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Land models, which have been developed by the modeling community in the past two decades to predict future states of ecosystems and climate, have to be critically evaluated for their performance skills of simulating ecosystem responses and feedback to climate change. Benchmarking is an emerging procedure to measure and evaluate performance of models against a set of defined standards. This paper proposes a benchmarking framework for evaluation of land models. The framework includes (1) targeted aspects of model performance to be evaluated; (2) a set of benchmarks as defined references to test model performance; (3) metrics to measure and compare performance skills among models so as to identify model strengths and deficiencies; and (4) model improvement. Component 4 may or may not be involved in a benchmark analysis but is an ultimate goal of general modeling research. Land models are required to simulate exchange of water, energy, carbon and sometimes other trace gases between the atmosphere and the land-surface, and should be evaluated for their simulations of biophysical processes, biogeochemical cycles, and vegetation dynamics across timescales in response to both weather and climate change. Benchmarks that are used to evaluate models generally consist of direct observations, data-model products, and data-derived patterns and relationships. Metrics of measuring mismatches between models and benchmarks may include (1) a priori thresholds of acceptable model performance and (2) a scoring system to combine data-model mismatches for various processes at different temporal and spatial scales. The benchmark analyses should identify clues of weak model performance for future improvement. Iterations between model evaluation and improvement via benchmarking shall demonstrate progress of land modeling and help establish confidence in land models for their predictions of future states of ecosystems and climate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Phosphate distributions simulated by seven state-of-the-art biogeochemical ocean circulation models are evaluated against observations of global ocean nutrient distributions. The biogeochemical models exhibit different structural complexities, ranging from simple nutrient-restoring to multi-nutrient NPZD type models. We evaluate the simulations using the observed volume distribution of phosphate. The errors in these simulated volume class distributions are significantly larger when preformed phosphate (or regenerated phosphate) rather than total phosphate is considered. Our analysis reveals that models can achieve similarly good fits to observed total phosphate distributions for a very different partitioning into preformed and regenerated nutrient components. This has implications for the strength and potential climate sensitivity of the simulated biological carbon pump. We suggest complementing the use of total nutrient distributions for assessing model skill by an evaluation of the respective preformed and regenerated nutrient components. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influence of land processes and in particular of diffuse/direct radiation partitioning on surface fluxes and associated regional-scale climate feedbacks is investigated. ERA-40 driven simulations over Europe are performed using the COSMO-CLM² Regional Climate Model (RCM). Two alternative Land Surface Models (LSMs), a 2nd generation LSM (TERRA ML) and a more advanced 3rd generation LSM (Community Land Model version 3.5), and two versions of the atmospheric component are tested, as well as a revised coupling procedure allowing for variations in diffuse/direct light partitioning at the surface, and their accounting by the land surface component. Overall, the RCM performance for various variables (e.g., surface fluxes, temperature and precipitation) is improved when using the more advanced 3rd generation LSM. These improvements are of the same order of magnitude as those arising from a new version of the atmospheric component, demonstrating the benefit of using a realistic representation of land surface processes for regional climate simulations. Taking into account variability in diffuse/direct light partitioning at the surface further improves the model performance in terms of summer temperature variability at the monthly and daily time scales. Comparisons with observations show that the RCM realistically captures temporal variations in diffuse/direct light partitioning as well as the evapotranspiration sensitivity to these variations. Our results suggest that a modest but consistent fraction (up to 3%) of the overall variability in summer temperature can be explained by variations in the diffuse to direct ratio. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monitoring lake water levels is important to fully understand the characteristics and mechanism of lake dynamic change, the impact of climate change and human activities on lakes, etc. This paper first individually evaluated the performance of the newly released Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) and the successor of the Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite mission (ICESat-2) for inland lake level retrieval over four typical lakes (Chaohu Lake, Hongze Lake, Gaoyou Lake and Taihu Lake) using in situ gauge data, then the lake levels of the two missions were combined to derive long time-series lake water levels. A comparison of the mission results with in situ water levels validated the accuracy of the ICESat-2 with R varying from 0.957 to 0.995, MAE 0.03 m-0.10 m and RMSE 0.04 m-0.13 m; however, larger bias occurred in GEDI results with R spanning from 0.560 to 0.952, MAE 0.31 m-0.38 m and RMSE 0.35 m-0.46 m. Before the lake levels were combined, GEDI bias correction was carried out. The correlation coefficients and annual change rate differences between the combined and the in situ data were 0.964 and 0.06 m/yr, 0.852 and 0.05 m/yr, 0.888 and 0.05 m/yr, and 0.899 and 0.02 m/yr for Lake Chaohu, Hongze, Gaoyou and Taihu, respectively. Except for individual months and seasonal differences caused by GEDI estimations, the general trend of monthly, seasonal, and annual dynamics of inland lake water levels captured by combined GEDI and ICESat-2 missions were consistent with measurements from hydrological stations. These encouraging results demonstrate that combining the two missions has great potential for frequent and accurate lake level monitoring and could be a valuable resource for the study of hydrological and climatic change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several studies sustained the possibility that a photochemical reflectance index (PRI) directly obtained from satellite data can be used as a proxy for ecosystem light use efficiency (LUE) in diagnostic models of gross primary productivity. This modelling approach would avoid the complications that are involved in using meteorological data as constraints for a fixed maximum LUE. However, no unifying model predicting LUE across climate zones and time based on MODIS PRI has been published to date. In this study, we evaluate the efficiency with which MODIS-based PRI can be used to estimate ecosystem light use efficiency at study sites of different plant functional types and vegetation densities. Our objective is to examine if known limitations such as dependance on viewing and illumination geometry can be overcome and a single PRIbased model of LUE (i.e. based on the same reference band) can be applied under a wide range of conditions. Furthermore, we were interested in the effect of using different faPAR (fraction of absorbed photosynthetically active radiation) products on the in-situ LUE used as ground truth and thus on the whole evaluation exercise. We found that estimating LUE at site-level based on PRI reduces uncertainty compared to the approaches relying on a maximum LUE reduced by minimum temperature and vapour pressure deficit. Despite the advantages of using PRI to estimate LUE at sitelevel, we could not establish an universally applicable light use efficiency model based on MODIS PRI. Models that were optimised for a pool of data from several sites did not perform well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The resilience of US container ports is increasingly