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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 685 records · Page 38
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2012

Globally Gridded Satellite (GridSat) Observations for Climate Studies

Geostationary satellites have provided routine, high temporal resolution Earth observations since the 1970s. Despite the long period of record, use of these data in climate studies has been limited for numerous reasons, among them: there is no central archive of geostationary data for all international satellites, full temporal and spatial resolution data are voluminous, and diverse calibration and navigation formats encumber the uniform processing needed for multi-satellite climate studies. The International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project set the stage for overcoming these issues by archiving a subset of the full resolution geostationary data at approx.10 km resolution at 3 hourly intervals since 1983. Recent efforts at NOAA s National Climatic Data Center to provide convenient access to these data include remapping the data to a standard map projection, recalibrating the data to optimize temporal homogeneity, extending the record of observations back to 1980, and reformatting the data for broad public distribution. The Gridded Satellite (GridSat) dataset includes observations from the visible, infrared window, and infrared water vapor channels. Data are stored in the netCDF format using standards that permit a wide variety of tools and libraries to quickly and easily process the data. A novel data layering approach, together with appropriate satellite and file metadata, allows users to access GridSat data at varying levels of complexity based on their needs. The result is a climate data record already in use by the meteorological community. Examples include reanalysis of tropical cyclones, studies of global precipitation, and detection and tracking of the intertropical convergence zone.

Knapp, Kenneth R.↗
NASA NTRS2019

Terrestrial Water Storage

Terrestrial water storage can be defined as the summation of all water on the land surface and in the subsurface. It includes surface soil moisture, root zone soil moisture, groundwater, snow,ice, water stored in the vegetation, river and lake water. Terrestrial water storage (TWS) changes have been observed by the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission since 2002. GRACE has provided an unprecedented view of the terrestrial water storage variations at large scales. Extremes in water storage often are associated with droughts and flooding events because they are driven by the surplus or deficit of water. Few hydrologic observing networks yield sufficient data for comprehensive monitoring of changes in the total amount of water stored in a region. GRACE observations have helped to fill this gap. This book chapter is divided into 4 sections.Section 1 provides an overview of the GRACE mission. Section 2 reviews the terrestrial water storage solutions that are available. Section 3 describes regional to global applications of GRACE for monitoring extremes in the terrestrial water storage, including droughts and flooding events. Conclusions and future directions are reported in Section 4.

Terrestrial Water Storage↗
DOE OSTI2023

Ocean Mesoscale and Frontal-Scale Ocean–Atmosphere Interactions and Influence on Large-Scale Climate: A Review

Two decades of high-resolution satellite observations and climate modeling studies have indicated strong ocean–atmosphere coupled feedback mediated by ocean mesoscale processes, including semipermanent and meandrous SST fronts, mesoscale eddies, and filaments. The air–sea exchanges in latent heat, sensible heat, momentum, and carbon dioxide associated with this so-called mesoscale air–sea interaction are robust near the major western boundary currents, Southern Ocean fronts, and equatorial and coastal upwelling zones, but they are also ubiquitous over the global oceans wherever ocean mesoscale processes are active. Current theories, informed by rapidly advancing observational and modeling capabilities, have established the importance of mesoscale and frontal-scale air–sea interaction processes for understanding large-scale ocean circulation, biogeochemistry, and weather and climate variability. However, numerous challenges remain to accurately diagnose, observe, and simulate mesoscale air–sea interaction to quantify its impacts on large-scale processes. This article provides a comprehensive review of key aspects pertinent to mesoscale air–sea interaction, synthesizes current understanding with remaining gaps and uncertainties, and provides recommendations on theoretical, observational, and modeling strategies for future air–sea interaction research.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
NASA NTRS2016

Using Climate Regionalization to Understand Climate Forecast System Version 2 (CFSv2) Precipitation Performance for the Conterminous United States (CONUS)

