Thesis (M.S.)--University of Delaware, 2009. / Principal faculty advisor: Daniel J. Leathers, Dept. of Geography. Includes bibliographical references.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:31:36Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2006-05-05Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T20:02:21Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 rickli_li_dr_botfca.pdf: 601367 bytes, checksum: abdaa96dc222f7b27de2cdeb6898ad34 (MD5) / Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP) / O aumento populacional do planeta tem exigido cada vez mais produtividade na agricultura objetivando suprir suas necessidades alimenticias. Um dos mais importantes fatores que determinam o sucesso ou o fracasso desta producao sao as variaveis climaticas, dentre elas, pode-se citar a precipitacao pluviometrica. A presente pesquisa analisou a eficiencia dos fatores funcionais no processo de simulacao de dados diarios de precipitacao utilizando a distribuicao Gama. Foram utilizadas series climatologicas diarias para as localidades de Piracicaba . SP e Ponta Grossa . PR. Para determinacao dos estimadores dos parametros da distribuicao Gama (ãá e ãâ), foram avaliados os procedimentos baseados no metodo dos momentos, da verossimilhanca e o metodo numerico de Greenwood & Durand. Avaliou-se tres geradores de numeros pseudo-aleatorios congruencias e dois algoritmos computacionais para geracao da variavel aleatorias Gama que foram implementados no simulador Sedac_R. Por meio de procedimentos estatisticos a validacao apontou que a escolha adequada do metodo para estimativa dos parametros da distribuicao Gama e o algoritmo computacional para geracao da variavel aleatoria Gama devem ser levados em consideracao na simulacao de series climaticas de precipitacao. Em relacao ao gerador de numeros pseudo-aleatorios os resultados indicaram... / The increase of people in the planet has required more productivity in the agriculture field in order to supply the food need. One of the most important factors that determine the success or the failures of that productivity are the climatic variables, such as the rain precipitation. This research analyzed the efficiency of the functional factors in the precipitation daily data simulation process, using the Gamma distribution. Daily climatic series related to the Piracicaba - SP and Ponta Grossa - PR cities were used. The procedures based on the Greenwood & Durand numerical, Likelihood and Moment methods were evaluated aiming to determine the approximation of the parameters of the Gamma distribution (á and â). Three congruent pseudorandom generators and two computational algorithms to generate the Gamma random variable implemented in the Sedac_R simulator were evaluated. By way of statistics procedures, the validation indicated that the suitable choose to both the approximation method of the parameters of the Gamma distribution (á and â) and the computational algorithm to generate the Gamma random variable must be taken into consideration in the precipitation climatic series simulation. Related to the numerical pseudo-random generator the results showed that it doesn t interferes in the accuracy of the generated data.

Resumo: O aumento populacional do planeta tem exigido cada vez mais produtividade na agricultura objetivando suprir suas necessidades alimenticias. Um dos mais importantes fatores que determinam o sucesso ou o fracasso desta producao sao as variaveis climaticas, dentre elas, pode-se citar a precipitacao pluviometrica. A presente pesquisa analisou a eficiencia dos fatores funcionais no processo de simulacao de dados diarios de precipitacao utilizando a distribuicao Gama. Foram utilizadas series climatologicas diarias para as localidades de Piracicaba . SP e Ponta Grossa . PR. Para determinacao dos estimadores dos parametros da distribuicao Gama (ãá e ãâ), foram avaliados os procedimentos baseados no metodo dos momentos, da verossimilhanca e o metodo numerico de Greenwood & Durand. Avaliou-se tres geradores de numeros pseudo-aleatorios congruencias e dois algoritmos computacionais para geracao da variavel aleatorias Gama que foram implementados no simulador Sedac_R. Por meio de procedimentos estatisticos a validacao apontou que a escolha adequada do metodo para estimativa dos parametros da distribuicao Gama e o algoritmo computacional para geracao da variavel aleatoria Gama devem ser levados em consideracao na simulacao de series climaticas de precipitacao. Em relacao ao gerador de numeros pseudo-aleatorios os resultados indicaram... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: The increase of people in the planet has required more productivity in the agriculture field in order to supply the food need. One of the most important factors that determine the success or the failures of that productivity are the climatic variables, such as the rain precipitation. This research analyzed the efficiency of the functional factors in the precipitation daily data simulation process, using the Gamma distribution. Daily climatic series related to the Piracicaba - SP and Ponta Grossa - PR cities were used. The procedures based on the Greenwood & Durand numerical, Likelihood and Moment methods were evaluated aiming to determine the approximation of the parameters of the Gamma distribution (á and â). Three congruent pseudorandom generators and two computational algorithms to generate the Gamma random variable implemented in the Sedac_R simulator were evaluated. By way of statistics procedures, the validation indicated that the suitable choose to both the approximation method of the parameters of the Gamma distribution (á and â) and the computational algorithm to generate the Gamma random variable must be taken into consideration in the precipitation climatic series simulation. Related to the numerical pseudo-random generator the results showed that it doesn’t interferes in the accuracy of the generated data. / Orientador: Ângelo Catâneo / Coorientador: Jorim Souza Virgens Filho / Banca: Célia Regina Lopes Zimback / Banca: Manoel Henrique Salgado / Banca: Marcelo Giovaneti Canteri / Banca: José Fernando Mantovani Micali / Doutor

