bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Why Do Good People Do Bad Things in Business?
Authors: James Jr. Harvey S.
Published: February 2015

Promoting ethical behavior in business requires an understanding of why and when seemingly good people do unethical things. Research on this issue consists of theoretical models of moral decision-making and empirical studies of ethical sensitivity, attitudes, and behaviors of people in various contexts. These studies reveal that explanations of unethical conduct include considerations of a person's psychological disposition as well as the circumstances in which they live. They also identify general principles that explain why individuals might engage in unethical conduct. This chapter reviews studies conducted over the past 50 years and articulates lessons that can help business managers improve the ethical climate of business and ethical behavior of employees. While it does not break new ground, this discussion is important because it synthesizes scholarship in simple language accessible to both scholars and business professionals. This chapter also identifies directions for future research that can enhance and supplement these lessons.
A Matter of Justice
Authors: Dörries Andrea
Published: February 2015

A crucial aspect of a fair allocation of scarce resources in hospital is the close cooperation of hospital executives and physicians. This chapter has three aims. Firstly, it provides an analysis of basic elements of medical and hospital executives' ethics. Secondly, it discusses the role of concepts of justice in hospital decision-making. Thirdly, it reflects on process criteria and structures that might support coping with allocation conflicts in hospitals. While hospital executives mainly act according to economic, legal, and strategic considerations, physicians are traditionally obliged to professional ethics codes. These include patient welfare as the primary concern with economic aspects a secondary priority. Therefore, implementing and applying ethical principles for the allocation of scarce resources requires an ongoing constructive discourse between hospital managers and physicians. Furthermore, in order to build trust between the two stakeholders, an effective structure for solving ethical conflicts and a fair decision-making process is paramount.
Self-Awareness
Authors: Wolf Ruth
Published: February 2015

The purpose of this chapter is to provide managers and employees with ways to internalize ethical behavior in a company. One of the ways to strengthen the effectiveness of management is to give managers the necessary tools that will enable employees of the post-modern age to internalize moral principles and ideas and to understand what is acceptable and what is prohibited. This theory relies on Wolf's (2008, 2013a) claim that man can be trained to be self-aware as the first step toward actual ethical conduct. Her approach is based on the principles of the humanist approach, which maintains that people are endowed with an “ethical sense” and wisdom as well as with the ability to correct their behavior and to choose their own course of action. This chapter utilizes the foundations and principles of this approach to explain what motivates a person to behave morally.
Sowing the Seeds for Ethical Business Leadership through Business Education
Authors: de Burgh-Woodman Hélène , Saha Amitav , Somasundram Kimera , Torrisi Angela
Published: February 2015

In an era that has seen events involving ethical misconduct by prominent business leaders, there is renewed attention around the issue of how and where business leaders acquire their ethical orientation. In this chapter, the authors argue that business education is an influential foundation upon which an ethical orientation is developed and offers an opportunity to be a primary focus for responding to the pressing need for strong ethical leadership in business. The chapter extends existing research in business ethics to present the novel possibility of situating ethics alongside technical competencies since this will assist in the training of business leaders who are needed equipped or armed with their skills, including those soft skills, to meet contemporary business challenges.
Business Ethics is Socio-Political, or Not at All
Authors: Pascal Ana-Maria
Published: February 2015

This chapter explores the moral aspects of commercial deals that allegedly democratic governments enter into with foreign investors. These are discussed against a twofold theoretical background – where the philosophical ideal of public ethics based on truth and transparency meets business ethics theories. The Kantian ethics of duty proves to be the key link between these, as particularly relevant for cases where the impact on a wide range of stakeholders is considerable. The main case under consideration is the controversial USD $2 billion Romanian mining project at Rosia Montana, which highlights the need for accountability mentioned above and lends itself well to a multi-fold business ethics analysis. The role of the civil society in effectively stopping the project is a good illustration of the stakeholder theory. The chapter concludes with the thesis that a high degree of socio-political responsibility may be best achieved when trying to combine principle-based and utilitarian thinking.
The Impact of Corruption on Entrepreneurship
Authors: Avnimelech Gil , Zelekha Yaron
Published: February 2015

There is a consensus that corruption may result in high societal costs. A growing body of research reveals the negative effects of corruption on a variety of economic indicators. This chapter presents a literature review on the impact of corruption on entrepreneurship. It allows us to suggest that one of the transition channels through which corruption has impacted growth is entrepreneurship. The main channels in which corruption impacts entrepreneurship is through reduced incentives for entrepreneurial activity and reduced trust within the system. The authors present evidence that the negative impact of an incremental increase in the level of corruption on entrepreneurship is more harmful in developed countries than in developing countries. Thus, they stress the need for more research in this area with the aim of establishing appropriate frameworks for the fight of corruption in both developing and developed countries and suggest significant gains from anti-corruption efforts, especially in developed countries.
Optimal sleep-state control of energy-aware M/G/1 queues
Authors: Eyob Gebrehiwot Misikir , Aalto Samuli , Lassila Pasi
Published: February 2015

