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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 343 records · Page 19
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1983

The stability of ground ice in the equatorial region of Mars

The lifetime of an unreplenished layer of ground ice lying within 30 deg of the Martian equator was examined within the context of the existing data base on Martian regolith and climate. Data on the partial pressure of H2O in the Martian atmosphere and the range of mean annual temperatures indicated the ground ice would be restricted to latitudes poleward of 40 deg. However, the ground ice near the poles may be a relic from early Martian geologic times held in place by a thin layer of regolith. Consideration of twelve model pore size distributions, similar to silt- and clay-type earth soils, was combined with a parallel pore model of gaseous diffusion to calculate the flux of H2O molecules escaping from the subsurface ground ice layer. Martian equatorial ground ice was found to be influenced by the soil structure, the magnitude of the geothermal gradient, the climatic desorption of CO2 from the regolith. It is concluded that equatorial ground ice is present on Mars only if a process of replenishment is active.

Clifford, S. M.↗
DOE OSTI2020

Uncertainty Quantification of Global Net Methane Emissions From Terrestrial Ecosystems Using a Mechanistically Based Biogeochemistry Model

Quantification of methane (CH4) emissions from wetlands and its sinks from uplands is still fraught with large uncertainties. Here, a methane biogeochemistry model was revised, parameterized, and verified for various wetland ecosystems across the globe. The model was then extrapolated to the global scale to quantify the uncertainty induced from four different types of uncertainty sources including parameterization, wetland type distribution, wetland area distribution, and meteorological input. We found that global wetland emissions are 212 ± 62 and 212 ± 32 Tg CH4 year -1 (1Tg = 10 12 g) due to uncertain parameters and wetland type distribution, respectively, during 2000–2012. Using two wetland distribution data sets and three sets of climate data, the model simulations indicated that the global wetland emissions range from 186 to 212 CH 4 year -1 for the same period. The parameters were the most significant uncertainty source. After combining the global methane consumption in the range of -34 to -46 Tg CH 4 year -1 , we estimated that the global net land methane emissions are 149–176 Tg CH 4 year -1 due to uncertain wetland distribution and meteorological input. Spatially, the northeast United States and Amazon were two hotspots of methane emission, while consumption hotspots were in the Eastern United States and eastern China. During 1950–2016, both wetland emissions and upland consumption increased during El Niño events and decreased during La Niña events. This study highlights the need for more in situ methane flux data, more accurate wetland type, and area distribution information to better constrain the model uncertainty.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2021

Climate impacts associated with reduced diet diversity in children across nineteen countries

It is widely anticipated that climate change will negatively affect both food security and diet diversity. Diet diversity is especially critical for children as it correlates with macro and micronutrient intake important for child development. Despite these anticipated links, little empirical evidence has demonstrated a relationship between diet diversity and climate change, especially across large datasets spanning multiple global regions and with more recent climate data. Here we use survey data from 19 countries and more than 107 000 children, coupled with 30 years of precipitation and temperature data, to explore the relationship of climate to child diet diversity while controlling for other agroecological, geographic, and socioeconomic factors. We find that higher long-term temperatures are associated with decreases in overall child diet diversity, while higher rainfall in the previous year, compared to the long-term average rainfall, is associated with greater diet diversity. Examining six regions (Asia, Central America, North Africa, South America, Southeast Africa, and West Africa) individually, we find that five have significant reductions in diet diversity associated with higher temperatures while three have significant increases in diet diversity associated with higher precipitation. In West Africa, increasing rainfall appears to counterbalance the effect of rising temperature impacts on diet diversity. In some regions, the statistical effect of climate on diet diversity is comparable to, or greater than, other common development efforts including those focused on education, improved water and toilets, and poverty reduction. These results suggest that warming temperatures and increasing rainfall variability could have profound short- and long-term impacts on child diet diversity, potentially undermining widespread development interventions aimed at improving food security.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2025

