Climate Commons^™

Global Validation Of Columnar Water Vapor Derived From Eos Modis-Maiac Algorithm Against The Ground-Based Aeronet Observations, Vitor S. Martins, Alexei Lyapustin, Yujie Wang, David M. Giles, Alexander Smirnov, Ilya Slutsker, Sergey Korkin

Vitor Martins

The water vapor is a relevant greenhouse gas in the Earth's climate system, and satellite products become one of the most effective way to characterize and monitor the columnar water vapor (CWV) content at global scale. Recently, a new product (MCD19) was released as part of MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) Collection 6 (C6). This operational product from Multi-Angle Implementation for Atmospheric Correction (MAIAC) algorithm includes a high 1 km resolution CWV retrievals. This study presents the first global validation of MAIAC C6 CWV obtained from MODIS MCD19A2 product. This evaluation was performed using Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) observations at …

Seasonal And Interannual Assessment Of Cloud Cover And Atmospheric Constituents Across The Amazon (2000–2015): Insights For Remote Sensing And Climate Analysis, Vitor S. Martins, Evlyn M.L.M. Novo, Alexei Lyapustin, Luiz E.O.C. Aragão, Saulo R. Freitas, Claudio C.F. Barbosa

Vitor Martins

The quantitative assessment of cloud cover and atmospheric constituents improves our ability to exploit the climate feedback into the Amazon basin. In the 21st century, three droughts have already occurred in the Amazonia (e.g. 2005, 2010, 2015), inducing regional changes in the seasonal patterns of atmospheric constituents. In addition to climate, the atmospheric dynamic and attenuation properties are long-term challenges for satellite-based remote sensing of this ecosystem: high cloudiness, abundant water vapor content and biomass burning season. Therefore, while climatology analysis supports the understanding of atmospheric variability and trends, it also offers valuable insights for remote sensing applications. In this …

A 2000 Year Saharan Dust Event Record From A European Alps Ice Core, Heather Clifford

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Ice core archives provide the most direct and detailed evidence of past climate and atmospheric conditions, however, traditional ice core sampling (~1-cm resolution) does not provide significant environmental detail in low accumulation and compressed ice core sites. Advances in ice core sampling techniques allows for the capability to detect environmental signals in compressed ice found deeper in the core using finer sampling resolutions. Using the Climate Change Institute’s W.M. Keck Laser Ice Facility non-destructive, ultra-high-resolution, continuously sampled laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometer (LA-ICP-MS) sampling on ice cores, we are able to resolve proxies for both climatological and meteorological scale events …

Climate-Driven Migration: Prioritizing Cultural Resources Threatened By Secondary Impacts Of Climate Change, Frankie St. Amand

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Archaeological sites suffer increasingly destructive primary impacts of climate-driven natural hazards, including sea level rise, flooding, and erosion. Action is generally limited to mitigation and salvage of immediately threatened sites, with little attention or forethought given to secondary effects, such as destruction of interior archaeological resources by inland migration of affected populations. The United Nations predicts a growing trend in resettlement of climate-affected communities from areas where in-situ infrastructure adaptations are not economically feasible, legal, or physically possible. While adapting existing urban infrastructure (e.g., abating combined sewage overflows) is a viable option in the primary impact zone (e.g. coastal areas …

A Multi-Proxy Paleoecological Reconstruction Of Holocene Climate, Vegetation, Fire And Human Activity In Jamaica, West Indies, Mario A. Williams

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Jamaica is located in the Caribbean biodiversity hotspot and has a rich flora and fauna, most notably characterized by exceptional levels of plant endemism. These natural resources are imperiled by climate change and increasing anthropogenic pressures, therefore highlighting the importance of implementing effective conservation programs to mitigate ecosystem degradation. Paleoecological studies that investigate the diversity and distributions of organisms and their habitats over millennial timescales provide critical long-term spatial and temporal context for the assessment of contemporary environmental problems. Lake sediments are a highly useful archive for the study of prehistoric climate and ecological changes, as biological, chemical and geophysical …

Development Of Digital Bathymetry Maps For Lakes Azuei And Enriquillo Using Sonar And Remote Sensing Techniques, Michael Piasecki, Mahrokh Moknatian, Fred Moshary, Jorge Gonzalez

