• Title/Summary/Keyword: Unprecedented

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The timing of unprecedented hydrological drought under climate change

  • Yusuke Satoh;Hyungjun Kim
    • Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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    • 2023.05a
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    • pp.48-48
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    • 2023
  • The intensified droughts under climate change are expected to threaten stable water resource availability. Droughts exceeding the magnitude of historical variability could occur increasingly frequently under future climate conditions. It is crucial to understand how drought will evolve over time because the assumption of hydrological stationarity of the past decades would be inappropriate for future water resources management. However, the timing of the emergence of unprecedented drought conditions under climate change has rarely been examined. Here, using multimodel hydrological simulations, we investigate the changes in the frequency of hydrological drought (defined as abnormally low river discharge) under high and low greenhouse gas concentration scenarios and with existing water resources management and estimate the timing of the first emergence of unprecedented regional drought conditions that persist for over several consecutive years. This new metric enables a new quantification of the urgency of adaptation and mitigation with regard to drought under climate change. The times are detected for several sub-continental-scale regions, and three regions, namely, southwestern South America, Mediterranean Europe, and northern Africa, exhibit particularly robust and earlier critical times under the high-emission scenario. These three regions are expected to confront unprecedented conditions within the next 30 years with a high likelihood, regardless of the emission scenarios. In addition, the results obtained herein demonstrate the benefits of the lower-emission pathway in reducing the likelihood of emergence. The Paris Agreement goals are shown to be effective in reducing the likelihood to the unlikely level in most regions. Nevertheless, appropriate and prior adaptation measures are considered indispensable to when facing unprecedented drought conditions. The results of this study underscore the importance of improving drought preparedness within the considered time horizons.

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The COVID-19 pandemic: an unprecedented tragedy in the battle against childhood obesity

  • Storz, Maximilian Andreas
    • Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
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    • v.63 no.12
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    • pp.477-482
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    • 2020
  • The childhood obesity pandemic has emerged as an important public health problem in many countries. Obese children are likely to become obese adults, and adult obesity is associated with an increased risk of morbidity. Therefore, controlling the childhood obesity epidemic has become a top public health priority worldwide. The current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic may significantly impede this important mission and constitute an unprecedented tragedy in the global battle against childhood obesity. This manuscript presents evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic will aggravate the childhood obesity epidemic and lead to significant weight gain in school children by creating an unprecedented obesogenic environment. Within the last few months, many countries took uncompromising measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including school closures and quarantine. While these steps are often necessary to ensure infection control, they may have a significant negative effect on children's mental and physical health. Physical, nutritional, and psychosocial factors that promote obesity in children during this special situation complementarily contribute to an unprecedented obesogenic environment. Large-scale quarantine and home confinement will impose new and unfamiliar stressors on children, thereby worsening the childhood obesity epidemic. Most importantly, adverse childhood events resulting from a predicted increase in domestic violence within the next few months will significantly contribute to this concern. The scenario presented in this review is of paramount public health importance and must be considered during future pandemic planning. Involved stakeholders, including governments, schools, and families, must make all possible efforts to minimize the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic on childhood obesity.

Regional Characteristics of Global Warming: Linear Projection for the Timing of Unprecedented Climate (지구온난화의 지역적 특성: 전례 없는 기후 시기에 대한 선형 전망)

  • SHIN, HO-JEONG;JANG, CHAN JOO
    • The Sea:JOURNAL OF THE KOREAN SOCIETY OF OCEANOGRAPHY
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    • v.21 no.2
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    • pp.49-57
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    • 2016
  • Even if an external forcing that will drive a climate change is given uniformly over the globe, the corresponding climate change and the feedbacks by the climate system differ by region. Thus the detection of global warming signal has been made on a regional scale as well as on a global average against the internal variabilities and other noises involved in the climate change. The purpose of this study is to estimate a timing of unprecedented climate due to global warming and to analyze the regional differences in the estimated results. For this purpose, unlike previous studies that used climate simulation data, we used an observational dataset to estimate a magnitude of internal variability and a future temperature change. We calculated a linear trend in surface temperature using a historical temperature record from 1880 to 2014 and a magnitude of internal variability as the largest temperature displacement from the linear trend. A timing of unprecedented climate was defined as the first year when a predicted minimum temperature exceeds the maximum temperature record in a historical data and remains as such since then. Presumed that the linear trend and the maximum displacement will be maintained in the future, an unprecedented climate over the land would come within 200 years from now in the western area of Africa, the low latitudes including India and the southern part of Arabian Peninsula in Eurasia, the high latitudes including Greenland and the mid-western part of Canada in North America, the low latitudes including Amazon in South America, the areas surrounding the Ross Sea in Antarctica, and parts of East Asia including Korean Peninsula. On the other hand, an unprecedented climate would come later after 400 years in the high latitudes of Eurasia including the northern Europe, the middle and southern parts of North America including the U.S.A. and Mexico. For the ocean, an unprecedented climate would come within 200 years over the Indian Ocean, the middle latitudes of the North Atlantic and the South Atlantic, parts of the Southern Ocean, the Antarctic Ross Sea, and parts of the Arctic Sea. In the meantime, an unprecedented climate would come even after thousands of years over some other regions of ocean including the eastern tropical Pacific and the North Pacific middle latitudes where an internal variability is large. In summary, spatial pattern in timing of unprecedented climate are different for each continent. For the ocean, it is highly affected by large internal variability except for the high-latitude regions with a significant warming trend. As such, a timing of an unprecedented climate would not be uniform over the globe but considerably different by region. Our results suggest that it is necessary to consider an internal variability as well as a regional warming rate when planning a climate change mitigation and adaption policy.

