Measures to enforce mandatory civil building energy efficiency codes in China

Mandatory civil building energy efficiency codes strictly govern the energy consumption of new buildings in China. As the promotion of building energy efficiency in China has increased in recent years, compliance with mandatory civil building energy efficiency codes has also improved, increasing from less than 10% in 2000 to nearly 100% in 2012, a remarkable achievement. However, because the promotion of energy efficiency strategies in China has followed a unique pattern, some researchers doubt these statistics. In response to these doubts, this paper summarises and analyses the framework of measures implemented by the Chinese government to enforce mandatory building energy efficiency codes. First, the development and implementation of China's mandatory civil building energy efficiency code system is summarised. Second, the building supervision and inspection systems used to assess energy efficiency are introduced and analysed in detail in order to provide a framework for the development of energy policies in other countries. Third, the assessment and reporting processes used to determine compliance rates are reviewed. Finally, the improvement of compliance rates and its impact on building energy savings in China are discussed. Along with the increase in compliance rates in the construction stage from 71% in 2007 to 100% in 2012, the energy savings of new buildings per increased floor area per year increased from 20.4 kWh/m2 to 28.4 kWh/m2. The supervision and inspection systems reported in this paper are the keys to enforcing building energy efficiency codes

Morphological evolution of a 3D CME cloud reconstructed from three viewpoints

The propagation properties of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are crucial to predict its geomagnetic effect. A newly developed three dimensional (3D) mask fitting reconstruction method using coronagraph images from three viewpoints has been described and applied to the CME ejected on August 7, 2010. The CME's 3D localisation, real shape and morphological evolution are presented. Due to its interaction with the ambient solar wind, the morphology of this CME changed significantly in the early phase of evolution. Two hours after its initiation, it was expanding almost self-similarly. CME's 3D localisation is quite helpful to link remote sensing observations to in situ measurements. The investigated CME was propagating to Venus with its flank just touching STEREO B. Its corresponding ICME in the interplanetary space shows a possible signature of a magnetic cloud with a preceding shock in VEX observations, while from STEREO B only a shock is observed. We have calculated three principle axes for the reconstructed 3D CME cloud. The orientation of the major axis is in general consistent with the orientation of a filament (polarity inversion line) observed by SDO/AIA and SDO/HMI. The flux rope axis derived by the MVA analysis from VEX indicates a radial-directed axis orientation. It might be that locally only the leg of the flux rope passed through VEX. The height and speed profiles from the Sun to Venus are obtained. We find that the CME speed possibly had been adjusted to the speed of the ambient solar wind flow after leaving COR2 field of view and before arriving Venus. A southward deflection of the CME from the source region is found from the trajectory of the CME geometric center. We attribute it to the influence of the coronal hole where the fast solar wind emanated from.Comment: ApJ, accepte

Excitation of nonlinear ion acoustic waves in CH plasmas

Excitation of nonlinear ion acoustic wave (IAW) by an external electric field is demonstrated by Vlasov simulation. The frequency calculated by the dispersion relation with no damping is verified much closer to the resonance frequency of the small-amplitude nonlinear IAW than that calculated by the linear dispersion relation. When the wave number $k\lambda_{De}$ increases, the linear Landau damping of the fast mode (its phase velocity is greater than any ion's thermal velocity) increases obviously in the region of $T_i/T_e < 0.2$ in which the fast mode is weakly damped mode. As a result, the deviation between the frequency calculated by the linear dispersion relation and that by the dispersion relation with no damping becomes larger with $k\lambda_{De}$ increasing. When $k\lambda_{De}$ is not large, such as $k\lambda_{De}=0.1, 0.3, 0.5$, the nonlinear IAW can be excited by the driver with the linear frequency of the modes. However, when $k\lambda_{De}$ is large, such as $k\lambda_{De}=0.7$, the linear frequency can not be applied to exciting the nonlinear IAW, while the frequency calculated by the dispersion relation with no damping can be applied to exciting the nonlinear IAW.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figures, Accepted by POP, Publication in August 1