challenged by disruptive and stressful events such as regulatory change, adverse weather, larger container ship sizes, changing patterns of trade and sea routes, and the still to be quantified effects of enlarging the capabilities and capacity of the Panama Canal. Port sustainability requires the port managers to be resilient in their practices, to maintain existing performance levels and to increase market share when opportunity presents. The primary question that this paper addresses is how US container ports might be affected by adverse events and how they undertake resilience processes when faced with complex problems and uncertain outcomes. The paper gathers insights from literature on complex adaptive systems to discuss how US container ports may adapt to changing circumstances through innovation and the emergent outputs of self-organised agents (components) of their port organisations. The paper suggests that by conceptualising ports as complex adaptive systems, port managers may be able to better understand the complexity of change and organisational dynamics and thus harness the phenomenon of self-organisation towards their strategic intent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Ensuring the resilience of transport infrastructure assets is a challenge for governments. • A resilient performance measurement framework (PMF) is useful to future-proof transport assets. • A new PMF enabling governments to future-proof their assets against climate change is proposed. • The implications of the PMF for policy development are identified. Having efficient and effective transport infrastructure (e.g. bridges, roads, railways, airways and tunnels) in place is essential for supporting the economic and social well-being of an economy. External disturbances that emerge as a result of climate change, for example, are impacting its performance. Delivering, managing and maintaining transport assets that are resilient and adaptive to changing environmental conditions have become a priority for many governments worldwide. Central to ensuring that transport infrastructure functions at their optimum and is resilient to external changes is performance measurement, as it enables those processes that need to be modified and improved for enhancing the asset's adaptability throughout their lifecycle to be identified. Despite the importance of performance measurement in ensuring the resilience of transport infrastructure, it has received limited attention by governments in their policy making. Therefore, this paper provides a review of the extant literature and proposes a life-cycle resilient performance measurement framework (PMF) within transport context. The developed PMF is robust in comprehensively capturing the underlying perspectives that are significant for: (1) understanding the current state of the resilient level of transport assets; and (2) enabling a higher ability of the assets to adapt to environment-related changes in the future. The implications of the proposed framework for transport policy development are also discussed in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agriculture in the Czech Republic is one of major sectors of the economy, as it provides a substantial share of the basic food requirements of the population. An important part of agricultural companies' production consists of livestock, especially because of the effective use of crop production as a source of all kinds of animal feed. It is also proven that livestock production plays a significant role in the creation and cultivation of the landscape. Czech agriculture has shown a profit since joining the EU thanks to a significant increase in subsidies. The aim of this paper is to show the impacts of the globalization of the economy and climate change on the economic performance of agricultural companies in the Czech Republic. Serious consequences of global climate change are already evident, and their intensity will grow with the ongoing warming of the planet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In traditional public good experiments participants receive an endowment from the experimenter that can be invested in a public good or kept in a private account. In this paper we present an experimental environment where participants can invest time during five days to contribute to a public good. Participants can make contributions to a linear public good by logging into a web application and performing virtual actions. We compared four treatments, with different group sizes and information of (relative) performance of other groups. We find that information feedback about performance of other groups has a small positive effect if we control for various attributes of the groups. Moreover, we find a significant effect of the contributions of others in the group in the previous day on the number of points earned in the current day. Our results confirm that people participate more when participants in their group participate more, and are influenced by information about the relative performance of other groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For current computational intelligence techniques, a major challenge is how to learn new concepts in changing environment. Traditional learning schemes could not adequately address this problem due to a lack of dynamic data selection mechanism. In this paper, inspired by human learning process, a novel classification algorithm based on incremental semi-supervised support vector machine (SVM) is proposed. Through the analysis of prediction confidence of samples and data distribution in a changing environment, a “soft-start” approach, a data selection mechanism and a data cleaning mechanism are designed, which complete the construction of our incremental semi-supervised learning system. Noticeably, with the ingenious design procedure of our proposed algorithm, the computation complexity is reduced effectively. In addition, for the possible appearance of some new labeled samples in the learning process, a detailed analysis is also carried out. The results show that our algorithm does not rely on the model of sample distribution, has an extremely low rate of introducing wrong semi-labeled samples and can effectively make use of the unlabeled samples to enrich the knowledge system of classifier and improve the accuracy rate. Moreover, our method also has outstanding generalization performance and the ability to overcome the concept drift in a changing environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International climate negotiations take place in a setting where uncertainties regarding the impacts of climate change are very large. In this paper, we examine the influence of increasing the probability and impact of large climate change damages, also known as the 'fat tail', on the formation of an international mitigation agreement. We systematically vary the shape and location of the distribution of climate change damages using the stochastic version of the applied game-theoretical STACO model. Our aim is to identify how changes to the distributional form affect the stability of coalitions and their performance. We find that fatter upper tails increase the likelihood that more ambitious coalitions are stable as well as the performance of these stable coalitions. Fatter tails thus imply more successful, or 'fatter', international climate agreements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent EU guidance on adaptation calls for the enhancement of socio-technical resilience to climate change. However, socio-technical resilience is relatively poorly defined and this makes it difficult to apply in practice. This paper uses the concept of identity as a vehicle to advance the definition and assessment of socio-technical resilience. Identity comprises four aspects (components, relationships, innovation, and continuity) that constitute the minimum of what has to be identified and specified if resilience is to be assessed. Characterising the identity of a socio-technical system requires the conceptualisation of these four aspects in relation to the particular function provided by the system (e.g. flood risk management) and also the identification of the specific variables and thresholds that reflect changes in identity. We have demonstrated the utility of the identity approach, using