No description available.

The primary objective of this creative project is to explore the meaning and complexity of simple forms, also referred to as symbols. The project examines symbols that interest me. These symbols may be found in various cultures and subcultures throughout the world. I also designed symbols to describe weather phenomena.I have provided a thematic interpretation of my work, focusing on the themes of identity and spirituality. When people view my work they may have multiple interpretations, but a thematic explanation of each piece also provides information for the viewer to ponder. The paper also includes a discussion of work by other artists and ideas that have informed and developed my prints. This body of work required traditional printmaking techniques such as: intaglio, deep etching, chine cone, color printing and photomechanical transfer using imagON photopolymer film. / Department of Art

Snow and glaciers are considered the most important sources of the estimated 32-60% of global water resources which are provided by mountains. Consequently, snow and glaciers have regularly been the focus of climate change studies in mountain regions. Rock glaciers are a type of ice-debris landform characterized by creeping ice-rich permafrost. Recognition of the hydrological significance of rock glaciers is increasing and is of particular relevance to the Arid Andes, where rock glaciers cover greater area than glaciers by an order of magnitude. Little research exists on the hydrological significance of rock glaciers beyond potential water storage capacities and their runoff pathways. Additional knowledge and research approaches pertaining to the seasonal hydrological contributions and climatic sensitivities of rock glaciers are necessary for improved water resource planning in many regions around the world. This work explored the feasibility of utilizing the energy and water balance model GEOtop to quantify the thermal and hydrological dynamics of rock glaciers under several climate scenarios. Weather data was generated with the intermediate-stochastic weather generator AWE-GEN for a site in the Southeast Swiss Alps, which marked a novel approach in studies of rock glaciers. Weather data for a reference (REF) scenario was generated which approximates conditions during the observation period (1985 to 2012). AWE-GEN produced time series of weather data for the REF scenario with statistical properties of precipitation in close agreement with observations. Air temperature had substantial inaccuracies with mean annual air temperature (MAAT) cooler by 1.82 C due to negative temperature biases in summer months which are attributed to difficulties in estimating parameters of the weather generator model caused by local climatic factors. The influence of climate change was also examined. Data for 8 climate change scenarios were generated by specifying change factors for mean monthly air temperature. MAAT in the climate change scenarios was within +/-0.12 C of the speci ed change factor from MAAT in the REF scenario. The thermal and hydrological evolution of rock glacier soils were simulated for 50 years under the climatic forcing of the REF scenario followed by 50 years under each climate change scenario. Mean annual ground surface temperature (MAGST), active layer depth (Dal), permafrost total ice content (IWEtot), and the potential summer runoff contribution (MELTsum) were quanti ed and compared before and after the onset of the climate change conditions. Air temperature increases in the climate change scenarios were amplified in MAGST. Stable rock glacier points were resistant to changes in Dal and IWEtot under any annual, summer, and winter mean air temperature increase of 1 C, and summer and winter mean air temperature increases of 3 C despite notable changes in MAGST and MELTsum. Under warming scenarios, the greatest increase in MELTsum occurred for high elevation rock glacier points with the mean possible runoff contribution increasing 88% under 3 C of warming, which corroborates with increased runoff from high elevation permafrost in the Colorado Rockies in recent decades.

