bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Evaluating Place of Refuge Risk in the Chesapeake Bay
Authors: Shupe Danielle , Ott Gary , Preble Kristen 
Published: August 2014

ABSTRACT
Worldwide, several tank ships have suffered structural failures at sea and shipping agents were unable to convince port stakeholders to provide the vessel a Place of Refuge. These situations resulted in catastrophic environmental damage to coastal states. They also highlighted the need for better Place of Refuge guidance to address both real and perceived risk within the port community. In coordination with the International Maritime Organization and the National Response Team, the U.S. Coast Guard established policies that encourage risk-based planning and decision-making to assist stakeholders in evaluating risks. The Coast Guard policy included a risk evaluation job aid to facilitate planning and serve as a response tool for a port faced with a Place of Refuge request from a stricken vessel. The Port Community of Hampton Roads continued this planning effort through the Area Committee. A “Steering Committee” was established and charged with drafting a Place of Refuge annex to the Virginia Area Contingency Plan. Port Community involvement was achieved through a series of workshops held by the Steering Committee. The workshop objectives were successfully met by reviewing historic local case studies, identifying critical stakeholders and working through the Places of Refuge process using the job aid. The Place of Refuge annex outlines the process used to communicate risk to stakeholders within the human health and safety, environmental and economic communities, with the goal of achieving consensus on a Place of Refuge decision. This paper will expand on the steps that led to the development of the Place of Refuge Plan and some of the key lessons learned regarding risk assessment and risk communication in the Port of Hampton Roads.
THE GROWTH IN ENERGY ACTIVITIES IN THE SOUTH CHINA SEA – ARE WE TRULY PREPARED?
Authors: Tan Yoppy 
Published: August 2014

ABSTRACT
Stretching from Singapore and the Strait of Malacca chokepoint in the southwest to the Strait of Taiwan in the northeast, the South China Sea is one of the most important energy trade routes in the world. Almost a third of global crude oil and over half of global liquefied natural gas (LNG) passes through the South China Sea each year. Coupled with the significant economy growth from China, that is the world's largest oil importer, protecting the flow of oil becomes a prime consideration of the South East and East Asia governments. All of these factors make the South China Sea to hold one of the highest potential for oil spill, be it by quantity of oil or frequency of energy activities.
In the region, our industry faces increasing political challenge due to the disputed territorial waters and hence if an incident affecting multiple countries such as an oil spill occurs, the response may be chaotic if not adequately prepared for. The duty is on industry to work with regional governmental groups to promote joined-up response that is sufficiently robust and flexible to deal with both marine and well-control incidents.
Other factors that could pose a major challenge are the understanding of response tool kits and prioritization given to national environmental laws and regulations which will vary amongst the affected administrations. Has there been sufficient investigation into the range of national laws which could help/hinder inter-regional approach? What about each of the area contingency plan along the South China Sea? Is there sufficient data on the crude oil characteristics in this region and the availability of Stockpile of equipment along this stretch of the trade route?
This paper provides an overview of the oil industry's response to the growing energy activities in the South China Sea using case studies to illustrate the situations that are still occurring in practice.
Oil Spill Response Capability Building in China and Her Road Map
Authors: Cheng Jin Xiang , Zhang Chun Chang , Xu Hong Lei , Wang Shou Dong 
Published: August 2014

ABSTRACT
In recent decades, China's strong economic development has brought higher risk of oil spill at sea from ships, oil exploration and land. Accordingly, China government has enacted some new laws and policies such as the compulsory requirements on certain ships calling Chinese ports enter into a preparedness and response contract with a pre-approved response organization, up to now, there are already 137 private oil spill response organizations along the coastline. Also, the port operators are required to invest on oil spill response equipments depending on the result of risk assessment. At the same time, the central government has invested more 20 stockpiles along the sea port and Yangzi River. Nowadays, the amount of clean-up equipments has reached to a historical high level, and the total investment in recent three years is near ten times more than those ten years ago. Therefore, scientific evaluation of the risk and its spatial distribution of oil spill, and development of the reasonable and effective oil spill response capability planning, are the major demands for marine environmental risk management in China. To solve the issues above, a model with oil spill risk evaluation and multi-objective response resources layout is proposed for multi–sources risk. Hopefully, the model will be used to develop the national plan for National Contingency Plan for oil spill capability building in China.
A NATIONAL REVIEW OF AUSTRALIA'S MARITIME ENVIRONMENTAL EMERGENCY RESPONSE ARRANGEMENTS
Authors: Storrie Jamie 
Published: August 2014

