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NASA NTRS2011

Climate Change Impacts and Responses: Societal Indicators for the National Climate Assessment

The Climate Change Impacts and Responses: Societal Indicators for the National Climate Assessment workshop, sponsored by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for the National Climate Assessment (NCA), was held on April 28-29, 2011 at The Madison Hotel in Washington, DC. A group of 56 experts (see list in Appendix B) convened to share their experiences. Participants brought to bear a wide range of disciplinary expertise in the social and natural sciences, sector experience, and knowledge about developing and implementing indicators for a range of purposes. Participants included representatives from federal and state government, non-governmental organizations, tribes, universities, and communities. The purpose of the workshop was to assist the NCA in developing a strategic framework for climate-related physical, ecological, and socioeconomic indicators that can be easily communicated with the U.S. population and that will support monitoring, assessment, prediction, evaluation, and decision-making. The NCA indicators are envisioned as a relatively small number of policy-relevant integrated indicators designed to provide a consistent, objective, and transparent overview of major variations in climate impacts, vulnerabilities, adaptation, and mitigation activities across sectors, regions, and timeframes. The workshop participants were asked to provide input on a number of topics, including: (1) categories of societal indicators for the NCA; (2) alternative approaches to constructing indicators and the better approaches for NCA to consider; (3) specific requirements and criteria for implementing the indicators; and (4) sources of data for and creators of such indicators. Socioeconomic indicators could include demographic, cultural, behavioral, economic, public health, and policy components relevant to impacts, vulnerabilities, and adaptation to climate change as well as both proactive and reactive responses to climate change. Participants provided inputs through in-depth discussion in breakout sessions, plenary sessions on break-out results, and several panels that provided key insights about indicators, lessons learned through experience with developing and implementing indicators, and thoughts on how the NCA could proceed to develop indicators for the NCA.

Kenney, Melissa A.↗
NASA NTRS2011

March 2011 Physical Indicators Workshop Summary Report

The National Climate Assessment (NCA) convened a workshop on Physical Climate Indicators from 29-30 March 2011, as part of a series on Monitoring Climate Change and its Impacts . The overarching goal of this workshop was to identify a few broad categories of potential physical climate indicators using a set of priorities developed by the NCA, and to provide a clear justification for how they would inform the Nation about climate change. Additional goals included providing input on the overall NCA framework for selecting the indicators and suggesting methodologies to construct indicators. Although one of the workshop goals was to address the status of current observational networks to support indicators, this was not a main focus of any single discussion. However, participants agreed with the NCA indicator vision that high quality data were needed to develop indicators, and generally focused on identifying indicator categories that current observation systems could support. The nearly 60 participants, primarily from Federal agencies, received a white paper in advance of the workshop that detailed the NCA vision for a coordinated suite of climate-related physical, ecological, and societal indicators. The intent of these national indicators of change is to develop a way to evaluate and communicate over time both the rate of change in impacts and the capacity to respond to climate drivers. These indicators will be tracked as a part of ongoing, long-term assessment activities, with adjustments as necessary to adapt to changing conditions and understanding. An initial framework was provided to workshop participants to ensure that everyone understood the audience, scope, and purpose of the indicators. A common lexicon was defined since indicator terminology varies widely. In addition, several potential approaches to grouping or categorizing the indicators were presented. Participants spent most of their time in small breakout groups with facilitators, working to address a common set of questions. The workshop was structured to start with the broadest issue and then focus down as the workshop progressed. The first breakout therefore solicited comments on the NCA indicator framework, followed by discussion of the potential approaches to organizing the physical climate indicators. Once several approaches were identified, the groups then worked to define specific measurements, or types of measurements, that could be used to create the indicators.

Roberts, Brent↗
NASA NTRS2016

Impacts of Extreme Events on Human Health

Increased Exposure to Extreme Events Key Finding 1: Health impacts associated with climate-related changes in exposure to extreme events include death, injury, or illness; exacerbation of underlying medical conditions; and adverse effects on mental health[High Confidence]. Climate change will increase exposure risk in some regions of the United States due to projected increases in the frequency and/or intensity of drought, wildfires, and flooding related to extreme precipitation and hurricanes [Medium Confidence].Disruption of Essential Infrastructure Key Finding 2: Many types of extreme events related to climate change cause disruption of infrastructure, including power, water, transportation, and communication systems, that are essential to maintaining access to health care and emergency response services and safeguarding human health [High Confidence].Vulnerability to Coastal Flooding Key Finding 3: Coastal populations with greater vulnerability to health impacts from coastal flooding include persons with disabilities or other access and functional needs, certain populations of color, older adults, pregnant women and children, low-income populations, and some occupational groups [High Confidence].Climate change will increase exposure risk to coastal flooding due to increases in extreme precipitation and in hurricane intensity and rainfall rates, as well as sea level rise and the resulting increases in storm surge.

