operationally available, it is of particular interest to the hydrologist to investigate both the potential and implication of ensemble rainfall inputs to the hydrological modelling systems in terms of uncertainty propagation. In this paper, we employ a distributed hydrological model to analyse the performance of the ensemble flow forecasts based on the ensemble rainfall inputs from a short-range high-resolution mesoscale weather model. The results show that: (1) The hydrological model driven by QPF can produce forecasts comparable with those from a raingauge-driven one; (2) The ensemble hydrological forecast is able to disseminate abundant information with regard to the nature of the weather system and the confidence of the forecast itself; and (3) the uncertainties as well as systematic biases are sometimes significant and, as such, extra effort needs to be made to improve the quality of such a system.

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