We study the problem of optimally controlling the use of sleep states in an energy-aware M/G/1 queue. In our model, we consider a family of policies where the server upon becoming idle can wait for a random period before entering, potentially randomly, any of a finite number of possible sleep states to save energy. The server becomes busy again after a possibly random number of jobs have arrived. However, jobs are served only after a random setup time. This kind of an energy-aware queuing system has been analyzed in recent papers under specific assumptions regarding the cost metrics and the distributions of the random variables. In this paper, we consider an essentially more general model. Notably we show that the optimal control of the idle time and sleep states is deterministic and does not benefit from randomization: either the system only uses the idle state and no sleep states, or the idle state is not used at all and the server immediately goes to some fixed sleep state and waits until a fixed number of jobs have arrived before starting the setup. We prove this result for two popular cost metrics, namely weighted sum of energy and response time (ERWS) and their product ERP.
A Tracing Toolset for Embedded Linux Flash File Systems
Authors: Olivier Pierre , Boukhobza Jalil , Senn Eric , Soula Mathieu , Le Grand Michelle , Chaib Draa Ismat
Published: February 2015

NAND flash memory integration in the traditional I/O software stack of Unix-like operating systems (OS) was achieved without modifying most of the OS layers. In fact, one can dissociate two categories of flash memory devices: (1) those which intricacies are abstracted to the OS (e.g. SSDs, USB sticks), and (2) raw flash memory chips driven by a specific Flash File System (FFS) such as JFFS2 and UBIFS. In the latter case, the operating system I/O software stack low level layers (i.e. file system and driver) were upgraded while the higher levels (virtual file system and related buffers) were not. In order to optimize the system behavior in such a case, one must understand the interactions between the different I/O software management layers, and the performance impact of each layer for a given I/O workload. For this sake, we developed a tracing toolset allowing to understand the impact of each layer on the I/O request flow, for instance: caching, overheads, and fragmentation. The developed framework proved to be precious to apprehend the interactions between OS flash specific layers and traditional layers for a better system performance understanding.
Approximate Transient Analysis of Queuing Networks by Decomposition based on Time-Inhomogeneous Markov Arrival Processes
Authors: Horvath Andras , Angius Alessio
Published: February 2015

We address the transient analysis of networks of queues with exponential service times. Such networks can easily have such a huge state space that their exact transient analysis is unfeasible. In this paper we propose an approximate transient analysis technique based on decomposing the queues of the network using a compact and approximate representation of the departure process of each queue. Namely, we apply time-inhomogeneous Markov arrival processes (IMAP) to describe the stream of clients leaving the queues. By doing so, the overall approximate model of the network is a time-inhomogeneous continuous time Markov chain (ICTMC) with significantly less number of states than there are in the original Markov chain. The proposed construction of the output IMAP of a queue is based on its transient state probabilities. We illustrate the approach first on a single M/M/1 queue and analyze the goodness of fitting of the departure process by numerical examples. Then we extend the approach to networks of queues and evaluate the precision of the resulting technique on several simple numerical examples by comparing the exact and the approximate transient probabilities of the queues.
On mean waiting time completeness and equivalence of EDD and HOL-PJ dynamic priority in 2-class M/G/1 queue
Authors: Gupta Manu , Hemachandra Nandyala , Venkateswaran Jayendran
Published: February 2015

This paper identifies two different parametrized dynamic priority queue disciplines, earliest due date (EDD) based and head of line priority jump (HOL-PJ), which are found to be mean waiting time complete in two class M/G/1 queue. An explicit one-to-one non linear transformation is obtained between earliest due date and delay dependent priority policy. Mean waiting time equivalence between these queue disciplines is established. Motivation behind the mean completeness and equivalence results is discussed from optimal control perspective. Notion of minmax fairness is introduced and it is argued that a simple global FCFS policy is the only solution for minmax fairness problem in two class by exploiting completeness in the structure of EDD based dynamic priority. Further, these completeness results are used to propose a simpler way for developing optimal control policy in celebrated c/ρ rule for two class M/G/1 queues.
The M/G/1 queueing model with preemptive random priorities
Authors: Haviv Moshe
Published: February 2015

For the M/G/1 model, we look into a preemptive priority scheme in which the priority level is decided by a lottery. Such a scheme has no effect on the mean waiting time in the non-preemptive case (in comparison with the First Come First Served (FCFS) regime, for example). This is not the case when priority comes with preemption. We derived the resulting mean waiting time (which is invariant with respect to the lottery performed) and show that it lies between the corresponding means under the FCFS and the Last Come First Served with Preemption Resume (LCFS-PR) (or equivalently, the Egalitarian Processor Sharing (EPS)) schemes. We also derive an expression for the Laplace-Stieltjes transform for the time in the system in this model. Finally, we show how this priority scheme may lead to an improvement in the utilization of the server when customer decide whether or not to join.
Network Analysis of Circular Permutations in Multidomain Proteins Reveals Functional Linkages for Uncharacterized Proteins
Authors: Adjeroh Donald , Jiang Yue , Jiang Bing-Hua , Lin Jie
Published: February 2015

