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At least 1,315 records · Page 73

Peru Water Resources: Integrating NASA Earth Observations into Water Resource Planning and Management in Perus La Libertad Region

Developing countries often struggle with providing water security and sanitation services to their populations. An important aspect of improving security and sanitation is developing a comprehensive understanding of the country's water budget. Water For People, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing clean drinking water, is working with the Peruvian government to develop a water budget for the La Libertad region of Peru which includes the creation of an extensive watershed management plan. Currently, the data archive of the necessary variables to create the water management plan is extremely limited. Implementing NASA Earth observations has bolstered the dataset being used by Water For People, and the METRIC (Mapping EvapoTranspiration at High Resolution and Internalized Calibration) model has allowed for the estimation of the evapotranspiration values for the region. Landsat 8 imagery and the DEM (Digital Elevation Model) from the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) sensor onboard Terra were used to derive the land cover information, and were used in conjunction with local weather data of Cascas from Peru's National Meteorological and Hydrological Service (SENAMHI). Python was used to combine input variables and METRIC model calculations to approximate the evapotranspiration values for the Ochape sub-basin of the Chicama River watershed. Once calculated, the evapotranspiration values and methodology were shared Water For People to help supplement their decision support tools in the La Libertad region of Peru and potentially apply the methodology in other areas of need.

Padgett-Vasquez, Steve↗

Data management in NOAA

The NOAA archives contain 150 terabytes of data in digital form, most of which are the high volume GOES satellite image data. There are 630 data bases containing 2,350 environmental variables. There are 375 million film records and 90 million paper records in addition to the digital data base. The current data accession rate is 10 percent per year and the number of users are increasing at a 10 percent annual rate. NOAA publishes 5,000 publications and distributes over one million copies to almost 41,000 paying customers. Each year, over six million records are key entered from manuscript documents and about 13,000 computer tapes and 40,000 satellite hardcopy images are entered into the archive. Early digital data were stored on punched cards and open reel computer tapes. In the late seventies, an advanced helical scan technology (AMPEX TBM) was implemented. Now, punched cards have disappeared, the TBM system was abandoned, most data stored on open reel tapes have been migrated to 3480 cartridges, many specialized data sets were distributed on CD ROM's, special archives are being copied to 12 inch optical WORM disks, 5 1/4 inch magneto-optical disks were employed for workstation applications, and 8 mm EXABYTE tapes are planned for major data collection programs. The rapid expansion of new data sets, some of which constitute large volumes of data, coupled with the need for vastly improved access mechanisms, portability, and improved longevity are factors which will influence NOAA's future systems approaches for data management.

Callicott, William M.↗

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↗

Trend Detection of Atmospheric Time Series: Incorporating Appropriate Uncertainty Estimates and Handling Extreme Events

This paper is aimed at atmospheric scientists without formal training in statistical theory. Its goal is to, 1) provide a critical review of the rationale for trend analysis of the time series typically encountered in the field of atmospheric chemistry; 2) describe a range of trend-detection methods; and 3) demonstrate effective means of conveying the results to a general audience. Trend detections in atmospheric chemical composition data are often challenged by a variety of sources of uncertainty, which often behave differently to other environmental phenomena such as temperature, precipitation rate, or stream flow, and may require specific methods depending on the science questions to be addressed. Some sources of uncertainty can be explicitly included in the model specification, such as autocorrelation and seasonality, but some inherent uncertainties are difficult to quantify, such as data heterogeneity and measurement uncertainty due to the combined effect of short- and long-term natural variability, instrumental stability, and aggregation of data from sparse sampling frequency. Failure to account for these uncertainties might result in an inappropriate inference of the trends and their estimation errors. On the other hand, the variation in extreme events might be interesting for different scientific questions, for example, the frequency of extremely high surface ozone events and their relevance to human health. In this study we aim to, 1) review trend detection methods for addressing different levels of data complexity in different chemical species; 2) demonstrate that the incorporation of scientifically interpretable covariates can outperform pure numerical curve fitting techniques in terms of uncertainty reduction and improved predictability; 3) illustrate the study of trends based on extreme quantiles that can provide insight beyond standard mean or median based trend estimates; and 4) present an advanced method of quantifying regional trends based on the inter-site correlations of multi-site data. All demonstrations are based on time series of observed trace gases relevant to atmospheric chemistry, but the methods can be applied to other environmental data sets.