The fresh water resources of the world are stressed due to the increasing population. Theclimate change has also affected the water resource availability due to the occurrence offrequent and uneven extreme events such as drought and flash floods. In the context ofPeloponnese, Greece water resource management is an important issue for tourism developmentas well as the water supply for the people in the peninsula. To assess the potential climatechange and to quantify the water resource availability linear regression trend analysis andhydrological modeling has been done in this study. The hydro-climatic data (Temperature,precipitation, evapotranspiration and precipitation surplus) show a decreasing trend when a longstudy period (1951-2008) is considered; however, all the trends are not statistically significantexcept precipitation, actual evapotranspiration and precipitation surplus. Similarly, the case isquite opposite when IPCC standard period (1961-1990) is considered. In this period,precipitation and precipitation surplus is increasing but not statistically significant, whereastemperature and potential evapotranspiration has decreasing and statistically significant trendand actual evapotranspiration is decreasing but not statistically significant. Hence, it cannot beconcluded that the climate has changed in the peninsula with reference to linear regressionanalysis. On the other hand, it should be noted that the water resource availability will decreasein the peninsula if the current trend in the hydro-climatic data continues. Furthermore, a spatialanalysis shows that water availability is less in the eastern part and the coastal area of thepeninsula due to low precipitation and high evapotranspiration. Hence, these areas need to befocused on for the better water resource management and planning. However, the uncertaintiesrelated to data and model should be accounted for in the water resource management andplanning.

Meteorological drought indices are commonly calculated from climatic stations that have long-term historical data and then converted to a regular grid using spatial interpolation methods. The gridded drought indices are mapped to aid decision making by policy makers and the general public. This study analyzes the spatial performance of interpolation methods for meteorological drought indices in the United States based on data from the Co-operative Observer Network (COOP) and United States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) for different months, climatic regions and years. An error analysis was performed using cross-validation and the results were compared for the 9 climate regions that comprise the United States. Errors are generally higher in regions and months dominated by convective precipitation. Errors are also higher in regions like the western United States that are dominated by mountainous terrain. Higher errors are consistently observed in the southeastern U.S. especially in Florida. Interpolation errors are generally higher in the summer than winter. The accuracy of different drought indices was also compared. The Standardized Precipitation and Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) tends to have lower errors than Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) in seasons with significant convective precipitation. This is likely because SPEI uses both precipitation and temperature data in its calculation, whereas SPI is based solely on precipitation. There are also variations in interpolation accuracy based on the network that is used. In general, COOP is more accurate than USHCN because the COOP network has a higher density of stations. USHCN is a subset of the COOP network that is comprised of high quality stations that have a long and complete record. However the difference in accuracy is not as significant as the difference in spatial density between the two networks. For multiscalar SPI, USHCN performs better than COOP because the stations tend to have a longer record. The ordinary kriging method (with optimal function fitting) performed better than Inverse Distance Weighted (IDW) methods (power parameters 2.0 and 2.5) in all cases and therefore it is recommended for interpolating drought indices. However, ordinary kriging only provided a statistically significant improvement in accuracy for the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) with the COOP network. Therefore it can be concluded that IDW is a reasonable method for interpolating drought indices, but optimal ordinary kriging provides some improvement in accuracy. The most significant factor affecting the spatial accuracy of drought indices is seasonality (precipitation climatology) and this holds true for almost all the regions of U.S. for 1-month SPI and SPEI. The high-quality USHCN network gives better interpolation accuracy with 6-, 9- and 12-month SPI and variation in errors amongst the different SPI time scales is minimal. The difference between networks is also significant for PDSI. Although the absolute magnitude of the differences between interpolation with COOP and USHCN are small, the accuracy of interpolation with COOP is much more spatially variable than with USHCN.

