Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology Commons^™

2025 May 1 - Tennessee Weekly Drought Summary, Tennessee Climate Office, East Tennessee State University

Tennessee Climate Office Weekly Drought Summaries

No abstract provided.

The Influence Of Complex Terrain On The Turin, New York Tornado Of 2023, Alex D. Kramer

Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences Honors Program

Although uncommon as compared to other regions of the United States, the Northeast does experience significant tornados; those rated F/EF3 and above, of which some have had profound impacts on the region. Due to the diverse topography of the region, including its many northsouth oriented river valleys, most of these significant tornados traversed considerable changes in elevation throughout their lifetime. This study seeks to better understand the impacts of local topography on the intensity and overall progression of a significant tornadic event through using the most recent Northeast EF3: the Turin, NY tornado. With the consideration of previous studies involving …

Assessment Of Sampling Gears For Bigheaded Carp In Mid-Order Prairie Rivers In Nebraska, Brett M. Anderson

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

Silver Carp Hypophthalmichthys molitrix and Bighead Carp H. nobilis (collectively bigheaded carp) have invaded tributaries to the Missouri River and Platte River in Nebraska, USA. Information pertaining to efficient sampling protocols for assessing bigheaded carp populations as well as benefiting removal efforts is needed. Herding is a method used to increase the capture efficiency and detection probability of adult bigheaded carp by simultaneously using active and passive sampling gears. During June-July 2023, four herding techniques were assessed regarding their ability to elicit directional movement past an enclosure gate. The combination of sound and electrofishing resulted in the highest mean …

Radar Precursors To Severe Weather Reports In Left-Moving Supercells, Eric A. Carothers

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

While much research has examined dual-polarimetric signatures of right-moving supercells, very little has been done with left-moving supercells. Given that left-moving supercells are thought to be disproportionate producers of large hail, understanding their internal dynamics is vitally important. This study examines differences and trends in the dual-polarimetric signatures of left-moving supercells to identify precursors to severe weather reports. A dataset of left-moving supercells associated with severe weather reports was created. These storms are processed with an automated analysis algorithm that identifies and quantifies the polarimetric signatures in each storm. A method for analysis of differences and trends in their dual-polarization …

Community Voices, Climate Action Choices: Working Towards A Resilient Monterey County, Lesley A. Solano Alonso

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Vulnerable communities in Monterey County face disproportionate environmental and health impacts due to climate change, yet many residents remain unaware of the tools and resources available to support local action. This capstone project was implemented in partnership with Ecology Action (EA) and the Resilient Central Coast (RCC) campaign to increase awareness and engagement with the RCC platform. Serving diverse communities across Monterey County, the project included bilingual outreach efforts, community tabling, educational presentations, and a climate action survey. Over 650 residents were engaged directly, resulting in 99 new household sign-ups on the RCC website, a major milestone for the agency. …

Optimizing Nitrogen Management: Assessing Nitrate Transport In The Deep Vadose Zone And Its Impact On Groundwater Quality In East-Central Nebraska, Muili O. Lawal

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Groundwater contamination by nitrate (NO₃-N) is a growing environmental and public health concern driven largely by intensive agricultural fertilizer applications. The vadose zone plays an important role in NO₃-N transport, influencing groundwater quality and agricultural sustainability. This study investigated NO₃-N leaching dynamics in the deep vadose zone of Water Quality Sub-Area 30 (WQA30) within the Lower Loup Natural Resources District (LLNRD), northeast of Columbus, Nebraska (mean groundwater NO₃-N: 20.3 mg/L), using soil cores from 16 shallow (to 6.1 m) and four deep (down to 25.9 m) across four zones, two with inorganic fertilizer (Zones 1 and 4) and two with …

Simulating Interactions Between (Remote) Internal Waves And The Background Flows And Topography Of The U.S. West Coast, Oladeji Siyanbola

Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on the simulation of remotely and locally generated semidiurnal internal tides (ITs) and near-inertial waves (NIWs), and how they interact with the California Current System (CCS) and the U.S. West Coast (USWC) topography. In Chapter II, we force Regional Ocean Modeling System (ROMS) simulations of the CCS with tides and remote internal waves (IWs) originating from as far as Hawaii, using a realistic global HYbrid Coordinate Ocean Model (HYCOM) simulation. To allow for optimal wave energy influx and minimize boundary reflections from the interior of the domain, we conduct boundary sensitivity tests on tide and IW forcing …

