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Odu-Led St. Vincent Workshop Explored Ocean's Role In Caribbean-Based U.N. Sustainable Development Initiative, News @ Odu

News Items

No abstract provided.

Factors Influencing Farmers’ Adoption Of Best Management Practices: A Review And Synthesis, Tingting Liu, Randall J. F. Bruins, Matthew T. Heberling

National Drought Mitigation Center: Faculty Publications

Best management practices (BMPs) for reducing agricultural non-point source pollution are widely available. However, agriculture remains a major global contributor to degradation of waters because farmers often do not adopt BMPs. To improve water quality, it is necessary to understand the factors that influence BMP adoption by farmers. We review the findings of BMP adoption studies from both developed and developing countries, published after (or otherwise not included in) two major literature reviews from 2007 and 2008. We summarize the study locations, scales, and BMPs studied; the analytical methods used; the factors evaluated; and the directionality of each factor’s influence …

Developing A Remotely Sensed Drought Monitoring Indicator For Morocco, Noureddine Bijaber, Driss El Hadani, Mariam Saidi, Mark D. Svoboda, Christopher Hain, Calvin Christian Poulsen, Mohammed Yessef, Atmane Rochdi

National Drought Mitigation Center: Faculty Publications

Drought is one of the most serious climatic and natural disasters inflicting serious impacts on the socio-economy of Morocco, which is characterized both by low-average annual rainfall and high irregularity in the spatial distribution and timing of precipitation across the country. This work aims to develop a comprehensive and integrated method for drought monitoring based on remote sensing techniques. The main input parameters are derived monthly from satellite data at the national scale and are then combined to generate a composite drought index presenting different severity classes of drought. The input parameters are: Standardized Precipitation Index calculated from satellite-based precipitation …

Weather And Climate Summary And Forecast: February 2018 Report, Gregory V. Jones

Linfield University Wine Studies Reports

This report provides a summary of the weather and climate forecast for February 2018. 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.

An Analysis Of The Efficacy Of Climate Challenge, Nicholas Barnes, Leslie Cook, Brandon Sharpton

Undergraduate Research Symposium

The temperature in our atmosphere is steadily rising; therefore, we need a method of communicating climate risk that educates and motivates people faster than the rising sea level. Our presentation analyzes the communicative effectiveness of Climate Challenge, a game created for this purpose. We will also analyze and utilize prior research of climate change games and serious games. We gathered participants for our research using convenience and snowball sampling. We conducted a pre-test survey and post-test interview, along with a screencast-recorded playthrough of Climate Challenge. After the research session we used grounded theory and inductive thematic analysis to …

The O2/N2 Ratio And Co2 Airborne Southern Ocean Study, Britton Stephens, Matthew Long, Ralph Keeling, Eric Kort, Colm Sweeney, Eric Apel, Elliot Atlas, Stuart Beaton, Jonathan Bent, Nicola Blake, James Bresch, Joanna Casey, Bruce Daube, Minghui Diao, Ernesto Diaz, Heidi Dierssen, Valeria Donets, Bo-Cai Gao, Michelle Gierach, Robert Green, Justin Haag, Matthew Hayman, Alan Hills, Martín Hoecker-Martínez, Shawn Honomichl, Rebecca Hornbrook, Jorgen Jensen, Rong-Rong Li, Ian Mccubbin, Kathryn Mckain, Eric Morgan, Scott Nolte, Jordan Powers, Bryan Rainwater, Kaylan Randolph, Mike Reeves, Sue Schauffler, Katherine Smith, Mackenzie Smith, Jeff Stith, Gregory Stossmeister, Darin Toohey, Andrew Watt

Faculty Publications, Meteorology and Climate Science

The Southern Ocean plays a critical role in the global climate system by mediating atmosphere–ocean partitioning of heat and carbon dioxide. However, Earth system models are demonstrably deficient in the Southern Ocean, leading to large uncertainties in future air–sea CO2 flux projections under climate warming and incomplete interpretations of natural variability on interannual to geologic time scales. Here, we describe a recent aircraft observational campaign, the O2/N2 Ratio and CO2 Airborne Southern Ocean (ORCAS) study, which collected measurements over the Southern Ocean during January and February 2016. The primary research objective of the ORCAS campaign was to improve observational constraints …

Climate-Driven Crop Yield And Yield Variability And Climate Change Impacts On The U.S. Great Plains Agricultural Production, Meetpal Singh Kukal, Suat Irmak

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications

Climate variability and trends affect global crop yields and are characterized as highly dependent on location, crop type, and irrigation. U.S. Great Plains, due to its significance in national food production, evident climate variability, and extensive irrigation is an ideal region of investigation for climate impacts on food production. This paper evaluates climate impacts on maize, sorghum, and soybean yields and effect of irrigation for individual counties in this region by employing extensive crop yield and climate datasets from 1968–2013. Variability in crop yields was a quarter of the regional average yields, with a quarter of this variability explained by …

2018 February - Tennessee Monthly Climate Report, Tennessee Climate Office, East Tennessee State University

Tennessee Climate Office Monthly Reports

No abstract provided.