A Study on Trend Impact Analysis Based of Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System

  • Yong-Gil Kim;Kang-Yeon Lee
    • International journal of advanced smart convergence
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    • v.12 no.1
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    • pp.199-207
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    • 2023
  • Trend Impact Analysis is a prominent hybrid method has been used in future studies with a modified surprise- free forecast. It considers experts' perceptions about how future events may change the surprise-free forecast. It is an advanced forecasting tool used in futures studies for identifying, understanding and analyzing the consequences of unprecedented events on future trends. In this paper, we propose an advanced mechanism to generate more justifiable estimates to the probability of occurrence of an unprecedented event as a function of time with different degrees of severity using adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS). The key idea of the paper is to enhance the generic process of reasoning with fuzzy logic and neural network by adding the additional step of attributes simulation, as unprecedented events do not occur all of a sudden but rather their occurrence is affected by change in the values of a set of attributes. An ANFIS approach is used to identify the occurrence and severity of an event, depending on the values of its trigger attributes.

Vertical Shortening Considerations in the 1 km Tall Jeddah Tower

  • Peronto, John;Sinn, Robert;Huizinga, Matthew
    • International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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    • v.6 no.1
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    • pp.21-31
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    • 2017
  • Jeddah Tower will be the first man-made structure to reach a kilometer in height upon its completion in 2019. From conception, it was clear that an all-concrete superstructure would present many advantages for a building of such unprecedented height and slenderness. An all-concrete structure, however, did present many challenges that needed to be addressed in the system arrangement and through comprehensive analysis and design, among them vertical shortening effects due to the time-dependent creep and shrinkage of concrete. This paper outlines and presents the engineering solutions developed by the authors regarding this complex concrete material phenomenon, while addressing the construction and regional challenges associated with realizing a concrete tower of this unprecedented scale.

Abnormality of GCR intensities measured by ground NMs in solar minimum of solar cycles 23/24

  • Lee, Eo-Jin;Yi, Yu
    • Bulletin of the Korean Space Science Society
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    • 2009.10a
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    • pp.26.1-26.1
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    • 2009
  • Many solar, interplanetary and geomagnetic activity parameters have 11-year cycle on the average in sync with solar sunspot number. The galactic cosmic ray (GCR) intensity measured by ground Neutron Monitor (NM) is one of those parameters showing the unprecedented activity levels in the current solar minimum (2008-2009) of solar cycles 23/24. We defined abnormality as the ratio of deviation from long term mean over mean amplitude of solar cycle change. The abnormality distribution map was drawn using all the data of NM stations available online. The implications of those unprecedented levels of GCR intensities of different cutoff rigidities will be discussed.

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Ginseng, a promising choice for SARS-COV-2: A mini review

  • Ratan, Zubair Ahmed;Mashrur, Fazla Rabbi;Runa, Nusrat Jahan;Kwon, Ki Woong;Hosseinzadeh, Hassan;Cho, Jae Youl
    • Journal of Ginseng Research
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    • v.46 no.2
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    • pp.183-187
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    • 2022
  • The current Covid-19 pandemic has changed the entire world and bought so many unprecedented challenges to the scientific community. More than 5 million people died due to the SARS-COV-2 outbreak. For many thousands of years, ginseng, the traditional herb has been used for various infectious diseases by traditional healers. Ginseng showed promising antiviral effects by modulating both natural and acquired immunity. Ginseng might be used as a potential therapeutic agent to prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection along with the vaccine. In this current review, we offer an alternative approach for SARS-COV-2 prevention during this unprecedented pandemic.