Cabot office weekly roundup – 21 September 2012

A meeting of the Cabot Press Gang started off the week. It’s good to know we will have some interesting new Cabot-related stories coming out from the faculties over the next couple weeks.

I have now posted the videos from the AXA Volcanoes and Society Research Day which was held back in May. You can view videos on our brand new YouTube channel with videos of presentations by the amazing Kathy Cashman, Katsu Goda, Caroline Williams, Paul Valdes, Susanna Jenkins, Jonathan Rougier, and David Pyle. I have also added the videos to the main Volcanoes and Society page on the website where you can also download the powerpoint presentations.

The magazine mock-ups came through from Dirty Design. We have three different designs to choose from which has been extremely contentious! I have taken the magazine to several different groups of people to gauge opinion. The press gang, press office, geography admin office, myself and Philippa all liked a bold design. The hydrology group, other members of geographical sciences and a couple PA’s like a less bold design. I have therefore decided to make a compromise between the two most popular designs. I’m really excited to see the finished article.

Today is the last day of Gemma Simpson, an administrator in Geographical Sciences. I for one am very sorry to see her go as she has supported Cabot in a lot of ways over the last year especially with regards to finding rooms for meetings! Very many thanks Gemma and good luck!

Converting probabilities between time-intervals

This is the first in an irregular sequence of snippets about some of the slightly more technical aspects of uncertainty and risk assessment. If you have a slightly more technical question, then please email me and I will try to answer it with a snippet. Suppose that an event has a probability of 0.015 (or 1.5%) of happening at least once in the next five years. Then the probability of the event happening at least once in the next year is 0.015 / 5 = 0.003 (or 0.3%), and the probability of it happening at least once in the next 20 years is 0.015 * 4 = 0.06 (or 6%). Here is the rule for scaling probabilities to different time intervals: if both probabilities (the original one and the new one) are no larger than 0.1 (or 10%), then simply multiply the original probability by the ratio of the new time-interval to the original time-interval, to find the new probability. This rule is an approximation which breaks down if either of the probabilities is greater than 0.1. For example

1-in-200 year events

You often read or hear references to the ‘1-in-200 year event’, or ‘200-year event’, or ‘event with a return period of 200 years’. Other popular horizons are 1-in-30 years and 1-in-10,000 years. This term applies to hazards which can occur over a range of magnitudes, like volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis, space weather, and various hydro-meteorological hazards like floods, storms, hot or cold spells, and droughts. ‘1-in-200 years’ refers to a particular magnitude. In floods this might be represented as a contour on a map, showing an area that is inundated. If this contour is labelled as ‘1-in-200 years’ this means that the current rate of floods at least as large as this is 1/200 /yr, or 0.005 /yr. So if your house is inside the contour, there is currently a 0.005 (0.5%) chance of being flooded in the next year, and a 0.025 (2.5%) chance of being flooded in the next five years. The general definition is this: ‘1-in-200 year magnitude is x’ = ‘the current rate for eve

Coconuts and climate change

Before pursuing an MSc in Climate Change Science and Policy at the University of Bristol, I completed my undergraduate studies in Environmental Science at the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. During my final year I carried out a research project that explored the impact of extreme weather events on coconut productivity across the three climatic zones of Sri Lanka. A few months ago, I managed to get a paper published and I thought it would be a good idea to share my findings on this platform. Climate change and crop productivity There has been a growing concern about the impact of extreme weather events on crop production across the globe, Sri Lanka being no exception. Coconut is becoming a rare commodity in the country, due to several reasons including the changing climate. The price hike in coconuts over the last few years is a good indication of how climate change is affecting coconut productivity across the country. Most coconut trees are no longer bearing fruits and thos

Cabot Institute for the Environment blog

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