Publications and Research

This article presents an improved algorithm for optimization and development of a digital bathymetric model (DBM) for Lake Azuei (LA) (Haiti) and Lake Enriquillo (LE) (Dominican Republic) using the ANUDEM method. Both sonar data and contour lines of the lakes’ layout extracted using Landsat imagery were compiled for bathymetry development. We show that the performance of the ANUDEM method was strongly dependent on the density and irregularity of the spatial distribution of the data. Changing the resolution of the output grids and deriving auxiliary topographically corrected contours improved the ANUDEM performance and minimized the systematic errors of the method. Statistical …

Wish You Were Here, Janie Stamm, Janie I. Stamm

Graduate School of Art Theses

The State of Florida is under threat from the effects of climate change. Rising sea levels are creeping up on to Florida’s coast, eroding the beaches and encroaching on heavily populated cities. Over my lifetime I will watch the water spill over the streets of my home town. I will watch the water flood the Everglades, pushing saltwater into freshwater habitats. I will watch the water begin to drown the state, taking Florida’s many little known histories along with it. This thesis serves as a document of Floridian life during the Anthropocene.

Within this thesis, I tell the story of …

Weather And Climate Summary And Forecast: May 2019 Report, Gregory V. Jones

Linfield University Wine Studies Reports

This report provides a summary of the weather and climate forecast for May 2019. It includes forecast information specific to the Pacific Northwest and the western United States, as well as forecast information for other portions of the United States and abroad.

A Comparative Analysis Of Governance And Leadership In Agricultural Development Policy Networks, Jessica Rudnick, Meredith Niles, Mark Lubell, Laura Cramer

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Publications

Agricultural development initiatives feature many public and private organizations working together across sectors and scales to pursue the goals of food security and climate resilience. Policy networks are considered a crucial ingredient for the learning and cooperation needed to effectively implement agricultural development projects and increase community resiliency, yet very little comparative empirical data has been collected to assess where and how these networks operate. We contribute to filling this gap by characterizing the governance and leadership patterns within agricultural development policy networks that connect organizations working on climate resilience and food security activities in 14 smallholder farming communities across …

Cool And Warm Season Climate Signals In Tree Rings From North America, Max Carl Arne Torbenson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Earlywood (EW) and latewood (LW) ring-width chronologies have become an increasingly important proxy in paleoclimate reconstructions. These subannual variables can provide estimates of past hydroclimate variability for seasonal windows that total ring-widths cannot resolve. The strength of the relationship between EW and LW series may influence what type of paleoclimate information is embedded within the tree-ring series. High correlations (> 0.70) between EW and LW are recorded for much of the continent but the magnitude of correlation varies greatly across space and species boundaries. Using four LW chronologies from shortleaf pine, the North American conifer species displaying the lowest EW-LW …

Past, Present, And Future Arctic Climate And National/Community Risk Assessment, Jeff Auger

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Arctic is warming at a rate nearly double that of the global average. The enhanced rate of warming impacts weather and climate across the Northern Hemisphere. As the meridional (south to north) thermal gradient weakens, the middle-latitude westerlies are expected to slow and become “wavier” increasing heat and moisture advection to higher latitudes. A quasi-stationary ridge-trough system of the jet stream increases chances for droughts, floods, heatwaves, and cold spells. These impacts have already been observed as North American forest fires and early or extended Great Lake ice out. It is more important than ever to understand how the …

Green Energy At Any Cost: How Ethanol Producer Magazine Uses Science To Frame Ethanol Production, Ashley Kappers

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates the use of science by media to shape discussions about policy in society. Specifically, it investigates how one influential trade publication, Ethanol Producer Magazine, used science in its construction of pro-ethanol production stories. This study is a multi-method analysis of Ethanol Producer Magazine’s feature articles. To determine how sources and writers use science to frame ethanol production during policy changes in the industry, 36 feature stories from four issues in 2009 and 2010 of Ethanol Producer Magazine were analyzed. The results of this study found that Ethanol Producer Magazine is a publication that presents one side of …

The Dionysus Project: Classifying & Monitoring Vineyards With Satellite Remote Sensing & Image Analysis, Evelin Perez-Flores, Nicole Flores, Rachel Zinberg, Dionne Huston, Aaron Davitt, Kyle Mcdonald

Publications and Research

Climate change is expected to impact the wine industry by shifting suitable growing regions away from established regions and increasing the demand for freshwater supplies to maintain vineyard health. This creates challenges for maintaining vineyards since the grapevines need to be appropriately stressed to produce quality grapes for quality wine. This requires precision management of freshwater application and canopy management to produce a grape that has the appropriate concentration of flavors and sugars. Vineyards in the U.S. are typically monitored by vineyard managers at the large scale, lacking the resolution needed to identify grapevine growth at the subfield level. Vineyard …