Environmental And Societal Impacts Of Agricultural Land Abandonment In Indonesia: A Bibliometric Review, Jane A. Landrum

Geosciences Undergraduate Honors Theses

In the past decades, Southeast Asia has faced one of the highest urbanization rates globally, with land conversion, agricultural land abandonment, and deforestation occurring simultaneously. High population growth rates and migration away from rural areas have also led to increased food insecurity, which has increased the need for agricultural production. In Indonesia, high rates of urbanization on the island of Java have historically prompted governmental policy solutions aimed at population redistribution and agricultural extensification (rather than intensification). The cost of this conversion of lands to agriculture often falls on the environment, with peatlands and forested lands being converted to large-scale …

The Petm: A Window Into Earth's Future Climate, Jacalyn M. Wittmer Malinowski

Climate Change and the Individual, 2025-26

The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) is not just an event that occurred in Earth’s distant past (~55 million years ago) but is a crucial lesson for today’s meteoric climate change. The PETM offers a historical parallel of rapid flux of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that caused global warming, ocean acidification, dramatic changes in weather, and extinctions. This global warming event was the result of 20,000 years of “rapid” warming (in geological terms) however, we are experiencing rates of warming that are 5-10x higher than PETM levels. We are not experiencing rapid warming today, in comparison to the past, we …

The Human Legacy: Agriculture, Civilizations, Strife, And Pandemics Changing Our Climate, Jacalyn M. Wittmer Malinowski

Climate Change and the Individual, 2025-26

For most of human history, climate has shaped our lives, while our influence on it remained minimal. However, the notion that early humans had no measurable impact on the climate before industrialization is inaccurate. Early in human history, activities – such as the rise of agriculture, the growth of civilizations, periods of conflict, and pandemics – altered greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere. These changes contributed to significant periods of climate change long before the burning of fossil fuels set us on the path to today’s global climate crisis.

A Synoptic Analysis Of Hurricane Andrew, Alice E. Schipper, Mark R. Sinclair

Student Works

Hurricane Andrew was a historic Category 5 storm that made landfall in southern Florida on the morning of 24 August 1992. Andrew’s landfall brought massive destruction, with entire neighborhoods in the city of Homestead, Florida destroyed. There were 250,000 people left homeless in the US over its entire track, and cost US$25 billion in damage, the costliest hurricane in United States history up to that point. A synoptic analysis was completed to study the tropical and subsequent extratropical phases of this destructive storm. During Andrew’s tropical phase it was found that strong vertical shear initially impeded development. As this dissipated, …

The Role Of The Neutral Wind In Observations Of High-Latitude Ionospheric Energy Transfer, Andrew M. Pepper

All Dissertations

Joule heating results from the collisional interaction between ions and neutrals and serves as a crucial mechanism for energy transfer between Earth's magnetosphere and ionosphere-thermosphere system, particularly at high latitudes. This dissertation investigates the modulation of Joule heating by altitude-resolved neutral winds, electric fields, and conductivity variations through multi-instrument observational analysis and modeling that incorporates both in-situ and ground-based sources to measure the main drivers of ion-neutral coupling. The observations presented consistently demonstrate a dual regulatory effect of the neutral wind on energy deposition that varies systematically with both geomagnetic activity level and proximity to auroral boundaries. In regions characterized …

Global Sporadic-E Prediction And Climatology Using Deep Learning, J. A. Ellis, Daniel J. Emmons, M. B. Cohen

Faculty Publications

Sporadic-E (E_s) is an ionospheric phenomenon defined by strong layers of plasma which may interfere with radio wave propagation. In this work, we develop deep learning models to improve the understanding of E_s, including the presence, intensity and height of the layers. We developed three separate models. The first, building off earlier work in (J. A. Ellis et al., 2024, link in AFIT Scholar, 10.1029/2023sw003669), includes only the main features from radio occultation (RO) measurements. The second adds to that time, date, location, geomagnetic and solar indices, solar winds, x-ray flux, weather and lightning. A …

Towards Advancing Streamflow And Peak Flow Prediction With Machine Learning: Identifying Infrastructure At Risk, Sudan Pokharel

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

Due to climate change and its impact, the need for adaptive strategies for natural disaster mitigation and resource management has never been more urgent. Central to this is water resource management, which is essential for sustainable human activities, ecological balance, and the mitigation of natural hazards like floods. Streamflow is a crucial element of water resource management and plays a vital role in planning and building water infrastructure, implementing emergency response plans, supporting flood mitigation initiatives, and regulating agricultural and industrial use. However, accurate prediction of streamflow still remains a challenge due to the complex non-linear and non-stationary interaction between …