Understanding Climate and Extreme Weather Events in the Greater New York Area

The goal of this project is to create a framework for modeling extreme events using climate information for risk assessment in the Greater New York City (NYC) region. The central research question we addressed was how best can we use information from historical climate data and numerical models of the climate system to estimate changing risks of rainfall extremes at specific locations – starting with the NYC region as a testbed.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
NASA NTRS1991

The NASA master directory quick reference guide

The NASA Master Directory (MD) is a free, online, multidisciplinary directory of space and Earth science data sets (NASA and non-NASA data) that are of potential interest to the NASA-sponsored research community. The MD contains high-level descriptions of data sets, other data systems and archives, and campaigns and projects. It provides mechanisms for searching for data sets by important criteria such as geophysical parameters, time, and spatial coverage. The MD also provides information on ordering the data. In order to simplify the process of finding more detailed information or accessing online data, the MD provides automatic connections to a number of data systems such as the NASA Climate Data System, the Planetary Data System, the NASA Ocean Data System, the Pilot Land Data System, and others. The MD also provides general information about many data systems, data centers, and coordinated data analysis projects. It represents the first major step in the Catalog Interoperability project, whose objective is to enable researchers to quickly and efficiently identity, obtain information about, and get access to space and Earth science data.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS1989

The NASA master directory: Quick reference guide

This is a quick reference guide to the NASA Master Directory (MD), which is a free, online, multidisciplinary directory of space and Earth science data sets (NASA and non-NASA data) that are of potential interest to the NASA-sponsored research community. The MD contains high-level descriptions of data sets, other data systems and archives, and campaigns and projects. It provides mechanisms for searching for data sets by important criteria such as geophysical parameters, time, and spatial coverage, and provides information on ordering the data. It also provides automatic connections to a number of data systems such as the NASA Climate Data System, the Planetary Data System, the NASA Ocean Data System, the Pilot Land Data System, and others. The MD includes general information about many data systems, data centers, and coordinated data analysis projects, It represents the first major step in the Catalog Interoperability project, whose objective is to enable researchers to quickly and efficiently identify, obtain information about, and get access to space and Earth science data. The guide describes how to access, use, and exit the MD and lists its features.

Satin, Karen↗
NASA NTRS2017

NASA Wrangler: Automated Cloud-Based Data Assembly in the RECOVER Wildfire Decision Support System

NASA Wrangler is a loosely-coupled, event driven, highly parallel data aggregation service designed to take advantageof the elastic resource capabilities of cloud computing. Wrangler automatically collects Earth observational data, climate model outputs, derived remote sensing data products, and historic biophysical data for pre-, active-, and post-wildfire decision making. It is a core service of the RECOVER decision support system, which is providing rapid-response GIS analytic capabilities to state and local government agencies. Wrangler reduces to minutes the time needed to assemble and deliver crucial wildfire-related data.

decision support↗
NASA NTRS2020

Uncertainty Quantification of Global Net Methane Emissions From Terrestrial Ecosystems Using a Mechanistically Based Biogeochemistry Model

Quantification of methane (CH4) emissions from wetlands and its sinks from uplands is still fraught with large uncertainties. Here, a methane biogeochemistry model was revised, parameterized, and verified for various wetland ecosystems across the globe. The model was then extrapolated to the global scale to quantify the uncertainty induced from four different types of uncertainty sources including parameterization, wetland type distribution, wetland area distribution, and meteorological input. We found that global wetland emissions are 212 ± 62 and 212 ± 32 Tg CH4 year−1 (1Tg = 1012 g) due to uncertain parameters and wetland type distribution, respectively, during 2000–2012. Using two wetland distribution data sets and three sets of climate data, the model simulations indicated that the global wetland emissions range from 186 to 212 CH4 year−1 for the same period. The parameters were the most significant uncertainty source. After combining the global methane consumption in the range of −34 to −46 Tg CH4 year−1, we estimated that the global net land methane emissions are 149–176 Tg CH4 year−1 due to uncertain wetland distribution and meteorological input. Spatially, the northeast United States and Amazon were two hotspots of methane emission, while consumption hotspots were in the Eastern United States and eastern China. During 1950–2016, both wetland emissions and upland consumption increased during El Niño events and decreased during La Niña events. This study highlights the need for more in situ methane flux data, more accurate wetland type, and area distribution information to better constrain the model uncertainty.