Dynamically based seasonal forecasts are prone to systematic spatial biases due to imperfections in the underlying global climate model (GCM). This can result in low-forecast skill when the GCM misplaces teleconnections or fails to resolve geographic barriers, even if the prediction of large-scale dynamics is accurate. To characterize and address this issue, this study applies objective climate regionalization to identify discrepancies between the Climate Forecast SystemVersion 2 (CFSv2) and precipitation observations across the Contiguous United States (CONUS). Regionalization shows that CFSv2 1 month forecasts capture the general spatial character of warm season precipitation variability but that forecast regions systematically differ from observation in some transition zones. CFSv2 predictive skill for these misclassified areas is systematically reduced relative to correctly regionalized areas and CONUS as a whole. In these incorrectly regionalized areas, higher skill can be obtained by using a regional-scale forecast in place of the local grid cell prediction.

geographic barriers↗
DOE OSTI2023

Envisioning urban environments resilient to vector-borne diseases: a protocol to study dengue in Vietnam

Transmitted primarily by Aedes aegypti (Ae. aegypti) and Aedes albopictus (Ae. albopictus), arboviral diseases pose a major global public health threat. Dengue, chikungunya, and zika are increasingly prevalent in Southeast Asia. Among other arboviruses, dengue and zika are becoming more common in Central and South America. Given human encroachment into previously uninhabited, often deforested areas, to provide new housing in regions of population expansion, conceptualizing built urban environments in a novel way is urgently needed to safeguard against the growing climate change-driven threat of vector-borne diseases. By understanding the spread from a One Health perspective, enhanced control and prevention can be achieved. This is particularly important considering that climate change is likely to significantly impact the persistence of ponded water where mosquitoes breed due to increasing temperature and shifting rainfall patterns with regard to magnitude, duration, frequency, and season. Models can incorporate aquatic mosquito stages and adult spatial dynamics when habitats are heterogeneously available, thereby including dispersal and susceptible-exposed-infected-recovered (SEIR) epidemiology. Coupled with human population distribution (density, locations), atmospheric conditions (air temperature, precipitation), and hydrological conditions (soil moisture distribution, ponding persistence in topographic depressions), modeling has improved predictive ability for infection rates. However, it has not informed interventional approaches from an urban environment perspective which considers the role of ponds/lakes that support green spaces, the density of population that enables rapid spread of disease, and varying micro-habitats for various mosquito stages under climate change. Here, for an example of dengue in Vietnam, a preventive and predictive approach to design resilient urban environments is proposed, which uses data from rapidly expanding metropolitan communities to learn continually. This protocol deploys computational approaches including simulation and machine learning/artificial intelligence, underpinned by surveillance and medical data for validation and adaptive learning. Its application may best inform urban planning in low-middle income countries in tropical zones where arboviral pathogens are prevalent.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2020

Investigating the linkage between simulated precipitation climatology and ENSO-related precipitation anomaly based on multi-model and perturbed parameter ensembles

It remains a challenge for climate models to correctly capture the relationship between precipitation and ENSO. This studyexamines the linkage between the simulated precipitation climatology and ENSO-related precipitation anomaly during borealwinter based on the multi-model ensemble from the Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (AMIP5) and perturbedparameter ensemble (PPE) with the Beijing Climate Center (BCC) atmospheric model. The AMIP5 models have large biases insimulating the tropical precipitation anomaly during El Niño, such as the shifts of the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ)and South Pacific Convergence Zone (SPCZ). The inter-model differences show that the precipitation change in response to seasurface temperature (SST) change increases with enhanced precipitation climatology. The ENSO-related precipitation anomalycan also be related to the spatial distribution of the mean-state precipitation. The simulated ITCZ/SPCZ displacements aresignificantly correlated with the spatial precipitation-SST relationship in the mean state. Models with stronger mean-stateprecipitation-SST relationship also produce stronger SPCZ/ITCZ displacements. The mean-state tropical precipitation also hasstrong impacts on the ENSO-related precipitation anomalies over East Asia. In the BCC PPE, the connection between the mean-state precipitation and ENSO-related precipitation anomaly is overall consistent with that in AMIP5. Parameters associated withthe low-cloud and deep convection processes are the most influential ones for the precipitation simulations in BCC. Comparedwith the version in AMIP5, the new BCC model can better simulate the precipitation climatology and the relationship betweenENSO and precipitation over southern China. These results have important implications for model development and model-basedclimate predictions.

