Sharif Digital Repository

Spatial and temporal patterns of climatological seasonality, interannual variability, and phytoplankton phenology were estimated using satellite-derived ocean color chlorophyll-a data (Chl-a) 1998 to 2020 in the Persian Gulf from. Biogeography of phytoplankton seasonal and interannual climatology was determined using k-means multivariate clustering analysis applied on the Chl-a time-series data. As a result, two distinct regions were identified: one in the deep north and middle area (DZC) with a minimum value of Chl-a in April–July (0.62–0.76 mg m−3) and maximum in December–February (1.07–1.59 mg m−3), and the other in the north–west coastal areas and along the southwest-southern area (SZC)... 

One of the significant challenges in urbanization is the air pollution. This highlights the need of the green city concept with reconsideration of houses, factories, and traffic in a green viewpoint. The literature review confirms that this reconsideration for green space has a positive effect on the air quality of large cities and to reduce the air pollution. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the annual vegetation changes in the green space of Mashhad, Iran as a very populated city in the middle east to study the air pollution. To investigate the relationship between the air pollution and vegetation, the Landsat 8 satellite images for summer seasons of 2013–2019 were used to extract... 

Dust storms are a common phenomenon in arid and semi-arid regions in West Asia, which has led to high levels of PM10 in local and remote area. The Yazd city in Iran with a high PM10 level located downstream of dust sources in the Middle East and Central Asia. In this study, based on meteorological and PM10 monitoring data, backward trajectory modeling of air parcels related to dust events at Yazd station was performed using the HYSPLIT model in 2012–2019. The trajectory cluster analysis was used to identify the main dust transport pathways and wind systems. Three methods of Cross-referencing Backward Trajectory (CBT), Potential Source Contribution Function (PSCF) and Concentration Weighted... 

Measuring urban environmental performance supports understanding and improving the livability and sustainability of a city. Creating a more livable and attractive environment facilitates a greater shift to active and greener transport modes. Two key aspects, among many others, that determine the environmental performance of an urban area are greenery and noise. This study aims to map street-level greenery and traffic noise using emerging data sources including crowd-sourced mobile phone-based data and street-level imagery data in Sydney, Australia. Results demonstrate the applicability of emerging data sources and the presented advanced techniques in capturing the seasonal variations in... 

Ground-coupled ejector cooling (GCEC) systems have been introduced to solve the air-coupled ejector cooling (ACEC) systems problems. To date, no research study is dedicated to compare the GCEC and the ACEC systems and determine the relative payback period of the GCEC system vs. the ACEC system. Furthermore, almost all the previous studies simulated the GCEC systems by elementary models. Therefore, a comprehensive simulation is conducted to assess the techno-economic performance of a GCEC system. The model consists of the ejector and the borehole heat exchanger submodels. The first section of the results compares the ACEC system and the GCEC system during a cooling season. The seasonal... 

Precipitation (P), plant water use, and evaporation from the soil surface control the travel time of streamflow (Q) and evapotranspiration (ET) in a complex way. However, the impact of soil moisture and energy availability on the travel time distribution (TTD) of evaporated and transpired waters are yet less understood. In this study, we investigate how the seasonal variability of P and ET in terms of phase shift and rate influences the temporal dynamics of TTDs. To this end, we choose four contrasting climate types described as in-phase P and ET, out-of-phase P and ET, year-round constant P with seasonal ET, and year-round constant ET with seasonal P. We use a physically-based hydrological... 

Fine particulate matter characterized as PM2.5 is the most important criteria air pollutant in the city of Tehran. Tehran is one of the most polluted cities of the Middle East based on annual mean PM2.5 concentrations. Tehran emission inventory shows the large contribution of mobile sources to the total particles. PM2.5 source apportionment studies show large fraction of black carbon (BC) in the total mass of PM2.5, especially during the cold seasons. BC is the product of incomplete combustion that is mainly derived from diesel engines and rich-burned gasoline carburetor engines on scooters and light-duty vehicles. The present study shows the results of a large experimental campaign in which... 

There is limited evidence for short-term association between mortality and ambient air pollution in the Middle East and no study has evaluated exposure windows of about a month prior to death. We investigated all-cause non-accidental daily mortality and its association with fine particulate matter (PM2.5), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), and the Air Quality Index (AQI) from March 2011 through March 2014 in the megacity of Tehran, Iran. Generalized additive quasi-Poisson models were used within a distributed lag linear modeling framework to estimate the cumulative effects of PM2.5, NO2, and the AQI up to a lag of 45 days. We further conducted multi-pollutant models and also stratified the analyses by... 

The accuracy of five soft computing techniques was assessed for the prediction of monthly streamflow of the Gilgit river basin by a cross-validation method. The five techniques assessed were the feed-forward neural network (FFNN), the radial basis neural network (RBNN), the generalised regression neural network (GRNN), the adaptive neuro fuzzy inference system with grid partition (Anfis-GP) and the adaptive neuro fuzzy inference system with subtractive clustering (Anfis-SC). The interaction between temperature and streamflow was considered in the study. Two statistical indexes, mean square error (MSE) and coefficient of determination (R2), were used to evaluate the performances of the... 

Oil spills are serious environmental issues that potentially can cause adverse effects on marine ecosystems. In some marine areas, like the Baltic Sea, there is a large number of wrecks from the first half of the 20th century, and recent monitoring and field work have revealed release of oil from some of these wrecks. The risk posed by a wreck is governed by its condition, hazardous substances contained in the wreck and the state of the surrounding environment. Therefore, there is a need for a common standard method for estimating the risks associated with different wrecks. In this work a state-of-the-art model is presented for spatial and stochastic risk assessment of oil spills from... 

