Seasonal and interannual variability of surface heat and freshwater fluxes in the Mediterranean Sea: budgets and exchange through the Strait of Gibraltar

Se adjunta la versión postprint aceptada, que incluye las correcciones de de los revisores, debido a que la editorial tiene los derechos de copyright y no permite la difusión en acceso abierto de la versión publicada. Puede accederse a la misma a través del DOI que se incluye en los datos de la publicación.Several NCEP climatological datasets have been combined to analyse the seasonal and interannual variations of the heat and water budgets in the Mediterranean Sea, and compare the long-term means with direct measurements in the Strait of Gibraltar. The seasonal cycle of the net heat is positive (toward the ocean) between March and September with maximum in June and negative the rest of the year with minimum in December. Although subject to inherent uncertainty, we obtain a practically neutral budget of 0.7 Wm−2 in a yearly basis. The net heat budget is positive for the western Mediterranean (∼12 Wm−2) and negative for the eastern Mediterranean (∼− 6.4 Wm−2) mainly due to the high latent heat losses of this basin. The evaporation minus precipitation (E–P) freshwater deficit has a seasonal cycle with a range of variation about 600 mm·y−1, maximum in August–September and minimum in May. The long-term mean of the basin-averaged deficit is 680 ± 70 mm·y−1 but it is almost 70% greater in the eastern Mediterranean due to higher E and lower P in this basin. Combining the climatological values with in situ measurements in Espartel sill, a mean inflow through the Strait of Gibraltar of 0.82 ± 0.05 Sv is obtained and a salinity ratio Sin/Sout = 0.956. A heat advection Qa = 3.2 ± 1.5 Wm−2 through the Strait of Gibraltar has been obtained that, combined with the long-term averaged surface heat flux, implies that the net heat content of the Mediterranean Sea would have increased in the last decades.Este trabajo se llevó cabo en el marco del proyecto P07-RNM-02938 financiado por la Junta de Andalucía. JSN disfrutó de una beca de doctorado de la Conserjería de Innovación Ciencia y Empresa, Junta de Andalucía. También se contó con el apoyo parcial de los proyectos CTM2006-02326 (Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología) y P08-RNM-03738 (Junta de Andalucía)

Large-scale atmospheric forcing influencing the long-term variability of Mediterranean heat and freshwater budgets: climatic indices

El copyritgh de este artículo pertenece a la editorial, American Meteorological Society.Interannual to interdecadal precipitation P, evaporation E, freshwater budget (E − P), and air–sea net heat flux Q have been correlated with the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), eastern Atlantic (EA), eastern Atlantic–western Russia (EA-WR), and Mediterranean Oscillation (MO) climatic indices to explore the influence of atmospheric forcing in the Mediterranean freshwater and heat budget variability. The effect of the MO pattern has similarities with that of the NAO, but MO influence is more intense. On an annual basis, the MO index gives the highest correlation with all the variables considered, and during its negative phase, it exerts a stronger influence than the NAO and is associated with higher P and, especially, enhanced evaporative losses in the Levantine subbasin. The EA pattern does not significantly affect P in the Mediterranean, but a high correlation is found for E and Q from 1979. The EA-WR mode plays a significant role in annual net heat flux since variations in its sign have the potential to induce seesaw variations in the heat budgets of the eastern and western subbasins, as previously found by Josey et al., for wintertime.Este trabajo se llevó en el marco del proyecto P07-RNM-02938 de la Junta de Andalucía. J.S.N. disfrutó de una beca de doctorado de la Conserjería de Innovación Ciencia y Empresa, Junta de Andalucía. También se tuvo apoyo parcial del proyecto CTM2010-21229 (Ministerio de de Ciencia y Tecnología)

Sensitivity of a distributed temperature-radiation index melt model based on AWS observations and surface energy balance fluxes, Hurd Peninsula glaciers, Livingston Island, Antarctica

We use an automatic weather station and surface mass balance dataset spanning four melt seasons collected on Hurd Peninsula Glaciers, South Shetland Islands, to investigate the point surface energy balance, to determine the absolute and relative contribution of the various energy fluxes acting on the glacier surface and to estimate the sensitivity of melt to ambient temperature changes. Long-wave incoming radiation is the main energy source for melt, while short-wave radiation is the most important flux controlling the variation of both seasonal and daily mean surface energy balance. Short-wave and long-wave radiation fluxes do, in general, balance each other, resulting in a high correspondence between daily mean net radiation flux and available melt energy flux. We calibrate a distributed melt model driven by air temperature and an expression for the incoming short-wave radiation. The model is calibrated with the data from one of the melt seasons and validated with the data of the three remaining seasons. The model results deviate at most 140 mm w.e. from the corresponding observations using the glaciological method. The model is very sensitive to changes in ambient temperature: a 0.5 ◦ C increase results in 56 % higher melt rates

OpenZmeter: An Efficient Low-Cost Energy Smart Meter and Power Quality Analyzer

Power quality and energy consumption measurements support providers and energy users with solutions for acquiring and reporting information about the energy supply for residential, commercial, and industrial sectors. In particular, since the average number of electronic devices in homes increases year by year and their sensitivity is very high, it is not only important to monitor the total energy consumption, but also the quality of the power supplied. However, in practice, end-users do not have information about the energy consumption in real-time nor about the quality of the power they receive, because electric energy meters are too expensive and complex to be handled. In order to overcome these inconveniences, an innovative, open source, low-cost, precise, and reliable power and electric energy meter is presented that can be easily installed and managed by any inexperienced user at their own home in urban or rural areas. The system was validated in a real house over a period of two weeks, showing interesting results and findings which validate our proposal

