Search Results
Changes in crop yields and their variability at different levels of global warming
2018, Ostberg, Sebastian, Schewe, Jacob, Childers, Katelin, Frieler, Katja
An assessment of climate change impacts at different levels of global warming is crucial to inform the policy discussion about mitigation targets, as well as for the economic evaluation of climate change impacts. Integrated assessment models often use global mean temperature change (ΔGMT) as a sole measure of climate change and, therefore, need to describe impacts as a function of ΔGMT. There is already a well-established framework for the scalability of regional temperature and precipitation changes with ΔGMT. It is less clear to what extent more complex biological or physiological impacts such as crop yield changes can also be described in terms of ΔGMT, even though such impacts may often be more directly relevant for human livelihoods than changes in the physical climate. Here we show that crop yield projections can indeed be described in terms of ΔGMT to a large extent, allowing for a fast estimation of crop yield changes for emissions scenarios not originally covered by climate and crop model projections. We use an ensemble of global gridded crop model simulations for the four major staple crops to show that the scenario dependence is a minor component of the overall variance of projected yield changes at different levels of ΔGMT. In contrast, the variance is dominated by the spread across crop models. Varying CO2 concentrations are shown to explain only a minor component of crop yield variability at different levels of global warming. In addition, we find that the variability in crop yields is expected to increase with increasing warming in many world regions. We provide, for each crop model, geographical patterns of mean yield changes that allow for a simplified description of yield changes under arbitrary pathways of global mean temperature and CO2 changes, without the need for additional climate and crop model simulations.
Benchmark study using a multi-scale, multi-methodological approach for the petrophysical characterization of reservoir sandstones
2021, Haruzi, Peleg, Katsman, Regina, Halisch, Matthias, Waldmann, Nicolas, Spiro, Baruch
This paper presents a detailed description and evaluation of a multi-methodological petrophysical approach for the comprehensive multi-scale characterization of reservoir sandstones. The suggested methodology enables the identification of links between Darcy-scale permeability and an extensive set of geometrical, textural and topological rock descriptors quantified at the pore scale. This approach is applied to the study of samples from three consecutive sandstone layers of Lower Cretaceous age in northern Israel. These layers differ in features observed at the outcrop, hand specimen, petrographic microscope and micro-CT scales. Specifically, laboratory porosity and permeability measurements of several centimetre-sized samples show low variability in the quartz arenite (top and bottom) layers but high variability in the quartz wacke (middle) layer. The magnitudes of this variability are also confirmed by representative volume sizes and by anisotropy evaluations conducted on micro-CT-imaged 3-D pore geometries. Two scales of directional porosity variability are revealed in quartz arenite sandstone of the top layer: the pore size scale of ∼0.1 mm in all directions and ∼3.5 mm scale related to the occurrence of high- and low-porosity horizontal bands occluded by Fe oxide cementation. This millimetre-scale variability controls the laboratory-measured macroscopic rock permeability. More heterogeneous pore structures were revealed in the quartz wacke sandstone of the intermediate layer, which shows high inverse correlation between porosity and clay matrix in the vertical direction attributed to depositional processes and comprises an internal spatial irregularity. Quartz arenite sandstone of the bottom layer is homogenous and isotropic in the investigated domain, revealing porosity variability at a ∼0.1 mm scale, which is associated with the average pore size. Good agreement between the permeability upscaled from the pore-scale modelling and the estimates based on laboratory measurements is shown for the quartz arenite layers. The proposed multi-methodological approach leads to an accurate petrophysical characterization of reservoir sandstones with broad ranges of textural, topological and mineralogical characteristics and is particularly applicable for describing anisotropy and heterogeneity of sandstones on various rock scales. The results of this study also contribute to the geological interpretation of the studied stratigraphic units.
Bilinear pressure diffusion and termination of bilinear flow in a vertically fractured well injecting at constant pressure
2020, Pérez Donoso, Patricio-Ignacio, Ortiz Rojas, Adrián-Enrique, Meneses Rioseco, Ernesto
This work studies intensively the flow in fractures with finite hydraulic conductivity intersected by a well injecting or producing at constant pressure, either during an injection or production well test or the operation of a production well. Previous investigations showed that for a certain time the reciprocal of flow rate is proportional to the fourth root of time, which is characteristic of the flow regime known as bilinear flow. Using a 2D numerical model, we demonstrated that during the bilinear flow regime the transient propagation of isobars along the fracture is proportional to the fourth root of time. Moreover, we present relations to calculate the termination time of bilinear flow under constant injection or production well pressure as well as an expression for the bilinear hydraulic diffusivity of fractures with finite hydraulic conductivity. To determine the termination of bilinear flow regime, two different methods were used: (a) numerically measuring the transient flow rate in the well and (b) analyzing the propagation of isobars along the fracture. Numerical results show that for low dimensionless fracture conductivities the transition from bilinear flow to another flow regime (e.g., pseudo-radial flow) occurs before the pressure front reaches the fracture tip, and for high dimensionless fracture conductivities it occurs when the pressure front arrives at the fracture tip. Hence, this work complements and advances previous research on the interpretation and evaluation of well test analysis under different reservoir conditions. Our results aim to improve the understanding of the hydraulic diffusion in fractured geologic media, and as a result they can be utilized for the interpretation of hydraulic tests, for example to estimate the fracture length.