Engineering Commons^™

Precipitation Trends Over The Indus Basin, Nir Krakauer, Tarendra Lakhankar, Ghulam Hussain Dars

Publications and Research

A large population relies on water input to the Indus basin, yet basinwide precipitation amounts and trends are not well quantified. Gridded precipitation data sets covering different time periods and based on either station observations, satellite remote sensing, or reanalysis were compared with available station observations and analyzed for basinwide precipitation trends. Compared to observations, some data sets tended to greatly underestimate precipitation, while others overestimate it. Additionally, the discrepancies between data set and station precipitation showed significant time trends in many cases, suggesting that the precipitation trends of those data sets were not consistent with station data. Among the …

Trends In Drought Over The Northeast United States, Nir Y. Krakauer, Tarendra Lakhankar, Damien Hudson

Publications and Research

The Northeast United States is a generally wet region that has had substantial increases in mean precipitation over the past decades, but also experiences damaging droughts. We evaluated drought frequency, intensity, and duration trends in the region over the period 1901–2015. We used a dataset of Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI), a measure of water balance based on meteorology that is computed at multiple timescales. It was found that the frequency of droughts decreased over this period, but their average intensity and duration did not show consistent changes. There was an increase in mean SPEI, indicating mostly wetter conditions, but …

Assessing The Impacts Of Super Storm Flooding In The Transportation Infrastructure – Case Study: San Antonio, Texas, Marcio Giacomoni, Francisco Olivera, Cesar Do Lago

Data

Corresponding data set for Tran-SET Project No. 18HSTSA02. Abstract of the final report is stated below for reference:

"Flooding are likely to increase worldwide due to climate change. Large storms, referred here as superstorms, defined as events with return period equal or larger than 100 years, can lead to an increase of property damages and loss of life. The ability to predict and plan for the impacts of superstorms on transportation infrastructure is key to mitigate future damages and losses. This study analyzed 51 combinations of future projections for representative concentration pathways (RCP) 4.5 and 8.5 scenarios, which were used …

Assessing The Impacts Of Super Storm Flooding In The Transportation Infrastructure – Case Study: San Antonio, Texas, Marcio Giacomoni, Francisco Olivera, Cesar Do Lago

Publications

Flooding are likely to increase worldwide due to climate change. Large storms, referred here as superstorms, defined as events with return period equal or larger than 100 years, can lead to an increase of property damages and loss of life. The ability to predict and plan for the impacts of superstorms on transportation infrastructure is key to mitigate future damages and losses. This study analyzed 51 combinations of future projections for representative concentration pathways (RCP) 4.5 and 8.5 scenarios, which were used to calculate future 1st and 3rd quartiles, median, minimum and maximum intensity-duration-frequency curves (IDF). A HEC-HMS and GSSHA …

Development Of Threshold Levels And A Climate-Sensitivity Model Of The Hydrological Regime Of The High-Altitude Catchment Of The Western Himalayas, Pakistan, Muhammad Saifullah, Shiyin Liu, Adnan Ahmad Tahir, Muhammad Zaman, Sajjad Ahmad, Muhammad Adnan, Dianyu Chen, Muhammad Ashraf, Asif Mehmood

Civil and Environmental Engineering and Construction Faculty Research

Water shortages in Pakistan are among the most severe in the world, and its water resources are decreasing significantly due to the prevailing hydro-meteorological conditions. We assessed variations in meteorological and hydrological variables using innovative trend analysis (ITA) and traditional trend analysis methods at a practical significance level, which is also of practical interest. We developed threshold levels of hydrological variables and developed a non-parametric climate-sensitivity model of the high-altitude catchment of the western Himalayas. The runoff of Zone I decreased, while the temperature increased and the precipitation increased significantly. In Zone II, the runoff and temperature increased but the …

Wrack Lines Volume 19, Number 1, Spring/Summer 2019, Nancy Balcom, Syma Ebbin, David Gregorio, Richard Telford, Judy Benson