Weather and climate serve as an important travel motivator, influencing destination choice, the timing of travel, travel expenditures and overall trip satisfaction. Climatic resources are a defining factor in destination attractiveness and are a key element of the natural resource base of a destination that can be classified along a spectrum from ideal to unacceptable. A growing literature has sought to measure, evaluate and assess climate resources for tourism, both generally and for specific tourism market segments. A direct impact of climate change on tourism will be the global redistribution of climatic resources. This would change the length and quality of climate-sensitive tourism seasons, affecting both the temporal and spatial distribution of domestic and international tourism flows and spending. Studies have revealed a generally consistent temporal and geographical pattern of climate change impacts on global tourism. As the 21st century progresses, there is anticipated to be a pronounced shift in thermal comfort (and thereby tourism demand) towards higher latitudes and away from sub-tropical and tropical destinations. This would have a substantial impact on the tourism-intensive economy of the Caribbean, as the vast majority of the region’s attractions are based on weather- and climate-dependent 3S (sun, sea, sand) tourism. However, the assertion that major coastal tourism destinations, such as the Caribbean, will become seasonally ‘too hot’ for tourism has been questioned because the literature has not established what tourists to these regions perceive to be thermally unacceptable for coastal tourism activities. In addition, existing climate and tourism assessments do not account for the microclimatic conditions where tourism activities take place. With the inextricable dependency between 3S tourism and favourable weather conditions in the coastal zone, it is important to understand both how tourists perceive and evaluate climatic resources, particularly those conditions that are most preferred or avoided (i.e., trigger behavioural responses), as well as examine the adaptive climatic range tourists’ can experience within a coastal setting. Such information is a prerequisite if accurate projections are to be made about changes in tourism demand as a result of climate variability or future climate change. This dissertation proposes a conceptual framework that integrates the multiple facets known to influence tourists’ evaluation of climatic resources, as well as tourists’ responses to holiday weather conditions. The research advances weather and climate resource assessments for tourism by improving our understanding of the complex relationship between personal and meteorological parameters that influence tourists’ climatic preferences and thresholds for coastal tourism. This was achieved through concurrent meteorological measurements and in situ surveys with 472 beach tourists in the Caribbean islands of Barbados, Saint Lucia and Tobago. The results from this study reveal that tourists’ optimal and unacceptable climatic conditions are dependent on several interpersonal factors, with statistically significant differences (p < 0.05) found based on gender, age, and climatic region of origin. Thermal comfort expectations and perceived thermal control were also found to be key contextual considerations that enable beach tourists’ to not only be exposed to, but to prefer, thermal conditions that elicit strong to very strong heat stress. This indicates that conventional evaluation systems of thermal comfort (e.g., PET, UTCI) cannot be applied to 3S tourists without modification. This research also highlights the importance of microclimatic conditions when evaluating weather and climate for tourism, with thermo-physiological comfort varying up to 4°C within a coastal resort setting. The results from this research can be incorporated into existing climate indices and climate change assessments to allow for more robust projections of tourism demand, as well as used in various decision-making contexts by both tourists (e.g., plan best time/place to travel, plan appropriate accommodation, attire, transportation and activity schedule) and the tourism industry (e.g., marketing strategies, risk assessment, operational decision making, infrastructure planning and development).

No description available.

Numerous authors note failure of private insurance markets to provide affordable and comprehensive crop insurance. Economic logic suggests that index contracts potentially may have some advantages when compared with traditional (farm based) crop insurance. It is also a matter of common knowledge that weather is an important production factor and at the same time one of the greatest sources of risk in agriculture. Hence introduction of crop insurance contracts, based on weather indexes, might be a reasonable approach to mitigate problems, associated with traditional crop insurance products, and possibly lower the cost of insurance for end users. In spite of the fact that before the financial crisis of 2008-09 market for weather derivatives was the fastest growing derivatives market in the USA, agricultural producers didn’t express much interest in application of weather derivatives to management of their systematic risk. There are several reasons for that, but the most important one is the presence of high basis risk, which is represented by its two major components: technological (i.e. goodness of fit between yield and weather index) and geographical basis. Majority of the researchers is focusing either on pricing of weather derivatives or on mitigation of geographical basis risk. At the same time the number of papers researching possible ways to decrease technological basis is quite limited, and always assumes linear dependency between yields and weather variables, while estimating the risk reducing efficiency of weather contracts, which is obviously large deviation from reality. The objective of this study is to estimate the risk reducing efficiency of crop insurance contracts, based on weather derivatives (indexes) in the state of Texas. The distributions of representative farmer’s profits with the proposed contracts are compared to the distributions of profits without a contract. This is done to demonstrate the risk mitigating effect of the proposed contracts. Moreover the study will try to account for a more complex dependency structures between yields and weather variables through usage of copulas, while constructing joint distribution of yields and weather data. Selection of the optimal copula will be implemented in the out-of-sample efficient framework. An effort will be done to identify the most relevant periods of year, when weather has the most significant influence on crop yields, which should be included in the model, and to discover the most effective copula to model joint weather/yield risk. Results suggest that effective insurance of crop yields in the state of Texas by the means of proposed weather derivatives is possible. Besides, usage of data-mining techniques allows for more accurate selection of the time periods to be included in the model than ad hoc procedure previously used in the literature. Finally selection of optimal copula for modeling of joint weather/yield distribution should be crop and county specific, while in general Clayton and Frank copula of Archimedean copula family provide the best out-of-sample metric results.

