Meteorology Commons^™

Umphlett Qci Dec 2019, Natalie A. Umphlett

HPRCC Personnel Publications

Highlights for the Basin

Temperature and Precipitation Anomalies

Soil Moisture Conditions

Agriculture

Energy

Infrastructure

Temperature

Precipitation

A Case Study Of Stratospheric Ozone Transport To The Northern San Francisco Bay Area And Sacramento Valley During Cabots 2016, Jodie Clark, Sen Chiao

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

The California Baseline Ozone Transport Study (CABOTS) was a major air quality study that collected ozone measurements aloft between mid-May and mid-August of 2016. Aircraft measurements, ground-based lidar measurements, and balloon-borne ozonesondes collected precise upper-air ozone measurements across the central and Southern California valley. Utilizing daily ozonesonde data from Bodega Bay, California, and Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications, version 2 (MERRA-2), reanalysis data for 25 July to 14 August 2016, three stratospheric intrusion events are identified over Northern California influencing air masses above Bodega Bay and Sacramento simultaneously. Calculated percent daily changes in afternoon ozonesonde observations indicate increasing …

The Intensification Of Hurricane Maria 2017 In The Antilles, Mark Jury, Sen Chiao, Raphael Cécé

Faculty Publications, Meteorology and Climate Science

Environmental influences on Hurricane Maria in the Antilles Islands are analyzed at the large-scale (1–25 September) and at the meso-scale (17–20 September 2017). The storm intensified rapidly prior to landfall in Dominica, going from category 1 to 5 in 15 h. As the storm progressed toward Puerto Rico (PR), its NE flank entrained air from seas cooled by the earlier passage of two hurricanes, and strengthened on its SW flank. Operational model forecasts tended to delay intensification until west of the Antilles Islands, thus motivating two independent weather research and forecasting (WRF) simulations. These gave minimal track errors at 1- …

Developing Spatially Accurate Rainfall Predictions For The San Francisco Bay Area Through Case Studies Of Atmospheric River And Other Synoptic Events, Alison Bridger, Dung Nguyen, Sen Chiao

Faculty Publications, Meteorology and Climate Science

Rainfall patterns in the San Francisco Bay Area (SFBA) are highly influenced by local topography. It has been a forecasting challenge for the main US forecast models. This study investigates the ability of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model to improve upon forecasts, with particular emphasis on the rain shadow common to the southern end of the SFBA. Three rain events were evaluated: a mid-season atmospheric river (AR) event with copious rains; a typical non-AR frontal passage rain event; and an area-wide rain event in which zero rain was recorded in the southern SFBA. The results show that, with …

Umphlett Qci Sept 2019, Natalie Umphlett

HPRCC Personnel Publications

Highlights for the Basin

Temperature and Precipitation Anomalies

Soil Moisture Conditions

Delayed/Prevented Planting

Forage Production

Infrastructure

Temperature

Precipitation

A Technical Overview Of The Kentucky Mesonet, Rezaul Mahmood, Megan Schargorodski, Stuart Foster, Andrew Quilligan

HPRCC Personnel Publications

The Kentucky Mesonet is a research-grade weather and climate observing network with redundant sensors that monitors the near-surface atmosphere at 71 locations across Kentucky. The network measures temperature, precipitation, solar radiation, relative humidity, barometric pressure, and wind speed and direction every 5 min, with soil moisture and soil temperature measured every 30 min. In addition, it operates a camera at selected locations. All observations are transmitted via cellular modem every 5 min and become available to the general public through the World Wide Web within seconds after arrival at Kentucky Mesonet’s Network Operations Center. In between arriving at the IT …

Investigation Of Grace-Derived Information On Forest Drought Stress Across The Contiguous Us, Beichen Zhang

School of Natural Resources: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This research derives z-score monthly groundwater storage (GWS) anomalies and z-score monthly root zone soil moisture (RZSM) anomalies from products of Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Data Assimilation (GRACE-DA). Z-score monthly GWS and RZSM anomalies are compared to two drought indicators: Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and Standardized Precipitation-Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) to investigate the usefulness of GRACE-DA information to detect drought conditions at tree-ring sites. This study also compares z-score monthly GWS and RZSM anomalies with the Tree Ring Standardized Growth Index (TRSGI) that is resampled by bootstrapping to investigate the capability of monitoring forest drought stress. Finally, this research uses …

