COST 733 - WG4: Applications of weather type classification

The main objective of the COST Action 733 is to achieve a general numerical method for assessing, comparing and classifying typical weather situations in the European regions. To accomplish this goal, different workgroups are established, each with their specific aims: WG1: Existing methods and applications (finished); WG2: Implementation and development of weather types classification methods; WG3: Comparison of selected weather types classifications; WG4: Testing methods for various applications. The main task of Workgroup 4 (WG4) in COST 733 implies the testing of the selected weather type methods for various classifications. In more detail, WG4 focuses on the following topics:• Selection of dedicated applications (using results from WG1), • Performance of the selected applications using available weather types provided by WG2, • Intercomparison of the application results as a results of different methods • Final assessment of the results and uncertainties, • Presentation and release of results to the other WGs and external interested • Recommend specifications for a new (common) method WG2 Introduction In order to address these specific aims, various applications are selected and WG4 is divided in subgroups accordingly: 1.Air quality 2. Hydrology (& Climatological mapping) 3. Forest fires 4. Climate change and variability 5. Risks and hazards Simultaneously, the special attention is paid to the several wide topics concerning some other COST Actions such as: phenology (COST725), biometeorology (COST730), agriculture (COST 734) and mesoscale modelling and air pollution (COST728). Sub-groups are established to find advantages and disadvantages of different classification methods for different applications. Focus is given to data requirements, spatial and temporal scale, domain area, specifi

The European 2015 drought from a hydrological perspective

In 2015 large parts of Europe were affected by drought. In this paper, we analyze the hydrological footprint (dynamic development over space and time) of the drought of 2015 in terms of both severity (magnitude) and spatial extent and compare it to the extreme drought of 2003. Analyses are based on a range of low flow and hydrological drought indices derived for about 800 streamflow records across Europe, collected in a community effort based on a common protocol. We compare the hydrological footprints of both events with the meteorological footprints, in order to learn from similarities and differences of both perspectives and to draw conclusions for drought management. The region affected by hydrological drought in 2015 differed somewhat from the drought of 2003, with its center located more towards eastern Europe. In terms of low flow magnitude, a region surrounding the Czech Republic was the most affected, with summer low flows that exhibited return intervals of 100 years and more. In terms of deficit volumes, the geographical center of the event was in southern Germany, where the drought lasted a particularly long time. A detailed spatial and temporal assessment of the 2015 event showed that the particular behavior in these regions was partly a result of diverging wetness preconditions in the studied catchments. Extreme droughts emerged where preconditions were particularly dry. In regions with wet preconditions, low flow events developed later and tended to be less severe. For both the 2003 and 2015 events, the onset of the hydrological drought was well correlated with the lowest flow recorded during the event (low flow magnitude), pointing towards a potential for early warning of the severity of streamflow drought. Time series of monthly drought indices (both streamflow- and climate-based indices) showed that meteorological and hydrological events developed differently in space and time, both in terms of extent and severity (magnitude). These results emphasize that drought is a hazard which leaves different footprints on the various components of the water cycle at different spatial and temporal scales. The difference in the dynamic development of meteorological and hydrological drought also implies that impacts on various water-use sectors and river ecology cannot be informed by climate indices alone. Thus, an assessment of drought impacts on water resources requires hydrological data in addition to drought indices based solely on climate data. The transboundary scale of the event also suggests that additional efforts need to be undertaken to make timely pan-European hydrological assessments more operational in the future

The impact of climate change on groundwater recharge: National-scale assessment for the British mainland