floods↗
NASA NTRS2017

WCRP Task Team for the Intercomparison of Reanalyses (TIRA): Motivation and Progress

Reanalyses have proven to be an important resource for weather and climate related research, as well as societal applications at large. Several centers have emerged to produce new atmospheric reanalyses in various forms every few years. In addition, land and ocean communities are producing disciplinary uncoupled reanalyses. Current research and development in reanalysis is directed at (1) extending the length of reanalyzed period and (2) use of coupled Earth system models for climate reanalysis. While WCRPs involvement in the reanalyses communities through its Data Advisory Council (WDAC) has been substantial, for example in organizing international conferences on reanalyses, a central team of reanalyses expertise is not in place in the WCRP structure. The differences among reanalyses and their inherent uncertainties are some of the most important questions for both users and developers of reanalyses. Therefore, a collaborative effort to systematically assess and intercompare reanalyses would be a logical progression that fills the needs of the community and contributes to the WCRP mission. The primary charge to the TIRA is to develop a reanalysis intercomparison project plan that will attain the following objectives.1)To foster understanding and estimation of uncertainties in reanalysis data by intercomparison and other means 2)To communicate new developments and best practices among the reanalyses producing centers 3)To enhance the understanding of data and assimilation issues and their impact on uncertainties, leading to improved reanalyses for climate assessment 4)To communicate the strengths and weaknesses of reanalyses, their fitness for purpose, and best practices in the use of reanalysis datasets by the scientific community. This presentation outlines the need for a task team on reanalyses, their intercomparison, the objectives of the team and progress thus far.

WDA↗
NASA NTRS2014

Use of the NASA Giovanni Data System for Geospatial Public Health Research: Example of Weather-Influenza Connection

The NASA Giovanni data analysis system has been recognized as a useful tool to access and analyze many different types of remote sensing data. The variety of environmental data types has allowed the use of Giovanni for different application areas, such as agriculture, hydrology, and air quality research. The use of Giovanni for researching connections between public health issues and Earths environment and climate, potentially exacerbated by anthropogenic influence, has been increasingly demonstrated. In this communication, the pertinence of several different data parameters to public health will be described. This communication also provides a case study of the use of remote sensing data from Giovanni in assessing the associations between seasonal influenza and meteorological parameters. In this study, logistic regression was employed with precipitation, temperature and specific humidity as predictors. Specific humidity was found to be associated (p 0.05) with influenza activity in both temperate and tropical climate. In the two temperate locations studied, specific humidity was negatively correlated with influenza; conversely, in the three tropical locations, specific humidity was positively correlated with influenza. Influenza prediction using the regression models showed good agreement with the observed data (correlation coefficient of 0.50.83).

public health↗
NASA NTRS2008

Impacts of the IBM Cell Processor to Support Climate Models

NASA is interested in the performance and cost benefits for adapting its applications to the IBM Cell processor. However, its 256KB local memory per SPE and the new communication mechanism, make it very challenging to port an application. We selected the solar radiation component of the NASA GEOS-5 climate model, which: (1) is representative of column physics (approximately 50% computational time), (2) has a high computational load relative to transferring data from and to main memory, (3) performs independent calculations across multiple columns. We converted the baseline code (single-precision, Fortran) to C and ported it with manually SIMDizing 4 independent columns and found that a Cell with 8 SPEs can process 2274 columns per second. Compared with the baseline results, the Cell is approximately 5.2X, approximately 8.2X, approximately 15.1X faster than a core on Intel Woodcrest, Dempsey, and Itanium2, respectively. We believe this dramatic performance improvement makes a hybrid cluster with Cell and traditional nodes competitive.

