Climate Commons^™

Using Future Benefits To Set Conservation Priorities For Wetlands, Samuel B. Merrill

Journal of Ocean and Coastal Economics

In an era of rising sea levels, costal land managers including land trust representatives, municipal planners, and others contributing to decisions about whether to develop or protect coastal parcels do not have viable means of evaluating future values on wetlands that will be created when sea levels rise. This project develops and tests a software modeling approach to help address this issue, in combination with a novel, expert-opinion driven benefit-cost framework. The beta test used three parcels in Scarborough, Maine: Hampton Circle, Maine Audubon, and Pine Point. It used a group of experts to 1) allocate initial values to these …

Climate Change And The U. S. Energy Sector: Regional Vulnerabilities And Resilience Solutions, United States Department Of Energy, Office Of Energy Policy And Systems Analysis

United States Department of Energy: Publications

Executive Summary

Changes in climate create diverse challenges across the U.S. energy system. Some energy infrastructure assets have already suffered damage or disruption in services from a variety of climate-related impacts, such as higher temperatures, rising sea levels, and more severe weather events. In the absence of concerted action to improve resilience, energy system vulnerabilities pose a threat to America’s national security, energy security, economic wellbeing, and quality of life.

Building climate change resilience into our energy infrastructure planning is a challenging and complex undertaking. Planning horizons can span several decades (the typical service life of most energy assets), associated …

The Prairie Post Quarterly Newsletter Of The High Plains Regional Climate Center- October 2015, Martha Shulski, Natalie Umphlett, Bill Sorensen, Glen Roebke, Crystal J. Stiles

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

Inside this issue:

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

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

New website design and products.....................................2

Training workshops................3

AWDN information.................4

Update on regional climate conditions and El Niño..........4

Research highlight..................5

Outreach/engagement.........5

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

Droughtscape, Fall 2015, Kelly Smith

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

Contents

Director’s column.

NDMC 20th anniversary 2

Employment opportunity

Third quarter 2015 climate summary

Third quarter 2015 impacts summary

Workshop in Ethiopia

San Antonio multi-hazard tournament

Healthy soil is drought buffer

U2U Award

Cost-benefit analysis for utilities managing drought

NDMC helps with rural poll questions on climate

Introducing our post-docs

South Korean visitors

Sea Level Rise In Virginia – Causes, Effects And Response, Tal Ezer, Larry P. Atkinson

Virginia Journal of Science

Sea level rise (SLR) along Virginia’s coasts and around the Chesapeake Bay as measured by tide gauges is analyzed and discussed. It is shown that the SLR rates vary between one location to another and in most locations the rates increase over time (i.e., SLR is accelerating). The latest science of SLR is reviewed and the causes of the high SLR rates in Virginia are discussed. The impacts of land subsidence and ocean currents (changes in the Gulf Stream in particular) on sea level are especially notable and important for predicting future SLR in Virginia. The consequences of SLR on …

A Risk Assessment Of The Impacts Of Coastal Flooding And Sea Level Rise On The Existing And New Pump Stations 113, Norfolk, Va, David A. Pezza

Civil & Environmental Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The author assessed the risk to a wastewater pump station and a planned replacement located nearby due to coastal flooding and rising sea levels. The locations for the pump stations are in the Larchmont neighborhood by the Lafayette River tidal estuaries in Norfolk, Virginia. The Lafayette River is a tributary to the Elizabeth River, which flows to the Chesapeake Bay. The low-lying areas along the river are subject to coastal surges caused by tropical and extra-tropical storms that flood the bay.

The region is considered one of the urban areas most exposed to the accelerating rate of rising sea levels. …

Source-Specific Molecular Signatures For Light-Absorbing Organic Aerosols, Amanda Susan Willoughby

Chemistry & Biochemistry Theses & Dissertations

Organic aerosols (OA) are universally regarded as an important component of the atmosphere based on quantitative significance as well as the far-reaching impact they have on global climate forcing and human health. Despite the acknowledged importance, OA amounts and impacts remain the largest uncertainties regarding radiative forcing estimates. Incomplete chemical characterization of aerosol organic matter (OM) and a lack of concrete source apportionment is a major source of this uncertainty. The primary focus of this study is to provide much needed molecular details regarding ambient OA from key emission sources, and establish links between molecular and optical properties.

