Atmospheric Sciences Commons^™

Ground Electric Field, Atmospheric Weather And Electric Grid Variations In Northeast Greece Influenced By The March 2012 Solar Activity And The Moderate To Intense Geomagnetic Storms, Georgios Anagnostopoulos, Anastasios Karkanis, Athanasios Kampatagis, Panagiotis Marhavilas, Sofia-Anna Menesidou, Dimitrios Efthymiadis, Stefanos Keskinis, Dimitar Ouzounov, Nick Hatzigeorgiu, Michael Danakis

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

In a recent paper, we extended a previous study on the solar solar influence to the generation of the March 2012 heatwave in the northeastern USA. In the present study we check the possible relationship of solar activity with the early March 2012 bad weather in northeast Thrace, Greece. To this end, we examined data from various remote sensing instrumentation monitoring the Sun (SDO satellite), Interplanetary space (ACE satellite), the Earth’s magnetosphere (Earth-based measurements, NOAA-19 satellite), the top of the clouds (Terra and Aqua satellites), and the near ground atmosphere. Our comparative data analysis suggests that: (i) the winter-like weather …

Spatial Analyses On Pre-Earthquake Ionospheric Anomalies And Magnetic Storms Observed By China Seismo-Electromagnetic Satellite In August 2018, Jann-Yeng Tiger Liu, Xuhui Shen, Fu-Yuan Chang, Yuh-Ing Chen, Yang-Yi Sun, Chieh‑Hung Chen, Sergey Pulinets, Katsumi Hattori, Dimitar Ouzounov, Valerio Tramutoli, Michel Parrot, Wei-Sheng Chen, Cheng-Yan Liu, Fei Zhang, Dapeng Liu, Xue-Min Zhang, Rui Yan, Qiao Wang

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

The China Seismo-Electromagnetic Satellite (CSES), with a sun-synchronous orbit at 507 km altitude, was launched on 2 February 2018 to investigate pre-earthquake ionospheric anomalies (PEIAs) and ionospheric space weather. The CSES probes manifest longitudinal features of four-peak plasma density and three plasma depletions in the equatorial/low-latitudes as well as mid-latitude troughs. CSES plasma and the total electron content (TEC) of the global ionosphere map (GIM) are used to study PEIAs associated with a destructive M7.0 earthquake and its followed M6.5 and M6.3/M6.9 earthquakes in Lombok, Indonesia, on 5, 17, and 19 August 2018, respectively, as well as to examine ionospheric …

Reducing Uncertainty In Sea-Level Rise Prediction: A Spatial-Variability-Aware Approach, Subhankar Ghosh, Shuai An, Arun Sharma, Jayant Gupta, Shashi Shekhar, Aneesh Subramanian

I-GUIDE Forum

Given multi-model ensemble climate projections, the goal is to accurately and reliably predict future sea-level rise while lowering the uncertainty. This problem is important because sea-level rise affects millions of people in coastal communities and beyond due to climate change's impacts on polar ice sheets and the ocean. This problem is challenging due to spatial variability and unknowns such as possible tipping points (e.g., collapse of Greenland or West Antarctic ice-shelf), climate feedback loops (e.g., clouds, permafrost thawing), future policy decisions, and human actions. Most existing climate modeling approaches use the same set of weights globally, during either regression or …

A Comparative Study Of Vinti-Based Orbit Propagation And Estimation For Cubesats In Very Low Earth Orbits, Ethan Michael Senecal

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in CubeSats and very low Earth orbit (VLEO) space missions. Mission SeaLion, a collaborative CubeSat mission between Old Dominion University, the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, and U.S. Air Force Institute of Technology, planned to launch a 3U CubeSat into VLEO. The VLEO mission is a particularly challenging environment for navigation and orbit propagation because drag introduces a significant perturbation for orbit models such as SGP4. Additionally, mission requirements left no capacity for attitude determination or control, further reducing knowledge of drag behavior of the satellite in flight. This deficiency is a …

A Gridded Co2 Emissions Inventory For Portland, Or, James Eckhardt Powell

Dissertations and Theses

Here we develop a new high resolution inventory of CO₂ emissions for the three Oregon counties which comprise the bulk of the City of Portland, Oregon, USA. Locally curated and long-running data collection efforts for on-road traffic activity and emission rates are used to model on-road emissions, and a new survey of the area's natural gas network informs the building energy model. The inventory estimates total emissions of CO₂ for each hour of the year 2018 in the on-road, residential, and commercial building sectors at 1 km² resolution. The onroad inventory compares to within 3% with an …

