Climate Commons^™

Enhancing Acis Maps: Increasing Usability Through A Gis Portal, Natalie Umphlett, Warren Pettee, Bill Sorensen, Crystal J. Stiles

High Plains Regional Climate Center: Staff Publications

The High Plains Regional Climate Center (HPRCC) is one of six NOAA Regional Climate Centers (RCCs) in the United States that aims to provide timely climate data and information to the public for cost-effective decision-making. As part of a three-tiered approach to climate services, the RCCs address needs on the national, regional, state, and local scales for a variety of sectors including agriculture, energy, natural resource management, research, transportation, and water resources. Working together, the RCCs develop and disseminate a wide range of valueadded climate products and services.

One of the HPRCC’s most popular products is the Applied Climate Information …

Conducting A Drought-Specific Thira (Threat And Hazard Identification And Risk Assessment): A Powerful Tool For Integrating All-Hazard Mitigation And Drought Planning Efforts To Increase Drought Mitigation Quality, Elliot Wickham, Deborah J. Bathke, Tarik Abdel-Monem, Tonya K. Bernadt, Denise Bulling, Lisa M. Pytlikzillig, Crystal J. Stiles, Nicole Wall

High Plains Regional Climate Center: Staff Publications

In the United States, drought is the second costliest natural disaster, which leads to the need for increased drought mitigation efforts over time. However, drought planning has lagged behind other hazard mitigation efforts, which is likely due to the lack of a national drought planning policy. Although the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) requires all jurisdictions have a hazard mitigation plan (HMP) to receive pre-disaster mitigation funds, drought has only recently been a requirement in HMPs. In 2012, Nebraska witnessed its worse drought in recent history, which exposed the gaps in drought planning effectiveness at all jurisdictional levels. To address …

Biodiversity And Distribution Of Benthic Foraminifera In Harrington Sound, Bermuda: The Effects Of Physical And Geochemical Factors On Dominant Taxa, Nam Le

Honors Theses

Harrington Sound, Bermuda, is a nearly enclosed lagoon acting as a subtropical/tropical, carbonate-rich basin in which carbonate sediments, reef patches, and carbonate-producing organisms accumulate. Here, one of the most important calcareous groups is the Foraminifera. Analyses of common benthic orders, including miliolids (Quinqueloculina and Triloculina spp.) and rotaliids (Homotrema rubrum, Elphidium spp., and Ammonia beccarii), are essential in understanding past and present environmental conditions affecting the island's coastal environment. These taxa have been studied previously; however, factors explaining their individual patterns of abundance in the Sound are not well detailed. The goal of this study is …

Impacts Of Basin-Scale Climate Modes On Coastal Sea Level: A Review, Weiqing Han, Detlef Stammer, Philip Thompson, Tal Ezer, Hindu Palanisamy, Xuebin Zhang, Catia M. Domingues, Lei Zhang, Dongliang Yuan

CCPO Publications

Global sea level rise (SLR) associated with a warming climate exerts significant stress on coastal societies and low-lying island regions. The rates of coastal SLR observed in the past few decades, however, have large spatial and temporal differences from the global mean, which to a large part have been attributed to basin-scale climate modes. In this paper, we review our current state of knowledge about climate modes’ impacts on coastal sea level variability from interannual-to-multidecadal timescales. Relevant climate modes, their impacts and associated driving mechanisms through both remote and local processes are elaborated separately for the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic …

Droughtscape, Winter 2019, National Drought Mitigation Center

DroughtScape: Quarterly Newsletter of the National Drought Mitigation Center (2007–2023)

Contents

From the Director

Drought intensified in California and Nevada, eased elsewhere

Year in Review: Drought spread and intensified in the West; record precipitation in the East

Drought impact summary for 4th quarter 2018

Drought impact summary 2018

Five states began drought plan updates in 2018

New web-based form makes submitting drought observations easier

FEMA risk assessment process tailored for drought

Upcoming events

A Diatom Proxy For Seasonality Over The Last Three Millennia At June Lake, Eastern Sierra Nevada (Ca), Laura Caitlin Streib