ABSTRACT
Australia's National Plan for Maritime Environmental Emergencies (‘the National Plan’) is a cooperative national strategy for the preparing, responding and recovering from maritime casualty and marine pollution incidents. A review of the National Plan was conducted between 2011 and 2012 following a series of shipping and offshore petroleum incidents which presented the most significant challenges to National Plan since its inception in 1973.
The Review incorporated two streams of work – a national risk assessment modelled the current and 10 year outlook of the marine pollution threat to Australia and a capability analysis, involving consultation with over 90 stakeholder groups, identified areas for improvement in national preparedness.
Forty-seven recommendations were forthcoming from the review including:Implementing a modern governance model for the National Plan, clarifying responsibilities and providing for the formal engagement of stakeholders.Alignment of planning and response systems with mainstream emergency services to improve the national response capability.Implementing a single response arrangement for maritime casualty and oil and chemical pollution.Addressing gaps in capability, including the development of a national chemical response capability, nationally accredited training and succession planning for the National Response Team.
This paper describes the conduct of the Review, the significant outcomes for Australia's preparedness and the ongoing program to embed these outcomes into all levels of response planning in Australia.
An Assessment of the Increasing Risk of Marine Oil Spills and the Existing Preparedness Capabilities in the Southeast Asian Region
Authors: Varghese Geeva 
Published: August 2014

ABSTRACT
A rapidly growing economy has pushed the energy demands and has significantly increased the exploration and production activities as well as the shipping traffic over recent years in the Southeast Asian Region. Since the introduction of offshore exploration and production in the 1960's, Southeast Asia has gone through a remarkable transition from an onshore to an offshore focused region with more than 80% of oil production coming from offshore fields in 2011. Also the region has recently moved into deepwater exploration and production activities which now makes up more than 10% of the offshore production. With the rising production volumes, the transport of oil products has continuously increased both in volume and in number of ships used. This trend is expected to grow further with the investment in new refinery capacity of several Southeast Asian countries. All these factors have significantly contributed to the increased risk of marine spill incidents in the region.
An increased risk of oil spills necessitates an increase in the capability to respond and manage major oil spill incidents. Even though the Southeast Asian region has made some notable progress over the past few decades in terms of oil spill preparedness and response, the region's capabilities are arguably less mature compared to other parts of the world. Most of the countries in the region have been successful in establishing the elements of preparedness advocated by the OPRC (International Convention on Oil Pollution Preparedness Response and Cooperation) convention. But recent spill incidents and preparedness work in the region have revealed a need for greater collaboration between the government and industry stakeholders from oil, shipping and port industries, planning and preparing of major trans-boundary oil spill incidents and alignment of oil spill preparedness and response system of a country from the national to provincial level.
This paper examines the increasing risks of oil spills from the growing vessel traffic and exploration and production activities in Southeast Asia against the current level of preparedness in the region. In doing so, the author will share the experience gained from working on various oil spill response planning and preparedness projects with the Governments and industry in the region with lessons learned, current developments and recommendation for improvements.
Simulating the Behaviour and Fate of an Oil Spill Using a Coupled Three-Dimensional Hydrodynamic Model
Authors: Stronach James A. , Hospital Aurelien 
Published: August 2014

ABSTRACT
Oil behavior and fate have been simulated extensively by several spill models. These simulations can be greatly enhanced by the use of a coupled three-dimensional model of currents and water properties to determine oil transport and weathering, both on the water surface and in the water column. Several physical and chemical processes such as vertical dispersion in response to wave action, resurfacing when waves die down, sinking through loss of volatiles and dissolution are essential in assessing the impact of an oil spill on the environment. Dissolution is especially important, considering the known toxicity of several of the constituents of liquid hydrocarbons. For this study, a three-dimensional hydrodynamic model of coastal British Columbia was coupled to an oil trajectory and weathering model in order to simulate the complete fate and behaviour of surface, shoreline-retained, dissolved, sunken and dispersed oil. Utilization of a three-dimensional model is the key to adequately modelling the transport of a spill in an estuarine region such as in the Strait of Georgia, B.C., where the distribution of currents and water properties is strongly affected by estuarine processes: the Fraser River enters at the surface and oceanic waters from the Pacific enter as a deep inflow.
Three-dimensional currents and water properties were provided by the hydrodynamic model, H3D, a semi-implicit model using a staggered Arakawa grid and variable number of layers in the vertical direction to resolve near-surface processes. Waves were simulated using the wave model SWAN. Winds were obtained from the local network of coastal light stations and wind buoys. Stochastic modelling was conducted first, using only surface currents, to determine probabilistic maps of the oil trajectory on water and statistical results were extracted, such as the amount of shoreline oiled and the amount of oil evaporated, both for the ensemble of simulations constituting the stochastic simulation, as well as for any particular individual simulation. Deterministic scenarios were then selected and the fate of the oil, such as the dissolved and sunken fractions, was tracked over a 14 day period on the three-dimensional grid. This method has been used for environmental impact assessment and spill response planning.
FROM BLOWOUT TO BEACH: AN INTEGRATED MODELING APPROACH
Authors: Chapman Piers , Socolofsky Scott , Hetland Robert 
Published: August 2014