Various studies have implicated different multidomain proteins in cancer. However, there has been little or no detailed study on the role of circular multidomain proteins in the general problem of cancer or on specific cancer types. This work represents an initial attempt at investigating the potential for predicting linkages between known cancer-associated proteins with uncharacterized or hypothetical multidomain proteins, based primarily on circular permutation (CP) relationships. First, we propose an efficient algorithm for rapid identification of both exact and approximate CPs in multidomain proteins. Using the circular relations identified, we construct networks between multidomain proteins, based on which we perform functional annotation of multidomain proteins. We then extend the method to construct subnetworks for selected cancer subtypes, and performed prediction of potential linkages between uncharacterized multidomain proteins and the selected cancer types. We include practical results showing the performance of the proposed methods.
Korean and Japanese as Chinese-Characters Cultural Spheres
Authors: OKIMORI Takuya
Published: February 2015

Korea and Japan belong to Chinese-characters cultural spheres. In the time of Han Dynasty and thereafter, tributary states connected with the monarchy of Chinese Kingdom and its surrounding countries. They imported Chinese state regulations, accepted and developed many thoughts and cultures by bringing in Chinese characters of Chinese classics. However, there have been some different points in the treatment of Chinese characters in each nation. The Korean modern writing system does not use Chinese characters in general, while on the contrary in Japanese, there is a tendency to increase the number of regularly-used Chinese characters, for example in the official list of jōyō kanji 常用漢字 announced by the Ministry of Education, with the latest increase in 2010. Therefore, it is necessary to observe more about some aspects of the languages to know why this different treatment occurred. The oldest Korean document is the History of the Three Kingdoms, Samguk Sagi 『三国史記』 that contains geographical proper names. The Buyeo-Kingdom languages were recorded there, including place names. It is no doubt that the use of Chinese characters of Silla have significantly affected Goguryeo and Paekche. The Silla and Buyeo-Kingdom languages have closed syllables with a consonant at the end of each syllable, while in Japanese, the syllables end with vowels as open syllables. There are further phonological characteristics as well. This article discusses how each language encountered Chinese characters, and how they related to their specific languages, and also how Chinese characters particularly reflected syllable structures of different languages. It can be said that the use of Chinese characters in proper names estranged the futures of Korean and Japanese in history. Focus is laid on the history of Korean and Japanese through Chinese characters, with their falsely similar language dispositions.
A Phonemic and Acoustic Analysis of Hindko Fricatives
Authors: RASHID Haroon Ur , KHAN Abdul Qadir
Published: February 2015

The Hindko language is mainly spoken in the province of Khyber Pukhtunkhaw, Pakistan. It relates to the Indo-Aryan family of languages. This paper focusses on the phonemic and acoustic analysis of Hindko fricatives. The phonemic analysis identifies that Hindko has eight fricatives. The acoustic analysis aims to explore temporal and spectral characteristics of these fricatives. The acoustic analysis discloses that Hindko fricatives are distinguishable on the basis of the temporal properties such as friction duration and spectral cues like turbulence noise.
Deriving and Interpreting Ka(karimusubi) in Premodern Japanese
Authors: MITROVIĆ Moreno
Published: February 2015

This paper provides a new syntax and semantics for kakarimusubi (KM), a focus construction prominent in the grammar of Old Japanese (OJ) and Early Middle (Classical) Japanese (CJ), which diachronically developed into the interrogative construction in Modern Japanese (MdJ) headed by the ka particle. Adopting Chierchia & Caponigro’s (2013) novel analysis of Free Relatives (FRs) as embedded interrogatives, an FR-based analysis of KM is proposed so as to obtain a compositional semantic analysis of this focus construction as well as an account of the adnominal marking of the presuppositional musubi component of this grammatical construction.
Dimethylsulfide gas transfer coefficients from algal blooms in the Southern Ocean
Authors: Bell T. G. , De Bruyn W. , Marandino C. A. , Miller S. D. , Law C. S. , Smith M. J. , Saltzman E. S.
Published: February 2015

