Long Term Effect of Climate Change on Rainfall in Northwest Iraq

Middle East and North Africa are considered as arid to semi-arid region. Water shortages in this region, represents an extremely important factor in the stability of the region and an integral element in its economic development and prosperity. Iraq was an exception due to the presence of Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. After the 1970s the situation began to deteriorate due to continuous decrease of the discharges of these rivers which are expected to dry (2040) with global climate change. In this research, long rainfall trends up to the year 2099 were studied in Sinjar area, northwest of Iraq to give an idea about future prospects. Two emission scenarios used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (A2 & B2) were employed to study long term rainfall trends in northwest of Iraq. ANN model was used to provide climate change information at a suitable spatial scale from the Global Climate Model (GCM) data. In general 7 predictors of climate variables were found to have a significant relation with the rainfall for winter, spring and 6 predictors for autumn while the summer shows only 4 predictors. All seasons consistently projected a drop in daily rainfall for all future periods with summer which expected to have more reduction compared with other seasons as it is consider to be almost dry by end of 21 century for both scenarios. The results also indicates that, there is an appreciable change in the number of wet days by 2080s for months January, February and March in both scenarios with about 10%-40% decrease in wet days, while rest of the months experience a slight drop for all future periods. Summer months are noticed are considered almost dry, however, a tendency of dryness extending to September is also observed. Generally the average rainfall trend shows a continuous decrease. The overall average annual rainfall is slightly above 210 mm. In view of this prudent water management strategies are to be adopted to overcome water shortage crisis

Subsidies for energy efficiency and alternative energy adoption programs: case study from Egypt taxi recycling program

This thesis was developed to call in question the conventional perception that energy subsidies, especially in the service sector, are necessarily barriers to the adoption of improved technology. It provides a case study for an innovative program that supported energy efficiency and the adoption of alternative energy in the transportation sector and relied in part on subsidy savings. The program-Egypt\u27s Taxi Recycling Program-was not only successful in reaching the targeted population effectively, but also lifted some of the fuel subsidies burden off the government budget. Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) and Soft System Methodology (SSM) were applied to analyze the distribution of benefits from the Taxi Recycling program. The CBA was applied to define the main costs and benefits drawn by the two key stakeholders- the Egyptian Government and taxi owners participating in the program. The SSM was applied to have more detailed understanding of the role and the power of the stakeholders involved; in order to evaluate the performance of the stakeholders. The study findings indicated that the program has an overall positive impact on the different stakeholders involved. Since it was structured as a Public-Private-Partnership, the program offered significant opportunities to the private sector participating companies, either by stimulating vehicles sales and loan demands that would have not otherwise occurred, or by facilitating the communication channels among the different stakeholders involved. The program encountered some challenges that directly and indirectly affected the stakeholders involved. The taxi owners, however, had been the most influenced by the program\u27s challenges. The challenges included: the advertising firm being unable to fulfill its commitments; the maintenance services and maintenance costs; the waiting periods for getting the new cars; the quality of the cars that were sold; and the adoption of natural gas as an alternative fuel. Nonetheless, the program had overall positive social impacts. Through applying CBA from the government perspective, we concluded that the benefits encountered from the program implementation far exceed the costs incurred by the government. Upon reaching the program target of changing around 40,000 old taxi vehicles operating in Greater Cairo Region, the program would save more than LE 380 million annually from the fuel subsidies assigned funds. As for the environmental impacts, the Taxi Recycling program has been divided into eleven separate projects called Certified Project Activities (CPAs); with an average of 4,576 recycled taxi vehicles per CPA. The preliminary assessment, based on CAPMAS\u27s 2010 estimation of the costs associated with CO2 emissions\u27 negative environmental impacts, showed that the new vehicles would result in annual average environmental benefits of 2.080 million US dollars per each Taxi-Recycling-CPA. In addition, these saved emissions represent potential government revenue if the government was able to sell the reduced emissions under the Clean Development Mechanism

Comparison of Artificial Neural Networks and Autoregressive Model to Forecast Inflows to Roseires Reservoir for better Prediction of Irrigation Water Supply in the Sudan

