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At least 523 records · Page 29

Formation of Cirrus Clouds near the Tropical Tropopause and Their Implications for Stratospheric Humidity, Radiation Budgets, and Climate

Optically-thin cirrus clouds are a nearly ubiquitous feature of the transition layer between the tropical troposphere and stratosphere (known as the Tropical Tropopause Layer). Given their high occurrence frequency, these clouds have significant impacts on the Earth's radiation budget, with a particularly strong influence on the outgoing longwave radiation. Further, ice crystal growth and sedimentation in these clouds dehydrates air in the cold TTL to very low water vapor mixing ratios. Since transport from the troposphere into the stratosphere occurs primarily through the tropical tropopause and the Brewer-Dobson circulation transports air from the TTL throughout the stratosphere, cloud processes in the TTL cold trap essentially regulate the humidity of the entire stratosphere. It has been shown that even small changes in stratospheric humidity can have significant impacts on the Earth's radiation budget and climate, with magnitudes comparable to anthropogenic changes in greenhouse gases. The humidity of air crossing the TTL cold trap depends to first order on tropical tropopause temperatures, but also on deep convection reaching the TTL, large-scale transport (in balance with TTL radiative heating), atmospheric waves, and cloud microphysical processes. Gaps in our understanding of TTL transport and cloud processes motivated the NASA Airborne Tropical TRopopause EXperiment (ATTREX). ATTREX used the long-range (16,000 km), high-altitude (20 km) Global Hawk unmanned aircraft system equipped with twelve instruments measuring clouds, water vapor, meteorological conditions, chemical tracers, chemical radicals, and radiation. I will discuss the physics of TTL cirrus formation and the impact of these clouds on water vapor and radiation budgets, including new results emerging from the ATTREX measurements.

Jensen, Eric↗

Simulation of the modern arctic climate by the NCAR CCM1

The National Center of Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Community Climate Model Version 1 (CCM1's) simulation of the modern arctic climate is evaluated by comparing a five-year seasonal cycle simulation with the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) global analyses. The sea level pressure (SLP), storm tracks, vertical cross section of height, 500-hPa height, total energy budget, and moisture budget are analyzed to investigate the biases in the simulated arctic climate. The results show that the model simulates anomalously low SLP, too much storm activity, and anomalously strong baroclinicity to the west of Greenland and vice versa to the east of Greenland. This bias is mainly attributed to the model's topographic representation of Greenland. First, the broadened Greenland topography in the model distorts the path of cyclone waves over the North Atlantic Ocean. Second, the model oversimulates the ridge over Greenland, which intensifies its blocking effect and steers the cyclone waves clockwise around it and hence produces an artificial circum-Greenland trough. These biases are significantly alleviated when the horizontal resolution increases to T42. Over the Arctic basin, the model simulates large amounts of low-level (stratus) clouds in winter and almost no stratus in summer, which is opposite to the observations. This bias is mainly due to the location of the simulated SLP features and the negative anomaly of storm activity, which prevent the transport of moisture into this region during summer but favor this transport in winter. The moisture budget analysis shows that the model's net annual precipitation (P-E) between 70 deg N and the North Pole is 6.6 times larger than the observations and the model transports six times more moisture into this region. The bias in the advection term is attributed to the positive moisture fixer scheme and the distorted flow pattern. However, the excessive moisture transport into the Arctic basin does not solely result from the advection term. The contribution by the moisture fixer is as large as from advection. By contrast, the semi-Lagrangian transport scheme used in the CCM2 significantly improves the moisture simulation for this region; however, globally the error is as serious as for the positive moisture fixer scheme. Finally, because the model has such serious problems in simulating the present arctic climate, its simulations of past and future climate change for this region are questionable.