Theses and Dissertations--Earth and Environmental Sciences

The Sierra Nevada snowpack is vital to the water supply of California, the world’s sixth largest economy. Though tree ring and instrumental records show the dramatic influence of environmental change on California’s hydroclimate over the last millennium, few proxy archives assess winter precipitation variability farther back in time. Here, we use diatoms from a ~3,200 yr. old sediment core to reconstruct the paleolimnology of June Lake, a hydrologically closed glacial lake in the eastern Sierra Nevada. We test the hypothesis that limnologic and climatic changes control diatom assemblages at June Lake. Fossil diatom assemblages from June Lake sediments chiefly consist …

Deciduous Shrub Encroachment Effects On Tundra Soil Properties, Daniela Aguirre

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Deciduous shrub abundance is increasing in tundra ecosystems as an effect of rising temperatures which may change tundra physical properties and, in turn, microbial communities and biogeochemical processes. Two mechanisms through which shrub presence may affect tundra ecosystems were examined in this study; the physical presence of the shrubs and effects of increasing shrub litter inputs. In a sub-arctic alpine tundra ecosystem, dominated by the deciduous shrub Betula glandulosa, both shrub presence (shrub present and removed) and litter quantity (no litter/litter removed, ambient litter, and twice ambient litter) were manipulated; multiple ecosystem properties where measured within the treatment plots over …

Delivering Sustained, Coordinated, And Integrated Observations Of The Southern Ocean For Global Impact, Louise Newman, Petra Heil, Rowan Tebilco, Katsuro Katsumata, Andrew Constable, Esmee Van Wijk, Karen Assmann, Joana Beja, Phillippa Bricher, Richard Coleman, Daniel Costa, Steve Diggs, Riccardo Farneti, Sarah Fawcett, Sarah T. Gille, Katharine R. Hendry, Sian Henly, Eileen Hofmann, Ted Maksym, Matthew Mazloff, Andrew Meijers, Michael M. Meredith, Sebastien Moreau, Burcu Ozsoy, Robin Robertson, Irene Schloss, Oscar Schofield, Jiuxin Shi, Elisabeth Sikes, Inga J. Smith, Sebastiaan Swart, Anna Wahlin, Guy Williams, Michael J. M. Williams, Laura Herraiz-Borreguero, Stefan Kern, Jan Lieser, Robert A. Massom, Jessica Melbourne-Thomas, Patricia Miloslavich, Gunnar Spreen

CCPO Publications

The Southern Ocean is disproportionately important in its effect on the Earth system, impacting climatic, biogeochemical, and ecological systems, which makes recent observed changes to this system cause for global concern. The enhanced understanding and improvements in predictive skill needed for understanding and projecting future states of the Southern Ocean require sustained observations. Over the last decade, the Southern Ocean Observing System (SOOS) has established networks for enhancing regional coordination and research community groups to advance development of observing system capabilities. These networks support delivery of the SOOS 20-year vision, which is to develop a circumpolar system that ensures time …

Holocene Fire History Reconstruction Of A Mid-Evaluation Mixed-Conifer Forest In The Eastern Cascades, Washington, Zoe Rushton

All Master's Theses

Fire histories of mid-elevation mixed-conifer forests (MEMC) are uncommon, particularly in the eastern Cascades of Washington. As a result, fire regimes and the effects of 20th century fire suppression in these forests are not well understood. In the summer of 2014 a 7.80 meter-long sediment core was extracted from Long Lake, located approximately 45 km west of Yakima, WA, which exists in a grand fir-dominated mixed-conifer forest. Fire activity for the Long Lake watershed was reconstructed using macroscopic charcoal analysis and pollen analysis was used to reconstruct vegetation change through time. Charcoal results show low fire activity in the early …

Modeled And Measured Ecosystem Respiration In Maize–Soybean Systems Over 10 Years, Ming Zhan, Adam Liska, Anthony Nguy-Robertson, Andrew E. Suyker, Matthew P. Pelton, Haishun Yang

Adam Liska Papers

Crop residue is an abundant resource for the potential production of biofuels, but a better understanding of its use on net carbon emissions must be developed to mitigate climate change. This analysis combines two established crop growth models (Hybrid-Maize and SoySim) with a simple soil and crop residue respiration model to estimate daily ecosystem respiration (ERe) from maize and soybean; ERe was estimated to be the sum of CO₂ emissions from the oxidation of the growing crop, crop residue, and soil organic carbon (SOC). Model-estimated CO₂ fluxes from irrigated continuous maize and irrigated maize–soybean cropping systems in eastern …