Droughtscape- 2019 Fall, Cory Matteson

Droughtscape, Quarterly Newsletter of NDMC, 2007-

Contents

From the Director........ 2

Quarterly drought summary........ 3

Quarterly drought impacts........ 6

Ranchers delayed response to drought....... 8

Drought Monitor celebrates 20 years............ 9

Drought Monitor state impact tables........... 11

Directorcontributesto U.N.droughtproject........... 12

Updated Drought Risk Atlas........... 13

New fact sheet lists recovery resources........... 14

Droughtscape- 2019 Summer, Cory Matteson

Droughtscape, Quarterly Newsletter of NDMC, 2007-

Contents

From the Director.......... 2

Quarterly drought summary........... 3

Quarterly drought impacts.......... 5

NDMC welcomes African visitors.......... 7

Ready for Drought game debuts............ 8

U.S. Virgin Islands added to USDM.......... 9

Australian programmer visits NDMC......... 10

Upcoming events......... 10

Partnerships with NDMC extended............ 11

Climate Change Impacts On Winter Wheat Yield In Northern China, Xiu Geng, Fang Wang, Wei Ren, Zhixin Hao

Plant and Soil Sciences Faculty Publications

Exploring the impacts of climate change on agriculture is one of important topics with respect to climate change. We quantitatively examined the impacts of climate change on winter wheat yield in Northern China using the Cobb–Douglas production function. Utilizing time-series data of agricultural production and meteorological observations from 1981 to 2016, the impacts of climatic factors on wheat production were assessed. It was found that the contribution of climatic factors to winter wheat yield per unit area (WYPA) was 0.762–1.921% in absolute terms. Growing season average temperature (GSAT) had a negative impact on WYPA for the period of 1981–2016. A …

Umphlett Qci June 2019, Natalie Umphlett

HPRCC Personnel Publications

Highlights for the Basin

Temperature and Precipitation Anomalies

Soil Moisture Conditions

Delayed/Prevented Planting

Impacts to Cattle

Damage to Infrastructure

Temperature

Precipitation

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 …

Droughtscape- Spring 2019, Cory Matteson

Droughtscape, Quarterly Newsletter of NDMC, 2007-

Contents

From the director............... 2

Wet and cool conditions bring drought relief to the West................ 3

Notable numbers from Q1.................. 5

Drought impact summary, 1st quarter 2019................ 6

New research examines drought effects on state recreation areas................ 8

At Ethiopian space science workshop, NDMC climatologist sees promise in preparing for drought.......... 9

U.S.- affiliated Pacific Islands now part of U.S. Drought Monitor.............. 11

Water conservation tips for drought, flood and other disasters.............. 12

Upcoming events..............13

Taking Action: A Case Study Analyzing The Deficiencies And Potential Opportunities For Improvement In The Severe Weather Warning System, Carson Meredith

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

The United States is one of the most prone areas in the world to experience severe weather. A warning system operated by the National Weather Service alerts the public of the dangers of severe weather. The purpose of this project is to analyze the effectiveness of the National Weather Service warning system across Kentucky and Tennessee. A case study is presented analyzing six severe weather events in areas warned by the National Weather Service offices in Louisville, Kentucky and Nashville, Tennessee in 2018. Factors reviewed include effectiveness in issuing timely warnings, verification (i.e., whether or not severe weather actually occurred), …

Kanjirowa Blues: An Exploration Of Environmental And Climate Consciousness In Lower Dolpa, Nepal, Casey Greenleaf

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

It has been scientifically demonstrated that high altitude, mountainous regions such as the Himalayas are extremely susceptible to and at accelerated risk of the effects of climate change. The regions of Lower Dolpa discussed in this work, Juphal, Dunai, Chun, and Dapu, lie in a glacial watershed, and are at present risk of landslides, floods, wildfires, and rely on agricultural and transhumant livelihoods that are uniquely susceptible to the impacts of changing temperature and weather patterns. People in this region are being forced to incrementally adapt and reframe their understanding of their surroundings due to both aforementioned severe events as …

