Search

This paper introduces a unique multiyear dataset and the monitoring capability of the PANDA automatic weather station network, which includes 11 automatic weather stations (AWSs) across the Prydz Bay–Amery Ice Shelf–Dome A area from the coast to the summit of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. The ∼ 1460 km transect from Zhongshan to Panda S follows roughly along ∼ 77∘ E longitude and covers all geographic units of East Antarctica. Initial inland observations, near the coast, started in the 1996/97 austral summer. All AWSs in this network measure air temperature, relative humidity, air pressure, wind speed and wind direction at 1 h intervals, and some of them can also measure firn temperature and shortwave/longwave radiation. Data are relayed in near real time via the Argos system. The data quality is generally very reliable, and the data have been used widely. In this paper, we firstly present a detailed overview of the AWSs, including the sensor characteristics, installation procedure, data quality control protocol and the basic analysis of each variable. We then give an example of a short-term atmospheric event that shows the monitoring capacity of the PANDA AWS network. This dataset, which is publicly available, is planned to be updated on a near-real-time basis and should be valuable for climate change estimation, extreme weather events diagnosis, data assimilation, weather forecasting, etc. The dataset is available at https://doi.org/10.11888/Atmos.tpdc.272721 (Ding et al., 2022b).

This article aims to examine alternative explanations of social disadvantage on the university-to-work transition experiences of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) students. ‘Becoming employable’ during the university-to-work transition is reflected in three ways: students’ cognition/patterns of thinking (i.e., perceived employability); affect/emotion (i.e., anxiety); and career-related behaviour (i.e., job search and networking). To understand how social disadvantage affects ‘becoming employable’, we examine three potential explanations: students’ social background, type of higher education institution attended and individual financial strain. A cross-sectional survey design targeted at final year students in two UK Higher Education Institutions provided 288 survey responses. Findings show support for an institutional explanation to ‘becoming employable’. The study contributes to our understanding of social disadvantage during preparation for labour market entry and the ‘employable graduate’ identity construction process. Practical recommendations focus on alleviating some of the pressures on socially disadvantaged students.

Project governance is an important activity in agile software development (ASD) projects for project success. Middle managers are part of the governance structure in ASD projects. Despite the efficacy of project governance and existence of middle managers in agile teams, project governance and middle management in ASD projects are under-researched. This multiple-case study investigates the roles of middle managers in agile project governance activities within two Nigerian ASD projects through the lens of activity theory. We collected data in semi-structured interviews, observations, questionnaires, and company documents. Our findings show that middle managers performed 25 roles related to planning and coordination for project alignment and execution, continuous improvement and organisational change, agile and technical leadership, monitoring, and capability building. We conclude that middle managers are pivotal to project governance practice and the effectual functioning of agile teams in ASD projects. The study will help agile practitioners to better understand the roles of middle managers in agile project governance. Results from this work contribute to the ‘middle management in agile’ debate and offer an alternative view that may change beliefs about middle managers in agile project settings.

The International Association of Cryospheric Sciences (IACS) became the eighth and most recent association of IUGG at the general assembly in Perugia, Italy, in July 2007. IACS was launched in recognition of the importance of the cryosphere within the Earth system, particularly at a time of significant global change. It was the first new association of the union to be formed in over 80 years and IACS celebrated its 10th anniversary only a year before the IUGG centennial. The forbearers of IACS, however, stretch back even further than IUGG, starting with the formation of the Commission Internationale des Glaciers (CIG) by the International Geological Congress in 1894. Here we record the history of the transition from CIG to IACS, the scientific objectives that drove activities and changes, and some of the key events and individuals involved.

Nine density-dependent empirical thermal conductivity relationships for firn were compared against data from three Automatic Weather Stations at climatically-different East Antarctica sites (Dome A, Eagle and LGB69). The empirical relationships were validated using a vertical, one-dimensional thermal diffusion model and a phase-change based firn diffusivity estimation method. The best relationships for these East Antarctica sites were identified by comparing the modeled and observed firn temperature at the depth of 1 m and 3 m, and from the mean heat conductivities over two depth intervals (1–3 m and 3–10 m). Among the nine relationships, that proposed by Calonne et al. (2011) appears to have the best performance. This study provides useful reference for firn thermal conductivity parameterizations in land modeling or snow-air interaction studies on the Antarctica Ice Sheet.