Hydroclimate Drivers And Atmospheric Dynamics Of Floods, Nasser Najibi

Dissertations and Theses

Our preliminary survey showed that most of the recent flood-related studies did not formally explain the physical mechanisms of long-duration and large-peak flood events that can evoke substantial damages to properties and infrastructure systems. These studies also fell short of fully assessing the interactions of coupled ocean-atmosphere and land dynamics which are capable of forcing substantial changes to the flood attributes by governing the exceeding surface flow regimes and moisture source-sink relationships at the spatiotemporal scales important for risk management. This dissertation advances the understanding of the variability in flood duration, peak, volume, and timing at the regional to the …

Utilizing Radiolarian Assemblages To Track Changes In The Agulhas Current Through The Mid-Pleistocene Transition: Iodp Site U1479, William Alberto Bugbee

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The objective of this study was to assess the radiolarian assemblage of the Agulhas Current at International Ocean Discovery Program Expedition 361, Site U1479 (the most westward site), through the Mid-Pleistocene Transition (MPT). Samples between 1,000 to 777ka were utilized to (1) characterize the radiolarian assemblage, (2) observe whether the radiolarian assemblage is sufficiently distinctive to help discern the occurrence of the MPT in the Southern Ocean, and (3) determine whether changes in the radiolarian assemblage reflect a change or changes in ocean currents that may have occurred during the MPT.

Over 300 radiolarian species from 15 different families were …

Climate Evolution Across The Mid-Brunhes Transition, Aaron M. Barth, Peter U. Clark, Nicholas S. Bill, Feng He, Nicklas G. Pisias

School of Earth & Environment Departmental Research

The Mid-Brunhes Transition (MBT) began ∼ 430 ka with an increase in the amplitude of the 100 kyr climate cycles of the past 800 000 years. The MBT has been identified in ice-core records, which indicate interglaciations became warmer with higher atmospheric CO2 levels after the MBT, and benthic oxygen isotope (δ18O) records, which suggest that post-MBT interglaciations had higher sea levels and warmer temperatures than pre-MBT interglaciations. It remains unclear, however, whether the MBT was a globally synchronous phenomenon that included other components of the climate system. Here, we further characterize changes in the climate system across the MBT …

Umphlett Qci Dec 2018, Natalie A. Umphlett

High Plains Regional Climate Center: Staff Publications

Highlights for the Basin

Temperature and Precipitation Anomalies

Mountain Snowpack

Water Resources and Drought

Agriculture

Temperature

Precipitation

Stable Isotope Geochemistry Of Bioapatite, Amanda E. Drewicz

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

The Cenozoic Era was a time period where dynamic shifts in climate created for both warm-wet greenhouse environments of the mid-Miocene Climatic Optimum (MMCO), and cool-dry, glacial periods of the late Pleistocene. The Cenozoic is close to our own time period, and although past climate reconstructions cannot be used as direct analogs for future climate change, understanding previous environmental responses can help inform policy surrounding future climate change. Presented here are climate reconstructions of the interior western United States, from two different geologic time periods. Each had a different climate, that differed greatly from modern day environments. The use of …

Breeding For Resilience To Increasing Temperatures: A Field Trial Assessing Genetic Variation In Soft Red Winter Wheat, Kathleen Russell, David Van Sanford

Plant and Soil Sciences Faculty Publications

Breeding for resilience to climate change is a daunting prospect. Crop and climate models tell us that global wheat yields are likely to decline as the climate warms, causing a significant risk to global food security. High temperatures are known to affect crop development yet breeding for tolerance to heat stress is difficult to achieve in field environments. We conducted an active warming study over two years to quantify the effects of heat stress on genetic variation of soft red winter (SRW) wheat (Triticum aestivum L.). Forty SRW cultivars and breeding lines were chosen based on marker genotypes at …

Molecular Fossils From Phytoplankton Reveal Secular Pco2 Trend Over The Phanerozoic, Caitlyn R. Witkowski, Johan W. H. Weijers, Brian S. Blais, Stefan Schouten, Jaap S. Sinninghe Damsté

Science and Technology Department Faculty Journal Articles

Past changes in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (PCO2) have had a major impact on earth system dynamics; yet, reconstructing secular trends of past PCO2 remains a prevalent challenge in paleoclimate studies. The current long-term PCO2reconstructions rely largely on the compilation of many different proxies, often with discrepancies among proxies, particularly for periods older than 100 million years (Ma). Here, we reconstructed Phanerozoic PCO2 from a single proxy: the stable carbon isotopic fractionation associated with photosynthesis (Ɛp) that increases as PCO2 increases. This concept has been widely applied to alkenones, but here, we …