Bromwich, David H.↗

Remote Sensing for Agriculture, Ecosystems and Hydrology III

The science need for remotely sensed soil moisture has been well established in the hydrologic, climate change and weather forecasting communities. In spite of this well documented science need there are currently no satellite missions flying or funded to make this very important geophysical measurement. There have been a number of experimental aircraft programs that have demonstrated the feasibility of using long wave microwave sensors for estimating soil moisture. Unfortunately, this science driver, soil moisture, imposes very difficult technical requirements for a satellite sensor system. Global soil moisture is driven by a spatial resolution on the order of 20 to 30 km and measurements need to be taken every two to three days to be useful to the science community. The principal sensor to accomplish the soil moisture measurements is an L- band passive microwave radiometer and achieving the spatial and temporal requirements requires a very large antenna. This paper describes the several alternatives to solve the very large antenna challenge and still meet the radiometer sensitivity requirement. The paper also discusses the alternatives considered to obtain the necessary ancillary data for characterizing the surface roughness, the surface temperature and the attenuation affects of vegetation needed to derive the geophysical parameter. Finally, the paper discusses proposed missions and how well they will meet the science requirements.

Engman, Edwin T.↗

A 7.5-Year Dataset of SSM/I-Derived Surface Turbulent Fluxes Over Global Oceans

The surface turbulent fluxes of momentum, latent heat, and sensible heat over global oceans are essential to weather, climate and ocean problems. Wind stress is the major forcing for driving the oceanic circulation, while Evaporation is a key component of hydrological cycle and surface heat budget. We have produced a 7.5-year (July 1987-December 1994) dataset of daily, individual monthly-mean and climatological (1988-94) monthly-mean surface turbulent fluxes over the global oceans from measurements of the Special Sensor Microwave/Imager (SSM/I) on board the US Defense Meteorological Satellite Program F8, F10, and F11 satellites. It has a spatial resolution of 2.0x2.5 latitude-longitude. Daily turbulent fluxes are derived from daily data of SSM/I surface winds and specific humidity, National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) sea surface temperatures, and European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) air-sea temperature differences, using a stability-dependent bulk scheme. The retrieved instantaneous surface air humidity (with a 25-km resolution) IS found to be generally accurate as compared to the collocated radiosonde observations over global oceans. The surface wind speed and specific humidity (latent heat flux) derived from the F10 SSM/I are found to be -encrally smaller (larger) than those retrieved from the F11 SSM/I. The F11 SSM/I appears to have slightly better retrieval accuracy for surface wind speed and humidity as compared to the F10 SSM/I. This difference may be due to the orbital drift of the F10 satellite. The daily wind stresses and latent heat fluxes retrieved from F10 and F11 SSM/Is show useful accuracy as verified against the research quality in si -neasurerrients (IMET buoy, RV Moana Wave, and RV Wecoma) in the western Pacific warm pool during the TOGA COARE Intensive observing period (November 1992-February 1993). The 1988-94 seasonal-mean turbulent fluxes and input variables derived from FS and F11 SSM/Is show reasonable patterns related to seasonal variations of atmospheric general circulation. This dataset of SSM/I-derived turbulent fluxes is useful for climate studies, forcing of ocean models, and validation of coupled ocean-atmosphere global models and can be accessed through the NASA/GSFC Distributed Active Archive Center.

Chou, Shu-Hsien↗

Martian meteorology

Viking mission results concerning the structure and dynamics of the Martian atmosphere are reviewed. The large-scale variability of pressure, temperature, and zonally averaged wind at the Lander sites is described, and small-scale phenomena involving the boundary layer and internal gravity waves are discussed. Observational evidence for the existence of transient planetary-scale waves, forced quasi-stationary waves, and thermal tides on Mars is examined. Atmospheric dynamics and properties of dust storms are considered, with emphasis on dust properties and distribution, the time evolution of planetwide dust storms, and dust-storm genesis and decay. Attention is also given to the nature of past Martian climates, the sizes and composition of volatile reservoirs, and volatile escape from the atmosphere.