wetland methane emission↗
NASA NTRS2023

Robustness of Gridded Precipitation Products for Vietnam Basins using the Comprehensive Assessment Framework of Rainfall

The use of satellite–based precipitation products (SPPs) have become increasingly prevalent as key inputs to provide regional rainfall for improving hydrological simulations in data–spare regions. This study introduces a new approach – Comprehensive Assessment Framework of Rainfall (CAFR) to evaluate six satellite–based precipitation products (SPPs) for eleven basins with different sizes across Vietnam (2007–2015). These SPPs include the Global Precipitation Mission (GPM) Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for Global Precipitation Measurement Final run Version 6 (GPM IMERGF V6), Multi–Source Weighted–Ensemble Precipitation (MSWEP) V2.2, Soil Moisture to Rain (SM2RAIN) – Advanced SCATterometer (ASCAT) V1.5, Asian Precipitation–Highly–Resolved Observational Data Integration Towards Evaluation (APHRODITE) V1901, Climate Hazards group Infrared Precipitation with Stations (CHIRPS) V2.0, and Precipitation Estimation from Remotely Sensed Information using Artificial Neural Networks (PERSIANN) – Climate Data Record (CDR) V1.0. With the proposed CAFR: (1) IMERGF is suggested to have the best performance overall, especially when simulating flood peaks; (2) SM2RAIN–ASCAT demonstrates the best skills in metrics related to the dry season; (3) For streamflow simulations, SPPs' performance is sensitive to basin size, with larger basins showing better performance skills. In this study, we demonstrate the capability of our proposed framework to better understand SPP applications in hydrological modeling.

Comprehensive Assessment Framework of Rainfall (CA↗
DOE OSTI2023

Factors influencing mode choice of adults with travel-limiting disability

Introduction: Despite the plethora of research devoted to analyzing the impact of disability on travel behavior, not enough studies have investigated the varying impact of social and environmental factors on the mode choice of people with disabilities that restrict their ability to use transportation modes efficiently. This research gap can be addressed by investigating the factors influencing the mode choice behavior of people with travel-limiting disabilities, which can inform the development of accessible and sustainable transportation systems. Additionally, such studies can provide insights into the social and economic barriers faced by this population group, which can help policymakers to promote social inclusion and equity. Method: This study utilized a Random Parameters Logit model to identify the individual, trip, and environmental factors that influence mode selection among people with travel-limiting disabilities. Here, using the 2017 National Household Travel Survey data for New York State, which included information on respondents with travel-limiting disabilities, the analysis focused on a sample of 8,016 people. In addition, climate data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration were integrated as additional explanatory variables in the modeling process. Results: The results revealed that people with disabilities may be inclined to travel longer distances walking in the absence of suitable accommodation facilities for other transportation modes. Furthermore, people were less inclined to walk during summer and winter, indicating a need to consider weather conditions as a significant determinant of mode choice. Moreover, low-income people with disabilities were more likely to rely on public transport or walking. Conclusion: Based on this study’s findings, transportation agencies could design infrastructure and plan for future expansions that is more inclusive and accessible, thus catering to the mobility needs of people with travel-limiting disabilities.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
DOE OSTI2014

Causes and Predictability of the 2012 Great Plains Drought

Central Great Plains precipitation deficits during May-August 2012 were the most severe since at least 1895, eclipsing the Dust Bowl summers of 1934 and 1936. Drought developed suddenly in May, following near-normal precipitation during winter and early spring. Its proximate causes were reduction in atmospheric moisture transport into the Great Plains from the Gulf of Mexico. Processes that would provide air mass lift and condensation were mostly absent, including a lack of frontal cyclones in late spring followed by suppressed deep convection in mid-late summer owing to large-scale subsidence and atmospheric stabilization. In this sense, the drought resulted mostly from natural variations in weather. Seasonal forecasts did not predict the summer 2012 central Great Plains drought development, which therefore arrived without early warning. Climate simulations and empirical analysis suggest that neither ocean surface temperatures nor changes in greenhouse gases induced a substantial reduction in summertime rainfall over the central Great Plains during 2012. Diagnosis of historical data, climate simulation data, and seasonal forecasts paint a picture of an extreme drought that may not have had extreme forcing as its cause and that had limited long lead predictability. Yet, diagnosis of the retrospective climate simulations also reveals a regime shift toward warmer and drier summertime Great Plains conditions during the recent decade, most probably due to natural decadal variability. As a consequence, the probability for a severe summer Great Plains drought may have increased 5-fold in the last decade compared to the 1980s and 1990s, and the models show that the so-called tail-risk for severe drought was heightened in summer 2012.

