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At least 613 records · Page 34

Quasi-periodic climatic changes on Mars and earth

Evidence of climatic changes on Mars and the earth due to geologic and astronomical variations is discussed. Finely striped ice-free bands in the Martian polar caps have been taken to indicate that long term variations in the orbit and axial tilt of Mars have precipitated these features at the rate of a mm/yr. Photogrammetric and photometric methods have contributed to measurements of the composition and depth of the Martian caps (14-46 m), and observations of higher solar energy absorption in the northern ice cap implies greater dust deposition in that region than on the south cap; however, the transport mechanisms are not well understood. Comparisons of earth and Martian climatic variations data are made, noting a lack of information on the age intervals of marine and nonmarine sediments on the earth. The possibilities of using quantitative data other than layer thickness to constrain climate models are discussed, and the slope or albedo of layers, or the spacing of polar undulations are suggested.

Cutts, J. A.↗

Impact of Spatial Sampling on Continuity of MODIS-VIIRS Land Surface Reflectance Products: A Simulation Approach

With the increasing need to construct long-term climate-quality data records to understand, monitor, and predict climate variability and change, it is vital to continue systematic satellite measurements along with the development of new technology for more quantitative and accurate observations. The Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership mission provides continuity in monitoring the Earths surface and its atmosphere in a similar fashion as the heritage MODIS instruments onboard the National Aeronautics and Space Administrations Terra and Aqua satellites. In this paper, we aim at quantifying the consistency of Aqua MODIS and Suomi-NPP Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) Land Surface Reflectance (LSR) and NDVI products as related to their inherent spatial sampling characteristics. To avoid interferences from sources of measurement and/or processing errors other than spatial sampling, including calibration, atmospheric correction, and the effects of the bidirectional reflectance distribution function, the MODIS and VIIRSLSR products were simulated using the Landsat-8s Operational Land Imager (OLI) LSR products. The simulations were performed using the instruments point spread functions on a daily basis for various OLI scenes over a 16-day orbit cycle. It was found that the daily mean differences due to discrepancies in spatial sampling remain below 0.0015 (1) in absolute surface reflectance at subgranule scale (i.e., OLI scene size).We also found that the MODISVIIRS product intercomparisons appear to be minimally impacted when differences in the corresponding view zenith angles (VZAs) are within the range of -15deg to -35deg (VZA(sub v) - VZA(sub m)), where VIIRS and MODIS footprints resemble in size. In general, depending on the spatial heterogeneity of the OLI scene contents, per-grid-cell differences can reach up to 20.Further spatial analysis of the simulated NDVI and LSR products revealed that, depending on the user accuracy requirements for product intercomparisons, spatial aggregations may be used. It was found that if per-grid-cell differences on the order of 10(in LSR or NDVI) are tolerated, the product intercomparisons are expected to be immune from differences in spatial sampling.

VIIRS↗

Methodology to Assess the Changing Risk of Yield Failure Due to Heat and Drought Stress Under Climate Change

While the understanding of average impacts of climate change on crop yields is improving, few assessments have quantified expected impacts on yield distributions and the risk of yield failures. Here we present the relative distribution as a method to assess how the risk of yield failure due to heat and drought stress (measured in terms of return period between yields falling 15% below previous five year Olympic average yield) responds to changes of the underlying yield distributions under climate change. Relative distributions are used to capture differences in the entire yield distribution between baseline and climate change scenarios, and to further decompose them into changes in the location and shape of the distribution. The methodology is applied here for the case of rainfed wheat and grain maize across Europe using an ensemble of crop models under three climate change scenarios with simulations conducted at 25 km resolution. Under climate change, maize generally displayed shorter return periods of yield failures (with changes under RCP 4.5 between −0.3 and 0 years compared to the baseline scenario) associated with a shift of the yield distribution towards lower values and changes in shape of the distribution that further reduced the frequency of high yields. This response was prominent in the areas characterized in the baseline scenario by high yields and relatively long return periods of failure. Conversely, for wheat, yield failures were projected to become less frequent under future scenarios (with changes in the return period of −0.1 to +0.4 years under RCP 4.5) and were associated with a shift of the distribution towards higher values and a change in shape increasing the frequency of extreme yields at both ends. Our study offers an approach to quantify the changes in yield distributions that drive crop yield failures. Actual risk assessments additionally require models that capture the variety of drivers determining crop yield variability and scenario climate input data that samples the range of probable climate variation.