From the Proceedings of the 1975 Meetings of the Arizona Section - American Water Resources Assn. and the Hydrology Section - Arizona Academy of Science - April 11-12, 1975, Tempe, Arizona / The universal soil loss equation (USLE) is widely used for estimating annual and individual storm erosion from field-sized watersheds. Records from a single precipitation gage in climatic areas dominated by thunderstorms can be used to estimate the erosion index (EI) only for the point in question on individual storms or for a specific annual value. Extrapolating the results for more than about a mile leads to serious error in estimating the erosion by the use of the USLE. Short time intervals must be used to obtain an adequate estimate of the EI when using the USLE. The variability of the annual EI can be approximated with a log-normal distribution. All studies indicated that investigations are needed to facilitate estimating the average annual EI from precipitation data as reported by state climatological summaries for states west of the 104th meridian. Additional work is needed to facilitate estimating the EI value from the precipitation data available in most areas of the southwest where thunderstorms dominate the rainfall pattern.

This dissertation thesis primarily focuses on the experimental measurement of energy consumption of a given energy-passive family house as well as theoretical research in the field of energy calculations using computer simulations. The results of quasi-stationary and dynamic simulations, with varying computational and real-time climate data, are compared with experimental measurements. Using the dynamic calculation model, which was validated by actually measured data, the relationship between architectural design and the energy performance of the building was analyzed. The influence of selected different operating modes for heat consumption on heating, cooling, ventilation, and interior overheating is observed. The result of the mutual interaction of several input parameters of variant solutions provides the basis for optimization of the whole design.

From the Proceedings of the 1971 Meetings of the Arizona Section - American Water Resources Assn. and the Hydrology Section - Arizona Academy of Science - April 22-23, 1971, Tempe, Arizona / Statistical analyses of existing hydrologic records suffer from the problem that such records are of relatively short duration, and therefore may not necessarily be random samples of the infinite population of events. On the hypothesis that tree-ring series and runoff series respond to a common climatic signal or signals that permit prediction of annual runoff from annual ring-width index, tree-ring data are used to extend available runoff records backwards in time to permit more accurate estimates of the 3 most common statistics used in hydrology: the mean, the variance and the 1st order correlation. It is assumed that both series are generated by the climatic parameters of precipitation, temperature, evapotranspiration, seasonal regime and spatial distribution. Of major concern in the reconstruction of annual runoff series from tree-ring records was the difference in persistence within each of the 2 series. A matrix of the tree-ring data was constructed, lagged up to 3 times and principal components were extracted. The covariation in this matrix was then decomposed by extracting the Eigen-vectors, and multiple regression was then used to weight the respective series and the differences in persistence were determined. This method was applied to watersheds of diverse characteristics and improved estimates of the mean and variance were obtained.

From the Proceedings of the 1971 Meetings of the Arizona Section - American Water Resources Assn. and the Hydrology Section - Arizona Academy of Science - April 22-23, 1971, Tempe, Arizona / Quantitative descriptions of regional differences of rainfall amounts and intensities in the southwest, such as depth-duration frequencies, generally have ignored differences in the storm system that generated the rainfall and have lumped essentially different storm systems together. Thunderstorm rainfall in southern Arizona and New Mexico were analyzed using data from both recording and standard rain gages. The results were somewhat conflicting. Possibly because of more frontal activity and less distance from the Gulf of Mexico., the thunderstorms in eastern New Mexico can be more intense than those in southeastern Arizona. Recording rain gage records suggest that air-mass thunderstorms produce a larger number of more intense short-duration (about 1 hour or less) rains in southeastern Arizona than in other parts of southern Arizona. However, standard rain gage records from southern Arizona indicate that rainfall from individual air-mass thunderstorms may be greater in south-central Arizona than in se or sw Arizona. But frequency analysis of standard gage data from air-mass storms shows that the 100-year point rainfall is about 3 inches in all 3 regions. With more data becoming available, especially from remote areas, more exact separation of thunderstorm types and a better definition of rainfall will soon be possible.

From the Proceedings of the 1971 Meetings of the Arizona Section - American Water Resources Assn. and the Hydrology Section - Arizona Academy of Science - April 22-23, 1971, Tempe, Arizona / Snowmelt is a major source of runoff in Arizona for both reservoir systems and groundwater recharge. Because much of the Arizona snowmelt runoff occurs in ponderosa pine forests, it follows that appropriate forest management methods may enhance snowmelt water yield by manipulating tree spacing or overstory density. This paper attempts to establish guidelines for evaluating such forest management practices. Physiographic and climatic factors also affect runoff quantity, and it is conceivable that 2 sites of identical vegetation composition, but different in some combination of these factors might yield quite different amounts of runoff in response to some management practice. A pert network is presented illustrating the investigative framework for such a research effort. The major study activities of the framework are the identifying developing preliminary evaluations and preparing a comprehensive report. Three inventory evaluations to attempt identification of pertinent populations are currently being conducted and are described.