the example of flood risk management for the Island of Dordrecht, the Netherlands. Based on the results, socio-technical resilience has been redefined as the ability of the system to continue to function as expected in the face of change. This definition implies that a system is resilient when it can deliver performance without a change of identity by continuing compliance with standards and expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on the dynamic capability view, we analyse how insurers adapt to climate change impacts and how adaptation relates to corporate financial performance. Based on a comprehensive literature review, we deduce seven categories of adaptation measures associated with three dynamic capability dimensions of climate change adaptation (i.e. climate knowledge absorption, climate-related operational flexibility and strategic climate integration). Using this framework, we conduct a content analysis of insurers' adaptation efforts as reported to the Carbon Disclosure Project. Regression analysis reveals positive relationships between climate knowledge absorption and return on assets (ROA), climate-related operational flexibility and ROA, and between the total number of adaptation measures and ROA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to investigate the determinants of measures used by German automotive suppliers to cut carbon emissions, and their impact on performance. To achieve this aim the concept of low-carbon operations is developed based on the broader concept of sustainable operations. An integrated conceptual model to research the drivers, practices and outcome of low-carbon operation is derived. The model is tested using variance-based structural equations modelling with data collected from 159 German automotive suppliers. It is found that stakeholder pressure, and to some extent expectations about competitiveness, drive the adoption of low-carbon operational practices. The relative and absolute effect of those drivers varies along the different practices. Regarding the outcomes, positive effects on carbon and indirect effects on economic performance are found. However, the results regarding both drivers and outcomes of the practices under consideration show significant differences with respect to firm size. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thermography is becoming more widely used amongst construction professionals for energy related defect detection in buildings. Until quite recently, most of the research and practical use of building thermography has centred on employing a building walk-around or walk-through methodology to detect sources of unacceptable energy use. However, thermographers are now creating new building thermography methodologies that seek to address some of the known limitations, such as camera spatial resolution, transient climatic conditions and differences in material properties. Often such limitations are misunderstood and sometimes ignored. This study presents a review of the existing literature, covering both well-established and emerging building thermography methodologies. By critically appraising techniques and observing methodology applications for specific energy related defects, a much clearer picture has been formed that will help thermographic researchers and thermographers to decide upon the best methodology for performing building thermography investigations and for the invention of new approaches. Whilst this paper shows that many of the different passive building thermography methodologies seek to address particular building issues such as defects and energy use, it has also demonstrated a lack of correlation between the different methodology types, where one methodology is often chosen over another for a particular reason, rather than making use of several methodologies to better understand building performance. Therefore this paper has identified the potential for using several passive building thermography methodologies together in a phased approach to building surveying using thermography. For example, a less costly and faster survey could be conducted to quickly identify certain defects before enabling more time consuming and expensive surveys to hone in on these with greater detail and spatial resolution if deemed necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a review and assessment of four nontraditional similarity metrics that can be applied to hydrological and meteorological data. These metrics are 1) the uncentered correlation coefficient, 2) the Hodgkin-Richards index, 3) the Petke index, and 4) the Wang-Bovik index. The first metric has been widely used in hydrometeorology, and the other three have been proposed in other disciplines for similarity analysis. It is demonstrated that these similarity metrics, in their original formulations, either do not actually have the purported advantage over the traditional Pearson correlation coefficient or are not suitable for some hydrometeorological applications. They are reformulated in this study to address these deficiencies. The resulting modified metrics are unitless, bounded, and proportional to the Pearson correlation coefficient, and three of them have the confirmed advantage of explicitly penalizing for differences in the mean and/or in the variance. Two application examples are used to demonstrate the applicability of these similarity metrics in hydrometeorology. A metavalidation model and a graphical tool (Taylor diagram) are used to evaluate the performances of these similarity metrics. In a case study of analog analysis, the Wang-Bovik index stands out as the best metric for simulation of the human perception of similarity between two-dimensional patterns, whereas the modified Petke index and the traditional root-mean-square distance may perform slightly better than the others in the regions with a very large difference between the variances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concerns with masonry building envelope performance, particularly thermal efficiency, are causing major changes in masonry solutions, mainly in south European countries, where traditionally the mild winter climate justified the use of high thermal masonry wall performance. The new European Directives regulations require different solutions. This paper describes the development a new masonry system, based on lightweight concrete units, intended for construction of large single leaf external walls without thermal insulation materials. A detailed analysis and optimization has been performed by FEM, under thermal point of view. This work was followed by a set of experimental tests in order to characterize the mechanical behavior of single units and masonry specimens. The concerns with productivity and ergonomics are also considered according their importance to the solution cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In air-conditioning field, a dehumidification has become increasingly important for human health and comfort especially in hot and humid climates. However, a conventional mechanical dehumidification with a vapor compression refrigerator has some problems. Therefore, much attention has been paid recently to a desiccant air-conditioning system as an alternative to the conventional system. In this paper, we focus on a rotary desiccant wheel which is the main component of the desiccant air-conditioning system and develop and validate the mathematical model by comparison with experimental results. The validation is conducted under various operating conditions. The mathematical model discussed in this paper includes, for example, the entrance region effect in air channel, detailed diffusion phenomenon in porous solid. In experiments, effects of the regeneration air temperature, air superficial velocity, wheel thickness and wheel rotational speed on the desiccant wheel performance are investigated. In addition, the temperature and humidity distribution at the outlet of the desiccant wheel are measured. As a result, an average relative error between the predicted and the measured humidity ratio difference distribution is 3.3% and temperature difference distribution 10.8%. Moreover, the effect of the regeneration air inlet temperature, the air superficial velocity, wheel thickness and wheel rotational speed on the desiccant wheel performance are clarified and the predicted results are totally in good agreement with the measured results. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: There is a demand for new and evolved research practices resulting from the so called “data deluge” emerging from high volume digital collection methods. As the volume of raw data increases traditional data processing methodologies, especially those involving manual manipulation are becoming increasingly difficult to manage. This paper presents the “Semantic Reef” architecture that offers an alternative approach to the development, application and execution of observational hypotheses involving studies of coral reef ecosystems. The Semantic Reef Knowledge Representation system is an eco-informatics application designed to assist in the integration of remotely sensed data streams and historic data sets supporting flexible hypothesis design and knowledge extraction. The system is an ontology-based architecture built to allow researchers to combine disjoint data sets into a single Knowledge Base for modelling the impact of climate change on coral reef ecosystems. The Knowledge Base consists of a hierarchy of ontologies developed to maximise usability and reusability by separating data instances from the concept descriptions. The model can be effectively reused to extract or disclose phenomena of any coral reef. This paper both demonstrates and describes a performance analysis of the Semantic Reef knowledge system. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In this paper an attempt has been made to assess the performance of an office building located in London (one of the case study buildings in CIBSE TM36: 2005) in relation to energy consumption, carbon emissions and potential for adaptability to the 2050s climate. Overheating is a particular issue in office buildings due to internal heat gains from computers and other electrical equipmen t. In addition, buildings in London are affected by the urban heat island, which is likely to intensify with warmer summer temperatures, reducing the capacity for night-time cooling of buildings. This paper proposes various passive design strategies which aim to address both mitigation (by reducing carbon emissions) and adaptation (by improving human comfort and reducing energy consumption). [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Photovoltaic (PV) connected systems are experiencing rapid market growth. This is due to the continually downward trend in PV cost together with government support programs. A scenario has been assumed to analyse the geographical market of PVs. The results provide clear evidence of the influence that some variables have on the profitability of PV investments. This study presents a model for minimising investment risk and maximising the return of a renewable energy portfolio in Italy. The value of the paper is in showing that the energy and CO2 reduction potential that can be reached through consumer-oriented policy measures, but the paper also looks at the effectiveness and social implications of such measures. Private households possess immense unused potential for energy reductions (and climate protection) that could be realised through gains in energy efficiency, behavioural changes, and extended use of low-emission energy. The focus of energy policy has been on businesses rather than on private households, which are only partly captured by direct policy measures. To achieve the goals of climate policies, the current political and scientific discussion increasingly considers measures that aim to reduce energy consumption in the private sector. Quantitative estimates are presented for economic indicators and will show the various effects of policy measures on the implemented household types. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to propose an integrative framework for understanding the determinants of business strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the impact of these determinants on performance. The proposed structural equation model is based on a survey of 319 Canadian manufacturing firms. The study calls into question the traditionally positive relationship between a firm's environmental commitment and its economic motivations. However, the results also show a win-win relationship between the commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and financial performance. This study contributes to the understanding of the motivations underlying the efforts manufacturers make to tackle climate change and their economic benefits. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates, for the first time, flash-flood guidance (FFG) values and recently developed gridded FFG (GFFG) used by the National Weather Service (NWS) to monitor and predict imminent flash flooding, which is the leading storm-related cause of death in the United States. It is envisioned that results from this study will be used 1) to establish benchmark performance of existing operational flash-flood prediction tools and 2) to provide information to NWS forecasters that reveals how the existing tools can be readily optimized. Sources used to evaluate the products include official reports of flash floods from the NWS Storm Data database, discharge measurements on small basins available from the U.S. Geological Survey, and witness reports of flash flooding collected during the Severe Hazards Analysis and Verification Experiment. Results indicated that the operational guidance values, with no calibration, were marginally skillful, with the highest critical success index of 0.20 occurring with 3-h GFFG. The false-alarm rates fell and the skill improved to 0.34 when the rainfall was first spatially averaged within basins and then reached 50%% of FFG for 1-h accumulation and exceeded 3-h FFG. Although the skill of the GFFG values was generally lower than that of their FFG counterparts, GFFG was capable of detecting the spatial variability of reported flash flooding better than FFG was for a case study in an urban setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: A novel fibre-optic UV illumination system for sulphuric acid (H2SO4) production has been developed. The illumination system described in this paper provides sufficient ultraviolet light (UV) power while causing practically no thermal effect on the aerosol chamber (temperature variation <0.005°C at full UV illumination). A similar thermal stability has not been achieved in other comparable experimental set-ups so far. The spectrum provided by the fibre-optic UV system corresponds to the UVB region, illuminates the chamber in a reasonably uniform way and is comparable to the ground level actinic flux. The UV system has been installed for the Cosmics Leaving OUtdoor Droplets (CLOUD) chamber experiments at CERN. Precise, easily-adjustable and reproducible concentrations of H2SO4 were generated by adjusting the UV light intensity. This paper gives an overview on the design of this new system as well as insights on its performance and application. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In previous papers the authors demonstrated that significant energy savings can be achieved in air-conditioning through the use of a hybrid plant in which a vapor-compression inverse cycle is integrated with an air dehumidification system working with hygroscopic solution and hydrophobic membrane. The advantage of this system lies in the fact that the refrigeration device operates at a higher evaporation temperature than that of a traditional system, in which dehumidification is achieved through condensation. In the proposed hybrid system the supplied air is simultaneously cooled and dehumidified in an air–solution membrane contactor. The LiCl solution is cooled by means of a vapor-compression inverse cycle. The solution is regenerated in another membrane contactor by exploiting the exhaust air and the heat rejected by the condenser. The paper reports a study of the steady-state behavior of the system in summer climatic conditions on varying some significant climatic parameters, such as the latent load of the conditioned space and the outdoor and indoor relative humidity. The performances of the hybrid system are compared with those of a traditional direct-expansion air-conditioning plant. Results of the simulations reveal that energy saving may exceed 60% when the latent load in the conditioned environment is high. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Portland cement can play a major role in providing cost-effective, long-term zonal isolation for CO2 capture and storage (CCS) used to mitigate climate change. However, achieving zonal isolation with Portland cement under supercritical CO2 environment for the required 1,000 year trapping period may be challenging. Some laboratory researchers report that Portland cement disintegrates when exposed to CO2, leading to potential leakage into the atmosphere or other to underground zones. Other researchers cite Portland cement samples from 30–50 year old CO2 EOR wells where sealing integrity was maintained, even though carbonation was found. In this paper we will discuss reasons likely for this disparity between research lab test results and actual well performance data. Carbonation of Portland cement is a thermodynamically favorable process and therefore difficult to avoid. But the effects can be minimized by various reactive chemical components optimized for the specific thermodynamic conditions. Our research shows partial carbonation of Portland cement is not detrimental unless the mechanical integrity is insufficient to provide effective zonal isolation. For these studies we have developed CO2 treatment test cells capable of producing conditions up to 200 °F and 2,000 psi. In addition, various analytical instruments including x-ray diffraction (XRD), thermo-gravimetric analysis (TGA) and mechanical properties measurement devices have been used for this study. In this paper we will discuss the importance of understanding the percentage of carbonation and depth of CO2 penetration, and how to control these factors by optimizing the cement blend. Interestingly, we found the amount of Portlandite { Ca(OH)2} that forms due to cement hydration and the cement-to-water ratio dictates the depth of penetration as well as percentage carbonation. The implications of this in relation to the long term chemical integrity of the cement sheath under downhole CCS conditions is discussed. This paper also includes the results of recent studies on the changes in mechanical properties of a properly optimized Portland cement blend for a period of up to one year. During this period, measurements were made at different time intervals to examine cement specimen treated with CO2 at 200 °F and 2,000 psi in the presence of water. The results show carbonation without any sign of loss of mechanical or sealing integrity that could lead to zonal isolation failure. Results from a separate set of experiments show the following: (1) Carbonation could be minimized by reducing the Portland cement content by adding Pozzolanic materials and by reducing the permeability and (2) Carbonation could help heal micro-cracks that may be caused by various well operations or ageing. However, such carbonation-induced healing is limited only to a certain width of cracks. In summary of this research, it is recommend that: (1) a high quality primary cement job be performed in adherence to all industry best practices; (2) the cement blend be properly optimized to minimize long-term CO2 corrosion; and (3) the sheath be designed for long-term mechanical integrity. This paper will discuss a comprehensive approach that may be taken to help ensure longer-term effective zonal isolation in new CO2 wells and remedial solutions for old wells and for plugging and abandoning wells. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Between 1994 and 2004, the Voluntary Challenge and Registry (VCR) played an important role in Canadian climate change policy. In this paper, we examine the decision of firms to participate in the VCR, the extent of their involvement, and then ask if greenhouse gas emissions are related to past VCR participation. As an information provision program, we find evidence that firms may participate in VCR to signal their environmental responsibility to regulators and to some extent investors, but not to consumers. We also find that past involvement in the VCR is a strong and significant determinant of current involvement in the registry. Greenhouse gas emissions reported to the Mandatory Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program in 2004, however, do not appear to be different between VCR reporters and non-reporters. GHG emissions are observed to be significantly lower among firms that are smaller, emit fewer toxic releases, use more renewable energy sources, are intermediate good producers, and are located in Quebec, Ontario, and Manitoba. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper aims to evaluate the performance of a solar district cooling system in typical Middle East climate conditions. A centralized cooling station is supposed to distribute chilled water for a residential compound through a piping network. Two different solar cooling technologies are compared: two-stage lithium-bromide absorption chiller ( 2sABS ) driven by Parabolic Trough Collectors ( PTCs ) vs. single-stage lithium-bromide absorption chiller ( 1sABS ) fed by Evacuated Tube Collectors ( ETCs ). A computer code has been developed in Trnsys® (the transient simulation software developed by the University of Wisconsin) to simulate on hourly basis the annual operation of the solar cooling system, including building thermal load calculation, thermal losses in pipes and control strategy of the energy storage. A solar fraction of 70% was considered to size the solar field aperture area and the chiller capacity, within a multi-variable optimization process. An auxiliary compression chiller is supposed to cover the peak loads and to be used as backup unit. The two different solar cooling plants exhibit strongly different performance. For each plant configuration, the model determined the optimal size of every component leading to the primary cost minimization. The solar district cooling configuration based on 2sABS and PTCs shows higher performance at Riyadh (KSA) climate conditions and the overall cost is 30% lower than the one of the single-stage absorption chiller plant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global climate change originates frequent floods that may cause severe damage, justifying the need for real-time remote monitoring and alerting systems. Several works deal with LoRa (Long Range) communications over land and in the presence of obstacles, but little is known about LoRa communication reliability over water, as it may happen in real flooding scenarios. One aspect that is known to influence the communication quality is the height at which nodes are placed. However, its impact in water environments is unknown. This is an important aspect that may influence the location of sensor nodes and the network topology. To fill this gap, we conducted several experiments using a real LoRa deployment to evaluate several features related to data communication. We considered two deployment scenarios corresponding to countryside and estuary environments. The nodes were placed at low heights, communicating, respectively, over the ground and over the water. Measurements for packet loss, received signal strength indicator (RSSI), signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and round-trip time (RTT) were collected during a period of several weeks. Results for both scenarios are presented and compared in this paper. One important conclusion is that the communication distance and reliability are significantly affected by tides when the communication is done over the water and nodes are placed at low heights. Based on the RTT measurements and on the characteristics of the hardware, we also derive a battery lifetime estimation model that may be helpful for the definition of an adequate maintenance plan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International cooperation is the key factor in mitigating the climate change impacts on the human and environmental system. Climate change cooperation index can incentivize countries to embrace international agreements to achieve an efficient mitigation. This paper argues that non-compensatory rule can generate a more theoretically meaningful climate change cooperation index if the preferential independence between indicators cannot be guaranteed, sub-indicator weights are assigned with the meaning of the