Numerical Investigations Of Atmospheric Rivers And The Rain Shadow Over The Santa Clara Valley, Dalton Behringer, Sen Chiao

Faculty Publications, Meteorology and Climate Science

This study investigated precipitation distribution patterns in association with atmospheric rivers (ARs). The Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model was employed to simulate two strong atmospheric river events. The precipitation forecasts were highly sensitive to cloud microphysics parameterization schemes. Thus, radar observed and simulated ZH and ZDR were evaluated to provide information about the drop-size distribution (DSD). Four microphysics schemes (WSM-5, WSM-6, Thompson, and WDM-6) with nested simulations (3 km, 1 km, and 1/3 km) were conducted. One of the events mostly contained bright-band (BB) rainfall and lasted less than 24 h, while the other contained both BB and non-bright-band …

Umphlett Qci March 2019, Natalie Umphlett

HPRCC Personnel Publications

Highlights for the Basin

Temperature Anomalies

Plains Snowpack

Agriculture

Energy

Transportation

Temperature

Precipitation

Incorporating Uh Occurrence Time To Ensemble-Derived Tornado Probabilities, Burkely T. Gallo, Adam J. Clark, Bryan T. Smith, Richard L. Thompson, Israel Jirak, Scott R. Dembek

United States Department of Commerce: Staff Publications

Probabilistic ensemble-derived tornado forecasts generated from convection-allowing models often use hourly maximum updraft helicity (UH) alone or in combination with environmental parameters as a proxy for right-moving (RM) supercells. However, when UH occurrence is a condition for tornado probability generation, false alarm areas can occur from UH swaths associated with nocturnal mesoscale convective systems, which climatologically produce fewer tornadoes than RM supercells. This study incorporates UH timing information with the forecast near-storm significant tornado parameter (STP) to calibrate the forecast tornado probability. To generate the probabilistic forecasts, three sets of observed climatological tornado frequencies given an RM supercell and STP …

Applications Of Satellite Data In Analyses Of Surface Pm2.5, Minghui Diao, Frank R. Freedman, Sen Chiao, Isa Cruz, Ana Rivera, Mohammad Z. Al-Hamdan, Akula Venkatram

Faculty Publications, Meteorology and Climate Science

Fine particulate is among the most harmful air pollutants for human health. There is ongoing interest in developing reliable methods to estimate PM2.5 concentrations 1) at unmonitored locations and 2) at finer horizontal resolution for improved health risk assessment and public health tracking.We aim to develop an efficient system that can reliably estimate PM2.5 at unmonitored locations and at finer horizontal resolution at important locations.• MODIS aerosol optical depth (AOD) provides an input for particulate levels at unmonitored locations in methods used to construct regional PM2.5 fields.• Dispersion model fields can be fused into portions of these regional fields for …

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

HPRCC Personnel 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 …

Drought Scenario-Based Exercises: A Research- And Experience-Based Reference Document, Deborah Bathke, Tonya Haigh, Tonya Bernadt, Nicole Wall

National Drought Mitigation Center: Publications

Contents

Acknowledgements.............................................................................. 1

Contents ................................................................................... 2

1.Introduction......................................................................................4

Objectives .............................................................................................................. 4

Format ................................................................................................................ 5

2. Drought and the Benefits of Preparation .................................................. 6

Drought Basics .................................................. 6

The Effects of Drought ................................................................................. 7

Preparing for Drought ............................................................................................... 9

Scenario Planning and Exercises ................................................................... 10

Influence Of Land Cover And Soil Moisture Based Brown Ocean Effect On An Extreme Rainfall Event From A Louisiana Gulf Coast Tropical System, Udaysankar S. Nair, Eric Rappin, Emily Foshee, Warren Smith, Roger A. Pielke Sr., Rezaul Mahmood, Jonathan L. Case, Clay B. Blankenship, Marshall Shepherd, Joseph A. Santanello, Dev Niyogi

