The closed Lake Issyk-Kul as an indicator of global warming in Tien-Shan

Lake Issyk-Kul is the seventh deepest lake in the world situated inCentral Asiain theTien-ShanMountainsat the elevation of 1607 m above sea level. This area belongs toKyrgyzstan. From 1927 to 1997 the water level decreased by 3.4 m, and increased by 0.93 m from 1997 to 2011. The article analyzes the impact of the global warming on the Lake Issyk-Kul thermal regime and the components of its water balance: river discharge, precipitation, evaporation and lake level variations. It shows that the global warming has entailed the increase of the Lake Issyk-Kul water temperature down to the maximum depths, and river discharge increase due to the glaciers melting and the evaporation from the lake surface. The air temperature increase of 1 ℃ results in river discharge increas and lake level rise of 44 mm/year and surface evaporation increase of 88 mm/year. TheLakeIssyk-Kullevel increase after 1997, which takes place in the situation of global warming, was caused by the activation of the West air masses transport and increase of precipitation in autumn.

Numerical analysis of flow separation zone in a confluent meander bend channel

The flow pattern in the confluent meander bend channel under the conditions of different discharge ratios and junction angles is numerically simulated by means of the large eddy simulation（LES）, and the characteristics of the flow separation zone are analyzed. Numerical results are well validated by experimental data with a good agreement. Analysis of the vertical confinement shows that the turbulence within the separation zone can be characterized as quasi-2-D. Details of the separation zone characteristics are revealed as shown by mean velocity isolines. According to the analysis of numerical results, the length and the width of the separation zone generally increase with the increase of the discharge ratio and the junction angle. However, the width of the separation zone keeps substantially constant when the junction angle increases from 60 o to90o. The dimensionless shape of the separation zone is nearly the same for three discharge ratios and three junction angles. The formulas of the relative width and the relative length of the separation zone are obtained by means of the polynomial fit method.

An improved chaotic hybrid differential evolution for the short-term hydrothermal scheduling problem considering practical constraints

Short-term hydrothermal scheduling(STHTS) is a non-linear and complex optimization problem with a set of operational hydraulic and thermal constraints. Earlier, this problem has been addressed by several classical techniques; however, due to limitations such as non-linearity and non-convexity in cost curves, artificial intelligence tools based techniques are being used to solve the STHTS problem. In this paper an improved chaotic hybrid differential evolution(ICHDE) algorithm is proposed to find an optimal solution to this problem taking into account practical constraints. A self-adjusted parameter setting is obtained in differential evolution(DE) with the application of chaos theory, and a chaotic hybridized local search mechanism is embedded in DE to effectively prevent it from premature convergence. Furthermore, heuristic constraint handling techniques without any penalty factor setting are adopted to handle the complex hydraulic and thermal constraints. The superiority and effectiveness of the developed methodology are evaluated by its application in two illustrated hydrothermal test systems taken from the literature. The transmission line losses, prohibited discharge zones of hydel plants, and ramp rate limits of thermal plants are also taken into account. The simulation results reveal that the proposed technique is competent to produce an encouraging solution as compared with other recently established evolutionary approaches.