Complete chemical …

Short-Tailed Temperature Distributions Over North America And Implications For Future Changes In Extremes, Paul C. Loikith, J. David Neelin

Geography Faculty Publications and Presentations

Some regions of North America exhibit nonnormal temperature distributions. Shorter-than-Gaussian warm tails are a special subset of these cases, with potentially meaningful implications for future changes in extreme warm temperatures under anthropogenic global warming. Locations exhibiting shorter-than-Gaussian warm tails would experience a greater increase in extreme warm temperature exceedances than a location with a Gaussian or long warm-side tail under a simple uniform warm shift in the distribution. Here we identify regions exhibiting such behavior over North America and demonstrate the effect of a simple warm shift on changes in extreme warm temperature exceedances. Some locations exceed the 95th percentile …

Environmental Education In Vietnam: A Case Study At Le Loi Elementary School, Emily Heck Heck

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The purpose of the research I conducted for this Independent Study Project was to get an in-depth understanding of how elementary school teachers and students think about the environment, environmental problems, and how to include environmental themes in education in Vietnam. I chose to focus on primary school-aged children, as they are a generation growing up in an era of global warming and daunting threats to the environment brought on by human activity. I conducted my research at Le Loi Elementary School in Hue, Vietnam, where I used a variety of research methods to learn from teachers and students including …

Coastal Ice-Core Record Of Recent Northwest Greenland Temperature And Sea-Ice Concentration, Erich C. Osterberg, Robert L. Hawley, Gifford Wong, Ben Kopec, David Ferris, Jennifer Howley

Dartmouth Scholarship

Coastal ice cores provide an opportunity to investigate regional climate and sea-ice variability in the past to complement hemispheric-scale climate reconstructions from ice-sheet-interior ice cores. Here we describe robust proxies of Baffin Bay temperature and sea-ice concentration from the coastal 2Barrel ice core collected in the Thule region of northwest Greenland. Over the 1990–2010 record, 2Barrel annually averaged methanesulfonic acid (MSA) concentrations are significantly correlated with May–June Baffin Bay sea-ice concentrations and summer temperatures. Higher MSA is observed during warmer years with less sea ice, indicative of enhanced primary productivity in Baffin Bay. Similarly, 2Barrel annually averaged deuterium excess (d-excess) …

The Lsu Department Of Otolaryngology – Head And Neck Surgery: A Decade In Review And A Vision For Our Future, Department Of Otolaryngology

LSUHSC Hurricane Katrina Archive: Reports & Presentations

"The LSU Department of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery: A Decade in review and a vision for our future" is a 10 page document extracted from a publication created the LSU Health Department of Laryngology on September 27, 2015.

The selected pages from this publication detail the forced temporary closure and relocation of LSU Health Sciences Center due to the impact of Hurricane Katrina, and the ways the Department of Otolaryngology continued their academic programming.

Umphlett Qci Sept 2015, Natalie Umphlett

High Plains Regional Climate Center: Staff Publications

Highlights for the Basin

Temperature and Precipitation Anomalie

Streamflow

Heavy Rains Continued

Positive and Negative Impacts to Agriculture

Persistent Smoke from Wildfires

3-Month Precipitation and Temperature Outlooks

Global Projections Of Intense Tropical Cyclone Activity For The Late Twenty-First Century From Dynamical Downscaling Of Cmip5/Rcp4.5 Scenarios, Thomas R. Knutson, Joseph J. Sirutis, Ming Zhao, Robert E. Tuleya, Morris Bender, Gabriel A. Vecchi, Gabriele Villarini, Daniel Chavas