Yang, Ben↗
DOE OSTI2022

A Hierarchy of Global Ocean Models Coupled to CESM1

Abstract We develop a hierarchy of simplified ocean models for coupled ocean, atmosphere, and sea ice climate simulations using the Community Earth System Model version 1 (CESM1). The hierarchy has four members: a slab ocean model, a mixed‐layer model (MLM) with entrainment and detrainment, an Ekman MLM, and an ocean general circulation model (OGCM). Flux corrections of heat and salt are applied to the simplified models ensuring that all hierarchy members have the same climatology. We diagnose the needed flux corrections from auxiliary simulations in which we restore the temperature and salinity to the daily climatology obtained from a target CESM1 simulation. The resulting three‐dimensional corrections contain the interannual variability fluxes that maintain the correct vertical gradients of temperature and salinity in the tropics. We find that the inclusion of mixed‐layer entrainment and Ekman flow produces sea surface temperature and surface air temperature fields whose means and variances are progressively more similar to those produced by the target CESM1 simulation. We illustrate the application of the hierarchy to the problem of understanding the response of the climate system to the loss of Arctic sea ice. We find that the shifts in the positions of the mid‐latitude westerly jet and of the Inter‐tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) in response to sea‐ice loss depend critically on upper ocean processes. Specifically, heat uptake associated with the mixed‐layer entrainment influences the shift in the westerly jet and ITCZ. Moreover, the shift of ITCZ is sensitive to the form of Ekman flow parameterization.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
NASA NTRS2002

Ship Radar Observations of a Developing Hurricane in the East Pacific

During the recently completed East Pacific Investigation of Climate Processes in the Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere System (EPIC) field program, the NOAA research vessel Ronald H. Brown (RHB) was deployed in the east Pacific Inter Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) for approximately 3 weeks near 10 deg. N, 95 deg. W. One of the principal objectives of the EPIC-ITCZ program was to observe the modulation of convection by synoptic-scale easterly waves and the air-sea coupling process in this poorly sampled region of the east Pacific. Data from the experiment will be used as validation to improve forecast models. The RHB carried a variety of platforms during EPIC to sample atmospheric and oceanic phenomena, including a scanning C-band Doppler radar, radiation flux instrumentation, air-sea flux system, Doppler lidar, 35 GHz cloud radar, UHF wind profiler, sea surface temperature (SST) sensors, as well as standard surface meteorological instrumentation and a suite of rain gauges. This presentation will focus on the analysis of C-band radar data that was collected on 10 September, 2001 as the ship passed through an easterly wave which later developed into hurricane Ivo. The ship captured approximately 12 hours of convection associated with the tropical disturbance. During this period, the domain sampled by the radar (approximately 71,000 sq km) contained a significant number of echo features. Specifically, the fraction of the domain containing radar echo above 10 dBZ reached 80% for over 2 hours and remained near 60% for a continuous six hour period. Animation of radar images showed distinct rotation in echo features associated with the easterly wave passage. Despite an approximate 4 C drop in surface air temperature and sustained winds approaching 20 m/ s, the SST remained nearly constant throughout the observation period (approx. 29.5 C). Peak values of latent and sensible heat flux exceeded 400 and 100 W /sq m, respectively. The radar documented the change in precipitation vertical structure as the ship passed through regions of significant convection with echo tops approaching 14 km and 30 dBZ echo tops extending to near 9 km embedded in regions that were predominantly stratiform in nature. Single Doppler retrievals (Extended Velocity Azimuth Display) were conducted continuously at 10-minute resolution for approximately 4 hours in the latter part of the observation period, and documented the transition from convection (low-level convergence, upper level divergence) to stratiform (mid-level convergence sandwiched between upper and lower level divergence) kinematic structure.