ABSTRACT
As part of the response to the BP Deepwater Horizon spill in 2010, we have been funded by the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative to construct a nested model suite that can follow an oil particle from its first release to its arrival on a shoreline, taking into account natural rates of mixing and degradation of the oil components. The model suite incorporates (at increasing levels of resolution) a coupled ocean-atmosphere model of the full Gulf of Mexico and North Atlantic Ocean, a deep Gulf of Mexico model, a regional model of the Texas-Louisiana shelf, a 3D, non-hydrostatic bay model, a 3D Navier-Stokes model of the spill plume, and a particle tracking and transformation model for dispersed and dissolved oil and gas fate and transport integrated within the full flow domain. The models are supported by a series of laboratory and field experiments, including studies of single droplets, with and without dispersant, plumes, a deep-sea tracer release experiment and bubble releases to simulate an underwater blowout. The laboratory experiments will improve modeling of small-scale, near-field processes such as bubble and droplet formation, dissolution, droplet-turbulence interaction, and evaporation and dispersion at the air-sea interface. We show how the models are linked and how we are making progress towards the complete nested model suite, which will be available for use in future spills.
Anisotropic turbulence and Rossby waves in an easterly jet: An experimental study
Authors: Galperin Boris , Hoemann Jesse , Espa Stefania , Nitto Gabriella Di 
Published: August 2014

AbstractA westward propagating jet is investigated experimentally. The focus is on complex interaction between anisotropic turbulence with inverse energy cascade and Rossby waves. The energy spectrum is highly anisotropic. To diagnose turbulence characteristics, we explore the analogy between turbulent overturns in stably stratified and quasi‐geostrophic flows and develop a novel method based upon the monotonizing of potential vorticity (PV). The RMS displacement from the monotonic PV profile yields a length scale, LM, analogous to the Thorpe's scale used in flows with stable stratification. As the Thorpe scale is proportional to the Ozmidov scale, the scale LM is proportional to the scale Lβ at which the time scales of turbulent overturns and Rossby waves are approximately equal. The relationship between LM and Lβ is established here for the first time. The method of PV monotonizing offers a simple and powerful tool for diagnosing geophysical and planetary macroturbulence.
Streamflow sensitivity to drought scenarios in catchments with different geology
Authors: Stoelzle Michael , Stahl Kerstin , Morhard Andreas , Weiler Markus 
Published: August 2014

AbstractStreamflow drought response depends to a large degree on groundwater recharge. To better predict and preempt streamflow droughts, the relationship between recharge deficit and streamflow response needs to be studied more systematically. We present a combined soil‐vegetation‐atmosphere transfer and conceptual groundwater model experiment that applies a novel set of recharge scenarios preceding drought events in humid‐temperate catchments with different dominant aquifer types. The recharge scenarios are based on the permutation of historical time series and on modified time series matching extreme (50 year) drought events. Karstic and fractured aquifers show short‐term sensitivity to drought with an event‐specific relationship between recharge and streamflow response. Porous and complex aquifers show long‐term sensitivity and a more catchment‐controlled propagation of drought. The sensitivity of drought deficit and recovery time correlates with the water age distribution in baseflow, which is trackable in the groundwater model and a characteristic that should be exploited to improve streamflow drought prediction.
The importance of storm time steady magnetospheric convection in determining the final relativistic electron flux level
Authors: Kissinger Jennifer , Kepko Larry , Baker Daniel N. , Kanekal Shri , Li Wen , McPherron Robert L. , Angelopoulos Vassilis 
Published: August 2014