The purpose of this research was to create the longest possible, homogeneous, historical daily temperature dataset for Southern New Zealand, analyse the changes in extreme temperatures and investigate atmospheric circulation patterns that contributed to these changes. Daily minimum and maximum temperature data for Southern New Zealand were captured from paper records and extended to include all available archival data from the region. This dataset was digitised and contains temperatures from 26 stations that began operation sometime in the period between 1852 and 1953. Stations include the Chatham and Campbell islands. Adjustments for inhomogeneities in the dataset were made using a frequency distribution matching method. Dunedin has a record dating from 1852, the longest in the Southern Hemisphere south of 40�S latitude. Reconstruction of a homogeneous record for Dunedin was made by taking into account site changes from contemporaneous modem data logger measurements and from an analysis of overlapping period data. Temperatures showed no clear pattern of change in Southern New Zealand from the mid 1800s through to the early 1900s with the exception of a brief cold period that occurred around 1900. However, from the 1940s through to the 1970s both minimum and maximum extreme temperatures showed strong warming. These trends were duplicated over the shorter length period of record for other regions, especially in Eastern Canterbury. The warming trend was maintained over the period 1979 - 2003, but only in the colder ends of minimum and maximum distributions. Temperatures have become less cold due to the recent compression of the temperature distribution. There was a marked decrease in cold days at stations in the south and offshore islands. Atmospheric circulation pattems, and in particular ENSO, were shown to affect extreme temperatures recorded in Southern New Zealand. Anomalous southwesterlies associated with El Nino events produce cooler temperatures and increase the numbers of cold extreme temperatures, while anomalous northeasterlies typical of La Nina increase the numbers of warm extreme temperatures. Monthly frequencies of extreme temperatures were primarily affected by anomalous south/north meridional airflows to increase cold/warm extreme temperature frequencies. Zonal airflows have a lesser, but topographically influenced effect. Record hot and cold temperatures in Southern New Zealand were a product of the interaction between advective northerly and southerly airflows respectively, and local climatic effects caused by topography.