Groundwater systems provide an important source of water supply as well as contributing baseflow to rivers, lakes and dependent ecosystems and so the impact of climate change on these systems needs to be understood. Calculating recharge to groundwater systems is, therefore, necessary to quantify what is typically one of the largest components of the groundwater balance. This study uses the national-scale recharge model developed for the British mainland and the 11 ensemble members from the Hadley Centre for rainfall and potential evaporation created by the Future Flows and Groundwater Levels (FFGWL) project to investigate the impact of future climate on groundwater resources. Changes to seasonal and monthly recharge for the 2050s and 2080s time slices have been produced for the whole modelled area and for river basin districts for England and Wales. Areal summaries and monthly time series of recharge values show a generally consistent trend of increased recharge in winter, decreased recharge in summer, and mixed pattern in autumn and spring. The work shows that increased winter rainfall is the main factor in increasing recharge. Water balance calculations reveal that over the 2050s and 2080s, the climate change “signal” predominates over the annual variability, which results in a clearer pattern of more recharge being concentrated in fewer months. This finding should prove useful for water resources planners to assess the resilience of groundwater resources to climate change. Further work is recommended to understand the sequencing of flooding and drought events and to the effects of soil health and land cover changes in the future analysis

Access to Artemisinin-Based Anti-Malarial Treatment and its Related Factors in Rural Tanzania.

Artemisinin-based combination treatment (ACT) has been widely adopted as one of the main malaria control strategies. However, its promise to save thousands of lives in sub-Saharan Africa depends on how effective the use of ACT is within the routine health system. The INESS platform evaluated effective coverage of ACT in several African countries. Timely access within 24 hours to an authorized ACT outlet is one of the determinants of effective coverage and was assessed for artemether-lumefantrine (Alu), in two district health systems in rural Tanzania. From October 2009 to June 2011we conducted continuous rolling household surveys in the Kilombero-Ulanga and the Rufiji Health and Demographic Surveillance Sites (HDSS). Surveys were linked to the routine HDSS update rounds. Members of randomly pre-selected households that had experienced a fever episode in the previous two weeks were eligible for a structured interview. Data on individual treatment seeking, access to treatment, timing, source of treatment and household costs per episode were collected. Data are presented on timely access from a total of 2,112 interviews in relation to demographics, seasonality, and socio economic status. In Kilombero-Ulanga, 41.8% (CI: 36.6-45.1) and in Rufiji 36.8% (33.7-40.1) of fever cases had access to an authorized ACT provider within 24 hours of fever onset. In neither of the HDSS site was age, sex, socio-economic status or seasonality of malaria found to be significantly correlated with timely access. Timely access to authorized ACT providers is below 50% despite interventions intended to improve access such as social marketing and accreditation of private dispensing outlets. To improve prompt diagnosis and treatment, access remains a major bottle neck and new more innovative interventions are needed to raise effective coverage of malaria treatment in Tanzania

COST 733 – WG4: Applications of weather type classifications

Presentación realizada para: European Geosciences Union General Assembly celebrado del 19-24 de abril de 2009 en Viena

The drying up of Britain? A national estimate of changes in seasonal river flows from 11 Regional Climate Model simulations

As climate change may modify the hydrological cycle significantly, understanding the impact on river flow is important because it affects long-term water resources planning. Here, we describe a high-resolution British assessment of changes in river flows in the 2050s under 11 different realisations of HadRM3. In winter, river flows may either increase or decrease, with a wide range of possible decreases in summer flow. These results should encourage adaptation that copes with a broad range of future hydrological conditions. © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Using ensemble reforecasts to generate flood thresholds for improved global flood forecasting

Global flood forecasting systems rely on predefining flood thresholds to highlight potential upcoming flood events. Existing methods for flood threshold definition are often based on reanalysis datasets using a single threshold across all forecast lead times, such as in the Global Flood Awareness System. This leads to inconsistencies between how the extreme flood events are represented in the flood thresholds and the ensemble forecasts. This paper explores the potential benefits of using river flow ensemble reforecasts to generate flood thresholds that can deliver improved reliability and skill, increasing the confidence in the forecasts for humanitarian and civil protection partners. The choice of dataset and methods used to sample annual maxima in the threshold computation, both for reanalysis and reforecast, are analysed in terms of threshold magnitude, forecast reliability and skill for different flood severity levels and lead times. The variability of threshold magnitudes, when estimated from the different annual maxima samples, can be extremely large, as can the subsequent impact on forecast skill. Reanalysis-based thresholds should only be used for the first few days, after which ensemble-reforecast-based thresholds, that vary with forecast lead time and can account for the forecast bias trends, provide more reliable and skilful flood forecasts

