Surge Episodes Research Articles (Page 1)

Sea level rise (SLR) and increased urbanisation of coastal areas have exacerbated coastal flood threats, making them even more severe in important cultural sites. In this context, the role of hard coastal defences such as promenades and embankments needs to be carefully assessed. Here, a thorough investigation is conducted in Grado, one of the most significant coastal and historical towns in the Friuli Venezia Giulia region of Italy. Grado is located on a barrier island of the homonymous lagoon, the northernmost of the Adriatic Sea, and is prone to flooding from both the sea and the back lagoon. The mean and maximum sea levels from the historical dataset of Venice (1950–2023) were analysed using the Gumbel-type distribution, allowing for the identification of annual extremes based on their respective return periods (RPs). Grado and Trieste sea level datasets (1991–2023) were used to calibrate the statistics of the extremes and to calculate the local component (subsidence) of relative SLR. The research examined the occurrence of annual exceedance of the minimum threshold water level of 110 cm, indicating Grado’s initial notable marine ingression. The study includes a detailed analysis of flood impacts on the urban fabric, categorised into sectors based on the promenade elevation on the lagoon side, the most vulnerable to flooding. Inundated areas were obtained using a high-resolution digital terrain model through a GIS-based technique, assessing both the magnitude and exposure of the urban environment to flood risk due to storm surges, also considering relative SLR projections for 2050 and 2100. Currently, approximately 42% of Grado’s inhabited area is inundated with a sea level threshold value of 151 cm, which occurs during surge episodes with a 30-year RP. By 2100, with an optimistic forecast (SSP1-2.6) of local SLR of around +53 cm, the same threshold will be met with a surge of ca. 100 cm, which occurs once a year. Thus, extreme levels linked with more catastrophic events with current secular RPs will be achieved with a multi-year frequency, inundating more than 60% of the urbanized area. Grado, like Venice, exemplifies trends that may impact other coastal regions and historically significant towns of national importance. As a result, the generated simulations, as well as detailed analyses of urban sectors where coastal flooding may occur, are critical for medium- to long-term urban planning aimed at adopting proper adaptation measures.

The aims of this scoping review were to: 1) explore factors driving surgical ICU (SICU) admission decisions, 2) provide an environmental scan of SICU admission practices, and 3) identify underexamined domains relevant for SICU triage, admission, and discharge inquiries. Embase, PubMed, and Medline were queried from inception to April 18, 2024, for English-language peer-reviewed studies related to adult SICU admission criteria and decision-making; neonatal ICU, PICU, veterinary ICU, and military ICU data and gray literature were excluded. Studies were not limited by design. Following duplicate removal, 363 of the initial 625 abstracts remained. After content screening, 54 abstracts remained topic aligned. Full-text review identified 44 articles appropriate for analysis. Abstracted data addressed SICU structure, function, findings, and potential future directions. Most included studies (n = 23, 52%) focused on identifying risk factors for SICU admission or risk factors for the need for SICU admission, including demographics, comorbidities, and procedural specifics. Admission protocol evaluation studies were less common (n = 5, 11%), but offered promise in reducing unnecessary admissions using preoperative or postoperative interventions. Future inquiry domains included admission and discharge protocol development (n = 17, 39%), risk factors for ICU admission or the need for ICU admission (n = 16, 36%), multicenter studies (n = 16, 36%), additional or specific patient populations (n = 15, 34%), prospective studies (n = 14, 32%), costs (n = 6, 14%), and implementation of embedded clinical decision-support aids to inform SICU triage decision-making (n = 2, 5%). No included studies presented results regarding SICU discharge decision-making or ICU stress adaptations relevant during surge episodes. Research on SICU triage decision-making primarily focuses at admission risk factor discovery, with less emphasis on protocol evaluation and implementation practices. Future research should focus on refining existing SICU triage approaches that include discharge and surge-based decision-making coupled with deployable clinical decision-support aids.

Abstract Given our poor understanding on mechanisms of stratospheric intrusions (SI) upon near‐surface ozone (O3) surges, predicting the SI‐induced O3 pollution pose inherent difficulties. Taking a wintertime O3 surge episode over the Sichuan Basin (SCB) as an example, we find SI contribute 47.8% to near‐surface O3 levels and reveal the underlying mechanisms. Tropopause folding nearly extends to the deep atmospheric boundary layer over the Tibetan Plateau (TP) due to topographic forcing, driving stratospheric O3 penetration into the TP's near‐surface. The intruded O3 is subsequently transported into the downstream SCB by strong downdrafts along the TP's leeward slope. Interestingly, the mountain‐plains solenoid between the TP and the SCB strengthens the downward intrusions of O3 during both daytime and nighttime, further amplifying the contribution of SI to the SCB's near‐surface O3 levels. This unique mechanism of O3 surges could provide new insights for the forecast of unexpected nocturnal high‐O3 episodes.