CCPO Publications

Global projections of intense tropical cyclone activity are derived from the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) High Resolution Atmospheric Model (HiRAM; 50-km grid) and the GFDL hurricane model using a two-stage downscaling procedure. First, tropical cyclone genesis is simulated globally using HiRAM. Each storm is then downscaled into the GFDL hurricane model, with horizontal grid spacing near the storm of 6 km, including ocean coupling (e.g., "cold wake" generation). Simulations are performed using observed sea surface temperatures (SSTs) (1980-2008) for a "control run" with 20 repeating seasonal cycles and for a late-twenty-first-century projection using an altered SST seasonal cycle obtained …

Forecasting The Big Picture: Arctic Ecosystems, Climate Change, Shipping & Fisheries, Mary S. Wisz

ShipArc 2015 Conference

No abstract provided.

Drivers Of Arctic Shipping & Marine Operation, Lawson W. Brigham Ph.D

ShipArc 2015 Conference

No abstract provided.

State-Of-Knowledge On Changing Arctic Environmental Conditions, David Carlson

ShipArc 2015 Conference

No abstract provided.

Radiocarbon Isotopic Classification Of Deep Tropical Forest Soils, Brooke Butler, Karis J. Mcfarlane, Jennifer Pett-Ridge, Katherine A. Heckman

STAR Program Research Presentations

Tropical forest soils have an important role in global carbon (C) stocks. Small changes in the cycling of C could drastically affect atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations and active cycling of carbon in a forest community. Currently, little is understood of how tropical forest soils will respond to the increasing global temperatures. To examine the effects of warming/ drought on losses of older versus younger soil C pools, we implemented radiocarbon (14C) isotopic characterization of various soil plot samples and depths from the Luquillo Experimental Forest, Puerto Rico. 14C was measured using Accelerated Mass Spectrometry (AMS) from catalytically condensed carbon …

Probing The Past 30-Year Phenology Trend Of Us Deciduous Forests, X. Yue, N. Unger, Xiaoyang Zhang, C.S. Vogel

GSCE Faculty Publications

Phenology is experiencing dramatic changes over deciduous forests in the USA. Estimates of trends in phenology on the continental scale are uncertain, however, with studies failing to agree on both the magnitude and spatial distribution of trends in spring and autumn. This is due to the sparsity of in situ records, uncertainties associated with remote sensing data, and the regional focus of many studies. It has been suggested that reported trends are a result of recent temperature changes, though multiple processes are thought to be involved and the nature of the temperature forcing remains unknown. To date, no study has …

Participatory Research Workshop On Seasonal Prediction Of Hydroclimatic Extremes In The Greater Horn Of Africa, Tsegaye Tadesse, Deborah Bathke, Nicole Wall, Jacob Petr, Tonya Haigh

National Drought Mitigation Center: Faculty Publications

Sixty participants, including experts from seven countries from the Greater Horn of Africa (GHA) and project coinvestigators from the United States, met to discuss seasonal prediction of hydroclimatic extremes across the GHA, engage decision-makers in the assessment of information requirements, and use feedback to orient prediction models to address user needs. Perceptions of current climate change impacts in the GHA were assessed using pre- and postworkshop surveys. Participatory research was conducted through small group discussions on water, agriculture, impacts, and data sharing.

Retrieval Of Aerosol Microphysical Properties From Aeronet Photopolarimetric Measurements, Xiaoguang Xu

Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Atmospheric aerosols play an important role in earth climate by scattering and absorbing solar and terrestrial radiation, and indirectly through altering the cloud formation, life- time, and radiative properties. However, accurate quantification of these effects is in no small part hindered by our limited knowledge about the particle size distribution (PSD) and refractive index, the aerosol microphysical properties essentially pertain to aerosol optical and cloud-forming properties. The research goal of this thesis is to obtain the aerosol microphysical properties of both fine and coarse modes from the polarimetric solar radiation measured by the SunPhotometer of the Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET). …