Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology Commons^™

Investigating Perspectives Of Rural Nevadans On Climate Change Solutions, Tricia Dutcher

Graduate Research Symposium (GCUA)

Rural perspectives are important for the issue of climate change. Rural areas are high concentrations of active voters who deny the problem of anthropogenic climate change. Rural residents also face decisions about inviting large, utility scale renewable energy developments in their areas. This research examines rural Nevadan’s perspectives on climate change to offer insights about the relationship between climate change perceptions and communication strategies. The research offers policy implications that address context specific issues, solution-oriented dialogue, and interest matching to mitigate anthropogenic climate change.

The Effects Of Climate Science Literacy And Cultural Polarization Around Climate Change Risk Perception, Gabriel R. Young, Helen R. Neill

Graduate Research Symposium (GCUA)

Science communicators have struggled to provide meaningful information about climate change due to the complex nature of the problem and the polarized political and media landscapes, and yet, a well informed public is a crucial element to both public acceptance and policy initiatives aimed at climate change mitigation. Current literature suggests that scientific literacy actually increases cultural polarization around the issue of climate change (Kahan, 2012). This study adds to the literature by testing the hypothesis that climate change risk perception is more heavily tied to climate science literacy than general science literacy when controlling for cultural worldviews. We use ...

Predicting Wave-Induced Ripple Equilibrium Geometry, Timothy R. Nelson, George Voulgaris, Peter Traykovski

George Voulgaris

A comprehensive database of existing (since 1954) field and laboratory measurements of ripple geometry is compiled and combined with newly collected field data to examine the performance of ripple equilibrium predictors. Re-analysis of this enlarged ripple geometry data set reveals that ripples formed from monochromatic waves scale differently than ripples formed from random waves for many existing ripple predictors. Our analysis indicates that ripple wavelengths from the two data sets collapse into a single scaling when the semi-orbital excursion and sediment grain diameter are used as normalizing factors. Ripple steepness remains relatively constant for both regular and irregular wave conditions ...

Enhancing Interest In Stem At Nw Indiana Middle And High Schools Through Balloon Launches And Tracking, Mark Spychala, Raymond Finzel

Celebration of Undergraduate Scholarship

Our vision with this project is to develop and implement a research project led by undergraduates from Valparaiso University (VU) that would involve the participation of local middle and high school students in innovative balloon payloads . Under the guidance of Dr. Gary Morris, two VU undergraduate students will develop their designs, then present and test their system at local schools to help instill excitement about STEM in curious young minds. All students (college, middle, and high school) gain knowledge, experience, and confidence in STEM-related areas. The primary goal of this project is to provide competency-building education and research opportunities that ...

Investigation Of Idabel, Oklahoma Ozone Concentration Pre- And Post-Frontal Passage, Veronica Fall, Alexander Kotsakis

Celebration of Undergraduate Scholarship

Fifty-eight ozone profiles from Oklahoma State University’s Kiamichi Forestry Research Station in Idabel, OK have been collected over the last three years. This has been made possible through funding from the Texas Commission for Environmental Quality. The data has provided an opportunity to see what was happening meteorologically that affected ozone concentrations. With ozone being the primary cause of short and long-term respiratory issues, the impact of weather on air quality is something that is still being researched. Ozone pre-cursor emitters such as Dallas, Oklahoma City, Longview, and Texarkana surround Idabel. Meteorological conditions such as temperature, wind speed, and ...

Tap Water Treatment And Testing, Matt Oswalt

Anthropology Undergraduate Research (COLA)

Introduction

My research is focused on how the water we drink is cleaned and filtered and whether or not it is safe to drink the water from the tap.

Limnological Assistance For Lake Mead National Recreation Area: Quarterly Report, Period Ending September 30, 2012, Margaret N. Rees

Limnological studies

Continuation of Project 1

• The research effort titled Growth of adult quagga mussels within Las Vegas Wash/Las Vegas Bay is ongoing.

Continuation of Project 2

• Additional content was contributed to the future NPS-funded U.S. Geological Survey Circular ‘state-of-the-science’ report for Lakes Mead and Mohave. UNLV performed a new co-editing and coordinating task related to this product as the major focus of this quarter’s effort; the master version of this report is on schedule for delivery to the editorial team during the first week of October 2012.

Modification Activities:

Extended Short-term Continued Limnological Assistance

Quagga Mussel Objectives:

• Most ...

Resolving Ionospheric E-Region Modeling Challenges: The Solar Photon Flux Dependence, Joseph B. Jensen, Jan J. Sojka, Michael David, Kent Tobiska, Robert W. Schunk, Tom Woods, Frank Eparvier

Browse All Undergraduate research

The EVE instrument of the NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) provides for the first time EUV and XUV measurements of the solar irradiance that adequately define the major source of ionization of the atmosphere. In our study we modeled the E-region of the ionosphere and analyzed how it is affected by the solar irradiance data obtained by EVE and contrast this with the S2000 Solar Irradiance model, used previously. The ionosphere has two major layers, the E-layer at 100 km, and the F-layer at 300 km. The difference in solar irradiances are small except at some wavelength bands, it is ...

The Greenhouse Effect At The Molecular Level, Michael Monce

Physics, Astronomy and Geophysics Faculty Publications

The greenhouse effect is generally modeled on a macro scale by designating energy balance for the planetary system. This involves the incoming solar radiation, reflected solar energy, absorbed solar energy at the ground, and subsequent re-radiation at longer wavelengths from the ground. The reradiated energy is then either transmitted out of the system or absorbed by the greenhouse gases and thus changing the overall energy balance.