Risk management is a key component of aeronautical decision-making and one of the possible causes of pilot error (e.g., Jensen, Guilke, & Hunter, 1997). Risk management encompasses risk perception and risk tolerance. Risk perception involves the detection of risks associated with a situation, whereas risk tolerance is the willingness to accept a given degree of risk (Hunter, 2002). Previous studies using flight simulators have found that risk perception and risk tolerance differs between pilots who fly into adverse weather and those who do not (e.g., O�Hare, Owen, Jorgensen, Wiegmann, Hunter, & Mullen, 2007). The aim of this research was to assess risk perception and risk tolerance using scenario-based measures. The measure of risk perception was developed over three studies. Since risk perception is a skill which expert pilots exercise (Jensen et al., 1997), I used the Cochran-Weiss-Shanteau (CWS, Weiss & Shanteau, 2003) index to measure how good pilots were at perceiving aeronautical risks. Weiss and Shanteau assumed that an expert should be able to discriminate between two relevant stimuli, and do so consistently. Participants were presented with flight scenarios and rated the risk involved in each scenario from 0 (low risk) to 100 (high risk). If a valid measure of expertise in risk perception, those with experience in aeronautical decision-making should have been better at this task. In study one the qualified pilots had higher and more variable CWS scores than the non-pilots, suggesting that some pilots were expert at this task, whereas most non-pilots were poor at this task. The focus of study two was shifted to weather-related decision-making (WRDM). Geography students, student pilots, and qualified pilots did not differ in their mean CWS scores, although the qualified pilots were most discriminating, and the geography students were most consistent. To decrease the reliance of the task on memory, study three included a blocking task in between each scenario. While only a small scale study, the results suggested that the blocking task improved the qualified pilots� performance while the geography students� performance deteriorated. In study four, I used Lopes�s (1987) theory to measure risk tolerance in pilots. According to Lopes (1987), risk tolerant individuals are motivated by opportunity, or what they can gain from taking risks, whereas risk averse individuals are motivated by threat, or what they can lose from taking risks. Qualified pilots were presented with 36 flight scenarios, varying in the level of threat and opportunity. The pilots rated the likelihood of going on the flights. Multiple regression equations were calculated, measuring the influence of threat and opportunity on each pilot�s ratings. Pilots were largely risk averse, as their ratings were influenced by threat. The two pilots whose ratings were influenced by opportunity had experienced more aviation incidents compared to the pilots who were not influenced by opportunity. The aim of study five was to assess the relationship between risk management and in-flight WRDM. Qualified pilots completed a simulated flight into adverse weather, and four-computer based measures: the expertise in risk perception measure developed in study three, the risk tolerance measure developed in study four, and two implicit association tests assessing implicit risk perception and anxiousness towards adverse weather. Twelve pilots continued beyond the critical decision point, 18 pilots diverted, and 2 pilots crashed. There was no relationship between in-flight WRDM and expertise in weather-related risk perception. However, the pilots who diverted gave higher ratings of risk during the CWS task compared to the pilots who crashed. The pilots who diverted also tended to be more risk averse and implicitly perceived more risk in adverse weather, compared to the pilots who continued, suggesting a relationship between risk management and decision-making in a simulated flight into adverse weather. These five studies further highlight the role of risk management in pilot decision-making. The tools developed in these studies have potential for measuring risk management in pilots.

The global climate has experienced four glacial cycles in the last 420,000 years, with each cycle characterised by a prolonged period of cooling culminating in maximal glaciation followed by a brief warm period. The most recent period of maximal glaciation is termed the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) and occurred about 21,000 years ago. We currently live in one of the warm periods. The global climate is changing, and it is becoming more important to understand the extremes of the climate system and how well our modelling capability can capture those extremes. / There has been a modelling intercomparison project established to examine how global general circulation models compare in simulating past climates, including the LGM. Analysis and comparison of these model results has been presented for many parts of the globe, but there has not been a comparison of the different model results over the Australian region. This thesis aims to fill that gap and explore the simulated LGM weather and climate of Australia and its drivers in more detail. Comparison with proxy evidence is also undertaken, and inconsistencies seen in the literature addressed. / The Australian climate at the LGM was believed to be generally cooler, drier and possibly windier from proxy evidence in the literature. In the comparison done here the mean temperature and precipitation fields from most models show cooler and drier conditions, with some seasonal variability, but there are some strong outliers. It was found that the differences were not dependent on model resolution, but that the surface parameterisations were highly important for these fields. / The shifts in the circulation were examined both in the model results and with a study of the non-linear link between the wind, surface moisture and dunes, which are a proxy for past winds. All the models simulate a southward shift in the westerlies in the Australian region. This is strongly driven byte prescribed sea-surface temperatures. Australia's current wind regime is conducive to dune building. However, the binding effect of soil moisture (or vegetation) is strong enough to limit present day movement, whereas in the drier climate at the LGM there was a capacity for sand movement. The analysis of dune orientations did not produce conclusive evidence for how the westerlies might have shifted at the LGM. / An apparent enigma in the proxy evidence at the LGM is the high lake levels in Australia’s south east, while most inland lakes were dry. Previous authors believed that the precipitation was still low, but the high lake levels were driven by lowered potential evaporation. The hydrological cycle was generally depressed in the LGM simulations, but the potential for evaporation remained high. Thus an alternative hypothesis is posed based on increased run off due to a known shift in the vegetation types and a lag in the timing of the run off due to snowmelt. / The analysis here shows that our capacity to simulate climates quite different from the present is still developing, but that model results can help explain apparent inconsistencies in the reconstruction of past climates from proxies.

Thesis (M.Sc. Earth Sciences)--University of Waikato, 2008. / Title from PDF cover (viewed February 23, 2009) Includes bibliographical references (p. 72-75)