Abstract. Air–sea dimethylsulfide (DMS) fluxes and bulk air–sea gradients were measured over the Southern Ocean in February–March 2012 during the Surface Ocean Aerosol Production (SOAP) study. The cruise encountered three distinct phytoplankton bloom regions, consisting of two blooms with moderate DMS levels, and a high biomass, dinoflagellate-dominated bloom with high seawater DMS levels (> 15 nM). Gas transfer coefficients were considerably scattered at wind speeds above 5 m s−1. Bin averaging the data resulted in a linear relationship between wind speed and mean gas transfer velocity consistent with that previously observed. However, the wind-speed-binned gas transfer data distribution at all wind speeds is positively skewed. The flux and seawater DMS distributions were also positively skewed, which suggests that eddy covariance-derived gas transfer velocities are consistently influenced by additional, log-normal noise. A flux footprint analysis was conducted during a transect into the prevailing wind and through elevated DMS levels in the dinoflagellate bloom. Accounting for the temporal/spatial separation between flux and seawater concentration significantly reduces the scatter in computed transfer velocity. The SOAP gas transfer velocity data show no obvious modification of the gas transfer–wind speed relationship by biological activity or waves. This study highlights the challenges associated with eddy covariance gas transfer measurements in biologically active and heterogeneous bloom environments.
Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, polychlorinated biphenyls, and chlorinated pesticides in background air in central Europe – investigating parameters affecting wet scavenging of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons
Authors: Shahpoury P. , Lammel G. , Holubová Šmejkalová A. , Klánová J. , Přibylová P. , Váňa M.
Published: February 2015

Abstract. Concentrations of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and chlorinated pesticides (CPs) were measured in air and precipitation at a background site in central Europe. ∑ PAH concentrations in air and rainwater ranged from 0.7 to 327.9 ng m−3 and below limit of quantification (< LOQ) to 2.1 × 103 ng L−1. The concentrations of PCBs and CPs in rainwater were < LOQ. ∑ PCB and ∑ CP concentrations in air ranged from < LOQ to 44.6 and < LOQ to 351.7 pg m−3, respectively. The potential relationships between PAH wet scavenging and particulate matter and rainwater properties were investigated. The concentrations of ionic species in particulate matter and rainwater were significantly correlated, highlighting the importance of particle scavenging process. Overall, higher scavenging efficiencies were found for relatively less volatile PAHs, underlining the effect of analyte gas-particle partitioning on scavenging process. The particulate matter removal by rain, and consequently PAH wet scavenging, was more effective when the concentrations of ionic species were high. In addition, the elemental and organic carbon contents of the particulate matter were found to influence the PAH scavenging.
The Passive microwave Neural network Precipitation Retrieval (PNPR) algorithm for AMSU/MHS observations: description and application to European case studies
Authors: Sanò P. , Panegrossi G. , Casella D. , Di Paola F. , Milani L. , Mugnai A. , Petracca M. , Dietrich S.
Published: February 2015

Abstract. The purpose of this study is to describe a new algorithm based on a neural network approach (Passive microwave Neural network Precipitation Retrieval – PNPR) for precipitation rate estimation from AMSU/MHS observations, and to provide examples of its performance for specific case studies over the European/Mediterranean area. The algorithm optimally exploits the different characteristics of Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit-A (AMSU-A) and the Microwave Humidity Sounder (MHS) channels, and their combinations, including the brightness temperature (TB) differences of the 183.31 channels, with the goal of having a single neural network for different types of background surfaces (vegetated land, snow-covered surface, coast and ocean). The training of the neural network is based on the use of a cloud-radiation database, built from cloud-resolving model simulations coupled to a radiative transfer model, representative of the European and Mediterranean Basin precipitation climatology. The algorithm provides also the phase of the precipitation and a pixel-based confidence index for the evaluation of the reliability of the retrieval. Applied to different weather conditions in Europe, the algorithm shows good performance both in the identification of precipitation areas and in the retrieval of precipitation, which is particularly valuable over the extremely variable environmental and meteorological conditions of the region. The PNPR is particularly efficient in (1) screening and retrieval of precipitation over different background surfaces; (2) identification and retrieval of heavy rain for convective events; and (3) identification of precipitation over a cold/iced background, with increased uncertainties affecting light precipitation. In this paper, examples of good agreement of precipitation pattern and intensity with ground-based data (radar and rain gauges) are provided for four different case studies. The algorithm has been developed in order to be easily tailored to new radiometers as they become available (such as the cross-track scanning Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS)), and it is suitable for operational use as it is computationally very efficient. PNPR has been recently extended for applications to the regions of Africa and the South Atlantic, and an extended validation over these regions (using 2 yr of data acquired by the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission precipitation radar for comparison) is the subject of a paper in preparation. The PNPR is currently used operationally within the EUMETSAT Hydrology Satellite Application Facility (H-SAF) to provide instantaneous precipitation from passive microwave cross-track scanning radiometers. It undergoes routinely thorough extensive validation over Europe carried out by the H-SAF Precipitation Products Validation Team.
Synchronous starphotometry and lidar measurements at Eureka in High Canadian Arctic
Authors: Baibakov K. , O'Neill N. T. , Ivanescu L. , Duck T. J. , Perro C. , Herber A. , Schulz K.-H. , Schrems O.
Published: February 2015