KinOath Kinship Archiver Version 1.4

This talk will introduce a new tool for Humanities research, in particular Ethnology, Linguistics, Law, History, but also Genetics and Archiving. This tool is KinOath Kinship Archiver which is an application for collecting and analysing kinship data. It is designed to be flexible and culturally nonspecific, which is important to prevent extraneous concepts being imposed onto the data being recorded. The kinship data can be linked to external resources such as archive data. Graphical representation of the data is a key feature, it produces publishable quality diagrams that can be exported to SVG, PDF and JPG formats. Data can be imported from GEDCOM, CSV and TIP files. Data can be exported into CSV format, with additional formats becoming available as plugins. KinOath provides very flexible data fields for each individual / entity recorded in the kinship data, this is combined with customisable relation types, customisable symbols and customisable kin types. This means, for example, that any number of genders and kinship relations can be defined and represented on a diagram. The most common format, GEDCOM (Family History Department, 1999), can be imported into KinOath. However this GEDCOM format exhibits cultural specificities because it has a predetermined set of kinship types, genders and initiation ceremonies. We know that there is a wider array of kinship types (e.g. suckling relations (Altorki, 1980)) and genders (e.g. the Māhū of Hawaiʻi (Matzner, 2001)). There are also initiation ceremonies beyond the Christian and Jewish ceremonies that are predefined in GEDCOM. However once this data is imported, all the flexibility of KinOath will be available. KinOath has project based diagrams and freeform diagrams. Freeform diagrams are like a quick sketch; while project diagrams each have a database of kinship data which can be shared across multiple diagrams. Project based diagrams also allow kin type string queries, such that individuals to be found based on their relations to others. Individuals in a project diagram can be duplicated and merged, which can be useful, for example, in correcting data, or merging multiple data sets where some individuals overlap. In freeform diagrams kin terms can be defined with kin type strings and shown on the diagram, organised in groups, imported and exported. In the future it will be possible to overlay these kin terms onto project diagrams. In order to perform statistical analysis, the kinship data for each project or freeform diagram can be exported for use in R or SPSS. This combined with queries based on kin types and other search parameters, provides great potential in the analysis of both the kin data and the archive data that has been recorded. The intended users of Kinoath are any researchers that collect data in a context of social relations. Kinship data is often not systematically included in the metadata of archives, however these kin relations provide a context that enriches that archived data. KinOath is in active development and new features are regularly being added. The plugin framework that KinOath shares with Arbil has made it possible for external developers to add features. The various versions and the manual are available at: http://tla.mpi.nl/tools/tlatools/kinoath/ REFERENCES Family History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints, 1999, THE GEDCOM STANDARD DRAFT Release 5.5.1 http://www.phpgedview.net/ged551¬5.pdf Matzner, Andrew. 2001. 'O au no keia: voices from Hawaii's Mahu and transgender communities. Bloomington, Indiana: Xlibris. Altorki, Soraya. 1980. MilkKinship in Arab Society: An Unexplored Problem in the Ethnography of Marriage. Ethnology 19(2): 233-24

Low Efficiency of Homology-Facilitated Illegitimate Recombination during Conjugation in Escherichia coli

Homology-facilitated illegitimate recombination has been described in three naturally competent bacterial species. It permits integration of small linear DNA molecules into the chromosome by homologous recombination at one end of the linear DNA substrate, and illegitimate recombination at the other end. We report that homology-facilitated illegitimate recombination also occurs in Escherichia coli during conjugation with small non-replicative plasmids, but at a low frequency of 3×10−10 per recipient cell. The fate of linear DNA in E. coli is either RecBCD-dependent degradation, or circularisation by ligation, and integration into the chromosome by single crossing-over. We also report that the observed single crossing-overs are recA-dependent, but essentially recBCD, and recFOR independent. This suggests that other, still unknown, proteins may act as mediator for the loading of RecA on DNA during single crossing-over recombination in E. coli