Within the past 125,000 years, variations in Earth’s climate have resulted in global sea levels fluctuating from 130 to 140 m lower than present day to 6 to 9 m higher. Presently, global mean sea level is rising at its fastest rate in the past 6,000 years (~3 mm/year). In this chapter, we discuss both the causes and implications of sea-level rise from the perspective of a cryospheric hazard. We also survey the best estimates of sea-level rise and cryospheric mass change from a variety of monitoring techniques. The transfer of terrestrial ice into the sea has contributed about 50 percent of the sea-level rise since 1993, and probably exceeded the combined sea-level changes due to thermal expansion, changes in terrestrial water storage, and changes in ocean basin size since 2003. This cryospheric contribution to sea-level rise is approximately equally split between the combined ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica, and the global population of about 200,000 glaciers. The societal effects of sea-level rise will be highly varied throughout the world, with some locations experiencing relative sea-level drop, whereas others experience a relative sea-level rise several times the global mean. Perhaps counter-intuitively, the sea-level rise due to terrestrial ice loss will be most substantial in areas furthest from the source of melting ice. Although this cryospheric hazard will unfold over a much longer time scale than many of the other hazards discussed in this volume, the ramifications of sea-level rise will likely be more widespread and profound. Some implications discussed here include coastal inundation, increased coastal flood frequency and groundwater salinization.

This paper explores the emergence and adoption of cloud computing by enterprises in sub-Saharan Africa. Several studies have shown the benefits of cloud technologies for enterprises. Using qualitative techniques we obtained and analyzed data from nine enterprises regarding the adoption of cloud computing as an IT strategy. These enterprises span the finance, information and communication technology (ICT) training, research, construction and manufacturing sectors in Ethiopia. We found that, contrary to the literature on cloud computing adoption in the global north, these enterprises are yet to adopt cloud computing as an IT provisioning method and they lack awareness of the advantages and disadvantages of adopting the cloud. The enterprises are concerned with challenges like security, privacy and trust issues as well as government telecommunications infrastructure policies and cloud technology skills acquisition. This research is part of a wider study that has taken place in Nigeria and Ghana, where we have observed higher levels of adoption. This research raises awareness of the challenges and potential benefits of cloud adoption.

The term "cryosphere" (deriving from the Greek word kryos for frost or icy cold) is used to describe collect­ively those portions of the Earth's surface where water is in a solid form. It includes sea, lake, and river ice, snow cover, glaciers, ice caps and ice sheets, and frozen ground (including permafrost). While the focus of this chapter is on geodetic issues and Future Earth, which primarily involves ice sheets and glaciers on land and their role in global mass redistribution and sea level, the cryosphere as a whole is an integral part of the global climate system with important links and feedbacks gen­erated through its influence on surface energy and mois­ture fluxes, clouds, precipitation, hydrology, and atmospheric and oceanic circulation. The basic proper­ties that determine these roles are the high albedo of snow and ice surfaces; the latent heat involved in phase changes of ice/water; the height-mass balance feedback, which results from the great elevation of ice sheets and resultant effects on temperature and precipitation; and the insulating effect of snow cover on land and of floating ice on fresh water or seawater. Other major factors include the water volume stored in ice sheets and glaciers, the greenhouse gases locked up in perma­frost, and the delays in annual energy and water cycles due to seasonal snow and ice cover. Through these and associated feedback processes, the cryosphere plays a significant role in global climate. Cryospheric processes therefore need to be included explicitly and correctly in climate models to project future response to global change. Change in the cryosphere is also an important indicator of climate variability and change.

The differing response of ice extent in the Arctic and Antarctic to global average temperature change, over approximately the last three decades, highlights the importance of reconstructing long-term sea ice history. Here, using high-resolution ice core records of methanesulfonate (MS−) from the East Antarctic Ice Sheet in Princess Elizabeth Land, we reconstruct southern Indian Ocean sea ice extent (SIE) for the sector 70° E–100° E for the period 1708–2000 A.D. Annual MS− concentration positively correlates in this sector with satellite-derived SIE for the period 1973–2000 (P < 0.05). The 293 yr MS− record of proxy SIE shows multi-decadal variations, with large decreases occurring in two warm intervals during the Little Ice Age, and during the 1940s. However, after the 1980s there is a change in phase between Antarctic SIE and global temperature change, with both increasing. This paradox is probably attributable to the strong anomaly in the Southern Annular Mode (SAM) in the recent three decades.