Scientific And Technical Advisory Committee Review Of The Chesapeake Bay Program Partnership’S Climate Change Assessment Framework And Programmatic Integration And Response Efforts, Maria Hermann, Scott Doney, Tal Ezer, Keryn Gedan, Philip Morefield, Barbara Muhling, Douglas Pirhalla, Stephen Shaw

CCPO Publications

[From the Executive Summary] The following report presents a synthesis of reviewer responses from the Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee’s (STAC) panel on the Chesapeake Bay Program Partnership’s Climate Change Assessment Framework (CCAF) and Programmatic Integration and Response Efforts. The enclosed findings and recommendations are in response to the 16 questions delivered to the panel (Appendix A).

In summary, given the current state of knowledge, the combination of using climate model projections and downscaling provides an acceptable baseline for estimating changing climate conditions for the Chesapeake Bay, and the panel finds the CCAF approach to be fundamentally sound. However, the …

Effects Of Projected Changes In Wind, Atmospheric Temperature, And Freshwater Inflow On The Ross Sea, Michael S. Dinniman, John M. Klinck, Eileen E. Hofmann, Walker O. Smith Jr.

CCPO Publications

A 5-km horizontal resolution regional ocean-sea ice-ice shelf model of the Ross Sea is used to examine the effects of changes in wind strength, air temperature, and increased meltwater input on the formation of high-salinity shelf water (HSSW), on-shelf transport and vertical mixing of Circumpolar Deep Water (CDW) and its transformation into modified CDW (MCDW), and basal melt of the Ross Ice Shelf (RIS). A 20% increase in wind speed, with no other atmospheric changes, reduced summer sea ice minimum area by 20%, opposite the observed trend of the past three decades. Increased winds with spatially uniform, reduced atmospheric temperatures …

A Model Species For Agricultural Pest Genomics: The Genome Of The Colorado Potato Beetle, Leptinotarsa Decemlineata (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae), Sean D. Schoville, Yolanda H. Chen, Martin N. Andersson, Joshua B. Benoit, Anita Bhandari, Julia H. Bowsher, Kristian Brevik, Kaat Cappelle, Mei-Ju M. Chen, Anna K. Childers, Christopher Childers, Olivier Christiaens, Justin Clements, Elise M. Didion, Elena N. Elpidina, Patamarerk Engsontia, Markus Friedrich, Inmaculada García-Robles, Richard A. Gibbs, Chandan Goswami, Alessandro Grapputo, Kristina Gruden, Marcin Grynberg, Bernard Henrissat, Emily C. Jennings, Jeffery W. Jones, Megha Kalsi, Sher A. Khan, Abhishek Kumar, Fei Li, Vincent Lombard, Subba Reddy Palli, June-Sun Yoon

Entomology Faculty Publications

The Colorado potato beetle is one of the most challenging agricultural pests to manage. It has shown a spectacular ability to adapt to a variety of solanaceaeous plants and variable climates during its global invasion, and, notably, to rapidly evolve insecticide resistance. To examine evidence of rapid evolutionary change, and to understand the genetic basis of herbivory and insecticide resistance, we tested for structural and functional genomic changes relative to other arthropod species using genome sequencing, transcriptomics, and community annotation. Two factors that might facilitate rapid evolutionary change include transposable elements, which comprise at least 17% of the genome and …

Improving National And Regional Drought Early Warning Systems In The Greater Horn Of Africa, Tsegaye Tadesse, Nicole Wall, Michael Hayes, Mark Svoboda, Deborah `Bathke

National Drought Mitigation Center: Faculty Publications

The workshop was conducted to discuss various new and existing seasonal models and experimental drought and vegetation prediction products with experts and decision-makers representing local (private, governmental, and nongovernmental organizations), regional, and international organizations in the Greater Horn of Africa (GHA). Eighty-five participants met to discuss a strategic approach for improving drought early warning and food security systems in the GHA.

