104,375 research outputs found
Research, Analysis and Insight into National Standards (RAINS) Project Final Report: National Standards and the Damage Done
No full textThis is the final report of the Research Analysis and Insight into National Standards (RAINS) project, a three-year study of the enactment of the National Standards policy in six diverse primary and intermediate schools. This report provides an overview discussion of the pros and cons of the National Standards policy as experienced by staff, children and parents in the RAINS schools. It summarises the policy and methodological background to the research and the findings of the two previous RAINS reports. The report is also being accompanied by online case studies and other data files
Research, Analysis and Insight into National Standards (RAINS) Project. Second Report: Understanding New Zealand’s Very Local National Standards
No full textThis is the second report of the Research, Analysis and Insight into National Standards (RAINS) project, a three-year study of the introduction of National Standards into New Zealand primary and intermediate schools
Research, Analysis and Insight into National Standards (RAINS) Project. First Report: Researching Schools’ Enactments of New Zealand’s National Standards Policy
No full textThis is the first report of the Research, Analysis and Insight into National Standards (RAINS) project, one year into a three-year study of the introduction of National Standards into New Zealand primary and intermediate schools
The Compensation mechanism in the rains model: the Norwegian targets for acidification.
No full textThe RAINS model is used to calculate cost minimising abatement policies subject to European-wide spatial restrictions on pollution. The principle for choosing environmental targets for the 1994 Oslo Protocol was closing a gap between benchmark- and critical loads for each grid with a uniform percentage. During the negotiations for the 1999 Gothenburg Protocol accumulated ecosystems exceedances was adapted as basis for gap closure, and overshooting of the constraints allowed as an option, provided compensation could be found within the same country. A theoretical discussion of this compensation mechanism is provided. A simulation study, using the full RAINS model, of the impact of different levels of targets for troublesome Norwegian grids is presented, and results in the form of changes in accumulated acidity excesses and costs for the participating countries are reported.Acid rain; RAINS; critical loads; gap closure; accumulated exceedances; compensation mechanism
An Economic Interpretation of the Compensation Mechanism in the RAINS Model.
No full textIn 1999 the optimization mode of the Regional Air Pollution Information and Simulation (RAINS) model was used to support international environmental negotiations on the Protocol to Abate Acidification, Eutrophication and Ground-level Ozone of the UN/ECE Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution and on the Directive for National Emission Ceilings of the Commission of the European Union. The optimization determines the cost-minimal set of emission reductions that bring acid deposition below user-specified constraints. In the original formulation of the optimization problem in the RAINS model, such deposition constraints were specified for each of the 750 grid cells in Europe, for which acid deposition is calculated, and emissions had to be reduced in such a way that all constraints are fully met. During the course of the negotiations it was recognized that, using such a formulation, deposition targets for individual grid cells might impose undue emission control burdens, which might not always be fully supported by verified scientific data. As a consequence, a "compensation" mechanism was developed, which introduces a certain spatial flexibility to the achievement of the deposition targets while maintaining the overall level of environmental achievements. This paper provides an economic interpretation of the compensation mechanism.
GCM simulations of the Indian Ocean dipole influence on East African rainfall: present and future.
No full textSix coupled GCMs are assessed in terms of their ability to simulate observed characteristics of East African rainfall, the Indian Ocean dipole and their temporal correlation. Model results are then used to analyze the future behaviour of rainfall and the DMI. All models simulate reasonably well the spatial distribution and variability of annual and seasonal rainfall over the 1961–1990 period. Model simulation of observed DMI characteristics is less consistent with observations, however, five models reproduce similar correlations to those observed between the DMI and East African short rains (SON). In the future, there are no clear inter-model patterns of rainfall or DMI behaviour. In this sample of models four (two) out of six simulate modest increases (decreases) in annual rainfall by the 2080s. For SON, three of the six models indicate a trend towards increasingly positive phase of the DMI, two indicate a decrease and one shows no substantial change
At the eye of the storm: Researching schools and their communities enacting National Standards. 2013 Herbison Lecture
No full textIt is with enormous pleasure that I deliver the 24th Herbison Lecture. I thank the NZARE Council for inviting me and I acknowledge those in the audience who have previously given the Herbison. Today I'm talking about my research and academic activism around National Standards and there's a nice circularity about giving this lecture in the South Island. It was at the NZARE conference in Christchurch back in 2007 that I gave my first conference paper on the National Standards, little knowing that responding to this policy would consume me for the next six years. But the RAINS project has been a high point of my career and as they say down here in the Mainland - "good things take time”. The paper I gave back in 2007 was called "The proposed National Standards for New Zealand's primary and intermediate pupils: Any better than national testing?" (Thrupp, 2007). It's a question we now have a few answers to I think.
In my lecture today I'm interested in developing the metaphor of the "eye of the storm" as a kind of refuge, a quiet place where you can get on and do some good work despite the academic and political storm that swirls around. So I offer a case study of someone trying to muddle through various academic issues and dealing with the difficult politics of doing policy-relevant research. I also want to get to the substantive findings of the final RAINS report that we are launching after my lecture today
Seasonal forecasting of East African short rains
No full textThe variability of East African short rains (October–December) has profound socioeconomic and environmental impacts on the region, making accurate seasonal rainfall predictions essential. We evaluated the predictability of East African short rains using model ensembles from the multi-system seasonal retrospective forecasts from the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). We assess the prediction skill for 1- to 5-month lead times using forecasts initialized in September for each year from 1993 to 2016. Although most models exhibit significant mean rainfall biases, they generally show skill in predicting OND (October–December) precipitation anomalies across much of East Africa. However, skill is low or absent in some northern and western parts of the focus area. Along the East African coasts near Somalia and over parts of the western Indian Ocean, models demonstrate skill throughout the late winter (up to December–February), likely due to the persistence of sea surface temperature anomalies in the western Indian Ocean. Years when models consistently outperform persistence forecasts typically align with the mature phases of El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and/or Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD). This latter mode, when tracked using the Dipole Mode Index, is generally able to predict the sign of the rainfall anomaly in all models. Despite East Africa’s proximity to the west pole of the IOD, the correlation between short rains and IOD maximizes when both east and west are considered. This finding confirms previous studies based on observational datasets, which indicate that broader-scale IOD variability associated with changes in the Walker Circulation, rather than local SST fluctuations, is the primary driver behind East African rainfall
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