What is the role of the real exchange rate in the performance of the tradable sector in a developing economy specialised in natural resource-related activities? In this article, we will answer this question, summarising the main results of three related papers of our own, which focus on the heterogeneity effects of the real exchange rate (RER) level on the export and import performance of different sectors in Argentina. The first paper employs the Mean Group method to estimate the RERelasticities by individual products. Its main result highlights a wide range of heterogeneous responses of exports and imports to RER movements at the individual product level, being RER-elasticities in differentiated products and labour-intensive manufacturing goods substantially larger than those of primary and homogeneous products. This finding critically impacts the value of aggregate RERelasticity –weighted by Argentina’s trade basket shares– given that Argentina’s economic structure is heavily specialised in primary and homogeneous products. The second and third paper takes advantage of the large devaluation of 2002 to study the development of new tradable sectors during a period of stable and competitive real exchange rate (SCRER). The third one studies the occurrence of import substitution episodes. Their main conclusions are: (i) the peak of the sectoral export surge and import substitution episodes occurred during the SCRER period; (ii) they are positively related to the labour intensity of sectors and their relatedness to already competitive sectors; (iii) sectors with export surges episodes show sign of hysteresis effects with a long-lasting increase of their export level after the end of the SCRER period; (iv) export surge episodes are positively correlated to sectors that have import substitution episodes during the SCRER period. The three papers highlight that the RER movements have heterogeneous effects on different sectors and that not every sector can take advantage of the higher tradable profitability. JEL Classification: F43; F14; O11

Abstract We study the role of undervaluation of currency exchange rates in triggering African product export surges. Over the period 1995–2017, 96 episodes are identified for 41 African countries from a basket of their primary and manufactured exported goods (149 products, 4‐digit HS code). We compute country‐product specific real exchange rate misalignments, that allow testing the hypothesis that undervaluation drives competitiveness and thus export surges. The complementary log–log model confirms that product‐specific undervaluation promotes the occurrence of surge episodes. This effect proves robust to the way we define export episodes, the introduction of covariates in the model and the use of the Relogit as an alternative estimator for rare events.

Real exchange rate and export surge episodes: What sectors take advantage of the real exchange rate stimulus?

The advantages derived from the use of Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are well-established: they are cost-effective and easy to use. There are numerous environmental applications, particularly when monitoring contexts characterized by rapid morphological changes and high rates of sediment transport, such as coastal areas. In this paper, three different case studies of survey and monitoring with high resolution and accuracy obtained through the use of UAVs are presented; these concern transgressive coastal sites. Results allow for the definition and quantification of coastal landforms and processes, including: (i) The anatomy of a parabolic dune and the rate of landward migration that could interfere with a tourist settlement; (ii) The mode and timing of morphological recovery and realignment of a barrier island overwashed by storm surge episodes; and (iii) The potential flood risk of a progradational spit that is a nesting site of a species of migratory breeding birds of conservation concern. The results demonstrate and confirm that, through a good coupling of drone-sensed quality data and accurate topographic control, quantitative estimates that are useful in assessing the impacts of natural processes involving both human and natural assets can be obtained.

This article classifies the extreme gross foreign direct investment (FDI) flow episodes into four types. It empirically investigates the determinants of each type by estimating complementary log-log (Clog–log) and probit regressions for 50 developing economies over the period 1990–2018. We document that domestic GDP growth rate, inflation, institutional quality, and human capital are the major empirical drivers of FDI flows. The world uncertainty index (WUI) is negatively associated with FDI inflows toward developing countries. Moreover, we find that the domestic GDP growth rate is positively associated with the probability of having FDI surge and FDI flight. In contrast, inflation is negatively linked with FDI surge episodes. These findings provide a better understanding of the empirical determinants of FDI flows to and from developing countries. The findings also help to understand the behavior of FDI extreme movements.