Water, Energy, And Carbon Footprints Of Bioethanol From The U.S. And Brazil, Mesfin Mekonnen, Thiago L. Romanelli, Chittaranjan Ray, Arjen Y. Hoekstra, Adam Liska, Christopher M. U. Neale

Adam Liska Papers

Driven by biofuel policies, which aim to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and increase domestic energy supply, global production and consumption of bioethanol have doubled between 2007 and 2016, with rapid growth in corn-based bioethanol in the U.S. and sugar cane-based bioethanol in Brazil. Advances in crop yields, energy use efficiency in fertilizer production, biomass-to-ethanol conversion rates, and energy efficiency in ethanol production have improved the energy balance and GHG emission reduction potential of bioethanol. In the current study, the water, energy, and carbon footprints of bioethanol from corn in the U.S. and sugar cane in Brazil were assessed. The …

Spatial Variation In Throughfall, Soil, And Plant Water Isotopes In A Temperate Forest, Gregory R. Goldsmith, Scott T. Allen, Sabine Braun, Nadine Engbersen, Clara Romero González-Quijano, James W. Kirchner, Rolf T. W. Siegwolf

Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles and Research

Studies of stable isotopes of water in the environment have been fundamental to advancing our understanding of how water moves through the soil‐plant‐atmosphere continuum; however, much of this research focuses on how water isotopes vary in time, rather than in space. We examined the spatial variation in the δ¹⁸O and δ²H of throughfall and bulk soil water, as well as branch xylem and bulk leaf water of Picea abies (Norway Spruce) and Fagus sylvatica (Beech), in a 1 ha forest plot in the northern Alps of Switzerland. Means and ranges of water isotope ratios varied considerably …

Ice And Guano Deposits In El Malpais Lava Tubes: Potential Paleoclimate Archives For The Southwest United States, Dylan S. Parmenter

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Three ice cores and one guano core were obtained from lava tubes in El Malpais National Monument, New Mexico, in the Southwest United States. A large hiatus in the Bat Cave guano record, resulting from mining activities in the early 1900's, left us with only ~50 years of data (from AD 1955-2006) to use in analysis. 13C values in guano (-18 to -11.6‰) primarily fall within the range of C4 plants, and likely indicate a tendency of Tadarida brasiliensis to feed on insects over grasslands to the North or South of the park. Variations in 13C values for this period …

Droughtscape, Fall 2018, National Drought Mitigation Center

DroughtScape: Quarterly Newsletter of the National Drought Mitigation Center (2007–2023)

Contents

From the director

Drought greatly improves in Southern Plains and South

Texas, Missouri, and Colorado logged late-summer impacts

Memory, remote sensing and a new research methodology

Navigating the U.S. Drought Monitor

Planners discuss the barriers to effective drought mitigation planning

Exploring climate issues from a county management perspective

Strategic Framework for Drought Risk Management and Enhancing Resilience in Africa

Mena global policy forum looks from data to mitigation

About us

State-by-state drought classification table developed by NDMC graduate student

The Prairie Post Quarterly Newsletter Of The High Plains Regional Climate Center- October 2018, Natalie Umphlett, Rezaul Mamood, Jamie Lahowetz, Warren Pettee, Dalton Van Stratten, Crystal J. Stiles

Prairie Post: Quarterly Newsletter of the High Plains Regional Climate Center

Inside this issue:

Message from the interim director........................................1

Staff spotlight...........................1

ACIS GIS portal release..........2

ACIS maps enhancement.....3

Product highlight....................4

Update on regional climate conditions..................................4

Update on tribal engagement............................................. 5

Recent and upcoming travel and activities.............................6

Umphlett Qci Sept 2018, Natalie Umphlett

High Plains Regional Climate Center: Staff Publications

Highlights for the Basin

Temperature and Precipitation Anomalies

Drought

Water Resources

Agriculture

Temperature

Precipitation

Quantifying The Effects Of Wind Regimes And Temperature On Surface Melt Over The Antarctic Peninsula (1982–2017) Through Modeling, Remote Sensing And In-Situ Data, Rajashree Datta