AbstractRelativistic electrons pose a space weather hazard to satellites in the radiation belts. Although about half of all geomagnetic storms result in relativistic electron flux enhancements, other storms decrease relativistic electron flux, even under similar solar wind drivers. Radiation belt fluxes depend on a complex balance between transport, loss, and acceleration. A critically important aspect of radiation belt enhancements is the role of the “seed” population—plasma sheet particles heated and transported earthward by magnetotail processes—which can become accelerated by wave‐particle interactions with chorus waves. While the effect of substorms on seed electron injections has received considerable focus, in this study we present a previously unexplored connection between quasi‐steady convection during steady magnetospheric convection (SMC) events and the transport and energization of electrons. SMC events are long‐duration intervals of enhanced convection without any substorm expansions and are an important mechanism in coupling magnetotail plasma populations to the inner magnetosphere. We find that storms with SMCs in the recovery phase are more likely to increase relativistic electron flux levels, while storms without SMCs are more likely to result in a decrease. Using particle measurements from the Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions During Substorms mission, we show that phase space density of seed electron populations increases 1 h before SMC start and stays elevated through the duration of SMCs. Chorus activity is also elevated during SMC events. These results suggest that rather than hindering electron acceleration by diverting plasma away from the inner magnetosphere, SMC events appear to act to enhance and maintain seed electron populations.
A simultaneous study of ionospheric parameters derived from FORMOSAT‐3/COSMIC, GRACE, and CHAMP missions over middle, low, and equatorial latitudes: Comparison with ionosonde data
Authors: Habarulema John Bosco , Katamzi Zama Thobeka , Yizengaw Endawoke 
Published: August 2014

AbstractAccurate ionospheric modeling efforts are partly restricted by lack of enough reliable ground‐based data and the inability to validate the existing space‐based data. In this article, we present a first time comprehensive reliability and validation check of ionospheric data derived using the GPS Radio Occultation (RO) Technique (from three separate missions: FORMOSAT‐3/COSMIC, GRACE, and CHAMP) by comparing RO data with ionosonde data for low‐latitude, equatorial, and midlatitude stations, simultaneously. This paper discusses two main objectives: (a) Determination of the appropriate spatial resolutions for effective RO and ionosonde data comparisons and (b) Estimating the accuracy of the ionospheric parameters derived from RO missions with respect to ionosonde data within the African sector. For the first time, ionospheric parameters retrieved from RO data have been compared (in details) to ionosonde data over the African sector, specifically for the South African midlatitude stations Grahamstown, GR13L (33.3°S, 26.5°E), and Madimbo, MU12K (22.4°S, 30.9°E). For the equatorial and low‐latitude regions, data for Fortaleza FZA0M (3.8°S, 38°W), Brazil, and Ascension Islands AS00Q (7.9°S, 14.4°W) was analyzed. A simple but important method to determine the latitudinal and longitudinal range to be used in comparison with ionosonde data has been established. Based on statistical analysis, it is found that 4.5°×4.5°, 3°×3°, and 4°×4° are the approximate suitable spatial resolutions in both latitude and longitude spaces over an ionosonde station for effective comparisons for midlatitude, low‐latitude, and equatorial regions, respectively. Appropriate spatial coverage for effective comparisons vary with region and therefore a constant assumption should not be applied on regional/global basis especially if the studies/investigations or modeling extends from middle to low/equatorial latitude zones. For the three latitude regions, COSMIC overestimates the maximum height of the F2 layer (hmF2) and underestimates the maximum electron densities. These results provide a step‐by‐step basis and motivation for the usage of RO data in ionospheric modeling (especially for models which give average conditions) and characterisation over regions that do not have sufficient ground‐based instruments/data.
Comparison of GCM‐ and RCM‐simulated precipitation following stochastic postprocessing
Authors: Eden Jonathan M. , Widmann Martin , Maraun Douglas , Vrac Mathieu 
Published: August 2014

AbstractIn order to assess to what extent regional climate models (RCMs) yield better representations of climatic states than general circulation models (GCMs), the output of each is usually directly compared with observations. RCM output is often bias corrected, and in some cases correction methods can also be applied to GCMs. This leads to the question of whether bias‐corrected RCMs perform better than bias‐corrected GCMs. Here the first results from such a comparison are presented, followed by discussion of the value added by RCMs in this setup. Stochastic postprocessing, based on Model Output Statistics (MOS), is used to estimate daily precipitation at 465 stations across the United Kingdom between 1961 and 2000 using simulated precipitation from two RCMs (RACMO2 and CCLM) and, for the first time, a GCM (ECHAM5) as predictors. The large‐scale weather states in each simulation are forced toward observations. The MOS method uses logistic regression to model precipitation occurrence and a Gamma distribution for the wet day distribution, and is cross validated based on Brier and quantile skill scores. A major outcome of the study is that the corrected GCM‐simulated precipitation yields consistently higher validation scores than the corrected RCM‐simulated precipitation. This seems to suggest that, in a setup with postprocessing, there is no clear added value by RCMs with respect to downscaling individual weather states. However, due to the different ways of controlling the atmospheric circulation in the RCM and the GCM simulations, such a strong conclusion cannot be drawn. Yet the study demonstrates how challenging it is to demonstrate the value added by RCMs in this setup.