Leovy, C. B.↗

Systematically tracking the hourly progression of large wildfires using GOES satellite observations

Abstract. In the western United States, prolonged drought, a warming climate, and historical fuel buildup have contributed to larger and more intense wildfires as well as to longer fire seasons. As these costly wildfires become more common, new tools and methods are essential for improving our understanding of the evolution of fires and how extreme weather conditions, including heat waves, windstorms, droughts, and varying levels of active-fire suppression, influence fire spread. Here, we develop the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES)-Observed Fire Event Representation (GOFER) algorithm to derive the hourly fire progression of large wildfires and create a product of hourly fire perimeters, active-fire lines, and fire spread rates. Using GOES-East and GOES-West geostationary satellite detections of active fires, we test the GOFER algorithm on 28 large wildfires in California from 2019 to 2021. The GOFER algorithm includes parameter optimizations for defining the burned-to-unburned boundary and correcting for the parallax effect from elevated terrain. We evaluate GOFER perimeters using 12 h data from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS)-derived Fire Event Data Suite (FEDS) and final fire perimeters from the California's Fire and Resource Assessment Program (FRAP). Although the GOES imagery used to derive GOFER has a coarser resolution (2 km at the Equator), the final fire perimeters from GOFER correspond reasonably well to those obtained from FRAP, with a mean Intersection-over-Union (IoU) of 0.77, in comparison to 0.83 between FEDS and FRAP; the IoU indicates the area of overlap over the area of the union relative to the reference perimeters, in which 0 is no agreement and 1 is perfect agreement. GOFER fills a key temporal gap present in other fire tracking products that rely on low-Earth-orbit imagery, where perimeters are available at intervals of 12 h or longer or at ad hoc intervals from aircraft overflights. This is particularly relevant when a fire spreads rapidly, such as at maximum hourly spread rates of over 5 km h−1. Our GOFER algorithm for deriving the hourly fire progression using GOES can be applied to large wildfires across North and South America and reveals considerable variability in the rates of fire spread on diurnal timescales. The resulting GOFER product has a broad set of potential applications, including the development of predictive models for fire spread and the improvement of atmospheric transport models for surface smoke estimates. The resulting GOFER product has a broad set of potential applications, including the development of predictive models for fire spread and the improvement of atmospheric transport models for surface smoke estimates (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8327264, Liu et al., 2023).

Geology↗

Projected increase in summer heat-dome-like stationary waves over Northwestern North America

Heat-dome-like stationary waves often lead to extreme heat events, such as the unprecedented heatwave in Northwestern North America during the summer of 2021. However, future changes in summer stationary waves over Northwestern North America and the underlying driving factors remain unclear. Here, we investigate the projected changes in the anticyclonic stationary wave circulation over Northwestern North America using data from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 and diagnose the circulation changes using a stationary wave model. Our findings reveal a significant 95% increase in the summer stationary wave amplitude over Northwestern North America under the high-emission scenario in 2080–2099 relative to 1995–2014. The response is mainly driven by the diabatic heating changes over the tropical Pacific which induce a Rossby wave source in the northeastern tropical Pacific, and further supported by a northward expanded waveguide in North America, both enhancing wave activity flux into the Northwestern North America. The heat-dome-like stationary wave anomaly is expected to heighten the heatwave risk over the region.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

A Network of Surface Pressure Observations to Constrain Aerosol Forcing in Mars Climate Models

The evolving distribution of radiatively active dust and water ice clouds plays a major role in modulating the seasonal and interannual variation in the thermal forcing of the Martian atmosphere. Thermal tides are the global-scale atmospheric response to the diurnally varying thermal forcing due to aerosol heating within the atmosphere and radiative and convective heat transfer from the surface. The tide includes westward propagating (sun-synchronous) waves driven in response to solar heating, as well as nonmigrating waves that result from zonal variations in the thermotidal forcing caused by variations in topography and surface thermal properties and in the distribution of aerosols (dust and water ice clouds).