Communicating About Extreme Heat: Results From Card Sorting And Think Aloud Interviews With Experts From Differing Domains, Jeannette Sutton, Nicholas Waugh, Savannah Olivas

Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security, and Cybersecurity Faculty Scholarship

Climate trends indicate that extreme heat events are becoming more common and more severe over time, requiring improved strategies to communicate heat risk and protective actions. However, there exists a disconnect in heat-related communication from experts, who commonly include heat related jargon (i.e., technical language), to decision makers and the general public. The use of jargon has been shown to reduce meaningful engagement with and understanding of messages written by experts. Translating technical language into comprehensible messages that encourage decision makers to take action has been identified as a priority to enable impact-based decision support. Knowing what concepts and terms …

Possible Overestimation Of Nitrogen Dioxide Outgassing During The Beirut 2020 Explosion, Ashraf Farahat, Nayla El-Kork, Ramesh P. Singh, Feng Jing

Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles and Research

On 4 August 2020, a strong explosion occurred near the Beirut seaport, Lebanon and killed more than 200 people and damaged numerous buildings in the vicinity. As Amonium Nitrate (AN) caused the explosion, many studies claimed the release of large amounts of NO₂ in the atmosphere may have resulted in a health hazard in Beirut and the vicinity. In order to reasonably evaluate the significance of NO₂ amounts released in the atmosphere, it is important to investigate the spatio-temporal distribution of NO₂ during and after the blast and compare it to the average day-to-day background emissions from …

¿Aviso O Alerta? Developing Effective, Inclusive, And Consistent Watch And Warning Translations For U.S. Spanish Speakers, Joseph E. Trujillo-Falcón, América R. Gaviria Pabón, Joseph T. Ripberger, Abby Bitterman, Jonathan B. Thornton, Mackenzie J. Krocak, Sean R. Ernst, Estilita Cassiani Obeso, John Lipski

NOAA Technical Reports and Related Materials

Spanish-speaking populations in the United States are more vulnerable in disaster contexts due to inequities, such as language barriers, that prevent them from receiving life-saving information. For the past couple of decades, governmental organizations have addressed these issues by translating weather watches, warnings, and advisories into Spanish. Previous studies suggest that these Spanish translations do not communicate the same level of urgency as their English counterparts. To identify whether these translated products result in inequities between English and Spanish speaker reception and comprehension of forecast information, we asked a representative sample of U.S. English (n = 1,550) and Spanish (n …

Estimation Of Economic Risk From Coastal Natural Hazards In Louisiana, Rubayet Bin Mostafiz

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Louisiana, U.S.A., is among the most vulnerable areas globally to coastal natural hazards, with risk vulnerability likely increasing. The risks associated with non-tropical-cyclone hazards in Louisiana’s coastal zone have been understudied. This research enhances present and future (i.e., 2050) Louisiana risk assessment using locally-weighted, model-based hazard frequency/intensity and population projections.

Results suggest that property risks associated with extreme cold temperature and tornado are and will remain costlier than those for hail and lightning. Property risks of extreme cold temperature and hail are projected to decrease with the expected warming temperatures, with those of all four of these hazards peaking in …

Meteor Radar Vertical Wind Observation Biases And Mathematical Debiasing Strategies Including The 3dvar+Div Algorithm, Alan Z. Liu, Zishun Qiao, Gunter Stober, Alexander Kozlovsky, Ales Kuchar, Christoph Jacobi, Chris Meek, Diego Janches, Guiping Liu, Masaki Tsutsumi, Njål Gulbrandsen, Satonori Nozawa, Mark Lester, Evgenia Belova, Johan Kero, Nicholas Mitchell

Publications

Meteor radars have become widely used instruments to study atmospheric dynamics, particularly in the 70 to 110 km altitude region. These systems have been proven to provide reliable and continuous measurements of horizontal winds in the mesosphere and lower thermosphere. Recently, there have been many attempts to utilize specular and/or transverse scatter meteor measurements to estimate vertical winds and vertical wind variability. In this study we investigate potential biases in vertical wind estimation that are intrinsic to the meteor radar observation geometry and scattering mechanism, and we introduce a mathematical debiasing process to mitigate them. This process makes use of …

Characterization Of Smoke Particles Toward Improved Remote Sensing Retrievals And Chemical Transport Modeling, Chenchong Zhang

