Diabatic heating, divergent circulation and moisture transport in the African monsoon system

The dynamics of the West African monsoon system is studied through the diagnosis of the roles of diabatic heating in the divergent circulation and moisture transport. The divergent circulation is partitioned into latent‐heating and non‐latent‐heating (the sum of surface sensible heat flux and radiative heating) driven components based on its field properties and its relationship with diabatic heating profiles. Roles of latent and non‐latent diabatic heating in the moisture transport of the monsoon system are thus distinguished. The gradient in surface sensible heat flux between the Saharan heat‐low and the Gulf of Guinea drives a shallow meridional circulation, which transports moisture far into the continent on the northern side of the monsoon rain band and thereby promotes the seasonal northward migration of monsoon precipitation. In contrast, the circulation directly associated with latent heating is deep and the corresponding moisture convergence maximum is within the region of precipitation and thus enhances local monsoon precipitation. Meanwhile, latent heating also induces dry air advection from the north. The seasonal northward migration of precipitation is encouraged by neither of the two effects. On the other hand, the divergent circulation forced by remote latent heating influences local moisture distribution through advection. Specifically by bringing Saharan air from the north, and driving moisture to the adjacent oceans, global latent heating has an overall drying effect over the Sahel. Copyright © 2009 Royal Meteorological Societ

Opportunistic experiments to constrain aerosol effective radiative forcing

Aerosol–cloud interactions (ACIs) are considered to be the most uncertain driver of present-day radiative forcing due to human activities. The nonlinearity of cloud-state changes to aerosol perturbations make it challenging to attribute causality in observed relationships of aerosol radiative forcing. Using correlations to infer causality can be challenging when meteorological variability also drives both aerosol and cloud changes independently. Natural and anthropogenic aerosol perturbations from well-defined sources provide “opportunistic experiments” (also known as natural experiments) to investigate ACI in cases where causality may be more confidently inferred. These perturbations cover a wide range of locations and spatiotemporal scales, including point sources such as volcanic eruptions or industrial sources, plumes from biomass burning or forest fires, and tracks from individual ships or shipping corridors. We review the different experimental conditions and conduct a synthesis of the available satellite datasets and field campaigns to place these opportunistic experiments on a common footing, facilitating new insights and a clearer understanding of key uncertainties in aerosol radiative forcing. Cloud albedo perturbations are strongly sensitive to background meteorological conditions. Strong liquid water path increases due to aerosol perturbations are largely ruled out by averaging across experiments. Opportunistic experiments have significantly improved process-level understanding of ACI, but it remains unclear how reliably the relationships found can be scaled to the global level, thus demonstrating a need for deeper investigation in order to improve assessments of aerosol radiative forcing and climate change

A methodology to create prototypical building energy models for existing buildings: A case study on U.S. religious worship buildings

•Propose a methodology to create prototypical building energy models for existing buildings.•Develop prototypical building energy models for existing US religious worship buildings.•Provide a case of applications to guide the users to use the models. Prototypical building energy models are of great significance because they are the starting point in conducting analyses for various applications, such as building energy saving potential analysis, building design, building energy market evaluation, and building energy policy-making. However, current prototypical building energy models only represent limited types of buildings in certain countries. To fill the gap, this paper proposes a methodology to systematically create prototypical building energy models. First, a six-step methodology is introduced: model input identification, data collection, data cleaning, data conversion, model simulation, and model calibration. Then, the methodology is demonstrated by a case study of creating 30 prototypical energy models for U.S. religious worship buildings, representing buildings in 15 climate zones and 2 vintages (pre- and post-1980). Finally, to show the applications of the models, the building energy saving potentials from six efficiency measures are analyzed for pre-1980 U.S. religious worship buildings in three ASHRAE Climate Zones. The results show that the maximum energy saving potentials are approximately 30% for the religious worship buildings in all three climate zones investigated, indicating significant opportunities for energy savings in these buildings through their prototypical building model development