Zhou, Shujia↗
NASA NTRS2015

Ocean Heat and Carbon Uptake in Transient Climate Change: Identifying Model Uncertainty

Global warming on decadal and centennial timescales is mediated and ameliorated by the oceansequestering heat and carbon into its interior. Transient climate change is a function of the efficiency by whichanthropogenic heat and carbon are transported away from the surface into the ocean interior (Hansen et al. 1985).Gregory and Mitchell (1997) and Raper et al. (2002) were the first to identify the importance of the ocean heat uptakeefficiency in transient climate change. Observational estimates (Schwartz 2012) and inferences from coupledatmosphere-ocean general circulation models (AOGCMs; Gregory and Forster 2008; Marotzke et al. 2015), suggest thatocean heat uptake efficiency on decadal timescales lies in the range 0.5-1.5 W/sq m/K and is thus comparable to theclimate feedback parameter (Murphy et al. 2009). Moreover, the ocean not only plays a key role in setting the timing ofwarming but also its regional patterns (Marshall et al. 2014), which is crucial to our understanding of regional climate,carbon and heat uptake, and sea-level change. This short communication is based on a presentation given by A.Romanou at a recent workshop, Oceans Carbon and Heat Uptake: Uncertainties and Metrics, co-hosted by US CLIVARand OCB. As briefly reviewed below, we have incomplete but growing knowledge of how ocean models used in climatechange projections sequester heat and carbon into the interior. To understand and thence reduce errors and biases inthe ocean component of coupled models, as well as elucidate the key mechanisms at work, in the final section we outlinea proposed model intercomparison project named FAFMIP. In FAFMIP, coupled integrations would be carried out withprescribed overrides of wind stress and freshwater and heat fluxes acting at the sea surface.

periodic variations↗
NASA NTRS2014

Climate Change and Vector Borne Diseases on NASA Langley Research Center

Increasing global temperature, weather patterns with above average storm intensities, and higher sea levels have been identified as phenomena associated with global climate change. As a causal system, climate change could contribute to vector borne diseases in humans. Vectors of concern originate from the vicinity of Langley Research Center include mosquitos and ticks that transmit disease that originate regionally, nationwide, or from outside the US. Recognizing changing conditions, vector borne diseases propagate under climate change conditions, and understanding the conditions in which they may exist or propagate, presents opportunities for monitoring their progress and mitigating their potential impacts through communication, continued monitoring, and adaptation. Personnel comprise a direct and fundamental support to NASA mission success, continuous and improved understanding of climatic conditions, and the resulting consequence of disease from these conditions, helps to reduce risk in terrestrial space technologies, ground operations, and space research. This research addresses conditions which are attributed to climatic conditions which promote environmental conditions conducive to the increase of disease vectors. This investigation includes evaluation of local mosquito population count and rainfall data for statistical correlation and identification of planning recommendations unique to LaRC, other NASA Centers to assess adaptation approaches, Center-level planning strategies.

Cole, Stuart K.↗
NASA NTRS2002

Software Engineering Support of the Third Round of Scientific Grand Challenge Investigations: An Earth Modeling System Software Framework Strawman Design that Integrates Cactus and UCLA/UCB Distributed Data Broker

One of the most significant challenges in large-scale climate modeling, as well as in high-performance computing in other scientific fields, is that of effectively integrating many software models from multiple contributors. A software framework facilitates the integration task. both in the development and runtime stages of the simulation. Effective software frameworks reduce the programming burden for the investigators, freeing them to focus more on the science and less on the parallel communication implementation, while maintaining high performance across numerous supercomputer and workstation architectures. This document proposes a strawman framework design for the climate community based on the integration of Cactus, from the relativistic physics community, and UCLA/UCB Distributed Data Broker (DDB) from the climate community. This design is the result of an extensive survey of climate models and frameworks in the climate community as well as frameworks from many other scientific communities. The design addresses fundamental development and runtime needs using Cactus, a framework with interfaces for FORTRAN and C-based languages, and high-performance model communication needs using DDB. This document also specifically explores object-oriented design issues in the context of climate modeling as well as climate modeling issues in terms of object-oriented design.

Talbot, Bryan↗
NASA NTRS1998

From Crew Communication to Coordination: A Fundamental Means to an End

This viewgraph presentation describes the purposes and contexts of communication, factors which affect the interpretation of communication, and the advantages of effective, systematic communication to and from crews. Communication accomplishes information transfer, team/task management, shared problem solving and decision making, and establishment of the interpersonal climate. These accomplishments support outcomes: Technical task performance; CRM (crew resource management); Procedures and ATC (air traffic control); and Work/team atmosphere. The presentation lists various types of management inefficiency which can result from a lack of each of the four accomplishments. Communication skills are used within the following contexts: physical; social and organizational; task and operational; and speech and linguistic. Crew communication can be evaluated through investigation (case study), research (experimentation), and training.