Wrack Lines

Issue theme is: "Making Connections: As the Climate Changes, People and Nature Intertwine in New Ways." Articles include: "As More Roads Become Rivers, Communities Search for Solutions;" "Solving an Engineering Conundrum: As Coastal Homes Get Elevated, New Research Looks at Whether Vulnerability to Wind Damage Is Increasing;" "Along the Coast, Residents Consider How to Heed Sandy's Warning of What's to Come;" "All Rivers, All Lives Run to the Sea," about the intersection of waterways and the world of nature writer Edwin Way Teale; and "Crosscurrents: Connecticut Sea Grant's Retrospective Exhibition Makes Waves," about reaching new audiences and building bridges with …

Next-Generation Rainfall Idf Curves For The Virginian Drainage Area Of Chesapeake Bay, Xixi Wang, Xiaomin Yang, Zhaoyi Cai

Civil & Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Probability-based intensity-duration-frequency IDF curves are needed but currently lacking for Department of Defense DoD to construct and manage its infrastructure in changing climate. The objectives of this project were to 1 develop an innovative approach for considering rainfall non-stationarity in developing such IDF curves and 2 apply this approach to the state of Virginia. In this regard, the observed data on 15-min rainfall at 57 gauges and the precipitations projected by twelve pairs of Regional Climate Model RCM and Global Circulation Model GCM were used. For a given gauge or watershed, in terms of fitting the empirical exceedance probabilities, a …

Changes In Snow Phenology From 1979 To 2016 Over The Tianshan Mountains, Central Asia, Tao Yang, Qian Li, Sajjad Ahmad, Hongfei Zhou, Lanhai Li

Civil and Environmental Engineering and Construction Faculty Research

Snowmelt from the Tianshan Mountains (TS) is a major contributor to the water resources of the Central Asian region. Thus, changes in snow phenology over the TS have significant implications for regional water supplies and ecosystem services. However, the characteristics of changes in snow phenology and their influences on the climate are poorly understood throughout the entire TS due to the lack of in situ observations, limitations of optical remote sensing due to clouds, and decentralized political landscapes. Using passive microwave remote sensing snow data from 1979 to 2016 across the TS, this study investigates the spatiotemporal variations of snow …

Climate‐Induced Changes In The Risk Of Hydrological Failure Of Major Dams In California, Iman Mallakpour, Amir Aghakouchak, Mojtaba Sadegh

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Existing major reservoirs in California, with average age above 50 years, were built in the previous century with limited data records and flood hazard assessment. Changes in climate and land use are anticipated to alter statistical properties of inflow to these infrastructure systems and potentially increase their hydrological failure probability. Because of large socioeconomic repercussions of infrastructure incidents, revisiting dam failure risks associated with possible shifts in the streamflow regime is fundamental for societal resilience. Here we compute historical and projected flood return periods as a proxy for potential changes in the risk of hydrological failure of dams in a …

Aesthetics, Ethics, And Lose-Lose Dilemmas In The Anthropocen, Adam Liska

Biological Systems Engineering: Papers and Publications

Anthropogenic climate change will cause violence to increase globally, and nonlinear increases in sea level could cause a major escalation in global conflict. After 2100, a 22-meter sea-level rise is estimated here to dislocate two billion people from coastal areas. These impending civilization-changing events require us to again reevaluate our prevalent aesthetic preferences for luxury that produce a significant fraction of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Due to industrial inertia, a central dilemma discussed here is the contradictions between the goals and impacts of aesthetics and ethics. Either we lose our own well-being (a loss of high-emission aesthetics) for the benefit …

Generational Aspects Of U.S. Public Opinion On Renewable Energy And Climate Change, Lawrence C. Hamilton, Joel N. Hartter, Erin Bell

Sociology

The topics of climate change and renewable energy often are linked in policy discussions and scientific analysis, but public opinion on these topics exhibits both overlap and divergence. Although renewable energy has potentially broader acceptance than anthropogenic climate change, it can also sometimes face differently-based opposition. Analyses of U.S. and regional surveys, including time series of repeated surveys in New Hampshire (2010–2018) and northeast Oregon (2011–2018), explore the social bases of public views on both issues. Political divisions are prominent, although somewhat greater regarding climate change. Such divisions widen with education, an interaction effect documented in other studies as well. …