McKelvey School of Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Wildfires increase in extent, intensity, and frequency across the globe over the recent decades. The uncontrolled fires trigger cascading effects on local ecosystems and the fire emissions pose a higher risk to air quality and climate. Wildfire emissions contain a variety of trace gases and particulate matters. The particle-phase emissions, especially those light-absorbing species including black carbon (BC) and brown carbon (BrC), significantly affect the regional and global climate by modulating the radiative transfer phenomena in the atmosphere. A great discrepancy still exists between model- and observation-based estimates of aerosol-radiation interactions (ARI). The discrepancy is partially attributed to the mischaracterizations …

Changes Of Winter Severity In Arkansas During 1901-2100, Christian Garcia

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The objective of this study was to quantify the winter severity in a way that was reproduceable and easy to understand. The Accumulated Winter Severity Seasonal Index (AWSSI) was chosen for this reason and was used to quantify winter severity by season across the state of Arkansas. The variables that go into the AWSSI calculation are maximum daily temperature, minimum daily temperature, daily snowfall, and daily snow depth. When the snowfall and snow depth were missing, they can be estimated using daily temperature and precipitation. Then the estimated snowfall and snow depth can be subsequently used to quantify the winter …

Response Of Surface And Atmospheric Parameters Associated With The Iran M 7.3 Earthquake, Feng Jing, Ramesh P. Singh

Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles and Research

Multiparameter observed from satellite, including microwave brightness temperature, skin temperature, air temperature, and carbon monoxide, have been analyzed to identify the anomalous signals associated with the M 7.3 Iran earthquake of November 12, 2017. Besides removing the multiyear variability of parameters as background, the effect of surface and atmosphere of a dust storm event in Middle East region during October 29–November 1 is considered to distinguish the possible anomalies associated with the earthquake. The characteristic behaviors of surface and atmospheric parameters clearly show the signals associated with the M 7.3 earthquake and the dust storm event. The multiple parameters at …

Remote Sensing & Land Surface Temperature From Satellite Observations, Isatu Jollah

Publications and Research

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument is designed and developed in 1995. • It is a critical instrument aboard Terra and Aqua satellites. Terra's orbit around the Earth is timed so that it crosses the equator from north to south in the morning, while Aqua crosses the equator from south to north in the afternoon. • Every 1 to 2 days, Terra MODIS and Aqua MODIS scan the entire Earth's surface, collecting data in groups of wavelengths. • In this research, a whole month of MODIS Land Surface Temperature data from both Aqua and Terra were explored and investigated.

S6e9: What Does Maine Need To Expand Electric Vehicle Use?, Ron Lisnet, Jonathan Rubin

The Maine Question

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions in Maine will require a broader adoption of electric vehicles, according to University of Maine economist Jonathan Rubin. Officials from the Maine Department of Transportation and other state agencies have a role to play in fueling the transition away from gas-powered cars and trucks. To guide them, Rubin, professor of economics and director of the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center, and his colleagues from the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) released a report that outlines strategies for reducing emissions from the transportation sector.

On this week’s episode of “The Maine Question,” Rubin discusses the report …

Global Gnss-Ro Electron Density In The Lower Ionosphere, Dong L. Wu, Daniel J. Emmons Ii, Nimalan Swarnalingam

Faculty Publications

Lack of instrument sensitivity to low electron density (N_e) concentration makes it difficult to measure sharp N_e vertical gradients (four orders of magnitude over 30 km) in the D/E-region. A robust algorithm is developed to retrieve global D/E-region N_e from the high-rate GNSS radio occultation (RO) data, to improve spatiotemporal coverage using recent SmallSat/CubeSat constellations. The new algorithm removes F-region contributions in the RO excess phase profile by fitting a linear function to the data below the D-region. The new GNSS-RO observations reveal many interesting features in the diurnal, seasonal, solar-cycle, and magnetic-field-dependent variations in the …

S6e1: What Happens If Mount Everest Loses All Of Its Snow And Ice?, Ron Lisnet, Paul A. Mayewski

The Maine Question

No place on earth can escape the effects of climate change, not even Mount Everest. The highest glacier on the world’s tallest mountain — the South Col Glacier — is rapidly disappearing. A new University of Maine-led study found that the glacier is losing several decades of ice and snow accumulation annually due to human-induced climate change.