Kanki, Barbara G.↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Communicating Metrics of Land Surface Temperature Variability Using Multi-sensor Machine Learning

Land surface temperature (LST) is a key climate observable used to detect changes in the Earth’s surface energy budget that influence carbon and water cycles. Land surface temperature exhibits strong diurnal variability, which geostationary satellites can observe at scale thanks to their temporal resolution. Due to anthropogenic climate and land use changes, the surface energy balance has been considerably modified and may be described by changes in diurnal temperature range and extremes. Using high performance computing and datasets from the NASA Earth Exchange, we exploit co-located, co-temporal observations from low-earth orbit (LEO) and geostationary (GEO) sensors to develop a deep learning-based method for LEO-to-GEO algorithm emulation. Our model is trained to predict MODIS Terra LST from GOES-16 thermal bands and achieves validation error <2K. Application of the model to unseen times of day (observed by MODIS Aqua) and a new GEO sensor (Himawari-8) observing an unseen spatial domain, demonstrate the generalization of the deep learning model across space, time and spectra. Further, time series clustering approaches are examined with the objective of identifying key indicators of change in diurnal cycling and extremes on a continental scale. Communicating LST variability observed by geostationary satellites can have impacts in multiple disciplines, from understanding of snow, vegetation and soil dynamics, to recognizing trends in heat events relevant to human health.

Kate Duffy↗
NASA NTRS1992

Providing relay communications support for the Mars Environmental Survey (MESUR) mission

The purpose of the Mars Environmental Survey (MESUR) mission is to put in place, over several launch opportunities, a constellation of Mars landers to make long-term surface observations of the circulation of the atmosphere and changes in climate, and to record the seismic activity of the planetary crust. Short-term objectives will also be addressed. An orbital communications infrastructure capable of providing regular high-rate data transfer to earth from the landers, which are scattered globally from pole to pole, is key to accomplishing the mission goals. A study is thereby presented of the orbit selection for the orbiter spacecraft, which will provide this support, and the relay communications operation. It is concluded that adequate communications support for the objectives of the MESUR mission can be provided by a single orbiter, provided care is taken in the selection of the size and orientation (i.e., inclination and apse line alignment) of the spacecraft orbit.

Swenson, Byron L.↗
NASA NTRS2016

Climate Impact and GIS Education Using Realistic Applications of Data.gov Thematic Datasets in a Structured Lesson-Based Workbook

This project created a workbook which teaches Earth Science to undergraduate and graduate students through guided in-class activities and take-home assignments organized around climate topics which use GIS to teach key geospatial analysis techniques and cartography skills. The workbook is structured to the White House's Data.gov climate change themes, which include Coastal Flooding, Ecosystem Vulnerability, Energy Infrastructure, Arctic, Food Resilience, Human Health, Transportation, Tribal Nations, and Water. Each theme provides access to framing questions, associated data, interactive tools, and further reading (e.g. The US Climate Resilience Toolkit and National Climate Assessment). Lessons make use of the respective theme's available resources. The structured thematic approach is designed to encourage independent exploration. The goal is to teach climate concepts and concerns, GIS techniques and approaches, and effective cartographic representation and communication results; and foster a greater awareness of publicly available resources and datasets. To reach more audiences more effectively, a two level approach was used. Level 1 serves as an introductory study and relies on only freely available interactive tools to reach audiences with fewer resources and less familiarity. Level 2 presents a more advanced case study, and focuses on supporting common commercially available tool use and real-world analysis techniques.

Satellite Imagery↗
NASA NTRS2022

Wichita Climate II: Quantifying and Mapping Urban Heat to Inform Equitable and Sustainable Urban Planning Initiatives in Wichita, Kansas