R. J. Wilson↗

Effect of the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation on the Madden Julian Oscillation Teleconnections in the Southern Hemisphere

The Madden Julian Oscillation (MJO) is the main source of intraseasonal variability in the tropics. MJO modulates rainfall in remote areas in the Southern Hemisphere by exciting tropical and extratropical wave trains. We use newly released reanalysis data to analyze how the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation (QBO) can influence the MJO's effects over the Southern Hemisphere, focusing on precipitation anomalies over South America. The anomalies in the intensity of the South Atlantic Convergence Zone (SACZ) and precipitation over Southeastern South America during MJO phases 1 and 4 are intensified during the easterly QBO. The extratropical wave train excited by the anomalous convection over the maritime continent during MJO phase 4 is affected by the QBO, with a stronger, better-defined pattern during westerly QBO. The conclusions are supported by a perturbation experiment of a case study, conducted using a high-top atmospheric global climate model where the QBO and MJO are controlled.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

Future Response of Coastal Wetlands to Environmental Stresses: Algorithm Comparison of Numerical Models

Coastal wetlands are a critical component of the earth system that strongly influence the global water and biogeochemical cycles. They are also likely important sentinel of climate change. Because eco-geomorphological processes have long been recognized to be important for coastal wetland survival under accelerated sea-level rise (SLR), many eco-geomorphology models have been developed to assess the impact of climate change on coastal wetlands. Although these models differ substantially in complexity and numerical methods, few studies have investigated the algorithm-level uncertainties in these models. In this study, we developed a multiple-algorithm model framework of coastal wetlands that represents coastal hydrodynamics (such as water level, significant wave height and bottom shear stress) and four eco-geomorphological processes: mineral accretion, organic matter accretion, storm surge erosion and landward migration. We validated the model at three representative coastal wetland sites (Venice Lagoon, Plum Island Estuary and Hunter Estuary) for hydrodynamics, mineral accretion and organic matter accretion. Through model-data comparison, we showed that the model can well capture the dynamics of hydrodynamical and eco-geomorphological conditions in the study sites. Importantly, analysis of the multiple-algorithm simulations suggests that differences in the process representation of mineral and organic matter accretion may contribute to the recent contradicting predictions of coastal wetland evolution under accelerated SLR.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Arctic Ocean Hydroacoustics

As the Arctic warms and loses its perennial ice cover, it is becoming more attractive for a variety of human uses. Hydroacoustic monitoring of this activity will grow in importance over the coming years and decades. Changes to the physical environment affect acoustic propagation and noise, with ramifications for our ability to detect and locate events and activities of interest. In this report, we use two long-term data sets from the Beaufort Sea, western Arctic Ocean, to determine how acoustic propagation conditions and seismic source detections are impacted by the changing environment: 1) oceanographic observations from ice-tethered profilers, and 2) passive acoustic recordings from a hydrophone. We find that changes to Beaufort Sea thermohaline stratification is stabilizing a subsurface duct, leading to more focused acoustic energy arrivals. Detections of catalogued submarine earthquakes show geographic differences in signal strength between seismic and acoustic waves. Signal strength increases with earthquake magnitude, but relationships to other source and path factors are less clear. Ambient noise also has clear seasonal patterns in the Arctic, with relatively low noise in the spring, higher noise near 1 Hz in summer, and higher noise near 10 Hz in winter. Climate change is expected to modify these seasonal noise patterns, impacting event detection. Future work will further investigate the mechanisms of ice effects on sound and couple acoustic modeling to an Earth System Model.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Rossby waves in a fluctuating zonal mean flow

The effects of the zonal mean wind variability on the energy propagation of a stationary Rossby wave in a barotropic nondivergent atmosphere are studied. It is shown that the random nature of the zonal wind fluctuations do not allow Rossby wave energy to propagate from its energy source. The mechanism for this effect is strongly dependent on the spatial resolution at which the zonal mean flow is assumed to be known. Some speculations are offered on the relation between this mechanism and the systematic error of some low-resolution climate models.

Pandolfo, Lionel↗

Process Drivers, Inter-model Spread, and a Path Forward: What Do We Know About Arctic Amplification?

Over the recent decades, rapid changes have been observed in the Arctic resulting from enhanced surface warming in the Arctic relative to the rest of the globe, a phenomenon called Arctic Amplification. While surface-based amplification of Arctic warming in response to increased CO2 has been established. The driving mechanisms, relevant processes, and the relative roles of local and remote mechanisms to Arctic Amplification remain unclear. Research over the last decade has made it clear that coupling between the atmosphere, sea ice, and ocean play a key role in Arctic Amplification. This presentation summarizes recent research on the fundamental role that atmosphere-sea ice-ocean interactions and energy exchanges play in driving Arctic Amplification, how these interactions manifest as radiative climate feedbacks, and how these processes influence the differences in the projected Arctic climate change across CMIP5 and 6. We hypothesize that models that simulate larger warming do so by generating a larger local atmospheric circulation response that more effectively redistributes energy drawn from the ocean in sea ice retreat regions Arctic-wide and contributing to a larger increase in downwelling long wave radiation. This process is also fundamentally tied to the Arctic lapse rate feedback.

