University of Southern Queensland

About: University of Southern Queensland is a education organization based out in Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Higher education. The organization has 3037 authors who have published 11241 publications receiving 234781 citations. The organization is also known as: USQ.

Is the long-run relationship between economic growth, electricity consumption, carbon dioxide emissions and financial development in Gulf Cooperation Council Countries robust?

Abstract: The relationship between carbon dioxide emissions, economic growth, electricity consumption and financial development in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries is investigated in this study using panel data for the period of 1980–2012. A number of econometric techniques: dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS), fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) and the dynamic fixed effect model (DFE) are applied in order to estimate the long-run relationship between the variables. The long-run relationship is found to be robust across these different econometric specifications. No significant short-run significant relationship was observed. Electricity consumption and economic growth have a positive long run relationship with carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions whilst a negative and significant relationship was found between CO2 emissions and financial development. The findings imply that electricity consumption and economic growth stimulate CO2 emissions in GCC countries while financial development reduces it. Granger causality results reveal that there is a bidirectional causal link between economic growth and CO2 emissions and a unidirectional causal link running from electricity consumption to CO2 emissions. However, there is no causal link between financial development and CO2 emissions. Also, impulse response and variance decomposition analysis outline forecasted impacts of economic growth and electricity consumption on future CO2 emissions.

Retrieving Cloud Characteristics from Ground-Based Daytime Color All-Sky Images

Abstract: A discussion is presented of daytime sky imaging and techniques that may be applied to the analysis of full-color sky images to infer cloud macrophysical properties. Descriptions of two different types of skyimaging systems developed by the authors are presented, one of which has been developed into a commercially available instrument. Retrievals of fractional sky cover from automated processing methods are compared to human retrievals, both from direct observations and visual analyses of sky images. Although some uncertainty exists in fractional sky cover retrievals from sky images, this uncertainty is no greater than that attached to human observations for the commercially available sky-imager retrievals. Thus, the application of automatic digital image processing techniques on sky images is a useful method to complement, or even replace, traditional human observations of sky cover and, potentially, cloud type. Additionally, the possibilities for inferring other cloud parameters such as cloud brokenness and solar obstruction further enhance the usefulness of sky imagers.