Odu Colleges Prepare To Collaborate On Second Arctic Research Expedition, Roger Njunge

News Items

No abstract provided.

Civil Engineering Ph.D. Student Puts Virginia Sea Grant Graduate Fellowship To Work On Living Shorelines, Keith Pierce

News Items

No abstract provided.

2017 Costliest Year Ever For Weather-Related Disasters, Betsy Hnath

News Items

No abstract provided.

Assessing The Impacts Of Climate Change On Streamflow And Reservoir Operation In Central Florida, Toni Panaou

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Climate change is a global concern as it may affect many aspects of life, including water supply. A tool used to model climate change’s impacts is called a General Circulation Model (GCM). GCMs project future scenarios including temperature and precipitation, but these are designed at a coarse resolution and require downscaling for employment for regional hydrologic modeling. There is a vast amount of research on downscaling and bias-correcting GCMs data, but it is unknown whether these techniques alter precipitation signals embedded in these models or reproduce climate states that are viable for water resource planning and management. Using the Tampa, …

Weather And Climate Summary And Forecast: January 2018 Report, Gregory V. Jones

Linfield University Wine Studies Reports

This report provides a summary of the weather and climate forecast for January 2018. 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.

Evolution Of The Maximum Upper Level Divergence Field In Gulf-Atlantic Tropical Cyclogenesis, Sara A. Ates

LSU Master's Theses

Upper-level (horizontal) divergence (ULD) is an important variable in tropical weather systems. As part of the circulation within a tropical cyclone (TC), it carries air in the upper troposphere away from the center of circulation (COC). To date, most research assumes the 200 hPa pressure level (approximately 12 km, varying with latitude and time of year) as the height for maximum ULD in a TC, possibly because weather observation at the 200 hPa level by radiosonde have remained mandatory for aviation purposes. The more recent availability of gridded, high-spatial-resolution, global “reanalysis” data at multiple levels, along with improvements in spatial …

2018 January - Tennessee Monthly Climate Report, Tennessee Climate Office, East Tennessee State University

Tennessee Climate Office Monthly Reports

No abstract provided.

Global Climate Change I-Ii, Kendall Barrett Sooter, Dione Rossiter, Costanza Rampini

Faculty Publications, Environmental Studies

Many different scientific observations and measurements indicate that Earth is experiencing global-scale changes in climate, i.e., in the long-term distributions of temperature, cloud cover, precipitation, and extreme weather events. Scientific consensus considers most these changes to be caused or accelerated by human activities. The economic, ecological, social, and cultural challenges caused by global climate change will affect everyone on the planet, and are very likely to have disproportionate impacts on developing nations. In this course, we will study global climate change from an interdisciplinary perspective, incorporating natural and social science approaches to understanding processes and effects. We will study the …

This Will Change Everything: Teaching The Climate Crisis, John Foran, Summer Gray, Corrie Grosse, Theo Lequesne

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

We argue that U.S. sociologists have been woefully remiss in incorporating the climate crisis into our research agendas and even more, into our teaching. After laying out the gravity of the situation we issue a call for sociologists to consider whether they wish to continue this striking denial of responsibility to our students and to knowledge production. We then present four ways that we have infused our understanding of climate change, climate crisis, and climate justice into courses on global issues, social movements, inequality, and much more. We believe that “climate justice” – the key concept that drives our concern …

Drought And Land-Cover Conditions In The Great Plains, Heather Tollerud, Jesslyn Brown, Thomas Loveland, Rezaul Mahmood, Norman Bliss

High Plains Regional Climate Center: Staff Publications

Land–atmosphere interactions play a critical role in the Earth system, and a better understanding of these interactions could improve weather and climate models. The interaction among drought, vegetation productivity, and land cover is of particular significance. In a semiarid environment, such as the U.S. Great Plains, droughts can have a large influence on the productivity of agriculture and grasslands, with serious environmental and economic impacts. Here, we used the vegetation drought response index (VegDRI) drought indicator to investigate the response of vegetation to weather and climate for landcover types in the Great Plains in the United States from 1989 to …

Life In Hampton Roads Survey Press Release #6: Sea Level Rise And Flooding, Social Science Research Center, Old Dominion University

Life in Hampton Roads Survey Report

[Introductory paragraph]