Abstract. We present recent progress related to the night-time retrievals of aerosol and cloud optical depth using starphotometry over the PEARL (Polar Environmental Atmospheric Research Laboratory) station at Eureka (Nunavut, Canada) in the High Arctic (80° N, 86° W). In the spring of 2011 and 2012, the SPSTAR starphotometer was employed to acquire aerosol optical depth (AOD) measurements while vertical aerosol and cloud backscatter coefficient profiles were acquired using the CANDAC Raman Lidar (CRL). Several events were detected and characterized using starphotometry-lidar synergy: aerosols (short term aerosol events on 9 and 10 March 2011); a potential multi-night aerosol event across three polar nights (13–15 March 2012), a thin cloud event (21 February 2011) and a very low altitude ice crystals (10 March 2011). Using a simple backscatter coefficient threshold criterion we calculated fine and coarse (sub and super-micron) mode AODs from the vertically integrated CRL profiles. These were compared with their starphotometry analogues produced from a spectral deconvolution algorithm. The process-level analysis showed, in general, good agreement in terms of the physical coherence between high frequency starphotometry and lidar data. We argue that R2 (coefficient of determination) is the most robust means of comparing lidar and starphotometer data since it is sensitive to significant optico-physical variations associated with these two independent data sources while being minimally dependent on retrieval and calibration artifacts. Differences between the fine and course mode components of the starphotometry and lidar data is clearly also useful but is more dependent on such artifacts. Studying climatological seasonal aerosol trends necessitates effective cloud-screening procedures: temporal and spectral cloud screening of starphotometry data was found to agree moderately well with temporal cloud screening results except in the presence of thin homogeneous cloud. We conclude that better screening conditions can be implemented to arrive at a robust method for combined temporal/spectral cloud-screening of starphotometer (and possibly sunphotometer) data. In general, as our understanding of process-level details increases with growing datasets, we will inevitably have more confidence in bulk climatological analyses of ground-based and satellite retrievals of aerosol parameters where conditions are less than ideal because of the weakness of the polar winter aerosol signal.
Ice nucleation activity in the widespread soil fungus Mortierella alpina
Authors: Fröhlich-Nowoisky J. , Hill T. C. J. , Pummer B. G. , Yordanova P. , Franc G. D. , Pöschl U.
Published: February 2015

Abstract. Biological residues in soil dust are a potentially strong source of atmospheric ice nuclei (IN). So far, however, the abundance, diversity, sources, seasonality, and role of biological – in particular, fungal – IN in soil dust have not been characterized. By analysis of the culturable fungi in topsoils, from a range of different land use and ecosystem types in southeast Wyoming, we found ice-nucleation-active (INA) fungi to be both widespread and abundant, particularly in soils with recent inputs of decomposable organic matter. Across all investigated soils, 8% of fungal isolates were INA. All INA isolates initiated freezing at −5 to −6 °C, and belonged to a single zygomycotic species, Mortierella alpina (Mortierellales, Mortierellomycotina). To our knowledge this is the first report of ice nucleation activity in a zygomycotic fungi because the few known INA fungi all belong to the phyla Ascomycota and Basidiomycota. M. alpina is known to be saprobic and widespread in soil, and Mortierella spores are present in air and rain. Sequencing of the ITS region and the gene for γ-linolenic elongase revealed four distinct clades, affiliated to different soil types. The IN produced by M. alpina seem to be proteinaceous, < 300 kDa in size, and can be easily washed off the mycelium. Ice nucleating fungal mycelium will ramify topsoils and probably also release cell-free IN into it. If these IN survive decomposition or are adsorbed onto mineral surfaces, their contribution might accumulate over time, perhaps to be transported with soil dust and influencing its ice nucleating properties.
Two distinct decadal and centennial cyclicities forced marine upwelling intensity and precipitation during the late Early Miocene in central Europe
Authors: Auer G. , Piller W. E. , Harzhauser M.
Published: February 2015