Patrick Charles Taylor↗

Process drivers, inter-model spread, and a path forward: What do we know about Arctic Amplification?

Over the recent decades, rapid changes have been observed in the Arctic resulting from enhanced surface warming in the Arctic relative to the rest of the globe, a phenomenon called Arctic Amplification. While surface-based amplification of Arctic warming in response to increased CO2 has been established. The driving mechanisms, relevant processes, and the relative roles of local and remote mechanisms to Arctic Amplification remain unclear. Research over the last decade has made it clear that coupling between the atmosphere, sea ice, and ocean play a key role in Arctic Amplification. This presentation summarizes recent research on the fundamental role that atmosphere-sea ice-ocean interactions and energy exchanges play in driving Arctic Amplification, how these interactions manifest as radiative climate feedbacks, and how these processes influence the differences in the projected Arctic climate change across CMIP5 and 6. We hypothesize that models that simulate larger warming do so by generating a larger local atmospheric circulation response that more effectively redistributes energy drawn from the ocean in sea ice retreat regions Arctic-wide and contributing to a larger increase in downwelling long wave radiation. This process is also fundamentally tied to the Arctic lapse rate feedback.

Patrick C. Taylor↗

Application of Local Discretization Methods in the NASA Finite-Volume General Circulation Model

We present the basic ideas of the dynamics system of the finite-volume General Circulation Model developed at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center for climate simulations and other applications in meteorology. The dynamics of this model is designed with emphases on conservative and monotonic transport, where the property of Lagrangian conservation is used to maintain the physical consistency of the computational fluid for long-term simulations. As the model benefits from the noise-free solutions of monotonic finite-volume transport schemes, the property of Lagrangian conservation also partly compensates the accuracy of transport for the diffusion effects due to the treatment of monotonicity. By faithfully maintaining the fundamental laws of physics during the computation, this model is able to achieve sufficient accuracy for the global consistency of climate processes. Because the computing algorithms are based on local memory, this model has the advantage of efficiency in parallel computation with distributed memory. Further research is yet desirable to reduce the diffusion effects of monotonic transport for better accuracy, and to mitigate the limitation due to fast-moving gravity waves for better efficiency.

Yeh, Kao-San↗

Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere (AIM)

The overall goal of the Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere (AIM) experiment is to resolve why Polar Mesospheric Clouds form and why they vary. By measuring PMCs and the thermal, chemical and dynamical environment in which they form, we will quanti@ the connection between these clouds and the meteorology of the polar mesosphere. In the end, this will provide the basis for study of long-term variability in the mesospheric climate and its relationship to global change. The results of AIM will be a rigorous validation of predictive models that can reliably use past PMC changes and present trends as indicators of global change. The AIM goal will be achieved by measuring PMC extinction, brightness, spatial distribution, particle size distributions, gravity wave activity, dust influx to the atmosphere and precise, vertical profile measurements of temperature, H20, C&, 0 3 , C02, NO. and aerosols. These data can only be obtained by a complement of instruments on an orbiting spacecraft (S/C).