Cifelli, Robert↗
DOE OSTI2023

Longitudinal Effects on Plant Species Involved in Agriculture and Pandemic Emergence Undergoing Changes in Abiotic Stress

In this work we identify changes in high-resolution zones across the globe linked by environmental similarity that have implications for agriculture, bioenergy, and zoonosis. We refine exhaustive vector comparison methods with improved similarity metrics as well as provide multiple methods of amalgamation across 744 months of climatic data. The results of the vector comparison are captured as networks which are analyzed using static and longitudinal comparison methods to reveal locations around the globe experiencing dramatic changes in abiotic stress. Specifically we (i) incorporate updated similarity scores and provide a comparison between similarity metrics, (ii) implement a new feature for resource optimization, (iii) compare an agglomerative view to a longitudinal view, (iv) compare across 2-way and 3-way vector comparisons, (v) implement a new form of analysis, and (vi) demonstrate biological applications and discuss implications across a diverse set of species distributions by detecting changes that affect their habitats. Species of interest are related to agriculture (e.g., coffee, wine, chocolate), bioenergy (e.g., poplar, switchgrass, pennycress), as well as those living in zones of concern for zoonotic spillover that may lead to pandemics (e.g., eucalyptus, flying foxes).

Cashman, Mikaela↗
DOE OSTI2024

Bonneville basin critical zones: Spring chemistry and gastropod ecology in playa-margin wetlands

Playa margin wetlands in the Bonneville basin are sustained by groundwater-fed brackish springs, which transport salts and other solutes into the playa basin. These wetlands are sensitive to changing water availability and quality, which are impacted by changing climate and land use, and whose sediments also provide important records of changing environmental conditions. Gastropods building their shells in these springs provide important recorders of water chemistry and may reflect changing aqueous conditions. In this paper, we analyze spring water chemistry, gastropod ecology and gastropod shell chemistry of Blue Lake (BL) and Horseshoe Springs (HRS), two groundwater-fed wetlands in the Great Salt Lake watershed. Here, we report the physical parameters including pH, temperature, and specific conductivity across the spring pond at Horseshoe springs.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2025

Integrated Modeling Driven Evaluation of Opportunities for Climate‐Resilient Perennial Biomass Crop Plantings in Flood‐Prone Agricultural Landscapes

Adapting to future climate change in flood-prone landscapes will require climate-resilient agricultural systems. Planting perennial crops, like switchgrass and willow, along river corridors can mitigate future flooding while supporting bioenergy markets. We developed an integrated assessment linking climate, hydrologic, and inundation model results to assess future flood risk to river-adjacent agricultural lands in the Mid-Atlantic Region (MAR) and explore this opportunity. We produced ensemble streamflow projections for every MAR stream using a hydrologic model driven by a suite of downscaled and bias-corrected Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 climate projections. We then conducted high-resolution inundation mapping based on projected flood frequencies for baseline and future periods. Results show that in the near-term future, at least two-thirds of the streams will experience 100-year floods more severe than the baseline 200-year floods. Riparian zones are projected to face a median rise of inundation by 9.5%–24.1%. Results show that there is an opportunity to mitigate flooding in over half of MAR's counties with the quantities of switchgrass and willow plantings anticipated for mature bioenergy markets, even under the most extreme (200-year) flood events. Our integrated modeling framework can guide similar regions to evaluate opportunities for flood-resilient agricultural systems under climate change.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗
NASA NTRS2015

Lissajous Orbit Control for the Deep Space Climate Observatory Sun-Earth L1 Libration Point Mission

DSCOVR Lissajous Orbit sized such that orbit track never extends beyond 15 degrees from Earth-Sun line (as seen from Earth). Requiring delta-V maneuvers, control orbit to obey a Solar Exclusion Zone (SEZ) cone of half-angle 4 degrees about the Earth-Sun line. Spacecraft should never be less than 4 degrees from solar center as seen from Earth. Following Lissajous Orbit Insertion (LOI), DSCOVR should be in an opening phase that just skirts the 4-degree SEZ. Maximizes time to the point where a closing Lissajous will require avoidance maneuvers to keep it out of the SEZ. Station keeping maneuvers should take no more than 15 minutes.