Abstract This study investigates excessive movements in capital flows called surges or bonanzas. Contrary to the previous work that extensively uses ad‐hoc measures and discretionary thresholds; we adopt a distinctive methodology to detect capital flow surges based on right‐tailed unit root tests. Generalized supremum augmented Dickey‐Fuller (GSADF) proposed by Phillips et al. (2015) is successfully applied to identify asset price bubbles. Exploiting the technical and conceptual similarities in the formations of asset price bubbles and capital flow surges, we perform the GSADF procedure using quarterly net capital flows data from 43 developing countries. The advantages of this procedure are twofold: it can distinguish the behaviour of volatility and explosiveness and diagnose multiple surges in a series. We identified 727 individual surges, 130 different surge episodes, and 4 global capital flow waves over the periods of 1995–2017. Compared with the existing measures, the application of this surge‐detection technique provides a useful tool as a data‐driven method with no need for discretionary thresholds. We also investigate the factors triggering capital flow surges, employing the Fernandez‐Val and Weidner (2016) bias‐adjusted fixed effects probit model and find that domestic factors play a dominant role on the surge occurrences in developing countries.

We examine the role of external debt financing (EDF) in shaping the credit cycle and output fluctuations in nine major emerging economies. We show that sharp fluctuations in EDF flows are significantly associated with credit surge and stop episodes in emerging market economies (EMEs). However the association is asymmetric in nature - a stop episode in EDF flows is more likely to bring about a credit stop episode compared to an EDF surge episode. We extend our framework to analyze the joint spillover of EDF flows and credit cycles on business cycle fluctuations in these EMEs. We find that EDF flows and credit together have a strong association with output growth. After dividing the sample into EDF surge and stop phases, we find evidence of asymmetric spillover of credit on output growth. Credit decline during EDF stop episode leads to a larger decline in GDP growth relative to the impact of an increase in credit growth during EDF surges. Our analysis points to the vulnerability of credit cycles of EMEs to the sharp movement in EDF flows which in turn is largely synchronized with external financing conditions. The strong negative spillover of EDF stop phases on the business cycle is a cause

ABSTRACT This study investigates regional housing market connectedness among the 16 first-tier administrative divisions in Korea and 25 districts in Seoul, the capital city. Time-varying parameter vector autoregressive model is used to capture time-varying nature of Diebold and Yilmaz (2014) connectedness network. Rapid increases in connectedness during the sample period are mostly associated with housing booms rather than downturns. The connectedness cycles for the whole country and for Seoul seem to diverge after the global financial crisis. During the 2006 and 2018 connectedness surge episodes, when housing booms were driven by the Seoul metropolitan area, Seoul and the surrounding Gyeonggi province had a strong influence on the whole country network. However, their impact was much weaker in 2010–2011 when the housing boom arose outside Seoul. The influence of Gangnam-3 districts in Seoul’s connectedness network is low overall, but tends to lead the total connectedness index by a few months.

Industrial countries and emerging markets economies (EMEs) have experienced a wild ride on gross capital inflows over the past 15 years. After reaching a record high in the run-up to the global financial crisis, they collapsed dramatically in 2008–9. As the world economy started to recover, global capital flows resumed at different speeds. Capital flows into EMEs recovered faster than those flows in industrial economies. This paper aims at understanding the drivers of these surges in gross inflows using quarterly data for 79 countries from 1975 to 2014. We find that domestic and external drivers have a significant explanatory power in driving surges of inflows. Domestic factors appear to play a significantly larger role in explaining surges into EMEs. Zooming in our findings shows that: (a) overvalued currencies rather than credit growth tend to attract massive capital inflows, (b) surges to either industrial countries or EMEs are driven by regional contagion, (c) strong growth and natural resource abundance are key to attract inflows of foreign capital into EMEs, (d) lower policy uncertainty about the global economy tend to trigger surge episodes, and (e) an increase in global risk aversion would precede the end of surges.

Investigating the relationship between financial liberalization and capital flow waves: A panel data analysis

Terrorist attack in Nice – The experience of general surgeons

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to consider the transition of surge episodes to stop episodes and differentiates between two types of surges, namely, surges that end in stops and surges that end in normal episodes.Design/methodology/approachPrevious studies show that surges end in output contractions, crises, and reversals of capital inflows. However, when one looks closely at the data, more than half of surges end in normal episodes at least four quarters following the last surge quarter.FindingsThe results show the varying significance of global and domestic factors correlated with the occurrence of surges leading to stops and the size of gross inflows during these two types of surges.Originality/valueThe findings highlight the importance of differentiating between these two types of surges as it leaves scope for policy design in safeguarding financial stability amidst surging capital inflows.

This paper looks into the transition of a surge episode to a stop episode and differentiates between two types of surges, namely surges that end in stops and surges that end in normal episodes. Previous studies on capital flows show that surges end in output contraction, crises, and reversals of capital inflows. However, when one looks closely at the data, more than half of surges end in normal episodes at least four quarters following the last surge quarter. This study focuses on global and domestic factors that strongly correlate with the transition of surges to either stop or normal episodes, as well as which factors correlate with the magnitude of gross inflows for these two types of surges. The results show that the higher likelihood of experiencing surges ending in stops is significantly correlated with lower global risk aversion and with higher domestic output gap. The estimates also indicate that surges ending in stops are different from surges ending in normal episodes. For instance, while global risk aversion and domestic credit are significant for both surges, larger gross capital inflows are significantly correlated with higher global commodity prices for surges ending in stops, but with lower commodity prices for surges ending in normal episodes.