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Surface melting over the Antarctic Peninsula (AP) plays a crucial role for the stability of ice shelves and dynamics of grounded ice, hence modulating the mass balance in a region of the world which is particularly sensitive to increasing surface temperatures. Understanding the processes that drive melting using surface energy and mass balance models is fundamental to improving estimates of current and future surface melting and associated sea level rise through ice-shelf collapse. This is even more important in view of the specific challenges presented by how circulation patterns over the topographically-complex Antarctic Peninsula, especially foehn winds, impact surface melt. …

The Influence Of Arctic Amplification On Mid-Latitude Summer Circulation, Dim Coumou, Giorgia Di Capua, Steve Vavrus, Lei Wang, Shih-Yu (Simon) Wang

Plants, Soils, and Climate Faculty Publications

Accelerated warming in the Arctic, as compared to the rest of the globe, might have profound impacts on mid-latitude weather. Most studies analyzing Arctic links to mid-latitude weather focused on winter, yet recent summers have seen strong reductions in sea-ice extent and snow cover, a weakened equator-to-pole thermal gradient and associated weakening of the mid-latitude circulation. We review the scientific evidence behind three leading hypotheses on the influence of Arctic changes on mid-latitude summer weather: Weakened storm tracks, shifted jet streams, and amplified quasi-stationary waves. We show that interactions between Arctic teleconnections and other remote and regional feedback processes could …

Assessment Of Snow Atmosphere Forcing During Central Idaho Atmospheric Rivers, William Rudisill

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Atmospheric Rivers (AR) are globally occuring weather features and the primary mechanism through which water vapor moves from the tropics and subtropics towards the mid-latitudes, doing so at rates comparable to the world’s largest terrestrial rivers. AR that encounter mountains often cause extreme precipitation in the form of rain and snow, high winds, and flooding in many watersheds. They account for as much as 20-30% of cool season precipitation in the central Idaho Mountains. In the Northern Hemisphere, seasonal snow cover during Winter and Spring months is the most variable land surface component in space and time, and acts on …

Estimating Adaptation To Climate Change In Groundwater Irrigation, James Keeler

Department of Agricultural Economics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Understanding the adaptive capacity of irrigated agriculture, including to what extent producers adjust irrigation choices along the intensive and extensive margins, is vital to the development of accurate and holistic estimates of the impacts of climate change on agricultural production and the sustainability of water-related ecosystem services. This thesis proposes and implements a natural experiment using statistical matching methods to estimate how producers adjust groundwater extraction, irrigated crop acreage, and irrigation technology in response to long-term changes in precipitation and evapotranspiration. Results from groundwater irrigated fields in Kansas suggest that intensive and extensive margin water use adaptations are generally limited …

Review Of Curbing Catastrophe: Natural Hazards And Risk Reduction In The Modern World, Kira H. Hamman

Numeracy

Timothy H. Dixon. 2017. Curbing Catastrophe: Natural Hazards and Risk Reduction in the Modern World. (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press) 300 pp. ISBN 978-1108113663.

In Curbing Catastrophe, Timothy H. Dixon explores commonalities among natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina, the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, and the meltdown at Fukushima. He identifies communication failure between scientists and policy makers as a major culprit in the devastation that results from such events and offers strategies for improving that communication. He includes optional in-depth scientific and quantitative examinations of the events and the resulting devastation, making the book appropriate for use …

Theory And Application Of Geophysical Geodesy For Studying Earth Surface Deformation, Makan A. Karegar

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

An interdisciplinary approach at the interface between geodesy and geophysics has recently resolved several Earth science problems at regional and global scales. I use the term “geophysical geodesy” to distinguish the technical and theoretical aspect of geodesy from geophysical applications of geodetic techniques. Using a wide range of Earth observation data, I study the spatio-temporal characteristics of Earth surface deformation in the United States associated with several geophysical processes, including natural and anthropogenic subsidence and uplift, regional relative sea-level rise, and continental hydrological loading. The theoretical portion of this dissertation applies loading theory and develops a new hybrid method to …

The Prairie Post Quarterly Newsletter Of The High Plains Regional Climate Center- July 2018, Natalie Umphlett, Emily Brown, Crystal J. Stiles

Prairie Post: Quarterly Newsletter of the High Plains Regional Climate Center

Inside this issue:

Message from the interim director........................................1

Staff spotlight...........................1

GRAINEX project......................2

Product highlights..................3

Update on regional climate conditions..................................4

GIS Portal....................................4

Regional news..........................5

Recent and upcoming travel and activities.............................6