This report examines regional measures of environmental risk perceptions from the 2018 Life In Hampton Roads survey (LIHR 2018) conducted by the Old Dominion University Social Science Research Center. Data from prior years is also provided when available to show comparisons in responses over time. Responses were weighted by city population, race, age, gender, and phone usage (cell versus land-line) to be representative of the Hampton Roads region. For additional information on survey methodology, and analyses of other issues, please see the SSRC website at www.odu.edu/ssrc. The 2018 Life in Hampton Roads survey included a series of …

Droughtscape, Winter 2018, National Drought Mitigation Center

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

Contents

Year in review: Drought eased in California, developed in Northern Plains

Quarterly Summary: Drought creeps across the country

Annual impact summary: A year of wildfires

Quarterly impact summary: Drought expands in Texas, Colorado

Drought and water crisis book updated

U.S. Drought Monitor available in Spanish

Study shows cities step up when drought occurs

New staff at the NDMC

Drought Summit in photos

Preparing For A Northwest Passage: A Workshop On The Role Of New England In Navigating The New Arctic, Katharine A. Duderstadt, Catherine M. Ashcraft, Jennifer F. Brewer, Elizabeth Burakowski, Jaed M. Coffin, Jack E. Dibb, Lawrence C. Hamilton, Nancy E. Kinner, Larry A. Mayer, Jennifer L. Miksis-Olds, Joseph Salisbury, Kerri D. Seger, Ruth K. Varner, Cameron P. Wake

All Materials

Preparing for a Northwest Passage: A Workshop on the Role of New England in Navigating the New Arctic (March 25 - 27, 2018 -- The University of New Hampshire) paired two of NSF's 10 Big Ideas: Navigating the New Arctic and Growing Convergence Research at NSF. During this event, participants assessed economic, environmental, and social impacts of Arctic change on New England and established convergence research initiatives to prepare for, adapt to, and respond to these effects. Shipping routes through an ice-free Northwest Passage in combination with modifications to ocean circulation and regional climate patterns linked to Arctic ice melt …

Sustainability At Sit: A Look At The Past, A Plan For The Future, Taliesin Haugh

Capstone Collection

Climate change threatens our world and way of life. Intelligent development and investment could mitigate the worst threats of climate change, while simultaneously providing continuous growth for the global economy. The New Climate Economy proposes efforts to combat this ecological collapse that would result in $30 trillion in new annual economic growth by 2030. Stockholm Resilience Center agrees, giving a framework based on global ecological systems that calls for five critical tasks that can bring growth and stability: Renewable energy

Sustainable local food production

New development models, based on what has worked globally

Reduction of wealth inequity

Education, health, and …

Agricultural Intensification In The Midwest: Impacts On Regional Surface Humidity, Andrew Hill

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

An overwhelming majority of anthropogenic climate change studies have placed emphasis on biogeochemical agents, chiefly carbon dioxide emissions, which operate on a global scale. Fewer studies focus on biophysical factors such as land use/ land cover which operate on a regional or local scale. The impact from biophysical factors will continue to be reinforced with a growing human population and expanding resource demands. Of these factors, agricultural land use represents one of the largest, most extensive, and vital land use allocations.

The U.S. Midwest, dominated by rain-fed corn and soybean agriculture, is a key agricultural region which is lacking in …

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

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

Inside this issue:

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

Weather photo of the quarter.................................................. 1

2017 - year in review..............2

2017 climate in the High Plains............................................3

Update on La Niña..................3

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

Product Highlight....................4

HPRCC Turns 30........................5

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

Sales And Marketing, Nancye Gannaway

Farm Systems and Economics published reports

Plan, prepare, Prosper - workshop

This document is part of the Plan, Prepare, Prosper program that was developed under the Pilot of Drought Reform Measures ('the pilot'), a joint initiative between the Australian Government and the Western Australian Government. The program aims to support businesses to prepare for drought, climate variability, financial and other challenges.

Today we will be working through your marketing program, and possible strategies for increasing its effectiveness and impact.

We will explore the advantages of target marketing - of focusing your marketing on those customers which best suit your business, and have the greatest potential for …

Climate Modeling, Outgoing Longwave Radiation, And Tropical Cyclone Forecasting, Thomas Rechtman

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Climate modeling and tropical cyclone forecasting are two significant is- sues that are continuously being improved upon for more accurate weather forecasting and preparedness. In this thesis, we have studied three climate models and formulated a new model with a view to determine the outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) budget at the top of the atmosphere (TOA) as ob- served by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) satellite based Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR). In 2006, Karnauskas proposed the African meridional OLR as an Atlantic hur- ricane predictor, the relation was further proven in 2016 by Karnauskas and Li …