Daily To Seasonal Moisture Signals Present In Sub-Annual Tree-Ring Data, Ian Howard

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In recent decades, there has been an increase in the development of sub-annual earlywood (EW) and latewood (LW) width tree-ring chronologies that have been used to make long-term inferences about discrete seasonal moisture variability for different regions of North America. This doctoral research developed a new network of EW, LW, and adjusted latewood (LWa) tree-ring chronologies from the western Great Plains. These chronologies were used to reconstruct 300+ years of spring and summer moisture variability over the northern and southern Plains. The reconstructions document new information about the long-term seasonal climate history of the Great Plains, including the unusual nature …

Phosphorus Rate Effects With And Without Avail® On Dryland Winter Wheat In An Eroded Calcareous Soil, Ryan C. Hodges

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Soluble phosphorus fertilizer is bound in the soil rapidly after application in soils high in calcium. A fertilizer additive known as AVAIL® (J.R. Simplot Company) is purported to keep applied phosphorus fertilizer more available to plants by binding to soil minerals such as calcium, magnesium, and iron, thereby reducing phosphorus binding. This could prove useful due to the attraction of AVAIL® with cations such as Ca²⁺, but is fairly unstudied for dryland wheat production on alkaline, calcium-rich soils. The objective of this study is to evaluate the effect of low-rate fertilizer treatments with AVAIL® on dryland small grain …

Analysis Of Hurricane Track Forecast Accuracy During The 2018 Season, Jonathan Unger

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Using Remote Sensing And Gis Techniques Combined With Weather And Climate Data To Create A Deeper Understanding The Wildfire Campfire In California, Lucas Farmer

Student Symposium

Wildfires have devastated the West Coast time and time again. This project takes on multiple approaches to help understand different aspects of these fires, focusing on the wildfire Campfire. The Campfire started and ended in November of 2018 in Butte County California. The first portion of the project focuses on the weather and climate of this region in California. By understanding the weather and climate of a particular area and the time at which a wildfire starts you can start to identify optimal conditions where a fire could potentially breakout. Local weather data will be gathered to look at temperature, …

Movement Of Lifetime Maximum Intensity Locations During The North Atlantic Hurricane Season, Morgan Steckler

EURēCA: Exhibition of Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement

Where a storm reaches its lifetime maximum intensity (LMI) can be a powerful indicator of tropical cyclone intensification patterns. Any changes in this location may demonstrate how hurricanes are affected by climate change. Studies on the annual and decadal trends in LMI location have shown that the latitude where storms are reaching their LMI is shifting, but at different rates and in different directions depending on the ocean basin. In the North Atlantic, for example, LMI location seems to be moving slightly closer to the equator, especially for those storms with the greatest intensities. LMI location patterns have yet to …

The Impact Of Trees On Passive Survivability During Extreme Heat Events In Warm And Humid Regions, Ulrike Passe, Janette R. Thompson, Baskar Ganapathysubramanian, Boshun Gao, Breanna L. Marmur

Breanna L. Marmur

Communities are increasingly affected by excessive heat. The likelihood of extreme heat events is predicted to increase in the Midwest region of the United States. By mid-century (2036–2065), one year out of 10 is projected to have a 5-day period that is 13°F warmer than a comparable earlier period (1976–2005). The frequency of high humidity/dew point days (“extra moist tropical air mass days,” MT++ synoptic climate classification system) has also increased significantly during a similar period (1975–2010) and between 2010 and 2014 included 8 of 26 heat events. This impact is exacerbated by the fact that many residences in low-income …

Radiative Forcing By Dust And Black Carbon On The Juneau Icefield, Alaska, Sonia A. Nagorski, Susan D. Kaspari, Eran Hood, Jason B. Fellman, S. Mckenzie Skiles

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of the Sciences

Here we present the first known data set on black carbon (BC) and mineral dust concentrations in snow from the Juneau Icefield (JIF) in southeastern Alaska, where glacier melt rates are among the highest on Earth. In May 2016, concentrations of BC (0.4–3.1 μg/L) and dust (0.2–34 mg/L) were relatively low and decreased toward the interior of the JIF. The associated radiative forcing (RF) averaged 4 W/m2. In July, after 10 weeks of exposure, the aged snow surface had substantially higher concentrations of BC (2.1–14.8 μg/L) and dust (11–72 mg/L) that were not spatially distributed by elevation or distance from …