Trends And Transport Of Tropospheric Ozone From New York City To Connecticut In The Summer Of 2023, Michele Iraci

Honors Scholar Theses

Tropospheric Ozone, or O3, is a criteria pollutant contributing to most of Connecticut and New York City’s poor air quality days. It has adverse effects on human health, particularly for high-risk individuals. Ozone is produced by nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds from fuel combustion reacting with sunlight. The Ozone Transport Region (OTR) is a collection of states in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic United States that experience cross-state pollution of O3. Connecticut has multiple days a year where O3 values exceed the National Ambient Air Quality Standards, requiring additional monitoring and standards because it falls in the OTR— partially due …

Simultaneous Observations Of Irregular Sporadic E Structures Using The Lwa And A Dps4d, Kenneth S. Obenberger, C. A. Taylor, Jonah J. Colman, Eugene Dao, J. Dowell, J. D. Eccles, Daniel J. Emmons, C. T. Fallen, J. M. Holmes, G. B. Taylor

Faculty Publications

Multi-instrument studies have recently shed new light on the morphology of sporadic E, especially intense sporadic E. Here we present simultaneous observations of dense sporadic E (E_s) structures using the Long Wavelength Array (LWA) radio telescopes and a Digisonde Portable Sounder 4D (DPS4D). Our coordinated observations show that the LWA radio telescopes in central New Mexico can reliably locate regions of dense Es structures as they pass over a Digisonde located over 500 km away in Texas. The LWA appears to be most sensitive to the densest E_s structures, which also appear to contain irregularities with vertical …

Global Ionospheric F Region Parameters From Gnss-Pod Limb Measurements: Evaluations And Comparisons With Two Empirical Models - Iri-2020 And Nequick-2, Nimalan Swarnalingam, Dong L. Wu, Dieter Bilitza, Daniel J. Emmons, Cornelius Csar Jude H. Salinas, Artem Smirnov, Yenca Migoya-Oru

Faculty Publications

An optimal estimation (OE) technique has recently been developed for F region electron density (Ne) using Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) limb sounding on low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites (COSMIC-2, Spire, and FengYun-3). This method provides unprecedented spatiotemporal sampling for global monthly Ne climatology within 100–500 km in 2 hr intervals. The global dataset, collected during mid to moderately high solar activity, is compared with leading models: IRI-2020 and NeQuick-2. Diurnal variations in summer, winter, and equinoctial months are examined for the F2-layer peak, as well as the topside and bottomside of the F region. The observed and modeled NmF2 …

2025 April 24 - Tennessee Weekly Drought Summary, Tennessee Climate Office, East Tennessee State University

Tennessee Climate Office Weekly Drought Summaries

No abstract provided.

Global Ocean Bottom Temperature Observation Design: Observing System Simulation Experiments For Strategic Deployment Of Smart Subsea Cables, Karen E. Renninger-Rojas

LSU Master's Theses

Deep-ocean observations below 2000 meters remain limited, restricting our ability to model global ocean processes critical to climate prediction. This thesis evaluates the potential of SMART (Science Monitoring and Reliable Telecommunications) subsea cables to address these observational gaps by conducting Observing System Simulation Experiments (OSSEs) and adjoint sensitivity analyses using the MITgcm ocean model and ECCO outputs.

Vertical decorrelation analysis showed that temperature and salinity in key regions decouple from the upper ocean beyond 2000 m. Over 60% of the proposed SMART cable sites exhibited decorrelation depths exceeding Argo’s maximum sampling depth, highlighting their strategic value for deployment.

A comparison …

Impacts Of Extreme Weather Conditions On Coastal Fisheries Near Bayou Teche, Louisiana From 2019–2023, Georgia C. Davis

LSU Master's Theses

The region of Southcentral Louisiana, particularly around Bayou Teche, thrives on its commercial and recreational fisheries. These fisheries are occasionally subject to events like extreme weather that cause sudden and unexpected losses (NOAA Fisheries, 2024a). Between 2019 and 2023, a series of extreme weather events impacted southcentral Louisiana near Bayou Teche. This series of extreme events includes Hurricane Barry (2019), Hurricane Laura (2020), Hurricane Delta (2020), Hurricane Zeta (2020), Hurricane Ida (2021), and a United States Drought Monitor (USDM) D4 drought (2023). This study analyzes the impacts of the extreme weather series on coastal fish observed species richness (SR) in …