Antarctic ice sheet mass loss has been linked to an increase in oceanic heat supply, which enhances basal melt and thinning of ice shelves. Here we detail the interaction of modified Circumpolar Deep Water (mCDW) with the Amery Ice Shelf, the largest ice shelf in East Antarctica, and provide the first estimates of basal melting due to mCDW. We use subice shelf ocean observations from a borehole site (AM02) situated ?70 km inshore of the ice shelf front, together with open ocean observations in Prydz Bay. We find that mCDW transport into the cavity is about 0.22?±?0.06 Sv (1 Sv?=?106 m3 s?1). The inflow of mCDW drives a net basal melt rate of up to 2?±?0.5 m yr?1 during 2001 (23.9?±?6.52 Gt yr?1 from under about 12,800 km2 of the north-eastern flank of the ice shelf). The heat content flux by mCDW at AM02 shows high intra-annual variability (up to 40%). Our results suggest two main modes of subice shelf circulation and basal melt regimes: (1) the “ice pump”/high salinity shelf water circulation, on the western flank and (2) the mCDW meltwater-driven circulation in conjunction with the “ice pump,” on the eastern flank. These results highlight the sensitivity of the Amery's basal melting to changes in mCDW inflow. Improved understanding of such ice shelf-ocean interaction is crucial to refining projections of mass loss and associated sea level rise.

With the omnipresence of softwares in our Society from Information Technology (IT) services to autonomous agents, their systematic and efficient development is crucial for software developers. Hence, in this paper, we present an approach to assist intelligent agents (IA), whatever human beings or artificial systems, in theirs task to develop and configure softwares. The proposed method is an ontological, developer-centred approach aiding a software developer in decision making and interoperable information sharing through the use of the ODYSSEY ontology we developed for the software development life cycle (SDLC) domain. This ODYSSEY ontology has been designed following the Enterprise Ontology (EO) methodology and coded in Descriptive Logic (DL). Its implementation in OWL has been evaluated for case studies, showing promising results.

Despite the Amery Ice Shelf (AIS) being the third largest ice shelf in Antarctica, the seasonal variability of the physical processes involved in the AIS-ocean interaction remains undocumented and a robust observational, oceanographic-based basal melt rate estimate has been lacking. Here we use year-long time series of water column temperature, salinity, and horizontal velocities measured along the ice shelf front from 2001 to 2002. Our results show strong zonal variations in the distribution of water masses along the ice shelf front: modified Circumpolar Deep Water (mCDW) arrives in the east, while in the west, Ice Shelf Water (ISW) and Dense Shelf Water (DSW) formed in the Mackenzie polynya dominate the water column. Baroclinic eddies, formed during winter deep convection (down to 1100 m), drive the inflow of DSW into the ice shelf cavity. Our net basal melt rate estimate is 57.4 ± 25.3 Gt yr−1 (1 ± 0.4 m yr−1), larger than previous modeling-based and glaciological-based estimates, and results from the inflow of DSW (0.52 ± 0.38 Sv; 1 Sv = 106 m3 s−1) and mCDW (0.22 ± 0.06 Sv) into the cavity. Our results highlight the role of the Mackenzie polynya in the seasonal exchange of water masses across the ice shelf front, and the role of the ISW in controlling the formation rate and thermohaline properties of DSW. These two processes directly impact on the ice shelf mass balance, and on the contribution of DSW/ISW to the formation of Antarctic Bottom Water.

Multi-tenancy is a vital cloud computing property that enables multiple tenants of an application to be served concurrently while guaranteeing isolation between the tenants. Current cloud deployment patterns catalogue for implementing multi-tenancy lack details which make it difficult to use in deploying applications to the cloud. This paper applies our existing catalogue template to the cloud multi-tenancy patterns, in particular the tenant-isolated and dedicated component pattern. Thereafter we demonstrated its applicability with a local company software application that involved the migration of a database driven business process management system to the cloud. The result shows that: (i) there is an improvement in the structure and clarity of the cloud deployment pattern catalogue; (ii) deployment patterns can help achieve migration in less time and with realistic results; (iii) the improved catalogue helps software engineers to understand the trade-off between each pattern.