predictability, 2012, great, plains, drought↗
DOE OSTI2015

Characterization of the Dynamics of Climate Systems and Identification of Missing Mechanisms Impacting the Long Term Predictive Capabilities of Global Climate Models Utilizing Dynamical Systems Approaches to the Analysis of Observed and Modeled Climate

The goal of this research was to apply fractional and non-linear analysis techniques in order to develop a more complete characterization of climate change and variability for the oceanic, sea ice and atmospheric components of the Earth System. This research applied two measures of dynamical characteristics of time series, the R/S method of calculating the Hurst exponent and Renyi entropy, to observational and modeled climate data in order to evaluate how well climate models capture the long-term dynamics evident in observations. Fractional diffusion analysis was applied to ARGO ocean buoy data to quantify ocean transport. Self organized maps were applied to North Pacific sea level pressure and analyzed in ways to improve seasonal predictability for Alaska fire weather. This body of research shows that these methods can be used to evaluate climate models and shed light on climate mechanisms (i.e., understanding why something happens). With further research, these methods show promise for improving seasonal to longer time scale forecasts of climate.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
NASA NTRS1986

Data needs and data bases for climate studies

Two complementary global digital data bases of vegetation and land use, compiled at 1 deg resolution from published sources for use in climate studies, are discussed. The data bases were implemented, in several individually tailored formulations, in a series of climate related applications including: land-surface prescriptions in three-dimensional general circulation models, global biogeochemical cycles (CO2, methane), critical-area mapping for satellite monitoring of land-cover change, and large-scale remote sensing of surface reflectance. The climate applications are discussed with reference to data needs, and data availability from traditional and remote sensing sources.

Matthews, Elaine↗
DOE OSTI2015

Climate Science Performance, Data and Productivity on Titan

Climate Science models are flagship codes for the largest of high performance computing (HPC) resources, both in visibility, with the newly launched Department of Energy (DOE) Accelerated Climate Model for Energy (ACME) effort, and in terms of significant fractions of system usage. The performance of the DOE ACME model is captured with application level timers and examined through a sizeable run archive. Performance and variability of compute, queue time and ancillary services are examined. As Climate Science advances in the use of HPC resources there has been an increase in the required human and data systems to achieve programs goals. A description of current workflow processes (hardware, software, human) and planned automation of the workflow, along with historical and projected data in motion and at rest data usage, are detailed. The combination of these two topics motivates a description of future systems requirements for DOE Climate Modeling efforts, focusing on the growth of data storage and network and disk bandwidth required to handle data at an acceptable rate.

Mayer, Benjamin W↗
NASA NTRS1999

Interactive Sectoring and Animation of Global Change Data

In order to analyze and share results of global change climate data sets, scientists require a venue in which to exchange their results. The perfect medium for these collaborative efforts is the world wide web. Intuitive and efficient user interfaces, and background processes were developed at the Global Hydrology and Climate Center to interactively view weather satellite, radar, global temperature anomaly, and model output data using the world wide web. These tools combine scripts, Java, and C code, which allows the end user to easily interact with data, to create high resolution sector images, and sectored animation sequences. This paper examines the architecture and interfaces which were designed at the Global Hydrology and Climate Center and how they are used for collaborative research.