These findings are the latest from the 2019 National Geographic and Rolex Perpetual Planet Everest Expedition, led by UMaine Climate Change Institute director Paul Mayewski. In this episode of “The Maine Question,” Mayewski and UMaine Ph.D. candidate Mariusz Potocki, both co-authors of the …

A Comparison Of Sporadic-E Occurrence Rates Using Gps Radio Occultation And Ionosonde Measurements, Rodney Carmona, Omar A. Nava, Eugene V. Dao, Daniel J. Emmons

Faculty Publications

Sporadic-E (E_s) occurrence rates from Global Position Satellite radio occultation (GPS-RO) measurements have shown to vary by a factor of five between studies, motivating the need for a comparison with ground-based measurements. In an attempt to find accurate GPS-RO techniques for detecting E_s formation, occurrence rates derived using five previously developed GPS-RO techniques are compared to ionosonde measurements over an eight-year period from 2010–2017. GPS-RO measurements within 170 km of a ionosonde site are used to calculate E_s occurrence rates and compared to the ground-truth ionosonde measurements. The techniques are compared individually for each ionosonde site …

Comparison Of Topsoil Moisture In E3sm Model Simulations And In-Situ Observations Over Illinois, Jacinda Lee Mayer

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Soil moisture stimulates land-atmosphere interactions by modifying energy and water fluxes in the boundary layer and it plays an important role in climate change studies. The objective of this research is to quantify the spatial and temporal variations of the Illinois Climate Network’s (ICN) observed topsoil moisture, as well as evaluate how accurately the new climate model, E3SM, is simulating soil moisture compared to the observed data during 2003-2014. Observed topsoil moisture averaged over growing season during the 12-year period indicates a general dry-north and wet-south pattern in Illinois, and northeast and southwest become drier with the progression of the …

On The Stratospheric Chemistry Of Midlatitude Wildfire Smoke, Susan Soloman, Kimberlee Dube, Kane Stone, Pengfei Yu, Doug Kinnison, Owen B. Toon, Susan E. Strahan, Karen H. Rosenlof, Robert Portmann, Sean Davis, William Randel, Peter Bernath, Chris Boone, Charles G. Bardeen, Adam Bourassa, Daniel Zawada, Doug Degenstein

Chemistry & Biochemistry Faculty Publications

Massive Australian wildfires lofted smoke directly into the stratosphere in the austral summer of 2019/20. The smoke led to increases in optical extinction throughout the midlatitudes of the southern hemisphere that rivalled substantial volcanic perturbations. Previous studies have assumed that the smoke became coated with sulfuric acid and water and would deplete the ozone layer through heterogeneous chemistry on those surfaces, as is routinely observed following volcanic enhancements of the stratospheric sulfate layer. Here, observations of extinction and reactive nitrogen species from multiple independent satellites that sampled the smoke region are compared to one another and to model calculations. The …

Spatial Distribution Of Pm2.5-Related Premature Mortality In China, Sheng Zheng, Uwe Schlink, Kin-Fai Ho, Ramesh P. Singh, Andrea Pozzer

Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles and Research

PM_2.5 is a major component of air pollution in China and has a serious threat to public health. It is very important to quantify spatial characteristics of the health effects caused by outdoor PM_2.5 exposure. This study analyzed the spatial distribution of PM_2.5 concentration (45.9 μg/m³ national average in 2016) and premature mortality attributed to PM_2.5 in cities at the prefectural level and above in China in 2016. Using the Global Exposure Mortality Model (GEMM), the total premature mortality in China was estimated to be 1.55 million persons, and the per capita mortality was 11.2 …

Pre-Earthquake Ionospheric Perturbation Identification Using Cses Data Via Transfer Learning, Pan Xiong, Cheng Long, Huiyu Zhou, Roberto Battiston, Angelo De Santis, Dimitar Ouzounov, Xuemin Zhang, Xuhui Shen

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

During the lithospheric buildup to an earthquake, complex physical changes occur within the earthquake hypocenter. Data pertaining to the changes in the ionosphere may be obtained by satellites, and the analysis of data anomalies can help identify earthquake precursors. In this paper, we present a deep-learning model, SeqNetQuake, that uses data from the first China Seismo-Electromagnetic Satellite (CSES) to identify ionospheric perturbations prior to earthquakes. SeqNetQuake achieves the best performance [F-measure (F1) = 0.6792 and Matthews correlation coefficient (MCC) = 0.427] when directly trained on the CSES dataset with a spatial window centered on the earthquake epicenter with the Dobrovolsky …

It Takes Two To Tango : Understanding The Processes That Lead To Simultaneous Changes In Tropical Cyclone Intensity And Size And Communicating The Associated Hazards To Emergency Managers, Emily A. Paltz

