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Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Development And Evaluation Of A Multi-Year Fractional Surface Water Data Set Derived From Active/Passive Microwave Remote Sensing Data, Ronny Schroeder, Kyle C. Mcdonald, Bruce D. Chapman, Katherine Jensen, Erika Podest, Zachary D. Tessler, Theodore J. Bohn, Reiner Zimmermann Dec 2015

Development And Evaluation Of A Multi-Year Fractional Surface Water Data Set Derived From Active/Passive Microwave Remote Sensing Data, Ronny Schroeder, Kyle C. Mcdonald, Bruce D. Chapman, Katherine Jensen, Erika Podest, Zachary D. Tessler, Theodore J. Bohn, Reiner Zimmermann

Publications and Research

The sensitivity of Earth’s wetlands to observed shifts in global precipitation and temperature patterns and their ability to produce large quantities of methane gas are key global change questions. We present a microwave satellite-based approach for mapping fractional surface water (FW) globally at 25-km resolution. The approach employs a land cover-supported, atmospherically-corrected dynamic mixture model applied to 20+ years (1992–2013) of combined, daily, passive/active microwave remote sensing data. The resulting product, known as Surface WAter Microwave Product Series (SWAMPS), shows strong microwave sensitivity to sub-grid scale open water and inundated wetlands comprising open plant canopies. SWAMPS’ FW compares favorably (R2 …


A Mechanism For Biologically Induced Iodine Emissions From Sea Ice, A. Saiz-Lopez, Christopher S. Blaszczak-Boxe, L. J. Carpenter Sep 2015

A Mechanism For Biologically Induced Iodine Emissions From Sea Ice, A. Saiz-Lopez, Christopher S. Blaszczak-Boxe, L. J. Carpenter

Publications and Research

Ground- and satellite-based measurements have reported high concentrations of iodine monoxide (IO) in coastal Antarctica. The sources of such a large iodine burden in the coastal Antarctic atmosphere remain unknown.We propose a mechanism for iodine release from sea ice based on the premise that micro-algae are the primary source of iodine emissions in this environment. The emissions are triggered by the biological production of iodide (I�) and hypoiodous acid (HOI) from micro-algae (contained within and underneath sea ice) and their diffusion through sea-ice brine channels, ultimately accumulating in a thin brine layer (BL) on the surface of sea ice. Prior …


Focus On Extreme Events And The Carbon Cycle, Chuixiang Yi, Elise Pendall, Philippe Ciais Jul 2015

Focus On Extreme Events And The Carbon Cycle, Chuixiang Yi, Elise Pendall, Philippe Ciais

Publications and Research

Climate physics indicates that warming climate is a likely cause of extreme weather and more frequent and intense climate events. These extreme events can disrupt terrestrial carbon dynamics dramatically by triggering ecological disturbances and potentially forcing climate–carbon feedbacks. In this paper we synthesize the findings of 26 papers that focus on collecting evidence and developing knowledge of how extreme events disturb terrestrial carbon dynamics


Stably Stratified Canopy Flow In Complex Terrain, Xiyan Xu, Chuixiang Yi, Eric Kutter Jul 2015

Stably Stratified Canopy Flow In Complex Terrain, Xiyan Xu, Chuixiang Yi, Eric Kutter

Publications and Research

Stably stratified canopy flow in complex terrain has been considered a difficult condition for measuring net ecosystem–atmosphere exchanges of carbon, water vapor, and energy. A long-standing advection error in eddy-flux measurements is caused by stably stratified canopy flow. Such a condition with strong thermal gradient and less turbulent air is also difficult for modeling. To understand the challenging atmospheric condition for eddy-flux measurements, we use the renormalized group (RNG) k–ε turbulence model to investigate the main characteristics of stably stratified canopy flows in complex terrain. In this two-dimensional simulation, we imposed persistent constant heat flux at ground surface and linearly …


Evaluation Of Alos Palsar Data For High-Resolution Mapping Of Vegetated Wetlands In Alaska, Daniel Clewley, Jane Whitcomb, Mahta Moghaddam, Kyle Macdonald, Bruce Chapman, Peter Bunting Jun 2015

Evaluation Of Alos Palsar Data For High-Resolution Mapping Of Vegetated Wetlands In Alaska, Daniel Clewley, Jane Whitcomb, Mahta Moghaddam, Kyle Macdonald, Bruce Chapman, Peter Bunting

Publications and Research

As the largest natural source of methane, wetlands play an important role in the carbon cycle. High-resolution maps of wetland type and extent are required to quantify wetland responses to climate change. Mapping northern wetlands is particularly important because of a disproportionate increase in temperatures at higher latitudes. Synthetic aperture radar data from a spaceborne platform can be used to map wetland types and dynamics over large areas. Following from earlier work by Whitcomb et al. (2009) using Japanese Earth Resources Satellite (JERS-1) data, we applied the “random forests” classification algorithm to variables from L-band ALOS PALSAR data for 2007, …