importance and compensability between sub-indicator is not desirable. Hence, this paper introduces a non-compensatory composite indicator approach to construct a new climate change cooperation index for cooperation performance evaluation. The main results are reported and discussed. An uncertainty analysis shows that the non-compensatory index has relatively good robustness on both weight factor and data inaccuracy. • Climate change cooperation index is constructed by a non-compensatory approach. • The climate change cooperation performance for 161 countries is re-assessed. • Uncertainty analysis is done to show the robustness of the evaluation results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Precipitation's temporal and spatial patterns under climate change significantly impact global terrestrial ecology and human social activities. Climate models are essential tools for assessing the impacts of climate change and formulating policies to address climate change. The evaluation results of historical climate model simulations can represent the reliability of their future simulations. This study evaluated the simulation capabilities of 41 historical All‐Forcing monthly precipitation simulations and three integrated models over global land in the Coupled Model Comparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6). The results show that the simulation capability of global climate models (GCMs) in CMIP6 is highly variable overland around the world. This variability is manifested in two aspects: the spatial variability of the comprehensive simulation ability of each model in different geographical regions and climatic zones of the world and the significant difference in the simulation ability of different models in each region. These GCMs generally overestimate global monthly precipitation over land, with the exception of southeast Asia and tropical rainforest climate (Af), where all models underestimate monthly precipitation. Some GCMS can perform well regionally but poorly on the global scale. One example shows that EC‐Earth3's best capability at Cwc climatic zone, surpassing the integrated model, but failed to rank in the top 10 in 22 of the 29 climate zones. Our results highlight the need to select appropriate models for integration when conducting climate change studies at global and regional scales as a critical factor in studying climate change predictions. Plain Language Summary: This study evaluated 41 monthly precipitation models in Coupled Model Comparison Project Phase 6 from geographic regionalization and global climate classification at the global land scale. Quantile integration was used to get three integration models to participate in the evaluation. Indicators used include correlation coefficient, Taylor skill score, Wasserstein distance, and common indicators of deviation analysis. Conclusions mainly include the performance of integrated models is generally better than that of single models on the global scale. The variation deviations of most indices have similar patterns to the corresponding mean deviations. In different geographic regions and climate types around the world, global climate models that perform better are different. In addition, this research also gives the suitable models in each region of the world and the upper limit of the simulation capability of all models in each area of the world. Key Points: The comprehensive simulation capability of each global climate model (GCM) has spatial variability in different geographical regions and climate zonesThere is no single model can achieve good performance on a global scaleMultiple model ensembles (quantile integration in this study) can significantly improve GCM's applicability on the large scale [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies on the relationship between corporate sustainability strategies and financial performance are often dealt with in a broad manner, which can hinder the ability to consolidate knowledge on the subject. In order to add greater depth and understanding to the debate, this study focuses on the issue of climate change mitigation strategies (CCMS). This focus allows for a reduction in the complexity of the analyses of the relationship between environmental and financial performance, and a more thorough discussion of corporate sustainability strategy choices. To analyze the relationship between CCMS and financial performance, this research collected data from 61 companies that took part in the selection process for the Corporate Sustainability Index (ISE) of the Brazilian Stock Exchange (B3), which was published between 2013 and 2019, and contained 249 observations. The research used multivariate analysis with the panel data regression method. The results showed there to be a positive and statistically significant relationship between CCMS and the financial performance of companies, indicating that the corporate implementation of practices and policies for facing up to climate change can lead to both environmental and economic benefits for companies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The IPCC, a collection of 800 of the world’s leading climate change scientists, state that future climate related risks to society and infrastructure are likely to change. It is therefore important for the power industry to consider the possible impacts of future climate change on infrastructure performance. However, very few studies have been published to date examining the potential impacts of climate change on power distribution poles networks, which constitute large and valuable infrastructure assets worldwide. The work presented in this paper builds on the limited research in this area by developing a framework for examination of the possible impacts of climate change on timber power pole networks. The time-dependent event-based model developed herein allows network maintenance and predicted climate change effects to be considered, while also incorporating uncertainty associated with both climate change predictions, and structural reliability modelling of infrastructure networks over time. The results of a case study which examined notional power pole networks for five Australian cities revealed that the effects of climate change on predicted power pole performance can be significant. Wind failures for the Brisbane location were predicted to increase by approximately 60% when considering a period from 2015 to 2070, under the severe climate change scenario. However, the predicted impacts are also highly regionally variable, with one location considered experiencing positive climate change impacts for a medium climate change scenario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents a field study on human interactions with motorized roller shades and dimmable electric lights in private offices of a high performance building. The experimental study was designed to (i) extend the current knowledge of human-building interactions to different and more advanced systems, including intermediate shading positions and light dimming levels, and (ii) reveal behavioral characteristics enabled through side-by-side comparisons of environmental controls ranging from fully automated to fully manual and interfaces with low or high level of accessibility (wall switch, remote controller and web interface). The research methodology includes monitoring of physical variables, actuation and operation states of building systems, as well as online surveys of occupant comfort and perception of environmental variables, their personal characteristics and attributes (non-physical variables). The analyzed datasets provide new insights on the dynamics of interdependent human interactions with shading and electric lighting systems. Higher daylight utilization was observed in offices with easy-to-access controls, which implies less frequent use of electric lights and less energy consumption accordingly. Analysis of occupant satisfaction, in terms of comfort with the amount of light and visual conditions, based on datasets from offices with variable accessibility to shading and lighting control, reveals a strong preference for customized indoor climate, along with a relationship between occupant perception of control and acceptability of a wider range of visual conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ground source