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The severity of tropical cyclone (TC) hazards is modulated by both TC intensity and size. More intense TCs produce stronger storm surges and increase wind damage. Larger TCs potentially impact more people, increase the duration of TC hazards, produce stronger storm surges and increase the amount of rainfall and flooding. Thus, accurately forecasting both TC intensity and size and effectively communicating those forecasts are critical to properly preparing communities for TC impacts. Forecast accuracy can be improved by enhancing our understanding about the processes that cause changes in TC intensity and size. This research divides the Extended Best Track dataset …

Climate Model Evaluation Of Atmospheric Rivers Over The Contiguous United States, Ilan González-Hirshfeld

Dissertations and Theses

Atmospheric rivers (ARs)--long corridors of intense atmospheric water vapor transport--significantly influence the hydrologic cycle and regional hydrometeorological extremes across the contiguous United States (CONUS). Ongoing and future climate change may alter AR characteristics and impacts, making confident climate model projections of future change, especially at regional scales, of critical importance. In order to better constrain uncertainty in such projections of future change, we perform a comprehensive climate model evaluation of AR climatology over the CONUS. Using an established AR detection algorithm, we evaluate the representation of ARs in historical simulations (1984-2013) from a suite of models participating in the sixth …

Assimilation Of Seasonal Moisture Variability In North America And Asia For The Last Millennium, Chang Liu

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The seasonal tree-ring chronologies that recorded discrete moisture signal for warm and cool season have been used to reconstruct the North America Seasonal Precipitation Atlas (NASPA) by the point-by-point regression method, and the results indicated that they can fairly reproduce the seasonal precipitation variability in the past. Compared with reconstructions using only paleoclimate proxy data, the paleoclimate data assimilation (PDA) considers both proxy data and climate model output, so the PDA reconstructions are consistent with both the climate signals reflected by the proxy data and the physical mechanisms represented by climate models. Based on the tree rings with discrete seasonal …

Investigating Water Usage Patterns Tied To California State Water Project, Xiaoqing Wu

Publications and Research

California (USA) is the largest agricultural producer and one of the populous states in the United State. As the population and agriculture grows, water consumption patterns become crucial to keep track of especially surface water. In this research project, we studied possible changes in water consumption patterns in different counties and water rights holders who obtain surface water supply from the State Water Project (SWP) in California. We conducted a time series analysis on the California Monthly Diverted Surface Water dataset through two different time series forecasting models. Our analysis indicates that the total diverted surface water presents a periodic …

Downscaling Methodology For Satellite Land Surface Temperatures Over Urban Environments, Naved Khan, Ruben Vecino

Publications and Research

The objective of this study is to develop high spatial and temporal resolution Land Surface Temperature (LST) data using a combination of Landsat 8, infrared satellite sensors such as the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), and the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-R Series (GOES-16). The Landsat 8 Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS) provides higher spatial resolution (30 m) estimates of skin temperature every 16 days. MODIS makes daytime and nighttime observations of the Earth’s thermal emission at a coarser spatial resolution (1000 m), while GOES-16, which has lower spatial resolution (2 km), measures the skin temperature at a much higher temporal resolution …

Hazardous Weather And Human Response In The Southeastern United States, Daniel Burow

Doctoral Dissertations

Effectively mitigating the human costs of future hazardous weather events requires examining meteorological threats, their long-term patterns, and human response to these events. The southeastern United States is a region that has both a high climatological risk and a high societal vulnerability to many different meteorological hazards. In this dissertation, I study hazardous weather and human response in the Southeast through three different lenses: identifying uniquely simultaneous hazards posed by tropical cyclones, assessing precipitation and synoptic weather patterns on hazardous weather days, and examining patterns in intended response to tornado watches. I find that simultaneous and collocated tornado and flash …

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 …

Hazardous Weather Communication En Español: Challenges, Current Resources, And Future Practices, Joseph E. Trujillo-Falcón, Orlando Bermúdez, Krizia Negrón-Hernández, John Lipski, Elizabeth Leitman, Kodi Berry

NOAA Technical Reports and Related Materials

According to recent Census data, the Hispanic or Latino population represents nearly 1 in 5 Americans today, where 71.1% of these individuals speak Spanish at home. Despite increased efforts among the weather enterprise, establishing effective risk communication strategies for Spanish-speaking populations has been an uphill battle. No frameworks exist for translating weather information into the Spanish language, nor are there collective solutions that address this problem within the weather world. The objective of this article is threefold. First, the current translation issue in Spanish is highlighted. Through research conducted at the NOAA/NWS Storm Prediction Center, situations are revealed where regional …