Trace gas↗

Split-Step Simulations to Assess the Effects of Atmospheric Boundary Layer Turbulence on the Dose Variability of N-Waves and Shaped Booms

The effects of atmospheric boundary layer turbulence on the loudness variability of a sonic boom N-wave and shaped boom are examined with split-step simulations. The shaped boom is representative of a design iteration of the NASA X-59 aircraft. Inhomogeneous atmospheric boundary layer turbulence is generated in the computational domain by a Fourier synthesis method. The N-wave and shaped boom are propagated through turbulent fields representing eight different convection levels measured at the NASA Kennedy Space Center and the NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center. Probability density functions of the formation of caustic regions along the propagation direction are computed from the N-wave results, and a parameter to collapse the caustic PDFs that accounts for both fluctuation intensities and length scales is proposed. Statistical results concerning loudness metric variability are presented, and the standard deviations of several metrics are shown to collapse across different convection levels of turbulence for small nondimensional propagation distances. The loudness metric distributions are observed to be well approximated by a normal distribution for a given range of propagation distances, and become increasingly skewed as distance increases. A model function for the dose variability is proposed, and the function parameters are found to be related to the convection level of the turbulence. The model for the dose variability distribution is compared to simulation data that were not used to find the regression parameters of the model. At several nondimensional propagation distances, agreement is observed between the model and the simulation data. These results indicate that the model may be suitable for providing quick estimates of noise dose variability in the primary carpet region across a wide range of atmospheric boundary layer conditions.

Sonic boom↗

Quantifying the impact of climate change on erosion - 20397

The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) is the owner of the Western New York Nuclear Service Center (WNYNSC), a 1,351-ha (3,338-ac) site located approximately 48 km (30 mi) south of Buffalo, New York. In 1962, Nuclear Fuel Services, Inc. (NFS) entered into Agreements with the Atomic Energy Commission and New York State to construct the first commercial reprocessing plant of nuclear fuel in the United States. NFS, a private company, built and operated the spent fuel reprocessing plant and waste disposal facilities, processing 640 Mg (metric tons, or 705 short tons) of spent nuclear fuel from 1966 to 1972 under an Atomic Energy Commission license. Nuclear fuel reprocessing operations ended in 1972 and never reopened, leaving behind radioactive and chemical wastes. Erosion can play an important role in the fate and transport of waste at sites where disposal of long-lived waste is anticipated. The statistical characterization of key processes related to erosion is essential to the understanding of site stability through time. One of the key processes governing erosion is extreme precipitation and it is critical that trends in the distribution of extreme precipitation events through time be represented. The evidence of climate change is increasingly well documented and projected impacts on extreme precipitation events should be incorporated in performance assessment studies when relevant. Not evaluating future climate states in a performance assessment is contradictory to good modeling practice. Specifically, excluding climate change limits development of modeling information that could aid in effective decision making. The current climate literature provides both observational evidence and climate model projections of climate trends and/or climate change in the late 20. and early 21. centuries for North America and the northeast United States. In this work, this information was used to assess the impacts of potential changes in climate on erosion processes. The goal was to understand how projections of future climate relate to the performance of the WNYNSC through time. In the first stage of this work multi-temporal historical aerial images were analyzed in conjunction with orthophotography and Lidar data to develop probability distributions for variables representing important erosion processes. The information from these analyses was then used in conjunction with simulated data from the West Valley Erosion Working Group (EWG). Analysis of EWG simulations provides estimates for the change in erosion rates through time that is driven by changes in climate. The time-varying rates of erosion change were applied to the historical aerial imagery data in order to inform time-varying rates of erosion that are driven by changes in climate. Ultimately, this process resulted in the identification of locations for features like gully heads using both the Lidar dataset and projection of the estimated location from the historical aerial photo under consideration back to the Lidar dataset. The distance between the estimate of the location from the historical image and that of the Lidar dataset was the estimated distance the feature has moved. This distance was then divided by the number of years between the Lidar dataset and the year of the historical aerial image of interest to get a rate of movement through time. This was done for several dozen points on each historical aerial image. The analyses from the EWG were used to characterize the relative impact of climate change on the erosion rates. This relative impact was quantified by comparing the LEM based estimates of erosion that were derived using historical climate data with LEM based estimates of erosion that were derived using projections of future climate. The relative increase in the erosion rates was then applied to the historical estimates of erosion derived from the analysis of the historical aerial imagery. This approach was used since the LEM-based estimated of the historical erosion rates from the past century have a bias towards underestimating erosion. This underestimation is hypothesized to be a consequence of an inability of the LEMs to account for the impacts of land-use change (i.e. deforestation) which had been shown to significantly increase erosion in similar Northern hardwood forest ecosystems. In summary, gully head retreat rate and gully widening rate were characterized using statistical probability distributions from the historical aerial image analysis. Simulated data from the EWG was used to estimate the climatically-driven changes in erosion rates through time. The changes through time from the EWG were applied to the gully head retreat rate and gully widening rate characterized using the historical aerial image analysis. This information can be used to inform PPA models to project future risks from a given site. (authors)