Abstract. Within a 5.5 m thick succession of Upper Burdigalian (Karpatian) sediments in the North Alpine Foreland Basin (NAFB; Austria), dated to CNP-zone NN4, a high-resolution section was logged continuously. One hundred samples were taken with a resolution of ~10 mm (approximating ~17 years) per layer and analyzed using an integrated multi-proxy approach. Earlier analyses of geochemistry and calcareous nannoplankton assemblages hint at small-scale, short-term variations in paleoenvironmental conditions, such as water-column stratification, primary productivity, organic matter flux, bottom-water oxygenation, freshwater influx, and changes in relative sea level. The results indicate a highly dynamic shallow marine setting that was subject to high-frequency environmental changes on a decadal to centennial scale. Time-series analyses on nine different proxy data sets using REDFIT analysis and wavelet spectra were applied to resolve a possible cyclic nature of these variations. Analyses revealed that different proxies for precipitation, upwelling intensity, and overall productivity were likely controlled by different cyclicities. A best-fit adjustment of the likely sedimentation rates within the high-resolution section resulted in periodicities fitting well with the Lower (~65 years) and Upper (~113 years) Gleissberg cycle as well as the Suess/de Vries cycle (~211 years). The section covers a time span of ~1190 years based on the correlation with solar cycles, which resulted in an estimated sedimentation rate of 575 mm kyr−1. For the first time, short-term climate variability on a decadal to centennial scale is resolved in Lower Miocene shallow marine laminated sediments in a land-based section. The results hint at a close relationship between climate variability and solar forcing during the Late Burdigalian. Moreover, accepting that these cyclicities are indeed of solar origin, this would indicate that precipitation was driven by the two Gleissberg cycles, while upwelling was driven by the Suess cycle. Furthermore, proxies for primary productivity were influenced by both cycles, although the Suess cycle exerts dominant control, reflecting a stronger influence of upwelling on primary productivity.
The evolution of sub-monsoon systems in the Afro-Asian monsoon region during the Holocene– comparison of different transient climate model simulations
Authors: Dallmeyer A. , Claussen M. , Fischer N. , Haberkorn K. , Wagner S. , Pfeiffer M. , Jin L. , Khon V. , Wang Y. , Herzschuh U.
Published: February 2015

Abstract. The recently proposed global monsoon hypothesis interprets monsoon systems as part of one global-scale atmospheric overturning circulation, implying a connection between the regional monsoon systems and an in-phase behaviour of all northern hemispheric monsoons on annual timescales (Trenberth et al., 2000). Whether this concept can be applied to past climates and variability on longer timescales is still under debate, because the monsoon systems exhibit different regional characteristics such as different seasonality (i.e. onset, peak and withdrawal). To investigate the interconnection of different monsoon systems during the pre-industrial Holocene, five transient global climate model simulations have been analysed with respect to the rainfall trend and variability in different sub-domains of the Afro-Asian monsoon region. Our analysis suggests that on millennial timescales with varying orbital forcing, the monsoons do not behave as a tightly connected global system. According to the models, the Indian and North African monsoons are coupled, showing similar rainfall trend and moderate correlation in centennial rainfall variability in all models. The East Asian monsoon changes independently during the Holocene. The dissimilarities in the seasonality of the monsoon sub-systems lead to a stronger response of the North African and Indian monsoon systems to the Holocene insolation forcing than of the East Asian monsoon and affect the seasonal distribution of Holocene rainfall variations. Within the Indian and North African monsoon domain, precipitation solely changes during the summer months, showing a decreasing Holocene precipitation trend. In the East Asian monsoon region, the precipitation signal is determined by an increasing precipitation trend during spring and a decreasing precipitation change during summer, partly balancing each other. A synthesis of reconstructions and the model results do not reveal an impact of the different seasonality on the timing of the Holocene rainfall optimum in the different sub-monsoon systems. Rather they indicate locally inhomogeneous rainfall changes and show that single palaeo-records should not be used to characterise the rainfall change and monsoon evolution for entire monsoon sub-systems.
Testing the performance of state-of-the-art dust emission schemes using DO4Models field data
Authors: Haustein K. , Washington R. , King J. , Wiggs G. , Thomas D. S. G. , Eckardt F. D. , Bryant R. G. , Menut L.
Published: February 2015

Abstract. Within the framework of the Dust Observations for Models (DO4Models) project, the performance of three commonly used dust emission schemes is investigated in this paper using a box model environment. We constrain the model with field data (surface and dust particle properties as well as meteorological parameters) obtained from a dry lake bed with a crusted surface in Botswana during a 3 month period in 2011. Our box model results suggest that all schemes fail to reproduce the observed horizontal dust flux. They overestimate the magnitude of the flux by several orders of magnitude. The discrepancy is much smaller for the vertical dust emission flux, albeit still overestimated by up to an order of magnitude. The key parameter for this mismatch is the surface crusting which limits the availability of erosive material, even at higher wind speeds. The second-most important parameter is the soil size distribution. Direct dust entrainment was inferred to be important for several dust events, which explains the smaller gap between modelled and measured vertical dust fluxes. We conclude that both features, crusted surfaces and direct entrainment, need to be incorporated into dust emission schemes in order to represent the entire spectra of source processes. We also conclude that soil moisture exerts a key control on the threshold shear velocity and hence the emission threshold of dust in the model. In the field, the state of the crust is the controlling mechanism for dust emission. Although the crust is related to the soil moisture content to some extent, we are not as yet able to deduce a robust correlation between state of crust and soil moisture.
The Parallelized Large-Eddy Simulation Model (PALM) version 4.0 for atmospheric and oceanic flows: model formulation, recent developments, and future perspectives
Authors: Maronga B. , Gryschka M. , Heinze R. , Hoffmann F. , Kanani-Sühring F. , Keck M. , Ketelsen K. , Letzel M. O. , Sühring M. , Raasch S.
Published: February 2015