General Circulation Models (GCMs) are advanced tools for impact assessment and climate change studies. Previous studies show that the performance of the GCMs in simulating climate variables varies significantly over different regions. This study intends to evaluate the performance of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5) GCMs in simulating temperature and precipitation over Iran. Simulations from 37 GCMs and observations from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) were obtained for the period of 1901–2005. Six measures of performance including mean bias, root mean square error (RMSE), Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE), linear correlation coefficient (r), Kolmogorov-Smirnov... 

The current study was designed to assess the association between temporal variations in urban PM2.5 chemical composition, sources, and the oxidative stress and inflammatory response in an alveolar macrophage (AM) model. A year-long sampling campaign collected PM2.5 samples at the Sharif University in Tehran, Iran. PM-induced reactive oxygen species (ROS) production was measured both with an acellular dithiothreitol consumption assay (DTT-ROS; ranged from 2.1 to 9.3 nmoles min−1 m−3) and an in vitro macrophage-mediated ROS production assay (AM-ROS; ranged from 125 to 1213 μg Zymosan equivalents m−3). The production of tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α; ranged from ~60 to 518 pg TNF-α m−3)... 

Currently PM2.5 is a major air pollution concern in Tehran, Iran due to frequent high levels and possible adverse impacts. In this study, which is the first of its kind to take place in Tehran, composition and sources of PM2.5 and carbonaceous aerosol were determined, and their seasonal trends were studied. In this regard, fine PM samples were collected every six days at a residential station for one year and the chemical constituents including organic marker species, metals, and ions were analyzed by chemical analysis. The source apportionment was performed using organic molecular marker-based CMB receptor modeling. Carbonaceous compounds were the major contributors to fine particulate mass... 

General Circulation Models (GCMs) are advanced tools for impact assessment and climate change studies. Previous studies show that the performance of the GCMs in simulating climate variables varies significantly over different regions. This study intends to evaluate the performance of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5) GCMs in simulating temperature and precipitation over Iran. Simulations from 37 GCMs and observations from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) were obtained for the period of 1901–2005. Six measures of performance including mean bias, root mean square error (RMSE), Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE), linear correlation coefficient (r), Kolmogorov-Smirnov... 

Frequent air pollution episodes have been reported for Tehran, Iran, mainly because of critically high levels of fine particulate matter (PM2.5). The composition and sources of these particles are poorly known, so this study aims to identify the major components and heavy metals in PM2.5along with their seasonal trends and associated sources. 24-hour PM2.5samples were collected at a main residential station every 6 days for a full year from February 2014 to February 2015. The samples were analyzed for ions, organic carbon (including water-soluble and insoluble portions), elemental carbon (EC), and all detectable elements. The dominant mass components, which were determined by means of... 

This paper addresses the challenge of improving the performance of heat pumps (HPs) in cold-climate conditions by applying refrigerant mixtures. The potential benefits of implementing R-32/CO2 zeotropic refrigerant mixtures in three different residential air-source HPs for cold climates are studied. The cases considered are conventional residential HP, HP with a variable mixture control system, and HP with a variable compressor speed. The seasonal performance of a heating system with these air-source HPs, supplemented with an auxiliary electric heater, is studied in the cold-climate city of Montreal, Canada. To this aim, a detailed screening HP model previously developed is modified and... 

Understanding the behavior and estimating the magnitude of floods with specific recurrence intervals are important tasks for various applications such as flood protection strategies. Fractal analysis has proven useful in characterization of flood frequency behavior. We employ a systematic fractal approach which enables dividing streamflow data into different behavior regimes and, in particular, identifying flood regimes. Since seasonality is a key factor in flood-formation scenarios, we incorporate this concept in our analysis through generating two separate streamflow data sets for summer and winter, and next performing associated fractal analysis on each. To illustrate our approach and see... 

Lead-acid battery is a storage technology that is widely used in photovoltaic (PV) systems. Battery charging and discharging profiles have a direct impact on the battery degradation and battery loss of life. This study presents a new 2-model iterative approach for explicit modelling of battery degradation in the optimal operation of PV systems. The proposed approach consists of two models: namely, economic model and degradation model which are solved iteratively to reach the optimal solution. The economic model is a linear programming optimisation problem that calculates the optimal hourly battery use profile based on an assumed value of the battery degradation cost. The degradation model,... 

This Regular evaluation and analysis of river quality helps accurate management to reach acceptable quality. In this study, water quality indices (WQI) method applied to evaluate quality of Jajrood River which is one of the main sources of Tehran drinking water. It helps to subsidize management actions in Jajrood watershed. Sampling carried out for 9 years during 2001-2010 in 10 stations along the river in wet and dry stations to identify water quality and the main source of pollution. Results show water quality in all stations classifies as medium according to National Sanitation Foundation (NSF) and water quality index in wet season is better than the corresponding value in dry seasons.... 

Because of the recent frequent observations of major dust storms in southwestern cities in Iran such as Ahvaz, and the importance of the ionic composition of particulate matters regarding their health effects, source apportionment, etc., the present work was conducted aiming at characterizing the ionic composition of total suspended particles (TSP) and particles on the order of ∼10 μm or less (PM10) during dust storms in Ahvaz in April-September 2010. TSP and PM10 samples were collected and their ionic compositions were determined using an ion chromatography. Mean concentrations of TSP and PM10 were 1,481.5 and 1,072.9 μg/m 3, respectively. Particle concentrations during the Middle Eastern...