Orbit Control↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Role of Arctic Low Clouds in the Arctic Climate System: Isolating the Surface Type Influence on Arctic Low-Clouds

Interactions between sea ice and clouds represent a mechanism through which sea ice influences climate. Understanding the cloud response to the rapidly changing Arctic surface properties is necessary for improving climate simulations and projection of future change inside and outside the Arctic. Towards the goal of understanding the cloud response to sea ice, we composite cloud properties for ice-free, marginal ice zone (MIZ), and ice-covered surfaces during MIZ crossing events to analyze the cloud property differences between surface types. Restricting the analysis to MIZ crossing events enables the isolation of the sea ice effect on clouds from meteorological factors. We find larger cloud fraction and total water concentration below ~1.5 km over ice-free relative to ice-covered surfaces during non-summer months. During summer, the results suggest larger cloud fraction and total water concentration over ice-free surfaces, however differences do not exceed observational uncertainty. Cloud property differences are linked to atmospheric thermodynamic profile differences, namely ice-free surfaces are warmer, moister, less stable, and have more positive surface turbulent fluxes than ice-covered surfaces. Ice-free minus ice-covered cloud property differences scale with surface temperature differences and are only found in the presence of a surface temperature difference. Our results suggest a 0.02 cloud fraction and 0.005 g m 3 total water concentration increase (~5%) at the level of maximum cloud fraction between 2000-2021 due to the observed Arctic sea ice decline in fall, corresponding to ~2 Wm 2 increase in the net surface radiative flux supporting a positive sea ice-cloud radiative feedback in fall and winter and a negative sea ice-cloud radiative feedback in spring. We propose an updated conceptual model where the average surface type influence on cloud properties is mediated by surface temperature differences between ice-free and ice-covered surfaces.

Arctic climate↗
NASA NTRS1997

Seventh Annual V. M. Goldschmidt Conference

Topics considered include: Subduction of the Aseismic Cocos Ridge Displaced Magma Sources Beneath the Cordillera de Talamanca, Costa Rica; Topography of Transition Zone Discontinuities: A Measure of 'Olivine' Content and Evidence for Deep Cratonic Roots; Uranium Enrichment in Lithospheric Mantle: Case Studies from French Massif Central; Rare-Earth-Element Anomalies in the Decollement Zone of the nankai Accretionary Prism, Japan: Evidence of Fluid Flow?; Rare Earth Elements in Japanese Mudrocks: The Influence of Provenance; The Evolution of Seawater Strontium Isotopes in the Last Hundred Million Years: Reinterpretation and Consequences for Erosion and Climate Models; From Pat to Tats: The Lead Isotope Legacy in the Studies of the Continental Crust-Upper Mantle System; Geochronology of the Jack Hills Detrital Zircons by Precise Uranium-Lead Isotope-Dilution Analysis of Crystal Fragments; Iridium in the Oceans; The Helium-Heat-Lead Paradox; Control of Distribution Patterns of Heavy Metals in Ganga Plain Around Kanpur Region, India, by Fluvial Geomorphic Domains; Geochemical and Isotopic Features of Ferrar Magmatic Provience (Victoria Land, Antarctica); Rare Earth Elements in Marine Fine-Grained Sediments from the Northwestern Portuguese Shelf (Atlantic); Aspects of Arc Fluxes; General Kinetic Model for Dolomite Precipitation Rate with Application to the Secular History of Seawater Composition; High-Precision Uranium-series Chronology from Speleothems; Trace-Element Modeling of Aqueous Fluid-Peridotite Interaction in the Mantle Wedge of Subduction Zones; Rainfall Variations in Southeastern Australia over the Last 500,000 Years from Speleothem Deposition; The Role of Water in High-Pressure Fluids; The Kinetic Conditions of Metamorphic Minearogenesis: Evidence from Minerals and Assemblages.