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗

Prestack Waveform Inversion at GC 955: Trials and sensitivity of PWI to high-resolution seismic data (Data Report)

Understanding the spatial extent and variability of hydrate deposits has important implications for potential economic production, climate change, and assessing natural hazards risks. Seismic reflection techniques are capable of determining the extent of gas hydrate deposits and can shed light on hydrate concentrations and properties. Using high resolution prestack time migrated seismic data collected during a 2013 US Geological Survey expedition and prestack waveform inversion (PWI) techniques, we produce highly resolved velocity models and compare them to co-located well logs. Coupling our PWI results with velocity-porosity relationships and nearby well control, we compare hydrate properties at site 955 in the Green Canyon and site 313 at Walker Ridge.

03 NATURAL GAS↗

Variability in Wind Energy Generation across the Contiguous United States

ERA5 provides high-resolution, high-quality hourly wind speeds at 100 m and is a unique resource for quantifying temporal variability in likely wind-derived power production across the United States. Gross capacity factors (CF) in seven independent system operators (ISOs) are estimated using the location and rated power of each wind turbine, a simplified power curve, and ERA5 output from 1979 to 2018. Excluding the California ISO, the marginal probability of a calm (zero power production) is less than 0.1 in any ERA5 grid cell. When a calm occurs, the mean co-occurrence across wind-turbine-containing grid cells ranges from 0.38 to 0.39 for ISOs in the Midwest and central plains [Midcontinent (or Midwest) ISO (MISO), Southwest Power Pool (SPP), and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) region], increasing to 0.54–0.58 for ISOs in the eastern United States [Pennsylvania–New Jersey–Maryland interconnection (PJM), New York ISO (NYISO), and New England ISO (NEISO)]. Periods with low gross CF have a median duration of ≤6 h, except in California, and are most likely during summer. Additionally, gross CF exhibit highest variance at periods of 1 day in ERCOT and SPP; on synoptic scales in MISO, NEISO, and NYISO; and on interannual time scales in PJM. This implies differences in optimal strategies for ensuring resilience of supply. Theoretical scenarios show adding wind energy capacity near existing wind farms is advantageous even in areas with high existing installed capacity (IC), while expanding into areas with lower IC is more beneficial to reducing ramps and the probability of gross CF falling below 20%. These results emphasize the benefits of large balancing areas and aggregation in reducing wind power variability and the likelihood of wind droughts.

17 WIND ENERGY↗

Circulating levels of micronutrients and risk of osteomyelitis: a Mendelian randomization study

Background Few observational studies have investigated the effect of micronutrients on osteomyelitis, and these findings are limited by confounding and conflicting results. Therefore, we conducted Mendelian randomization (MR) analyses to evaluate the association between blood levels of eight micronutrients (copper, selenium, zinc, vitamin B12, vitamin C, and vitamin D, vitamin B6, vitamin E) and the risk of osteomyelitis. Methods We performed the two-sample and multivariable Mendelian randomization (MVMR) to investigate causation, where instrument variables for the predictor (micronutrients) were derived from the summary data of micronutrients from independent cohorts of European ancestry. The outcome instrumental variables were used from the summary data of European-ancestry individuals ( n = 486,484). The threshold of statistical significance was set at p < 0.00625. Results We found a significant causal association that elevated zinc heightens the risk of developing osteomyelitis in European ancestry individuals OR = 1.23 [95% confidence interval (CI) [1.07, 1.43]; p = 4.26E-03]. Similarly, vitamin B6 showed a similar significant causal effect on osteomyelitis as a risk factor OR = 2.78 (95% CI [1.34, 5.76]; p = 6.04E-03; in the secondary analysis). Post-hoc analysis suggested this result (vitamin B6). However, the multivariable Mendelian randomization (MVMR) provides evidence against the causal association between zinc and osteomyelitis OR = 0.98(95% CI [−0.11, 0.07]; p = 7.20E-1). After searching in PhenoScanner, no SNP with confounding factors was found in the analysis of vitamin B6. There was no evidence of a reverse causal impact of osteomyelitis on zinc and vitamin B6. Conclusion This study supported a strong causal association between vitamin B6 and osteomyelitis while reporting a dubious causal association between zinc and osteomyelitis.