Abstract. In this paper we present the current version of the Parallelized Large-Eddy Simulation Model (PALM) whose core has been developed at the Institute of Meteorology and Climatology at Leibniz Universität Hannover (Germany). PALM is a Fortran 95-based code with some Fortran 2003 extensions and has been applied for the simulation of a variety of atmospheric and oceanic boundary layers for more than 15 years. PALM is optimized for use on massively parallel computer architectures and was recently ported to general-purpose graphics processing units. In the present paper we give a detailed description of the current version of the model and its features, such as an embedded Lagrangian cloud model and the possibility to use Cartesian topography. Moreover, we discuss recent model developments and future perspectives for LES applications.
Application of WRF/Chem version 3.4.1 over North America under the AQMEII Phase 2: evaluation of 2010 application and responses of air quality and meteorology–chemistry interactions to changes in emissions and meteorology from 2006 to 2010
Authors: Yahya K. , Wang K. , Zhang Y. , Kleindienst T. E.
Published: February 2015

Abstract. The Weather Research and Forecasting model with Chemistry (WRF/Chem) simulation with the 2005 Carbon Bond gas-phase mechanism coupled to the Modal for Aerosol Dynamics for Europe and the Volatility Basis Set approach for Secondary Organic Aerosol (SOA) are conducted over a domain in North America for 2006 and 2010 as part of the Air Quality Model Evaluation International Initiative (AQMEII) Phase 2 project. This paper focuses on comparison of model performance in 2006 and 2010 as well as analysis of the responses of air quality and meteorology–chemistry interactions to changes in emissions and meteorology from 2006 to 2010. In general, emissions for gaseous and aerosol species decrease from 2006 to 2010, leading to a reduction in gaseous and aerosol concentrations and associated changes in radiation and cloud variables due to various feedback mechanisms. WRF/Chem is able to reproduce most observations and the observed variation trends from 2006 to 2010, despite its slightly worse performance than WRF that is likely due to inaccurate chemistry feedbacks resulted from less accurate emissions and chemical boundary conditions (BCONs) in 2010. Compared to 2006, the performance for most meteorological variables in 2010 gives lower normalized mean biases but higher normalized mean errors and lower correlation coefficients. The model also shows worse performance for most chemical variables in 2010. This could be attributed to underestimations in emissions of some species such as primary organic aerosol in some areas of the US in 2010, and inaccurate chemical BCONs and meteorological predictions. The inclusion of chemical feedbacks in WRF/Chem reduces biases in meteorological predictions in 2010; however, it increases errors and weakens correlations comparing to WRF simulation. Sensitivity simulations show that the net changes in meteorological variables from 2006 to 2010 are mostly influenced by changes in meteorology and those of ozone and fine particulate matter are influenced to a large extent by emissions and/or chemical BCONs and to a lesser extent by changes in meteorology. These results indicate a need to further improve the accuracy of emissions and chemical BCONs, the representations of SOA and chemistry–meteorology feedbacks in the online-coupled models.
SPHY v2.0: Spatial Processes in HYdrology
Authors: Terink W. , Lutz A. F. , Simons G. W. H. , Immerzeel W. W. , Droogers P.
Published: February 2015

Abstract. This paper introduces and presents the Spatial Processes in HYdrology (SPHY) model (v2.0), its development background, its underlying concepts, and some typical applications. The SPHY model is developed using the best components of existing and well-tested simulation models, and is developed with the explicit aim to simulate terrestrial hydrology at flexible scales, under various land use and climate conditions. SPHY is a spatially distributed leaky bucket type of model, and is applied on a cell-by-cell basis. The model is written in the Python programming language using the PCRaster dynamic modelling framework. Compared to other hydrological models, that typically focus on the simulation of streamflow only, the SPHY model has several advantages: it (i) integrates most relevant hydrological processes, (ii) is setup modular, (iii) is easy adjustable and applicable, (iii) can easily be linked to remote sensing data, and (iv) can be applied for operational as well as strategic decision support. The most relevant hydrological processes that are integrated in the SPHY model are rainfall–runoff processes, cryosphere processes, evapotranspiration processes, the simulation of dynamic vegetational cover, lake/reservoir outflow, and the simulation of rootzone moisture contents. Studies in which the SPHY model was successfully applied and tested are described in this paper, and range from (i) real-time soil moisture predictions to support irrigation management in lowland areas, to (ii) detailed climate change impact studies in snow and glacier-fed river basins, to (iii) operational flow forecasting in mountainous catchments.
Inverse modelling of in situ soil water dynamics: accounting for heteroscedastic, autocorrelated, and non-Gaussian distributed residuals
Authors: Scharnagl B. , Iden S. C. , Durner W. , Vereecken H. , Herbst M.
Published: February 2015