An agent-based hardware-in-the-loop simulation framework for building controls

•Hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulation is increasingly used for building controls.•HIL simulation combines the advantages of pure simulation and field tests.•The agent-based framework for HIL simulation has several distinctive advantages.•An example was used to illustrate the use of the HIL simulation framework. In general, a hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) building simulation has lower cost and fewer practical limitations (e.g., scheduling issues) than field tests in occupied buildings, while also overcoming limitations of simulations alone by capturing the full behavior of some physical systems, equipment, and components. However, the implementation of an HIL can be difficult due to the scarcity of appropriate tools. This paper presents an agent-based framework for HIL simulation. It can be used for investigation of controller performance via controller-in-the-loop simulations and also HIL for system synthesis. In the latter case, both controllers and major equipment participate in tests to ensure that dynamics of equipment operation are correctly captured in addition to controller performance. The HIL simulation framework presented allows such actual physical parts to be included in the framework while representing others for which behaviors are better known and modeled in simulation models. The mechanism implemented in the framework to synchronize simulations in software with real-time operation of physical equipment is described. As an example, use of the HIL simulation framework is illustrated through a brief study of speed control of the supply fan in the air handling unit of a variable-air-volume building heating, ventilating and air-conditioning system

Setting Time Measurement Using Ultrasonic Wave Reflection

Ultrasonic shear wave reflection was used to investigate setting times of cement pastes by measuring the reflection coefficient at the interface between hydrating cement pastes of varying water-to-cement ratio and an ultrasonic buffer material. Several different buffer materials were employed, and the choice of buffer was seen to strongly affect measurement sensitivity; high impact polystyrene showed the highest sensitivity to setting processes because it had the lowest acoustic impedance value. The results show that ultrasonic shear-wave reflection can be used successfully to monitor early setting processes of cement paste with good sensitivity when such a very low impedance buffer is employed. Criteria are proposed to define set times, and the resulting initial and final set times agreed broadly with those determined using the standard penetration resistance test

Bridging the Gap between Scientific Data Producers and Consumers: A Provenance Approach

Despite the methodical and painstaking efforts made by scientists to record their scientific findings and protocols, a knowledge gap problem continues to persist today between producers of scientific results and consumers because technology is performing the exchange of data as opposed to scientists making direct contact. Provenance is a means to formalize how this knowledge is transferred. However, for it to be meaningful to scientists, the provenance research community needs continued contributions from the scientific community to extend and leverage provenance-based vocabularies and technology from the provenance community. Going forward the provenance community must also be vigilant to meet scalability needs of data intensive scienc

Integrated Metabolomics and Proteomics Analyses in the Local Milieu of Islet Allografts in Rejection versus Tolerance

An understanding of the immune mechanisms that lead to rejection versus tolerance of allogeneic pancreatic islet grafts is of paramount importance, as it facilitates the development of innovative methods to improve the transplant outcome. Here, we used our established intraocular islet transplant model to gain novel insight into changes in the local metabolome and proteome within the islet allograft’s immediate microenvironment in association with immune-mediated rejection or tolerance. We performed integrated metabolomics and proteomics analyses in aqueous humor samples representative of the graft’s microenvironment under each transplant outcome. The results showed that several free amino acids, small primary amines, and soluble proteins related to the Warburg effect were upregulated or downregulated in association with either outcome. In general, the observed shifts in the local metabolite and protein profiles in association with rejection were consistent with established pro-inflammatory metabolic pathways and those observed in association with tolerance were immune regulatory. Taken together, the current findings further support the potential of metabolic reprogramming of immune cells towards immune regulation through targeted pharmacological and dietary interventions against specific metabolic pathways that promote the Warburg effect to prevent the rejection of transplanted islets and promote their immune tolerance

Estimates of Tropical Diabatic Heating Profiles: Commonalities and Uncertainties

Abstract This study aims to evaluate the consistency and discrepancies in estimates of diabatic heating profiles associated with precipitation based on satellite observations and microphysics and those derived from the thermodynamics of the large-scale environment. It presents a survey of diabatic heating profile estimates from four Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) products, four global reanalyses, and in situ sounding measurements from eight field campaigns at various tropical locations. Common in most of the estimates are the following: (i) bottom-heavy profiles, ubiquitous over the oceans, are associated with relatively low rain rates, while top-heavy profiles are generally associated with high rain rates; (ii) temporal variability of latent heating profiles is dominated by two modes, a deep mode with a peak in the upper troposphere and a shallow mode with a low-level peak; and (iii) the structure of the deep modes is almost the same in different estimates and different regions in the tropics. The primary uncertainty is in the amount of shallow heating over the tropical oceans, which differs substantially among the estimates