Climate risk assessment↗

Potomac River Basin Water Resources: Assessing Water Quality and Quantity in the National Capital Region Using NASA Earth Observations

The Potomac River Basin (PRB) is responsible for providing drinking water to over 5 million residents and plays a significant role in the health of the Chesapeake Bay. Therefore, it is important to understand the relationship between water quality, landcover, and the hydrological cycle within the PRB. The National Park Service (NPS) has monitored 37 streams within the National Park Units in Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and Washington, D.C. This project aimed to help the NPS better understand trends in water quality to supplement their ability to monitor changes in the National Capital Region Network (NCRN). Google Earth Engine, ArcGIS Pro, R, and Python were used for data retrieval, visualization, and analysis. Earth observations included Landsat 5 TM and Landsat 8 OLI/TIRS imagery. Ancillary data included the USDA Cropland Data Layer, Climate Hazards Group InfraRed Precipitation with Station Data (CHIRPS), and soil moisture data from the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) Land Data Assimilation System (FLDAS). We compared Land use/land cover (LULC), Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), precipitation and soil moisture data to water quality data provided by the NPS at a watershed level. LULC change maps were also generated for the PRB between 2008 and 2022. We found significant correlations between precipitation, soil moisture, NDVI, and water quality. Correlations were found between certain land use types and water quality metrics, but findings varied greatly between watersheds. These insights emphasize the imperative of strategic watershed management in preserving the integrity of key aquatic systems.

Landsat↗

High Resolution Nature Runs and the Big Data Challenge

NASA's Global Modeling and Assimilation Office at Goddard Space Flight Center is undertaking a series of very computationally intensive Nature Runs and a downscaled reanalysis. The nature runs use the GEOS-5 as an Atmospheric General Circulation Model (AGCM) while the reanalysis uses the GEOS-5 in Data Assimilation mode. This paper will present computational challenges from three runs, two of which are AGCM and one is downscaled reanalysis using the full DAS. The nature runs will be completed at two surface grid resolutions, 7 and 3 kilometers and 72 vertical levels. The 7 km run spanned 2 years (2005-2006) and produced 4 PB of data while the 3 km run will span one year and generate 4 BP of data. The downscaled reanalysis (MERRA-II Modern-Era Reanalysis for Research and Applications) will cover 15 years and generate 1 PB of data. Our efforts to address the big data challenges of climate science, we are moving toward a notion of Climate Analytics-as-a-Service (CAaaS), a specialization of the concept of business process-as-a-service that is an evolving extension of IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS enabled by cloud computing. In this presentation, we will describe two projects that demonstrate this shift. MERRA Analytic Services (MERRA/AS) is an example of cloud-enabled CAaaS. MERRA/AS enables MapReduce analytics over MERRA reanalysis data collection by bringing together the high-performance computing, scalable data management, and a domain-specific climate data services API. NASA's High-Performance Science Cloud (HPSC) is an example of the type of compute-storage fabric required to support CAaaS. The HPSC comprises a high speed Infinib and network, high performance file systems and object storage, and a virtual system environments specific for data intensive, science applications. These technologies are providing a new tier in the data and analytic services stack that helps connect earthbound, enterprise-level data and computational resources to new customers and new mobility-driven applications and modes of work. In our experience, CAaaS lowers the barriers and risk to organizational change, fosters innovation and experimentation, and provides the agility required to meet our customers' increasing and changing needs

big data analysis↗

Meta-modeling strategy for data-driven forecasting

Accurately forecasting the weather is a key requirement for climate change mitigation. Data-driven methods offer the ability to make more accurate forecasts, but lack interpretability and can be expensive to train and deploy if models are not carefully developed. Here, we make use of two historical climate data sets and tools from machine learning, to accurately predict temperature fields. Furthermore, we are able to use low fidelity models that are cheap to train and evaluate, to selectively avoid expensive high fidelity function evaluations, as well as uncover seasonal variations in predictive power. This allows for an adaptive training strategy for computationally efficient geophysical emulation.