Source record↗
DOE OSTI2025

Performance Evaluation of Weather@home2 Simulations over West African Region

Weather and climate forecasting, using climate models, have become essential tools and life-savers in the West African region; in spite of the fact that climate models do not fully comply with attributes of forecast qualities—RASAP: reliability, association, skill, accuracy, and precision. The objective of this paper is to quantitatively evaluate, in comparison to CRU and ERA5 datasets, the RASAP compliance-level of the weather@home2 modeling system (w@h2). Findings from some statistical evaluations show that, to a moderately significant extent, w@h2 model provides useful information during the monsoon seasons; skills to capture the Little Dry Season over the Guinea zone; predictive skills for the onset season; ability to reproduce all the annual characteristics of the surface maximum air temperature over the region; as well as skill to detect heat waves that usually ravage West Africa during the boreal spring. The model displays traces of attributes that are needed for seasonal climate predictions and applications. Deficiencies in the quantitative reproducibility point to the facts that the model does provide a reliability akin to that of regional climate models. This paper further furnishes a prospective user with information on whether the model might be “useful or not” for a particular application.

West Africa↗
DOE OSTI2022

A hierarchy of global ocean models coupled to CESM1

We develop a hierarchy of simplified ocean models for coupled ocean, atmosphere, and sea ice climate simulations using the Community Earth System Model version 1 (CESM1). The hierarchy has four members: a slab ocean model, a mixed-layer model (MLM) with entrainment and detrainment, an Ekman MLM, and an ocean general circulation model (OGCM). Flux corrections of heat and salt are applied to the simplified models ensuring that all hierarchy members have the same climatology. We diagnose the needed flux corrections from auxiliary simulations in which we restore the temperature and salinity to the daily climatology obtained from a target CESM1 simulation. The resulting three-dimensional corrections contain the interannual variability fluxes that maintain the correct vertical gradients of temperature and salinity in the tropics. We find that the inclusion of mixed-layer entrainment and Ekman flow produces sea surface temperature and surface air temperature fields whose means and variances are progressively more similar to those produced by the target CESM1 simulation. We illustrate the application of the hierarchy to the problem of understanding the response of the climate system to the loss of Arctic sea ice. We find that the shifts in the positions of the mid-latitude westerly jet and of the Inter-tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) in response to sea-ice loss depend critically on upper ocean processes. Specifically, heat uptake associated with the mixed-layer entrainment influences the shift in the westerly jet and ITCZ. Moreover, the shift of ITCZ is sensitive to the form of Ekman flow parameterization.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
NASA NTRS1980

Atmospheric and oceanographic research review, 1979

Papers generated by atmospheric, oceanographic, and climatological research performed during 1979 at the Goddard Laboratory for Atmospheric Sciences are presented. The GARP/global weather research is aimed at developing techniques for the utilization and analysis of the FGGE data sets. Observing system studies were aimed at developing a GLAS TIROS N sounding retrieval system and preparing for the joint NOAA/NASA AMTS simulation study. The climate research objective is to support the development and effective utilization of space acquired data systems by developing the GLAS GCM for short range climate predictions, studies of the sensitivity of climate to boundary conditions, and predictability studies. Ocean/air interaction studies concentrated on the development of models for the prediction of upper ocean currents, temperatures, sea state, mixed layer depths, and upwelling zones, and on studies of the interactions of the atmospheric and oceanic circulation systems on time scales of a month or more.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS1995

Winter Storm Zones on Mars

Preferred regions of weather activity in Mars' winter middle latitudes-so called 'storm zones' are found in a general circulation model of Mars' atmospheric circulation. During northern winter, these storm zones occur in middle latitudes in the major planitia (low-relief regions) of the western and eastern hemisphere. In contrast, the highlands of the eastern hemisphere are mostly quiescent. Compared to Earth's storm zones where diabatic heating associated with land-sea thermal contrasts is crucial, orography on Mars is fundamental to the regionalization of weather activity. Future spacecraft missions aimed at assessing Mars' climate and its variability need to include such regions in observation strategies.

Hollingsworth, J. L.↗