Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology Commons^™

Kaleidoscope Of Urban Evapotranspiration: Exploring The Science And Modeling Approaches, Rubab Saher

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Urban evapotranspiration is a complex physical process. It depends on various critical drivers, including the land surface temperature (LST), surface albedo, landscape types, and building orientations. All of these factors create difficulties in the estimation of evapotranspiration (ET) by changing the microclimate conditions. The literature has oversimplified microclimate conditions by considering temperature difference as the only variable defining climate. The physical process depends on land-use changes, building proximities, and landscape types. This study devised three objectives to understand the microclimate effects on ET.

In the first objective, land-use change effects on LST, surface albedo, and ET were analyzed over a …

Pattern-Based Downscaling Of Snowpack Variability In The Western United States, Nicolas Gauthier, Kevin J. Anchukaitis, Bethany Coulthard

Geoscience Faculty Research

The decline in snowpack across the western United States is one of the most pressing threats posed by climate change to regional economies and livelihoods. Earth system models are important tools for exploring past and future snowpack variability, yet their coarse spatial resolutions distort local topography and bias spatial patterns of accumulation and ablation. Here, we explore pattern-based statistical downscaling for spatially-continuous interannual snowpack estimates. We find that a few leading patterns capture the majority of snowpack variability across the western US in observations, reanalyses, and free-running simulations. Pattern-based downscaling methods yield accurate, high resolution maps that correct mean and …