The Blue Nile River is utilized in Sudan as the main source of irrigation water. However, the river has a long, dry, low-flow season (October–May), which necessitates the use of regulations and rules to manage its water use during this period. This depends on the use of accurate lead time forecasts of inflows to the reservoirs built along the river. Thus a reliable and tested forecasting tool is needed to provide inflow forecast, with sufficient lead time. In the present study, artificial neural network (ANN) is used to model the recession curve of the flow hydrograph at El-Deim gauging station, which subsequently is used as inflows to the Roseires Reservoir on the Blue Nile River. Different scenarios of ANN have been tested to forecast 23 10-day mean discharges during the recession period and their performances were assessed. Results from the optimal ANN model were compared to those simulated with an autoregressive (AR1) model to check their accuracy. Modelling results showed that the ANN model developed is capable of accurately forecasting the inflows to the Roseires Reservoir and outperforms the AR1 model. It has then proposed for use in operation of the reservoir for purposes of predicting irrigation water supply

3-Aminopyrroles and their application in the synthesis ofpyrrolo[3,2-d]pyrimidine (9-deazapurine) derivatives

3-Aminopyrrole derivatives have been synthesized from 3-anilino-2-cyanoacrylonitrile using Thorpe-Ziegler cyclization. These substituted pyrroles are readily converted into 5H-pyrrolo[3,2- d]pyrimidine (9-deazapurines).FEDERFundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT

Heterocyclic synthesis with nitriles: synthesis of pyridazine and pyridopyridazine derivatives

The reaction of MND with aryldiazonium chlorides followed by cyclization afforded the pyridazinimine derivatives. Reaction of the latter with another mole of malononitrile produce only pyrido[3,2-c]pyridazine derivatives. Reaction of 4-aminopyridazinone-3- carboxylic acid esters with malononitrile gave only pyridazine-3-carboxylic acid.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) - POCTI-SFA-3-686, SFRH/BPD/31490/2006Fundo Europeu de Desenvolvimento Regional (FEDER

Application of the stochastic model for temporal rainfall disaggregation for hydrological studies in north western England

Assessment of climate change on any hydrological system requires higher temporal resolution at hourly or less in terms of time-scale. This paper implements the Bartlett-Lewis Rectangular Pulses (BLRP) model coupled with a proportional adjusting procedure to disaggregate daily rainfall to hourly rainfall in order to demonstrate the reliability of this method. Three stations in NorthWestern England have been selected that represent different climates in the region. Parameters estimation of the BLRP model has been performed under different levels of hourly rainfall aggregation for a combination of rainfall statistics. The Hyetos model, which applies BLRP, reproduced standard statistics such as mean, variance, Lag -1, autocorrelation as well as dry proportions. Moreover, the model was proven to have the capability to disaggregate the rainfall extremes. The fitted BLRP model could then be used to disaggregate future daily rainfall in order to investigate the climate change impact of different rainfall intensities

Proton induced K-shell ionization cross sections for a wide range of elements (4 ≤ Z ≤ 92) within ECPSSR theory and updated experimental data

AbstractWithin the individual treatment of the elements from beryllium (4Be) to uranium (92U), the experimental databases are normalized to their corresponding values of the ECPSSR model to deduce the semi-empirical cross sections. These databases rely on the different compilations available in the literature and on the other data extracted from papers published from 1953 till 2010. In the present paper, a fourth order polynomial was used to fit very well the existing normalized database of K-shell ionization cross sections by proton. These procedures generate a new set of parameters for the sake of the quick calculation of the semi-empirical cross sections. A comparison is made between the deduced results and those obtained by using the ECPSSR model where a remarkable discrepancy is observed at low-proton velocity regime especially for the lightest elements

Modeling of aging effects on concrete creep / shrinkage behavior : a lattice discrete particle modeling approach

The currently aging and deteriorating infrastructures both in the US and all around the world have been a major cause to extend the current design provisions for concrete structures to 100 years of design lifetime. During such a long period, concrete exhibits a well-known time dependent behavior that is a function of multiple factors including both rheological aspects of the concrete mix as well as the effect of environmental conditions, which contribute to its time dependent aging. While initial conditions (e.g. concrete mix design parameters) can be well controlled, much less knowledge is available on the type and extent of the environmental conditions that will affect the structure