Preliminary results of the relation between ice viscosity and water content using an inverse method

One of the outstanding problems of the modelling of temperate ice dynamics is the limited knowledge on the rheology of temperate ice and, in particular, on how the rate factor depends on the liquid water content. Though it is well known that the rate factor depends strongly on the water content, in practice the only available experimentally-based relationship is that by Duval (1977), which is only valid for water contents up to 1%. However, actual water contents found in temperate and polythermal glaciers are sometimes substantially larger

Recognizing the importance of an urban soil in an open-air city museum: An opportunity in the city of Madrid, Spain

This article examines the presence of urban soil buried under anthropogenic debris in an air-museum park in the Madrid city center (Spain), and highlights the particularities of this singular urbanized setting to indicate ecological evaluation options for soils. The study of a soil profile (with a thickness of about 2.30 m), classified as Urbic Technosols, allowed us to devise that it is formed by a series of filled-in amounts of artifacts (construction debris and other anthropogenic waste) of about 10–30%, plus organic and mineral materials. These soils’ composition and morphology depend on the natural conditions of the territory and also on anthropogenic activities. The soil properties (analyzed by conventional techniques) are moderate in acidity reaction and have relatively higher organic matter content. The Pb, Cu and Zn concentrations in anthropogenic horizons do not exceed the approximate permissible concentrations by 1.5–10-fold. Over the course of time, the soil profile has been transformed as a result of the impact of pedogenetic processes developing under the Mediterranean climate and man’s hand. Although urban environments present a certain complexity, at least the role of soil should be recognized regarding flood mitigation, recycling of wastes and toxins, filtering of nutrients or carbon storage and GHG regulation. The analysis of our results concludes the need to better perceive this soil profile and its green space to improve the urban ecosystem and to ensure better citizen well-bein

A naive Bayes strategy for classifying customer satisfaction: A study based on online reviews of hospitality services

This research assesses whether terms related to guest experience can be used to identify ways to enhance hospitality services. A study was conducted to empirically identify relevant features to classify customer satisfaction based on 47,172 reviews of 33 Las Vegas hotels registered with Yelp, a social networking site. The resulting model can help hotel managers understand guests' satisfaction. In particular, it can help managers process vast amounts of review data by using a supervised machine learning approach. The naive algorithm classifies reviews of hotels with high precision and recall and with a low computational cost. These results are more reliable and accurate than prior statistical results based on limited sample data and provide insights into how hotels can improve their services based on, for example, staff experience, professionalism, tangible and experiential factors, and gambling-based attractions.Junta de Andalucía SEJ49

Recent thermohaline trends of the Atlantic waters inflowing to the Mediterranean Sea.

Política de acceso abierto tomada de: https://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/id/publication/27333 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/19448007A total of 5077 Argo float profiles in the period 01/2002-05/2010 have been used to analyze salinity and temperature trends in the Atlantic waters adjacent to the Strait of Gibraltar in order to identify the source of recent changes observed in the inflow to the Mediterranean Sea. Positive salinity trends of 0.038 +/- 0.009 psu/year and 0.013 +/- 0.003 psu/year have been found for the Surface Atlantic Water and the Eastern North Atlantic Central Water, respectively. For temperature, no significant trend is observed in the surface layer while positive trend of 0.05 +/- 0.02 °C/year is obtained for the thermocline waters. The Mediterranean Water layer does not show any significant trend for the entire period, but a switch from positive to negative trends is observed in year 2006. In contrast to previous findings, these thermohaline variations are driven by intrinsic water masses changes, instead of isopycnal vertical displacements, proba- bly related to an enhancement of the net freshwater losses in the area.Este trabajo llevó a cabo en el marco del proyecto P07-RNM-02938, financiado con fondos de la Junta de Andalucía. También se contó con el apoyo parcial de los proyectos del plan nacional CTM2006-02326/MAR (INGRES 2) y CTM2009-05810-E

A new insight on the decreasing sea level trend over the Ionian basin in the last decades

Se adjunta la versión postprint aceptada, que incluye las correcciones de de los revisores, debido a que la editorial tiene los derechos de copyright y no permite la difusión en acceso abierto de la versión publicada. Puede accederse a la misma a través del DOI que se incluye en los datos de la publicación.Altimetry measurements over the Ionian region and tide gauge records along the southern Italian coasts have been combined to analyse the negative sea level trend over the Ionian basin in the last decades. The apparent decreasing trend should be better understood as an abrupt sea level drop in 1998 probably linked to changes in the surface circulation in the Ionian basin induced by the Eastern Mediterranean Transient, which changed from anticyclonic to cyclonic about March 1998. From then onwards, a rising rate of 7.9 ± 0.9 mm/year is observed over the basin.Este trabajo se llevó a cabo en el marco del proyecto P07-RNM-02938 financiado por la Junta de Andalucía. También tuvo financiación parcial del proyecto CTM2006-02326 financiado por Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología de España. JSN disfrutaba de una beca de doctorado de la Conserjería de Innovación Ciencia y Empresa, Junta de Andalucía