HPRCC Personnel Publications

Extreme flooding over southern Louisiana in mid-August of 2016 resulted from an unusual tropical low that formed and intensified over land. We used numerical experiments to highlight the role of the ‘Brown Ocean’ effect (where saturated soils function similar to a warm ocean surface) on intensification and it’s modulation by land cover change. A numerical modeling experiment that successfully captured the flood event (control) was modified to alter moisture availability by converting wetlands to open water, wet croplands, and dry croplands. Storm evolution in the control experiment with wet antecedent soils most resembles tropical lows that form and intensify over …

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

HPRCC Personnel 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 …

Droughtscape- 2019 Winter, National Drought Mitigation Center

Droughtscape, Quarterly Newsletter of NDMC, 2007-

Contents

From the director.............. 2

Drought intensified in California and Nevada, eased elsewhere............. 3

Year in Review: Drought spread and intensified in the West; record precipitation in the East.............. 5

Drought impact summary for 4th quarter 2018........... 6

Drought impact summary 2018............ 8

Five states began drought plan updates in 2018................. 10

New web-based form makes submitting drought observations easier............ 12

FEMA risk assessment process tailored for drought............... 14

Upcoming events...............14

Ua66/8/2 Ogden College Of Science & Engineering Geography & Geology Centers & Institutes, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Records created by and about Centers and Institutes administered by the Geography & Geology Department. Including:

• Center for Cave & Karst Studies
• Center for Local Government Services
• Hoffman Environmental Research Institute
• Kentucky Climate Center
• Resources Management Institute
• Small Public Water System Technology Center

The Total Solar Eclipse Of 2017: Meteorological Observations From A Statewide Mesonet And Atmospheric Profiling Systems, Rezaul Mahmood, Megan Schargorodski, Eric Rappin, Melissa Griffin, Patrick Collins, Kevin Knupp, Andrew Quilligan, Ryan Wade, Kevin Cary, Stuart Foster

HPRCC Personnel Publications

A total solar eclipse traversed 37 the continental United States on August 21, 2017. It 38 was the first such event in 99 years and provided a rare opportunity to observe the atmospheric response from a variety of instrumented observational platforms. This paper discusses the high quality observations collected by the Kentucky Mesonet (www.kymesonet.org), a research-grade meteorological and climatological observation network consisting of 72 stations and measuring air temperature, precipitation, relative humidity, solar radiation, wind speed, and wind direction. The network samples the atmosphere, for most variables, every three seconds and then calculates and records observations every five minutes. During …

Irrigation Impacts On Minimum And Maximum Surface Moist Enthalpy In The Central Great Plains Of The Usa, Tianyi Zhang, Rezaul Mahmood, Xiaomao Lin, Roger A. Pielke Sr.

HPRCC Personnel Publications

Agricultural activities notably alter weather and climate including near-surface heat content. However, past research primarily focused on dry bulb temperature without considering the role of water vapor (dew point temperature) on surface air heat content. When using dry bulb temperature trends to assess these changes, for example, not including concurrent trends in absolute humidity can lead to errors in the actual rate of warming or cooling. Here we examined minimum and maximum surface moist enthalpy, which can be expressed as “equivalent temperature.” Using hourly climate data in the Central Great Plains (Nebraska and Kansas) from 1990 to 2014, the averages …

Role Of Sea Surface Temperatures In Forcing Circulation Anomalies Driving U.S. Great Plains Pluvial Years, Paul X. Flanagan, Jeffrey B. Basara, Jason C. Furtado, Elinor R. Martin, Xiangming Xiao

HPRCC Personnel Publications

In the U.S. Great Plains (GP), diagnosing precipitation variability is key in developing an understanding of the present and future availability of water in the region. Building on previous work investigating U.S. GP pluvial years, this study usesERAtwentieth century (ERA-20C) reanalysis data to investigate key circulation anomalies driving GP precipitation anomalies during a subset of GP pluvial years (called in this paper Pattern pluvial years). With previous research showing links between tropical Pacific sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies and GP climate variability, this study diagnoses the key circulation anomalies through an analysis of SSTs and their influence on the atmosphere. …