We investigate in a sample of 53 emerging markets over 1980-2014 whether countries with open capital accounts are necessarily at the mercy of global events, or are able to take policy actions when receiving inflows to mitigate the impact of a subsequent reversal. Our analysis suggests that, while changes in global conditions have an important bearing on crisis susceptibility, countries that allow the buildup of macroeconomic and financial vulnerabilities during boom times, and which receive mostly debt flows, are significantly more likely to see capital inflow surge episodes end in a financial crisis.

We report on ice movements changes in the Horcones Inferior Glacier (HIG), a major debris-covered glacier located in the southern sector of Mt. Aconcagua, Central Andes of Argentina. The HIG has been characterized by outstanding surge phenomena in the recent past, with the last episode registered in 2003. After a surge episode, the surface becomes highly unstable, with continuous ice degradation. We studied the response of the glacier surface in the post-surge stagnation period, based on six semi-continuous Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) stations distributed along the main axis of the glacier. Kinematic GNSS profiles were acquired over the surface, aiming to strengthen the GNSS measurements of elevation change. Our results show a horizontal surface displacement from 0.4 cmd-1 to 2.7 cmd-1, and a 0.8 cmd-1 mean elevation reduction during the 2009-2014 period. GNSS profiles also show a velocity increase, ranging from -1.1 cmd-1 in 2012 to -1.8 cmd-1 in 2013. Changing surface velocities in the HIG may be related to the presence of a thick debris cover, in combination with faster glacier degradation due to thickness loss after the 2003 surge, and glacier-climate interaction.

ABSTRACTAt low latitudes, strong seasonal changes in cloud cover and precipitation largely control the mass balance of glaciers. Measurements of shortwave and longwave radiation fluxes reaching Zongo glacier, Bolivia (16°S, 5060 m asl), were analysed from 2005 to 2013 to investigate cloud radiative properties. Cloud shortwave attenuation and longwave emission were greater in the wet summer season (DJF) than in the dry winter season (JJA) probably because most DJF clouds were low warm cumulus associated with local convection, whereas JJA clouds were frequently altostratus associated with extra‐tropical perturbations. Solar irradiance was high all year round and cloud radiative forcing on down‐welling fluxes was strongly negative, with monthly averages ranging from ‐60 to ‐110 W m−2 from the dry to the wet season, respectively. In the wet season, high extraterrestrial solar irradiance and low shortwave transmissivity caused very negative cloud forcing despite the high longwave emissivity of convective clouds. Reanalysis of wind and geopotential height anomalies and outgoing longwave radiation satellite data were used to characterize the regional atmospheric circulation causing thick cloud covers (10% thickest clouds) during the dry (JJA), transition (SON), and wet (DJF) seasons. Around 87% (80%) of cloud events in JJA (SON) occurred during the incursion of low‐level southern wind from southern South America to the Bolivian Andes, which caused 2–3 days of cold surge episodes in the Cordillera Real. Around 13% of cloudy days in JJA were associated with high‐level low‐pressure conditions over the Chilean coast around 45°S, including cut‐off lows. In SON, 20% of cloudy days were associated with summer conditions, characterized by an active Bolivian High and moist air advection from the Amazon basin. In the wet season, only 46% of thick cloud events were associated with low‐level southern wind incursions, the other events being associated with the South American Monsoon.

This paper examines the determinants of surge and stop episodes in foreign loans using quarterly data from 55 countries covering 1990Q1 to 2011Q4. The estimation results show that, first, global, contagion and domestic factors are all significantly associated with both loan-led surge and stop episodes. Second, domestic factors are more relevant to stops than to surges and are associated more strongly with episodes in emerging countries than with those in advanced countries. Third, global risk and domestic growth shock are most consistent and important in predicting both types of episodes. Fourth, financial linkage is the most important contagion channel in the occurrence of loan-led episodes. Fifth, capital control is not a useful tool for avoiding either type of episode and may actually increase their likelihood. Finally, stops in emerging countries are strongly related to macroeconomic fundamentals such as inflation, current account balance, net foreign assets, real exchange rate, and previous occurrence of surge episodes. Our results strongly suggest that emerging countries with lower institutional quality levels are more likely to experience both surges and stops.