Adolescent Girls, Human Rights And The Expanding Climate Emergency, Holly G. Atkinson, Judith Bruce May 2015

Adolescent Girls, Human Rights And The Expanding Climate Emergency, Holly G. Atkinson, Judith Bruce

Publications and Research

Many adolescent girls—the poorest girls in the poorest communities—already live in an “emergency.” Humanitarian crises only amplify the call on their coping and caring capacities, while exacerbating their vulnerabilities. The frequency and intensity of emergencies, including natural disasters, conflicts, and infectious disease outbreaks such as Ebola, appear to be growing.1 These emergencies threaten entire communities and whole countries, often with global implications. Many become virtually permanent. The authors urge key actors responding to both the threats and opportunities that climate change poses to understand adolescent girls as exceptionally at risk on the one hand, and as exceptionally resilient and …


Probabilistic Precipitation Estimation With A Satellite Product, Nir Y. Krakauer, Soni M. Pradhanang, Jeeban Panthi, Tarendra Lakhankar, Ajay K. Jha Apr 2015

Probabilistic Precipitation Estimation With A Satellite Product, Nir Y. Krakauer, Soni M. Pradhanang, Jeeban Panthi, Tarendra Lakhankar, Ajay K. Jha

Publications and Research

Satellite-based precipitation products have been shown to represent precipitation well over Nepal at monthly resolution, compared to ground-based stations. Here, we extend our analysis to the daily and subdaily timescales, which are relevant for mapping the hazards caused by storms as well as drought. We compared the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA) 3B42RT product with individual stations and with the gridded APHRODITE product to evaluate its ability to retrieve different precipitation intensities. We find that 3B42RT, which is freely available in near real time, has reasonable correspondence with ground-based precipitation products on a daily timescale; rank …


Assessment Of The Consistency Among Global Microwave Land Surface Emissivity Products, Hamidreza Norouzi, M. Temimi, C. Prigent, J. Turk, Reza Khanbilvardi, Y. Tian, F. A. Furuzawa, H. Masunaga Mar 2015

Assessment Of The Consistency Among Global Microwave Land Surface Emissivity Products, Hamidreza Norouzi, M. Temimi, C. Prigent, J. Turk, Reza Khanbilvardi, Y. Tian, F. A. Furuzawa, H. Masunaga

Publications and Research

The goal of this work is to intercompare four global land surface emissivity products over various landcover conditions to assess their consistency. The intercompared land emissivity products were generated over a 5year period (2003–2007) using observations from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer – Earth Observing System (AMSR-E), the Special Sensor Microwave Imager (SSM/I), the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Microwave Imager (TMI), and WindSat. First, all products were reprocessed in the same projection and spatial resolution as they were generated from sensors with various configurations. Then, the mean value and standard deviations of monthly emissivity values were calculated for each …


A Recipe For The Estimation Of Information Flow In A Dynamical System, Deniz Gencaga, Kevin H. Knuth, William B. Rossow Jan 2015

A Recipe For The Estimation Of Information Flow In A Dynamical System, Deniz Gencaga, Kevin H. Knuth, William B. Rossow

Publications and Research

Information-theoretic quantities, such as entropy and mutual information (MI), can be used to quantify the amount of information needed to describe a dataset or the information shared between two datasets. In the case of a dynamical system, the behavior of the relevant variables can be tightly coupled, such that information about one variable at a given instance in time may provide information about other variables at later instances in time. This is often viewed as a flow of information, and tracking such a flow can reveal relationships among the system variables. Since the MI is a symmetric quantity; an asymmetric …


Tipping Point Of A Conifer-Based Ecosystem Under Severe Drought, Kaicheng Huang, Chuixiang Yi, Donghai Wu, Tao Zhou, Xiang Zhao, William J. Blanford, Suhua Wei, Hao Wu, Du Ling, Zheng Li Jan 2015

Tipping Point Of A Conifer-Based Ecosystem Under Severe Drought, Kaicheng Huang, Chuixiang Yi, Donghai Wu, Tao Zhou, Xiang Zhao, William J. Blanford, Suhua Wei, Hao Wu, Du Ling, Zheng Li

Publications and Research

Drought-induced tree mortality has recently received considerable attention. Questions have arisen over the necessary intensity and duration thresholds of droughts that are sufficient to trigger rapid forest declines. The values of such tipping points leading to forest declines due to drought are presently unknown. In this study, we have evaluated the potential relationship between the level of tree growth and concurrent drought conditions with data of the tree growth-related ring width index (RWI) of the two dominant conifer species (Pinus edulis and Pinus ponderosa) in the Southwestern United States (SWUS) and the meteorological drought-related standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index …