Meyer, Paul J.↗
NASA NTRS2014

MERRA Analytic Services: Meeting the Big Data Challenges of Climate Science Through Cloud-enabled Climate Analytics-as-a-service

Climate science is a Big Data domain that is experiencing unprecedented growth. In our efforts to address the Big Data challenges of climate science, we are moving toward a notion of Climate Analytics-as-a-Service (CAaaS). We focus on analytics, because it is the knowledge gained from our interactions with Big Data that ultimately produce societal benefits. We focus on CAaaS because we believe it provides a useful way of thinking about the problem: a specialization of the concept of business process-as-a-service, which is an evolving extension of IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS enabled by Cloud Computing. Within this framework, Cloud Computing plays an important role; however, we it see it as only one element in a constellation of capabilities that are essential to delivering climate analytics as a service. These elements are essential because in the aggregate they lead to generativity, a capacity for self-assembly that we feel is the key to solving many of the Big Data challenges in this domain. MERRA Analytic Services (MERRAAS) is an example of cloud-enabled CAaaS built on this principle. MERRAAS enables MapReduce analytics over NASAs Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA) data collection. The MERRA reanalysis integrates observational data with numerical models to produce a global temporally and spatially consistent synthesis of 26 key climate variables. It represents a type of data product that is of growing importance to scientists doing climate change research and a wide range of decision support applications. MERRAAS brings together the following generative elements in a full, end-to-end demonstration of CAaaS capabilities: (1) high-performance, data proximal analytics, (2) scalable data management, (3) software appliance virtualization, (4) adaptive analytics, and (5) a domain-harmonized API. The effectiveness of MERRAAS has been demonstrated in several applications. In our experience, Cloud Computing lowers the barriers and risk to organizational change, fosters innovation and experimentation, facilitates technology transfer, and provides the agility required to meet our customers' increasing and changing needs. Cloud Computing is providing a new tier in the data services stack that helps connect earthbound, enterprise-level data and computational resources to new customers and new mobility-driven applications and modes of work. For climate science, Cloud Computing's capacity to engage communities in the construction of new capabilies is perhaps the most important link between Cloud Computing and Big Data.

Data Analytics↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Explore Information Content Efficiently from Current and Future Hyperspectral Satellite Missions using a Spectral Fingerprinting Method

Hyperspectral remote sensors from current and future missions provide measurements of the Top of Atmosphere (TOA) radiance or reflectance spectra with high information content. For example, the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS), together with the Cross-track Infrared Sounder (CrIS), and the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI) have provided more than 20 years radiance measurements with thousands of spectral channels. These measurements will be continued for the next two decades with the same or more advanced hyperspectral sensors. The upcoming missions such as NASA’s CLARREO Pathfinder (CPF) and ESA’s TRUTHS will provide unprecedented accurate TOA hyperspectral radiance measurements in solar spectral region. Traditional ways to derive Climate Data Records (CDRs) from these measurements are performing spatial and temporal averages of the retrieved Level-2 products. However, it is a time-consuming process to generate decades of Level-2 data from Level-1 data. Furthermore, the differences in Level-2 algorithms used for different satellite sensors will introduce errors in derived CDRs. In this presentation, we will describe a spectral fingerprinting method to generate high-quality CDRs directly from spatiotemporally averaged Level-1 data. By using consistent radiative kernels which contain the spectral information of various atmospheric and surface CDRs, we can reduce the errors due to algorithm inconsistency. Additionally, the spectral fingerprinting method reduces the time needed to generate CDRs by more than three orders of magnitude. This makes it easy to reprocess CDRs once the Level-1 data from different satellites have been improved via either re-calibrations or inter-satellite calibrations. We will present results of applying spectral fingerprinting method to 20-years of AIRS and CrIS data. The resulting CDRs include: 1) vertical profiles of atmospheric temperature and water vapor, 2) cloud properties such as optical depth, effective size, and height, 3) vertical profiles or column amounts for atmospheric trace gases such as O3 and CO, and 4) surface emissivity spectra and skin temperatures. These CDRs will be publicly available at NASA GES DISC in late 2024. The same fingerprinting method is planned to be applied to future CPF and TRUTHS data for solar spectral region.

hyperspectral remote sensing↗