However, the entire notion of the effects of so-called greenhouse gases hinges on the absorption and reemission of radiation at the individual molecular level. This paper presents an evaluation of that process by utilizing ...

An Examination Of The Mechanisms And Environments Supportive Of Bow Echo Mesovortex Genesis, George Limpert

Dissertations & Theses in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences

Low-level mesovortices are associated with enhanced surface wind gusts and high-end wind damage in quasi-linear thunderstorms. Although damage associated with mesovortices can approach that of moderately strong tornadoes, skill in forecasting mesovortices is low. The overarching goal of this work is to understand mesovortices and how they develop, to improve the skill in forecasting them. This was done by developing a climatology of mesovortices, which required a tracking algorithm, and numerical simulations were conducted to answer questions that could not be answered through the observational data. A climatology of mesovortices was constructed from 44 events during 2009 and 2010 to ...

A Climatology Of Lake-Effect Snowfall And Evaluation Of The Cobb Method For The Great Lakes Region, Seth Kutikoff

Dissertations & Theses in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences

Accuracy in snowfall prediction has lagged behind other short-term weather forecasting areas. Errors in quantitative precipitation forecasts ensure that any snow ratio applied to snow may result in inaccurate snowfall amounts, and snowfall observations are not consistent or fully reliable. In this study, the Cobb Method is tested on lake-effect snowfalls to determine if the top-down ice crystal growth modeled in the algorithm can be applied to convective snowfalls. To establish the spatiotemporal and physical characteristics of lake-effect snowfalls at selected study locations near the Great Lakes, snowfall and snow ratio climatologies are produced that separate events by lake-effect and ...

Remote Sensing Of Surface Visibility From Space: A Look At The United States East Coast, Amy L. Kessner

Dissertations & Theses in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences

While important for the management of air quality, human health and transportation, surface visibility data currently are only available through ground-based measurements, such as the Automated Surface Observing System (ASOS), and therefore lack spatial coverage. In analogy to the recent work of using satellite-based aerosol optical depth (AOD) to derive surface dry aerosol mass concentration at continental-to-global scale for cloud-free conditions, this study evaluates the potential of AOD retrieved from the MODerate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) for deriving surface visibility. For this purpose of evaluation, the truncated and discrete visibility data from daily weather reports are not suitable and the ...

Economic Efficiency In Fisheries And Aquaculture, Paul Molyneaux

The Catch

Reflection of the author as a worker looking to make the best use of his time and energy. His innate understanding of the principles of ecological economics followed by exposure to the discipline’s advancing theories leads to a revelation regarding the backwards logic of fisheries and aquaculture policy thus far, and the decline in real seafood production.Along with many others, Molyneaux looks to ecological economics to create a new paradigm for sustainable fisheries.

Marine Museum, Bob Brooks

The Catch

Poem inspired by the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport, Maine

Restoration, Pat Ranzoni

The Catch

Poem commemorating the removal of the Great Works Dam on the Penobscot River.

Editor's Note, Catherine Schmitt

The Catch

No abstract provided.

Towards Linked Data For Oceanographic Science: The R2r Eventlogger Project, Controlled Vocabularies, And Ontologies At The Mblwhoi Library, Elizabeth Coburn, Andrew R. Maffei, Cynthia L. Chandler, Lisa Raymond

University of Massachusetts and New England Area Librarian e-Science Symposium

Objective: Research vessels coordinated by the United States University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System (US-UNOLS) collect data which are considered important oceanographic science research products. The NSF-funded Rolling Deck to Repository (R2R) project aims to improve access to these data and diminish barriers to their use. One aspect of the R2R project has been to develop a shipboard scientific event logging system, Eventlogger, which incorporates best practice guidelines, controlled vocabularies, a cruise metadata schema, and a scientific event log. Eventlogger facilitates the eventual ingestion of datasets into oceanographic data repositories for subsequent integration and synthesis by investigators. The careful use of controlled ...

Using High-Resolution Weather Data To Improve Winter Weather Maintenance Operations, Michael Baldwin

Purdue Road School

Substantial resources are required for winter maintenance operations. This presentation focuses on more accurate and precise weather information that can help reduce the uncertainty related to winter weather, resulting in improved decision-making and significant cost savings for winter operations.

Bottled Sky, Ioannis Michalou(Di)S

The STEAM Journal

Cloud-hunter Ioannis ΜICHALOU(di)S, lies in wait of air streams, grapping pieces of sky, shaping them, molding them, and baptizing them as ‘aerosculptures’. MICHALOU(di)S is the first visual artist worldwide to use art and science in a unique way. His latest Art-Science achievement is ‘Bottled Sky’. He states:

“In October 2001, while I was trying to create a cubic nephele, in the Visual Arts Research Centre of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), I came upon the silica aerogel for the first time... It is a space technology material, intangible -consisting of 99.9% air and 0.1 ...

Assessment Of A Rotenone Application Event At Mormon Island West Lake In Central Nebraska, Keith D. Koupal, Brian C. Peterson, Casey W. Schoenebeck

Transactions of the Nebraska Academy of Sciences and Affiliated Societies

Fisheries managers applied rotenone to Mormon Island West in August of 2010 to renovate a fish community that was hypothesized to be unbalanced (i.e., dominated with gizzard shad and common carp) based on standardized survey results. We estimated species-specific biomass following the lake renovation to provide a baseline biomass estimate for a sand pit lake and to evaluate the effectiveness of standardized sampling gears. Gizzard shad (Dorosoma cepedianum) were abundant in all sampling gears, but mostly stock-size (>175 mm total length) and larger individuals were caught in gill and trap nets and sub-stock (≤175 mm total length) individuals were ...