We simulated a sensor network that detects and tracks the release of harmful airborne contaminants in an urban environment. The simulation determines sensor placement in that environment. The effort required integration of models from computational fluid dynamics (CFDs), combinatorial optimization, and population mobility dynamics. These CFD models, coupled with population mobility models, faci...

Probabilistic forecasts of wind vectors are becoming critical as interest grows in wind as a clean and renewable source of energy, in addition to a wide range of other uses, from aviation to recreational boating. Unlike other common forecasting problems, which deal with univariate quantities, statistical approaches to wind vector forecasting must be based on bivariate distributions. The prevail...

Measurements of the CHAMP accelerometer are utilized to investigate the average thermospheric wind distribution in the polar regions at altitudes around 400 km. This study puts special emphasis on the seasonal differences in the wind patterns. For this purpose 131 days centered on the June solstice of 2003 are considered. Within that period CHAMP’s orbit is precessing once through all local tim...

Paired trap lines of Þve boll weevil pheromone traps each were placed on opposite sides of a brush line at six different sites on a plantation in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas. Temperature, wind speed, and wind direction were monitored with a nearby weather station. We observed a strong negative relationship between mean daily wind speed and total daily capture of boll weevils. About hal...

The offshore wind industry currently relies on subsidy schemes to be competitive with fossil-fuel-based energy sources. For the wind industry to survive, it is vital that costs are significantly reduced for future projects. This can be partly achieved by introducing new technologies and partly through optimization of existing technologies and design methods. One of the areas where costs can be ...

[1] When upwelling favorable winds weaken or relax in coastal upwelling systems, prevailing equatorward currents often weaken and then reverse to form propagating poleward currents. Here the statistics of wind relaxations and poleward flow events along the south central California coast are derived using meteorological and oceanographic times series during 2000–2006. Over the 7-year record, 169...

Knowledge of the mesoscale wind systems is very important to understand the dispersion of pollutants, thermal regulation and human comfort in the city. Wind field modifications brought about by the growth of the city of Lisbon and the possible urban environmental impacts are presented. In the last years the city of Lisbon has been growing towards the northern districts and the city center loose...

Meticulous planning is required to minimize heat-stress conditions in barns. The objective of this study was to determine optimum barn characteristics for high-yielding dairy cows under Israeli (Mediterranean) summer ambient conditions, by using a new stress model that takes ambient temperature, relative humidity and wind velocity into account. During the summers of 2004 and 2005, three meteoro...

The atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) height (zi) over complex, forested terrain is estimated based on the power spectra and the integral length scale of cross-stream winds obtained from a three-axis sonic anemometer during the two summers of the BEARPEX (Biosphere Effects on Aerosol and Photochemistry) Experiment. The zi values estimated with this technique show very good agreement with observa...

Recent work has demonstrated that under conditions of extreme fire weather, bushfires burning in rugged terrain can exhibit highly atypical patterns of propagation, which can have a dramatic effect on subsequent fire development. In particular, wildfires have been observed to spread laterally across steep, lee-facing slopes in a process that has been termed ’fire channelling’. Fire channelling,...