Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology Commons^™

Ensemble Methods For Dynamic Data Assimilation Of Chemical Observations In Atmospheric Models, Adrian Sandu, Emil Constantinescu, Gregory R. Carmichael, Tianfeng Chai, Dacian Daescu, John H. Seinfeld

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Publications and Presentations

The task of providing an optimal analysis of the state of the atmosphere requires the development of dynamic data-driven systems (DDDAS) that efficiently integrate the observational data and the models. Data assimilation, the dynamic incorporation of additional data into an executing application, is an essential DDDAS concept with wide applicability. In this paper we discuss practical aspects of nonlinear ensemble Kalman data assimilation applied to atmospheric chemical transport models. We highlight the challenges encountered in this approach such as filter divergence and spurious corrections, and propose solutions to overcome them, such as background covariance inflation and filter localization. The predictability …

Concept Tests For A New Wire Flying Vehicle Designed To Achieve High Horizontal Resolution Profiling In Deep Water, Chris Roman, Dave Hebert

Graduate School of Oceanography Faculty Publications

Efficiently profiling the water column to achieve both high vertical and horizontal resolution from a moving vessel in deep water is difficult. Current solutions, such as CTD tow-yos, moving vessel profilers, and undulating tow bodies, are limited by ship speed or water depth. As a consequence, it is difficult to obtain oceanographic sections with sufficient resolution to identify many relevant scales over the deeper sections of the water column. This paper presents a new concept for a profiling vehicle that slides up and down a towed wire in a controlled manner using the lift created by wing foils. The wings …

Estimating Oil Concentration And Flow Rate With Calibrated Vessel-Mounted Acoustic Echo Sounders, Thomas C. Weber, Alex De Robertis, Shep Smith, Samuel F. Greenaway, Larry A. Mayer, Glen Rice

Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping

As part of a larger program aimed at evaluating acoustic techniques for mapping the distribution of subsurface oil and gas associated with the Deepwater Horizon-Macondo oil spill, observations were made on June 24 and 25, 2010 using vessel-mounted calibrated single-beam echo sounders on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ship Thomas Jefferson. Coincident with visual observations of oil at the sea surface, the 200-kHz echo sounder showed anomalously high-volume scattering strength in the upper 200 m on the western side of the wellhead, more than 100 times higher than the surrounding waters at 1,800-m distance from the wellhead, …

A Landscape Approach To Late Prehistoric Settlement And Subsistence Patterns In The Mojave Sink, Tiffany Ann Thomas

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The environment of the Late Prehistoric period (1200 A.D. to Historic Contact) Mojave Sink was wetter than modern conditions. The settlement and subsistence patterns of the occupants of the region during this period were driven by the availability of water, subsistence resources, raw material sources, and tradition. These people utilized the regional landscape based upon the seasonal availability of these resources. Supplemental agricultural production has been proposed for the Mojave River Delta due to the more favorable environmental conditions of this period. If agriculture was being practiced it would have affected the regional land-use patterns. For this thesis I propose …

Hydroclimatic Forecasting In The Western United States Using Paleoclimate Reconstructions And Data-Driven Models, Christopher Allen Carrier

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This thesis investigated climate variability and their associated hydrologic responses in the western United States. The western United States faces the problem of water scarcity, where the management and mitigation of available water supplies are further complicated by climate variability. Climate variability associated with the phases of oceanic-atmospheric oscillations has been shown to influence streamflow and precipitation, where predictive relationships have led to the possibility of producing long-range forecasts. Based on literature review, four oceanic-atmospheric oscillation indices were identified in having the most prominent influence over the western United States including the El Niño - Southern Oscillation (ENSO), Pacific Decadal …

Changing Climatic Conditions In The Colorado River Basin: Implications For Water Resources Management In The Las Vegas Valley, Srijana Dawadi

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Climate change affects the water available in a region. It also affects the water demand, because of the increase in temperature. A system dynamics model was developed for the Colorado River Basin (CRB), operating at a monthly time scale, to assess the potential impacts of climate change on streamflow in the Colorado River and its subsequent impact on the water resources management in the Las Vegas Valley (LVV). The effect of climate change on streamflow was evaluated using 16 global climate model outputs for 3 emission scenarios, also referenced in the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report. Risk …

Aquatic Plant Surveys In The Bureau Of Land Management, Medford District, 2010-2011, Mark D. Sytsma, Rich Miller, Vanessa Morgan

Center for Lakes and Reservoirs Publications and Presentations

The introduction of invasive aquatic plant species (IAPS) can cause significant ecological and economic harm. IAPS can displace native aquatic plant species, impair recreation, and degrade water quality. Early detection of new invasions can improve chances for successful eradication or containment to reduce the risk of IAPS spread. The Oregon Department of Agriculture (ODA) lists the most egregious offenders as “Noxious Weeds” which are defined as plants classified by the Oregon State Weed Board that are injurious to public health, agriculture, recreation, wildlife, or any public or private property (ODA 2011).

