Heat stress increase under climate change twice as large in cities as in rural areas : a study for a densely populated midlatitude maritime region

Urban areas are usually warmer than their surrounding natural areas, an effect known as the urban heat island effect. As such, they are particularly vulnerable to global warming and associated increases in extreme temperatures. Yet ensemble climate-model projections are generally performed on a scale that is too coarse to represent the evolution of temperatures in cities. Here, for the first time, we combine unprecedented long-term (35years) urban climate model integrations at the convection-permitting scale (2.8km resolution) with information from an ensemble of general circulation models to assess temperature-based heat stress for Belgium, a densely populated midlatitude maritime region. We discover that the heat stress increase toward the mid-21st century is twice as large in cities compared to their surrounding rural areas. The exacerbation is driven by the urban heat island itself, its concurrence with heat waves, and urban expansion. Cities experience a heat stress multiplication by a factor 1.4 and 15 depending on the scenario. Remarkably, the future heat stress surpasses everywhere the urban hot spots of today. Our results demonstrate the need to combine information from climate models, acting on different scales, for climate change risk assessment in heterogeneous regions. Moreover, these results highlight the necessity for adaptation to increasing heat stress, especially in urban areas

Parametric Design Study on Aerodynamic Characteristics of Variable Pitot Inlets for Transonic and Supersonic Civil Aviation

This paper reveals the influence of selected geometric parameters on the aerodynamic performance of circular variable aero engine inlets in transonic and supersonic civil aviation. The trade-off in inlet design and aerodynamic evaluation parameters are presented. The approach to investigate the dependencies between the aerodynamic and geometric parameters at different flight conditions by means of a parametric design study is introduced. The dependencies of inlet drag and efficiency from geometric parameters at flight speeds of Mach 0.95 up to Mach 1.6 are identified. Although entailing additional weight, the inlet length represents the parameter with the highest potential for drag reduction by up to 50% in the selected design space. Ideal geometries for variable pitot inlets are determined. After considering weight, their potential range benefit nearly disappears for subsonic applications, but remains above 20% for supersonic flight at Mach 1.6

Validation of TERRA-ML with discharge measurements

We evaluate the runoff-simulation performance of a water transport model (routing scheme) coupled to the Land Surface Parameterization module TERRA-ML of the operational COSMO (Consortium for Small-Scale Modelling) weather forecast model. In addition to the successful implemention of the routing scheme, we also included an alternative vertical soil water transport parameterisation in TERRA-ML in order to estimate the uncertainty caused by the component of the LSP central to runoff generation. A combination of two data sets, both operational products by DWD, is used for precipitation input. These are the hourly precipitation data set RADOLAN RW, which is based on radar data and is calibrated by rain gauges, as well as the daily REGNIE data set, which is only based on gauge data. The mesoscale Sieg river catchment located in Western Germany is used as the evaluation testbed. The extended TERRA-ML was run in standalone mode (decoupled from the atmospheric part of the COSMO model) with 1 × 1 km spatial resolution from April to September 2005 based on and provided with spatially more detailed descriptions of topography, land use and soil texture. The model was driven by operational COSMO analysis data and two different sources of observed precipitation (gauge and radar measurements). The results are compared to discharge measurements. They indicate a good representation of the observed discharge by the extended TERRA-ML system. The additionally implemented linear vertical soil water parameterization overestimates total discharge less (6 %) than the default exponential parameterization (20 %) when compared to a gauging station located at the lower reaches of the river Sieg. Suggestions are given on how to further enhance the modelled discharge by improvements in the LSP scheme

Streamflow simulations reveal the impact of the soil parameterization

Land surface models calculate runoff from the land surface. Therefore they must be coupled to a hydrological model to receive the streamflow which then allows for the comparison to measurements at gauging stations. The land surface model TERRA-ML of the weather forecast model COSMO of the German Weather Service is coupled to a river routing model and applied to the Enz watershed upstream of Höfen (Baden-Württemberg, Germany). The comparison of simulated to measured streamflow revealed, deficiencies in the hydraulic conductivity parameterization and in the applied soil texture data set. Small changes in the vertical soil water fluxes and high resolution soil texture data led to a significant improvement in the streamflow simulation. This resulted in different simulations of evapotranspiration and soil moisture, namely in spring and early summer, i.e. during the most pronounced growing season

Data-Grey-BoxWeb Services in Data-Centric Environments

In data-centric environments, for example, in the field of scientific computing, the transmission of large amount of structured data to Web services is required. In service-oriented environments (SOA), the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) is commonly used as the main transport protocol. However, the resulting 'by value' data transmission approach is not efficiently applicable in data-centric environments. One challenging bottleneck of SOAP arises from the XML serialization and deserialization when processing large SOAP messages. In this paper, we present an extended Web service framework which explicitly considers the data aspects of functional Web services. Aside from the possibility to integrate specialized data transfer methods in SOA, this framework allows the efficient and scalable data handling and processing within Web services. In this case, we combine the advantages of the functional perspective (SOA) and the data perspective to efficiently support data-centric environments

Data-aware SOA for Gene Expression Analysis Processes

In the context of genome research, the method of gene expression analysis has been used for several years. Related microarray experiments are conducted all over the world, and consequently, a vast amount of microarray data sets are produced. Having access to this variety of repositories, researchers would like to incorporate this data in their analyses processes to increase the statistical significance of their results. Such analyses processes are typical examples of data-intensive processes. In general, data-intensive processes are characterized by (i) a sequence of functional operations processing large amount of data and (ii) the transportation and transformation of huge data sets between the functional operations. To support data-intensive processes, an efficient and scalable environment is required, since the performance is a key factor today. The service-oriented architecture (SOA) is beneficial in this area according to process orchestration and execution. However, the current realization of SOA with Web services and BPEL includes some drawbacks with regard to the performance of the data propagation between Web services. Therefore, we present in this paper our data-aware service-oriented approach to efficiently support such data-intensive processes