Abstract. Inverse modelling of in situ soil water dynamics is a powerful tool to test process understanding and determine soil hydraulic properties at the scale of interest. The observations of soil water state variables are typically evaluated using the ordinary least squares approach. However, the underlying assumptions of this classical statistical approach of independent, homoscedastic, and Gaussian distributed residuals are rarely tested in practice. In this case study, we estimated the soil hydraulic properties of a homogeneous, bare soil profile from field observations of soil water contents. We used a formal Bayesian approach to estimate the posterior distribution of the parameters in the van Genuchten–Mualem (VGM) model of the soil hydraulic properties. Three likelihood models that differ with respect to assumptions about the statistical features of the time series of residuals were used. Our results show that the assumptions of the ordinary least squares did not hold, because the residuals were strongly autocorrelated, heteroscedastic and non-Gaussian distributed. From a statistical point of view, the parameter estimates obtained with this classical statistical approach are therefore invalid. Since a test of the classic first-order autoregressive (AR(1)) model led to strongly biased model predictions, we introduced an modified AR(1) model which eliminates this critical deficit of the classic AR(1) scheme. The resulting improved likelihood model, which additionally accounts for heteroscedasticity and nonnormality, lead to a correct statistical characterization of the residuals and thus outperformed the other two likelihood models. We consider the corresponding parameter estimates as statistically correct and showed that they differ systematically from those obtained under ordinary least squares assumptions. Moreover, the uncertainty in the parameter estimates was increased by accounting for autocorrelation in the observations. Our results suggest that formal Bayesian inference using a likelihood model that correctly formalizes the statistical properties of the residuals may also prove useful in other inverse modelling applications in soil hydrology.
Volcanological aspects of the northwest region of Paraná continental flood basalts (Brazil)
Authors: Braz Machado F. , Reis Viana Rocha-Júnior E. , Soares Marques L. , Ranalli Nardy A. J.
Published: February 2015

Abstract. There has been little research on volcanological aspects of Paraná continental flood basalts (PCFBs), and all investigations have mainly been concentrated on the internal portions of the lava flows. Thus, this study describes for the first time morphological aspects of lava flows and structural characteristics caused by lava–sediment interaction in the northwestern PCFB province (NW-PCFB). Early Cretaceous (134 to 132 Ma) tholeiitic rocks of the PCFB were emplaced on a large intracratonic Paleozoic sedimentary basin (Paraná Basin), mainly covering dry eolian sandstones (Botucatu Formation). As this sedimentary unit is overlain by the basic lava flows of the PCFB, the interaction of lavas and unconsolidated sediments resulted in the generation of fluidal peperites. This aspect is significant because it shows that restricted wet environments should have existed in the Botucatu desert. The peperite zones of the NW-PCFB are associated with compound pahoehoe-type (P-type) flows and are always related to the first volcanic pulses. These flows have dispersed vesicles and sand-filled cracks in their base and top borders, as well as the presence of interlayered sandstones with irregular contacts and varied thicknesses. It is remarkable that, to the best of current knowledge, only in this area of the whole PCFB did the volcanic activity start with low-Ti basalt flows of Ribeira type (TiO2 < 2.3 wt%), which are scarce in the province.
Stress field sensitivity analysis in a sedimentary sequence of the Alpine foreland, Northern Switzerland
Authors: Hergert T. , Heidbach O. , Reiter K. , Giger S. B. , Marschall P.
Published: February 2015

Abstract. The stress field at depth is a relevant parameter for the design of subsurface constructions and reservoir management. Yet the distortion of the regional stress field due to local-scale features such as sedimentary and tectonic structures or topography is often poorly constrained. We conduct a stress sensitivity analysis using 3-D numerical geomechanical modelling with an elasto-plastic material law to explore the impact of such site specific features on the stress field in a sedimentary sequence of the Swiss Alpine foreland. The model's dimensions are 14 km × 14 km × 3 km and it contains ten units with different mechanical properties, intersected by two regional fault zones. An initial stress state is established involving a semi-empirical relationship between the ratio of horizontal to vertical stress and the overconsolidation ratio of argillaceous sediments. The model results indicate that local topography can affect the stress field significantly to depths greater than the relief contrasts at the surface, especially in conjunction with horizontal tectonic loading. The complexity and frictional properties of faults are also relevant. The greatest variability of the stress field arises across the different sedimentary units. Stress magnitudes and stress anisotropy are much larger in stiffer formations such as massive limestones than in softer argillaceous formations. The stiffer formations essentially carry the load of the far-field forces and are therefore more sensitive to changes of the boundary conditions. This general characteristic of stress distribution in the stiff and soft formations is broadly maintained also with progressive loading towards the plastic limit. The stress field in argillaceous sediments within a stack of formations with strongly contrasting mechanical properties like in the Alpine foreland appears to be relatively insensitive to changes in the tectonic boundary conditions and is largely controlled by the maximum stiffness contrast with respect to the load-bearing formations.