Several IAPS classified as noxious have been detected within …

Spatial And Temporal Variations In The Air-Sea Carbon Dioxide Fluxes Of Florida Bay, Christopher Michael Dufore

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The flux of CO2 between the ocean and the atmosphere is an important measure in determining local, global, and regional, as well as short term and long term carbon budgets. In this study, air-sea CO2 fluxes measured using a floating chamber were used to examine the spatial and temporal variability of CO2 fluxes in Florida Bay. Measurements of dissolved inorganic carbon and total alkalinity obtained concurrently with chamber measurements of CO2 flux allowed calculation of ΔpCO2 from flux measurements obtained at zero wind velocity. Floating chamber measurements of ΔpCO2 were subsequently coupled with wind speed data to provide a simple …

Field Ecology Patterns Of High Latitude Coral Communities, Kristi A. Foster

HCNSO Student Theses and Dissertations

Some climate models predict that, within the next 30-50 years, sea surface temperatures (SSTs) will frequently exceed the current thermal tolerance of corals (Fitt et al. 2001; Hughes et al. 2003; Hoegh-Guldberg et al. 2007). A potential consequence is that mass coral bleaching may take place (i) during warm El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events which are predicted to occur in some regions more frequently than the current 3-7 year periodicity (Hoegh-Guldberg 1999; Sheppard 2003) or (ii) perhaps as often as annually or biannually if corals and their symbionts are unable to acclimate to the higher SSTs (Donner et al. 2005, …

Climate Change In The Piscataqua/Great Bay Region: Past, Present, And Future, Cameron P. Wake, Elizabeth Burakowski, Eric Kelsey, Katharine Hayhoe, Anne Stoner, Chris Watson, Ellen Douglas

The Sustainability Institute Publications

Earth ’s climate changes. It always has and always will. However, an extensive body of scientific evidence indicates that human activities are now a significant force driving change in the Earth’s climate system. This report describes how the climate of the Piscataqua/Great Bay region of coastal New Hampshire in the United States has changed over the past century and how the future climate of the region will be affected by human activities that are warming the planet.

Overall, the region has been getting warmer and wetter over the last century, and the rate of change has increased over the last …

Consistency In Statistical Moments As A Test For Bubble Cloud Clustering, Thomas C. Weber, Anthony P. Lyons, David L. Bradley

Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping

Frequency dependent measurements of attenuation and/or sound speed through clouds of gas bubbles in liquids are often inverted to find the bubble size distribution and the void fraction of gas. The inversions are often done using an effective medium theory as a forward model under the assumption that the bubble positions are Poisson distributed (i.e., statistically independent). Under circumstances in which single scattering does not adequately describe the pressure field, the assumption of independence in position can yield large errors when clustering is present, leading to errors in the inverted bubble size distribution. It is difficult, however, to determine the …

Sustainability And Climate Models For The Intermountain West: An Annotated Bibliography, Marianne A. Buehler, William E. Brown Jr.

Brookings Mountain West Publications

This resource on climate models and sustainability in the Intermountain West, a region that includes the states of Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah, is a collaborative effort between the UNLV Libraries (http://library.unlv.edu/) and Brookings Mountain West (http://brookingsmtnwest.unlv.edu/).

The selected citations include academic, government, and non-profit information that highlight ongoing research on climate models and sustainability efforts in the region. The websites, government studies, independent reports, scholarly articles, and media reports reflect the diversity and complexity of climate change and sustainability issues in a region that contains widely varying ecosystems. The Intermountain West, with its deserts, basins, mountains, …

Lsuhsc Facilities Biweekly Update: November 2011, Lsuhsc Property And Facilities Management

LSUHSC Facilities Biweekly Updates: 2011

LSUHSC Facilities Biweekly Updates from November 4 and 18, 2011.

These updates describe damage and a timeline of repairs at the LSU Health Sciences Center - New Orleans campus due to Hurricane Katrina which made landfall August 29, 2005.

Lsuhsc Facilities Daily Updates: November 2011, Lsuhsc Property And Facilities Management

LSUHSC Facilities Daily Updates: 2011

LSUHSC Facilities Daily Updates from November 2011.

On the original documents, the daily update for Tuesday, November 8, 2011 was misdated as Tuesday, November 9, 2011.

These updates describe damage and a timeline of repairs at the LSU Health Sciences Center - New Orleans campus due to Hurricane Katrina which made landfall August 29, 2005.

2011 Aquatic Weed Surveys In Timothy Lake, Lake Harriet And North Fork Reservoir : Final Report, Mark D. Sytsma, Vanessa Howard Morgan

Center for Lakes and Reservoirs Publications and Presentations

Portland General Electric (PGE) was issued a new license by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for the continued operation and maintenance of the Clackamas River Hydroelectric Project No. 2195 (Project) on December 21, 2010. This Project is located on both the lower 16 miles of Oak Grove Fork of the Clackamas River (Oak Grove Fork) and the mainstem of the Clackamas River in Clackamas County, Oregon. The effects of relicensing this Project were addressed in the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) completed in December 2006 and included the issue of invasive aquatic weed species. The term “aquatic weed” is …

Comparing Ingenio Santa Rosa Precipitation Data To Trmm And Hydroestimator Data For El Nino And Normal Years In Panama, Tiffany Keeton

Von Braun Symposium Student Posters

No abstract provided.

Geospatially Detecting Saccharum Spontaneum: An Invasion Of The Panama Canal Watershed, Casey L. Calamaio

Von Braun Symposium Student Posters

No abstract provided.

Analysis Of Solar Lyman-Alpha Backscatter Radiation In The Heliosphere, Brian Fayock

Von Braun Symposium Student Posters

No abstract provided.

Investigation Of Turbulence Transport In The Heliosphere, Lauren Kahre

Von Braun Symposium Student Posters

No abstract provided.

Environmental Prediction In Canadian Cities, James Voogt

Geography & Environment Presentations

No abstract provided.