Zhang, Xu↗

Plant canopy transpiration in bioregenerative life support systems - The link between mechanistic and empirical models

A model of water transpiration in a plant canopy that combines two approaches is presented. The first approach is to account for underlying physical processes, while the second is to empirically incorporate transpiration data now being generated at the Johnson Center Variable Pressure Growth Chamber. The two approaches, physical modeling and data analysis, make it possible to produce a model that is more robust than either the standard first-principles model or a straightforward empirical model. It is shown that the present transpiration model is able to efficiently capture the dynamic behavior of the plant canopy over the entire range of environmental parameters now envisioned to be important in an operating controlled ecological life support system (CELSS). Examples of the use of this model in assessing plant canopy dynamics and CELSS design options are also presented.

Sirko, Robert J.↗

Coronal abundances and their variation

This contract supports the investigation of elemental abundances in the solar corona, principally through analysis of high-resolution soft x-ray spectra from the Flat Crystal Spectrometer (FCS) on the Solar Maximum Mission. The goals of the study are a characterization of the mean values of relative abundances of elements accessible in the FCS data, and information on the extent and circumstances of their variability. This report is a summation of the data analysis and reporting activities which occurred during the first ten months of the contract, 15 Jun. 1993 to 15 Apr. 1994.

Saba, Julia L. R.↗

Coronal abundances and their variation

This contract supports the investigation of elemental abundances in the solar corona, principally through analysis of high-resolution software X-ray spectra from the Flat Crystal Spectrometer on NASA's Solar Maximum Mission. The goals of the study are a characterization of the mean values of relative abundances of elements accessible in the FCS data, and information on the extent and circumstances of their variability. This report is a summation of the data analysis and reporting activities which occurred since the last report, submitted two months early, in April 1994, to facilitate evaluation of the first year's progress for contract renewal. Hence this report covers the period 15 April 1994 - 15 December 1994. A list of publications resulting from this research is included.

Saba, Julia L. R.↗

Coronal abundances and their variation

This contract supports the investigation of elemental abundances in the solar corona, principally through analysis of high-resolution soft X-ray spectra from the Flat Crystal Spectrometer on the Solar Maximum Mission. The goals of the study are a characterization of the mean values of relative abundances of elements accessible in the FCS data, and information on the extent and circumstances of their variability. This report is a summation of the data analysis and reporting activities which occurred during the period of 15 April 1994 to 15 April 1995.

Saba, Julia L. R.↗

Coronal Abundances and Their Variation

This contract supported the investigation of elemental abundances in the solar corona, principally through analysis of high-resolution soft X-ray spectra from the Flat Crystal Spectrometer on NASA's Solar Maximum Mission. The goals of the study were a characterization of the mean values of relative abundances of elements accessible in the FCS data, and information on the extent and circumstances of their variability. This is the Final Report, summarizing the data analysis and reporting activities which occurred during the period of performance, June 1993 - December 1996.

Saba, Julia L. R.↗

BOREAS TF-10 NSA-YJP Tower Flux, Meteorological, and Porometry Data

The BOREAS TF-10 team collected tower flux and meteorological data at two sites, a fen and a young jack pine forest, near Thompson, Manitoba, Canada, as part of BOREAS. A preliminary data set was assembled in August 1993 while field testing the instrument packages, and at both sites data were collected from 15-Aug to 31-Aug. The main experimental period was in 1994, when continuous data were collected from the young jack pine site from 23-May to 20-Sep. Upon examination of the 1994 data set, it became clear that the behavior of the heat, water, and carbon dioxide fluxes throughout the whole growing season was an important scientific question, and that the 1994 data record was not sufficiently long to capture the character of the seasonal behavior of the fluxes. Thus, the young jack pine site was operated from 08-May to 07-Nov in 1996 in order to collect data from spring melt to autumn freeze-up. All variables are presented as 30-minute averages. Supporting data were also collected to describe the surface#s state and to provide the information, in association with the flux data, to build SVAT models. For the young jack pine site, these supporting data included stomatal conductance measurements. The data are stored in tabular ASCII files.