heat pumps (GSHP) have attracted increasing attention because of their high energy efficiencies. The aim of this paper is to study the performance of (GSHP) in future climate conditions (2040–2069) by using projected future hourly weather data of selected representative cities in the US to estimate future ground temperature change. The projected hourly weather data and estimated ground temperatures are input to an hourly simulation tool (TRNSYS and eQuest for this research), which provides reliable coupling of GSHP system and building performance. The simulation results show that global warming will decrease the energy efficiency of GSHP in US residential buildings because a rise in inlet and outlet water temperature is predicted for GSHP systems during the cooling season and because buildings will become more cooling dominated in the future. For office buildings, although the cooling performance of GSHP will not drop significantly under future climate, the overall energy efficiency for the system will decrease due to the increasing energy consumption of the ground loop pump. In the future, considering the significant ground heat imbalance for GSHP operation, GSHP will become less competitive both economically and technically than it is now in the context of US climate zones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Suitability of the analytical model by Moupfouma in modeling the one-minute rain rate distributions at tropical stations of Thiruvananthapuram and Gadanki is studied. The Climatic dependent parameters of the model governing the slope of the one-minute rain rate distributions are acclimatized and validated. The paper also presents rain rate distributions for Thiruvananthapuram and Gadanki. Performance of the model with newly refined climatic dependent parameters is assessed. The Moupfouma model is observed to model the one minute rain rate distributions with a maximum percentage relative error of 14% at 0.001% of time, and with approximately zero relative error at 0.01% of time in an average year. The climatic dependent parameters governing the slope of one-minute rain rate distributions are proposed for Southern India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Evapotranspiration (ET) is a key variable for hydrologic, climatic and agricultural studies. ET cannot be measured in many situations and its estimation is only possible through the application of mathematical models. ET is commonly calculated relying on reference evapotranspiration (ET o ) or potential evapotranspiration (PET). In particular, temperature-based models (TET) are interesting, because temperature is a widely available climatic variable and it might explain a significant fraction of ET o and PET variability. Nevertheless, most studies about TET models usually provide a local assessment of the studied model performance, usually at regional or national scale. This paper presents the assessment of 11 representative TET methods for estimating ET o and PET considering a very wide climatic spectrum, specifically 4362 climatological stations worldwide. Therefore, the applicability of the different TET approaches was evaluated in relationship to the Köppen climate classification of the stations, considering a monthly timescale and FAO56 Penman Monteith benchmarks (PM56). The encountered correlation indexes confirm the importance of air temperature for modeling ET. In general, the Hargreaves–Samani equation provided the most accurate global average performance in arid, semiarid, temperate, cold and polar climates. The Thornthwaite and McCloud approaches provide the worst average estimates in all climate classes. TET approaches yield high errors and a low average correlation to PM56 in tropical climates. Although a similar comparative analysis might provide other trends at local scale, the presented results might allow for a general selection of suitable TET methods for each climate Köppen class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The building envelopes are exposed to the hot-humid climate with high humidity in hot summer and cold winter zone (HSCW) of China. The moisture transfer may severely influence the conduction loads through exterior walls. In this paper, a coupled heat and moisture transfer model is developed and validated to investigate the thermal performance of exterior walls. The conduction loads through a typical exterior wall are used to evaluate the effect of moisture transfer on the thermal performance of exterior walls in HSCW zone of China. The results show that the peak cooling and heating loads are overestimated by 2.1–3.9% and 4.2–10.1%, respectively, when ignoring moisture transfer. In cooling season, the sum of the latent load accounts for 14.3–52.2% of the sum of the total load and the yearly latent load accounts for 4.9–6.1% of the yearly total load when considering moisture transfer. The total cooling, heating and the yearly load are underestimated by 9.9–34.4%, 1.7–4.0%, and 5.2–6.8%, respectively, when ignoring moisture transfer. The results indicate that ignoring moisture transfer causes significant discrepancy in predicting the conduction loads. A detailed model considering moisture transfer in building envelope is essential to accurately evaluate the building energy performance in HSCW zone of China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy provides safety, comfort and mobility to people, and is essential for industrial, commercial and societal growth. However, generation and consumption of energy give rise of greenhouse gases and various air pollutants, which have a negative impact on the natural environment and global climate. The building sector is responsible for about 40% of the energy consumption and related CO 2 emissions worldwide. In order to reduce the environmental impact of buildings, energy efficient measures must be taken into account when designing, operating and retrofitting buildings. It is imperative that holistic consideration is given to the structural, environmental and energy aspects in buildings through their life. In order to maintain safe, healthy and comfortable sustainable buildings, assurance of the structural and environmental building performance must be given not only at the design, but also commissioning and operation stages of its life cycle. This paper presents the motivation, objectives and method description of the measurement framework developed at the National University of Ireland Galway in order to continuously monitor the structural and environmental performance of operating buildings. The proposed real-time monitoring provides rich information about the building performance, offering opportunities for better control strategies for operating buildings. This may lead to safer, healthier, more comfortable and productive indoor environments, at the same time ensuring the reduced/optimised energy consumption in buildings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For certain temperate climate types, cooling towers have the potential to produce high temperature chilled water, which when used in conjunction with radiant and displacement cooling technologies, have prompted interest in this concept as a potential approach for the conditioning of buildings. The feasibility of the proposed system depends largely, on achieving low approach water temperatures within an appropriately designed cooling tower, at acceptable levels of energy performance. Using a validated mathematical model, the current paper examines the performance of such a cooling tower for four different temperate climate conditions. The current assessment shows for building water return temperature of 22 °C, for temperate climates that are considered warm and humid, the limitations on cooling tower operation are when ambient conditions exceed 25 °C and 75% RH. Two strategies were investigated to allow the smallest practicable approach to the wet bulb temperature to be achieved: (i) increasing the tower air flowrate, (ii) decreasing the tower water flowrate. For a temperate climate that is warm and humid, operating the cooling tower with an approach of 1.0 K was found to be not practicable for all encountered weather conditions, but use of a 2.0 K approach was found to be practicable for all conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper presents annual experimental performance of pyramid shaped skylight for daylighting of a dome shaped adobe house located at solar energy park in New Delhi (India). This approach of single story dome shaped building with skylight is more useful for rural and semi-urban sectors for both office and residential buildings reducing artificial lighting energy consumption. The hourly measured data of inside and outside illuminance for three different working surface levels inside the existing rooms are presented for each month of the year. The embodied energy payback time of the skylight is also determined on the basis of lighting energy saving potential. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Pavement of the surfaces, along with a possible climate change induced increase of rainfall intensities, is one of key factors accountable for (increased) flooding in urban areas. Consequently higher runoffs have an impact on sewer system performance in terms of higher risk of flooding and decrease of storm water treatment performance. This paper presents a sensitivity analysis to compare impact of increased rainfall intensities and pavement of urban areas. It can be seen that both impacts result in a similar figure. Hence it is important to look into both aspects when trying to predict future performance of combined sewer systems. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Nature-inspired metaheuristics found various applications in different fields of science, including the problem of artificial neural networks (ANN) training. However, very versatile opinions regarding the performance of metaheuristics applied to ANN training may be found in the literature. Both nature-inspired metaheuristics and ANNs are widely applied to various geophysical and environmental problems. Among them the water temperature forecasting in a natural river, especially in colder climate zones where the seasonality plays important role, is of great importance, as water temperature has strong impact on aquatic life and chemistry. As the impact of possible future climate change on water temperature is not trivial, models are needed to allow projection of streamwater temperature based on simple hydro-meteorological variables. In this paper the detailed comparison of the performance of nature-inspired optimization methods and Levenberg–Marquardt (LM) algorithm in ANNs training is performed, based on the case study of water temperature forecasting in a natural stream, namely Biala Tarnowska river in southern Poland. Over 50 variants of 22 various metaheuristics, including a large number of Differential Evolution, as well as some Particle Swarm Optimization, Evolution Strategies, multialgorithms and Direct Search methods are compared with LM algorithm on ANN training for the described case study. The impact of population size and some control parameters of particular metaheuristics on the ANN training performance are verified. It is found that despite widely claimed large improvement in nature-inspired methods during last years, the vast majority of them are still outperformed by LM algorithm on the selected problem. The only methods that, based on this case study, seem competitive to LM algorithm in terms of the final performance (but not speed) are Differential Evolution algorithms that benefit from the concept of Global and Local neighborhood-based mutation operators. The streamwater forecasting performance of the neural networks is adequate, the major prediction errors are related to the river freezing and melting processes that occur during winter in the mountainous catchment under study. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: With increased global concerns on climate change, the need for innovative spaces which can provide thermal comfort and energy efficiency is also increasing. This paper analyses the effects of transitional spaces on energy performance and indoor thermal comfort of low-rise dwellings in the Netherlands, at present and projected in 2050. For this analysis the four climate scenarios for 2050 from the Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute (KNMI) were used. Including a courtyard within a Dutch terraced dwelling on the one hand showed an increase in annual heating energy demand but on the other hand a decrease in the number of summer discomfort hours. An atrium integrated into a Dutch terraced dwelling reduced the heating demand but increased the number of discomfort hours in summer. Analysing the monthly energy performance, comfort hours and the climate scenarios indicated that using an open courtyard May through October and an atrium, i.e. a covered courtyard, in the rest of the year establishes an optimum balance between energy use and summer comfort for the severest climate scenario. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Climate change is of great concern for society today. Manufacturing industries and construction account for approximately 20% of global CO2 emissions and, consequently, it is important that this sector investigate options to reduce its CO2 emissions. One option could be to substitute fossil fuels with renewable alternatives. This paper describes a case study in which four future energy market scenarios predicting 2030 were used to analyse whether it would be profitable for a steel plant to produce bio-SNG (bio-synthetic natural gas) in a biomass gasifier and to substitute LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) with bio-SNG as fuel in reheating furnaces. The effects on global CO2 emissions were analysed from a perspective in which biomass is considered a limited resource. The results from the analysis show that investment in a biomass gasifier and fuel conversion would not be profitable in any of the scenarios. Depending on the scenario, the production cost for bio-SNG ranged between 22 and 36 EUR/GJ. Fuel substitution would reduce global CO2 emission if the marginal biomass user is a producer of transportation fuel. However, if the marginal user of biomass is a coal power plant with wood co-firing, the result would be increased global CO2 emissions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In the tropics, daylighting from a side window requires shading to intercept direct sunlight from the window whilst allowing penetration of daylight from sky. In this paper, daylighting from a double-pane glazed window with enclosed horizontal slats (slat window) was investigated for which it is situated on either north or south wall of a room. Full-scale experiments and simulations were conducted to characterize distribution of the interior daylight from the slat window under a real tropical climate. Performance of the slat window was evaluated in terms of the “useful daylight illuminance” (UDI), interior daylight availability and light power density (LPD) of an integrated dimmable lighting system. Empirical formulas were developed for determining annual average LPD values of the dimmable lighting system over its served area. The LPD value can be used with a reduced form of the energy equation of Thailand's building energy code to evaluate the reduced annual electrical energy consumption for accreditation of the daylight use in a building. The analysis of life cycle cost proved that the daylighting from the slat window integrated with the dimmable lighting system is cost effective. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper presents a modification of stepped solar still through internal reflectors. A comparison study between modified stepped solar still with trays (5mm depth×120mm width) and conventional solar still was carried out to evaluate the developed desalination system performance under the same climate conditions. The effect of installing a reflecting mirror on the vertical sides of the steps of stepped still on the distillate productivity was investigated. An experimental as well as theoretical investigation is carried out. The results indicate that, during experimentation the productivity of the modified stepped solar still with and without internal reflectors is higher than that for conventional still approximately by 75% and 57%, respectively. Also the daily efficiency for modified stepped still with and without internal reflectors and conventional solar still is approximately 56%, 53% and 34%, respectively. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]