Wichita, Kansas is experiencing a host of climate threats, particularly extreme heat manifested through Urban Heat Islands (UHI). Heat is unevenly distributed within cities due to factors such as income inequality, historical discriminatory practices like redlining, and divestment in neighborhoods of color. This leads to less vegetation and more heat-absorbing infrastructure in specific communities. Moreover, adverse effects of heat, including heat-related morbidity and mortality, disproportionately impact populations that experience vulnerability through social inequities and structural discrimination. Heat vulnerability is a combination of the factors of heat exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity, and can be harnessed to guide urban heat interventions. This DEVELOP project partnered with the City of Wichita to understand the spatial distribution and drivers of UHIs and heat vulnerability indicators. The team modeled outcomes of tree cover interventions using Landsat 8’s Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS) and Operational Land Imager (OLI), Landsat 9 TIRS-2 and OLI-2, and the International Space Station’s Ecosystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on the International Space Station (ECOSTRESS) sensor, along with the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST) Urban Cooling model. The team also leveraged statistical analysis by implementing principal component analysis to develop a heat vulnerability index (HVI) specific to Wichita. Ultimately, the project’s outputs will inform the City of Wichita’s Climate Adaptation and Mitigation Plan, identify priority areas for heat mitigation initiatives, and be used in public-facing communications to educate communities on the impacts of urban heat.

Environmental Justice↗
NASA NTRS2019

Providing Small Satellite Communications Using the NOAA GOES Satellite

The results of a LEO to GEO communication system using the NOAA GOES (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite) DCS (Data Collection System) are presented. The DCS system was designed to collect climate-related data from remote unmanned stations. Data are uplinked to one of the two operational satellites via an aggregated link to the NASA Wallops Facility. The modified LEO transmitter, one of the 7 transmitters flown on the TechEdSat-8 nano-satellite, is designed to compensate for the Doppler effects to ensure the communication link. Though a slow data rate initially, the system may offer another convenient means of transmitting data from LEO to ground stations any time during an orbit. The experiment will allow for an assessment of this as a future communication system development path - as well as the very interesting extension of the system for a comparable system at Mars for climatic surveys from ground stations (hence, a Mars radio).

Stone, T.↗
NASA NTRS1994

NASA High Performance Computing and Communications program

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's HPCC program is part of a new Presidential initiative aimed at producing a 1000-fold increase in supercomputing speed and a 1(X)-fold improvement in available communications capability by 1997. As more advanced technologies are developed under the HPCC program, they will be used to solve NASA's 'Grand Challenge' problems, which include improving the design and simulation of advanced aerospace vehicles, allowing people at remote locations to communicate more effectively and share information, increasing scientists' abilities to model the Earth's climate and forecast global environmental trends, and improving the development of advanced spacecraft. NASA's HPCC program is organized into three projects which are unique to the agency's mission: the Computational Aerosciences (CAS) project, the Earth and Space Sciences (ESS) project, and the Remote Exploration and Experimentation (REE) project. An additional project, the Basic Research and Human Resources (BRHR) project, exists to promote long term research in computer science and engineering and to increase the pool of trained personnel in a variety of scientific disciplines. This document presents an overview of the objectives and organization of these projects, as well as summaries of early accomplishments and the significance, status, and plans for individual research and development programs within each project. Areas of emphasis include benchmarking, testbeds, software and simulation methods.

Holcomb, Lee↗
NASA NTRS1995

Science Rationale for a Micro-Met Mission to Augment InterMarsNet

The 2003 opportunity has the potential to carry out for the first time in Mars exploration history, coordinated measurements from the surface and from orbit that can address fundamental issues associated with the Martian global circulation and climate system. Coordinated measurements are defined here to mean collecting meteorological data from a network of 12-16 globally distributed surface stations simultaneously with an orbiter carrying an atmospheric sounder. With such measurements it is possible to define the horizontally varying (barotropic) and vertically varying (baroclinic) components of the global circulation from which the full 3-dimensional horizontal wind field can be reconstructed. It is also possible to precisely define the CO2 cycle, the main component of the current climate system. InterMarsNet, as currently envisioned, consists of 3-4 landers with a supporting communications orbiter that may carry some instrumentation. The landers are likely to touch down in low latitudes and will probably be configured to optimize seismological objectives. We propose to augment the InterMarsNet meteorological objectives by flying an additional 10-15 "MicroMet" landers equipped to measure surface pressure and nothing else. Surface pressure is the most fundamental meteorological parameter and it is the easiest to measure. The sensors are light, operate with minimal power, and do not require orientation or deployment. Consequently the landers can be very small (< 10 kg) and 10-15 of them can be delivered by a Med-lite launcher. This would enable global network science for meteorology and, when combined wAh the more sophisticated measurements from the InterMarsNet landers and the simultaneous temperature and dust profiling measurements from an atmospheric sounder aboard the orbiter, it would enable us to reconstruct global scale circulation patterns.

Haberle, Robert M.↗