McCaughey, J. Harry↗

Application of Modern Design of Experiments to CARS Thermometry in a Model Scramjet Engine

We have applied formal experiment design and analysis to optimize the measurement of temperature in a supersonic combustor at NASA Langley Research Center. We used the coherent anti-Stokes Raman spectroscopy (CARS) technique to map the temperature distribution in the flowfield downstream of an 1160 K, Mach 2 freestream into which supersonic hydrogen fuel is injected at an angle of 30 degrees. CARS thermometry is inherently a single-point measurement technique; it was used to map thc flow by translating the measurement volume through the flowfield. The method known as "Modern Design of Experiments" (MDOE) was used to estimate the data volume required, design the test matrix, perform the experiment and analyze the resulting data. MDOE allowed us to match the volume of data acquired to the precision requirements of the customer. Furthermore, one aspect of MDOE, known as response surface methodology, allowed us to develop precise maps of the flowfield temperature, allowing interpolation between measurement points. An analytic function in two spatial variables was fit to the data from a single measurement plane. Fitting with a Cosine Series Bivariate Function allowed the mean temperature to be mapped with 95% confidence interval half-widths of +/- 30 Kelvin, comfortably meeting the confidence of +/- 50 Kelvin specified prior to performing the experiments. We estimate that applying MDOE to the present experiment saved a factor of 5 in data volume acquired, compared to experiments executed in the traditional manner. Furthermore, the precision requirements could have been met with less than half the data acquired.

Danehy, P. M.↗

Results from CrIS-ATMS Obtained Using the AIRS Science Team Retrieval Methodology

AIRS was launched on EOS Aqua in May 2002, together with AMSU-A and HSB (which subsequently failed early in the mission), to form a next generation polar orbiting infrared and microwave atmospheric sounding system. AIRS/AMSU had two primary objectives. The first objective was to provide real-time data products available for use by the operational Numerical Weather Prediction Centers in a data assimilation mode to improve the skill of their subsequent forecasts. The second objective was to provide accurate unbiased sounding products with good spatial coverage that are used to generate stable multi-year climate data sets to study the earth's interannual variability, climate processes, and possibly long-term trends. AIRS/AMSU data for all time periods are now being processed using the state of the art AIRS Science Team Version-6 retrieval methodology. The Suomi-NPP mission was launched in October 2011 as part of a sequence of Low Earth Orbiting satellite missions under the "Joint Polar Satellite System" (JPSS). NPP carries CrIS and ATMS, which are advanced infra-red and microwave atmospheric sounders that were designed as follow-ons to the AIRS and AMSU instruments. The main objective of this work is to assess whether CrIS/ATMS will be an adequate replacement for AIRS/AMSU from the perspective of the generation of accurate and consistent long term climate data records, or if improved instruments should be developed for future flight. It is critical for CrIS/ATMS to be processed using an algorithm similar to, or at least comparable to, AIRS Version-6 before such an assessment can be made. We have been conducting research to optimize products derived from CrIS/ATMS observations using a scientific approach analogous to the AIRS Version-6 retrieval algorithm. Our latest research uses Version-5.70 of the CrIS/ATMS retrieval algorithm, which is otherwise analogous to AIRS Version-6, but does not yet contain the benefit of use of a Neural-Net first guess start-up system which significantly improved results of AIRS Version-6. Version-5.70 CrIS/ATMS temperature profile and surface skin temperature retrievals are of very good quality, and are better than AIRS Version-5 retrievals, but are still significantly poorer than those of AIRS Version-6. CrIS/ATMS retrievals should improve when a Neural-Net start-up system is ready for use. We also examined CrIS/ATMS retrievals generated by NOAA using their NUCAPS retrieval algorithm, which is based on earlier versions of the AIRS Science Team retrieval algorithms. We show that the NUCAPS algorithm as currently configured is not well suited for climate monitoring purposes.

CrIS↗

NO2 Anomalies - Economy Attribution and Rapid Climate Response

Using principal component (PC) analysis of 16 years of monthly series of NO2 from OMI/Aura, we show that it is the third PC (PC3) from the full hierarchy of principal modes that is best coupled with the economic indicators. This coupling is positive, i.e. PC3 and economic indicators manifest positive covariance. However, the economic variability can explain only 40% of the information in PC3. Furthermore, this mode by itself explains only 3% of the total deseasonalized NO2 variability. We thus conclude that, while having an unambiguous impact, the economy can be awarded at best third order of importance in driving the deseasonalized NO2 series, i.e. after seasonal variability is removed from the series. Once we identified PC3 as the NO2 mode that is coupled with economic variability, we use this mode as an indicator and look for rapid climate adjustments to that part of NO2 variability that we are confident is coupled with the economic variability. We focus on observational data from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) on board of NASA Aqua satellite, decompose series of surface skin temperature and clear-sky outgoing longwave radiances (OLR) into principal components, and identify potential impacts of NO2 PC3 on these climate variables.

NO2↗