Source record↗

Radiometric Modeling and Calibration of the Geostationary Imaging Fourier Transform Spectrometer (GIFTS)Ground Based Measurement Experiment

The ultimate remote sensing benefits of the high resolution Infrared radiance spectrometers will be realized with their geostationary satellite implementation in the form of imaging spectrometers. This will enable dynamic features of the atmosphere s thermodynamic fields and pollutant and greenhouse gas constituents to be observed for revolutionary improvements in weather forecasts and more accurate air quality and climate predictions. As an important step toward realizing this application objective, the Geostationary Imaging Fourier Transform Spectrometer (GIFTS) Engineering Demonstration Unit (EDU) was successfully developed under the NASA New Millennium Program, 2000-2006. The GIFTS-EDU instrument employs three focal plane arrays (FPAs), which gather measurements across the long-wave IR (LWIR), short/mid-wave IR (SMWIR), and visible spectral bands. The GIFTS calibration is achieved using internal blackbody calibration references at ambient (260 K) and hot (286 K) temperatures. In this paper, we introduce a refined calibration technique that utilizes Principle Component (PC) analysis to compensate for instrument distortions and artifacts, therefore, enhancing the absolute calibration accuracy. This method is applied to data collected during the GIFTS Ground Based Measurement (GBM) experiment, together with simultaneous observations by the accurately calibrated AERI (Atmospheric Emitted Radiance Interferometer), both simultaneously zenith viewing the sky through the same external scene mirror at ten-minute intervals throughout a cloudless day at Logan Utah on September 13, 2006. The accurately calibrated GIFTS radiances are produced using the first four PC scores in the GIFTS-AERI regression model. Temperature and moisture profiles retrieved from the PC-calibrated GIFTS radiances are verified against radiosonde measurements collected throughout the GIFTS sky measurement period. Using the GIFTS GBM calibration model, we compute the calibrated radiances from data collected during the moon tracking and viewing experiment events. From which, we derive the lunar surface temperature and emissivity associated with the moon viewing measurements.

Tian, Jialin↗

Understanding Effective Diameter and Its Application to Terrestrial Radiation in Ice Clouds

The cloud property known as "effective diameter" or "effective radius", which in essence is the cloud particle size distribution (PSD) volume at bulk density divided by its projected area, is used extensively in atmospheric radiation transfer, climate modeling and remote sensing. This derives from the assumption that PSD optical properties can be uniquely described in terms of their effective diameter, D(sub e), and their cloud water content (CWC), henceforth referred to as the D(sub e)-CWC assumption. This study challenges this assumption, showing that while the D(sub e)-CWC assumption appears generally valid for liquid water clouds, it appears less valid for ice clouds in regions where (1) absorption is not primarily a function of either the PSD ice water content (IWC) or the PSD projected area, and (2) where wave resonance (i.e. photon tunneling) contributes significantly to absorption. These two regions often strongly coincide at terrestrial wavelengths when De less than ~60 m, which is where this D(sub e)-CWC assumption appears poorest. Treating optical properties solely in terms of D(sub e) and IWC may lead to errors up to 24%, 26% and 20% for terrestrial radiation in the window region regarding the absorption and extinction coefficients and the single scattering albedo, respectively. Outside the window region, errors may reach 33% and 42% regarding absorption and extinction. The magnitude and sign of these errors can change rapidly with wavelength, which may produce significant errors in climate modeling, remote sensing and other applications concerned with the wavelength dependence of radiation. Where the D(sub e)-CWC assumption breaks down, ice cloud optical properties appear to depend on D(sub e), IWC and the PSD shape. Optical property parameterizations in climate models and remote sensing algorithms based on historical PSD measurements may exhibit errors due to previously unknown PSD errors (i.e. the presence of ice artifacts due to the shattering of larger ice particles on the probe inlet tube during sampling). More recently developed cloud probes are designed to mitigate this shattering problem. Using realistic PSD shapes for a given temperature (and/or IWC) and cloud type may minimize errors associated with PSD shape in ice optics parameterizations and remote sensing algorithms. While this topic was investigated using two ice optics schemes (the Yang et al., 2005 database and the modified anomalous diffraction approximation, or MADA), a physical understanding of the limitations of the D(sub e)-IWC assumption was made possible by using MADA. MADA allows one to approximate the contribution of photon tunneling to absorption relative to other optical processes, which reveals that part of the error regarding the D(sub e)-IWC assumption can be associated with tunneling. By relating the remaining error to the radiation penetration depth in bulk ice (DELTA L) due to absorption, the domain where the D(sub e)-IWC assumption is weakest was described in terms of D(sub e) and DELTA L.

Mitchell, D. L.↗