Skinner, Dominic J↗

Reviews and syntheses: The promise of big diverse soil data, moving current practices towards future potential

Abstract. In the age of big data, soil data are more available and richer than ever, but – outside of a few large soil survey resources – they remain largely unusable for informing soil management and understanding Earth system processes beyond the original study. Data science has promised a fully reusable research pipeline where data from past studies are used to contextualize new findings and reanalyzed for new insight. Yet synthesis projects encounter challenges at all steps of the data reuse pipeline, including unavailable data, labor-intensive transcription of datasets, incomplete metadata, and a lack of communication between collaborators. Here, using insights from a diversity of soil, data, and climate scientists, we summarize current practices in soil data synthesis across all stages of database creation: availability, input, harmonization, curation, and publication. We then suggest new soil-focused semantic tools to improve existing data pipelines, such as ontologies, vocabulary lists, and community practices. Our goal is to provide the soil data community with an overview of current practices in soil data and where we need to go to fully leverage big data to solve soil problems in the next century.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Physical and biological processes in the North Atlantic during the First GARP Global Experiment

The seasonal cycle of the phytoplankton productivity in the North Atlantic is investigated using monthly mean pigment composites generated by the Nimbus 7 CZCS for the period of December 1978 through December 1979. Data on the temporal and spatial distributions of surface pigments are compared with quantities derived from the First GARP Global Experiment wind data set, Climate Analysis Center SST fields, concurrent hydrogarphic station data, and climatological mixed-layer depths and heat fluxes. Time series at 11 selected sites throughout the North Atlantic basin are used to illustrate the relation of phytoplankton biomass to local physical forcing.

Mcclain, Charles R.↗

Using the NASA NEESPI Portal Data to Study Land, Climate, and Socio-Economic Changes in Northern Eurasia

A large number of fires detected in July of 2003 - a nearly 200-time increase in fire detections compared to other years during 2001-2006. despite the summer monsoon suppression of large fire occurrence. Traditional vegetation indices (NDVI and EVI) included in operational fire danger assessment provide little information on the fuel state in this ecosystem pre- or post-fire. No considerable differences in surface temperature and soil moisture in July were observed between the catastrophic year of 2003 and the two subsequent years of low summer fire occurrence of 2004 and 2005. However, the temporal analysis indicates that dry spring conditions in 2003 (detected through low soil moisture measurements in April and May) may have led to a stressed vegetative state and created conditions conducive to catastrophic fire occurrence.

Leptoukh, Gregory↗

A Statistical Filtering Approach for Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) Gravity Data

We describe and analyze a statistical filtering approach for GRACE data that uses a parametrized model for the temporal evolution of the GRACE coefficients. After least-squares adjustment, a statistical test is performed to assess the significance of the estimated parameters. If the test is passed, the parameters are used by the filter in the reconstruction of the field; otherwise they are rejected. The test is performed, and the filter is formed, separately for annual components of the model and the trend. This new approach is distinct from Gaussian smoothing since it uses the data themselves to test for specific components of the time-varying gravity field. The statistical filter appears inherently to remove most of the "stripes" present in the GRACE fields, although destriping the fields prior to filtering seems to help the trend recovery. We demonstrate that the statistical filter produces reasonable maps for the annual components and trend. We furthermore assess the statistical filter for the annual components using ground-based GPS data in South America by assuming that the annual component of the gravity signal is associated only with groundwater storage. The un-destriped, statistically filtered field has a X2 value relative to the GPS data consistent with the best result from smoothing. In the space domain, the statistical filters are qualitatively similar to Gaussian smoothing. Unlike Gaussian smoothing, however, the statistical filter has significant sidelobes, including large negative sidelobes on the north-south axis, potentially revealing information on the errors, and the correlations among the errors, for the GRACE coefficients.

Davis. J. L.↗

Interactive Computing and Processing of NASA Land Surface Observations Using Google Earth Engine

Google's Earth Engine offers a "big data" approach to processing large volumes of NASA and other remote sensing products. h\ps://earthengine.google.com/ Interfaces include a Javascript or Python-based API, useful for accessing and processing over large periods of record for Landsat and MODIS observations. Other data sets are frequently added, including weather and climate model data sets, etc. Demonstrations here focus on exploratory efforts to perform land surface change detection related to severe weather, and other disaster events.

earth engine↗

Turbulence theories and statistical closure approaches

When discussing research in physics and in science more generally, it is common to ascribe equal importance to the three components of the scientific trinity: theoretical, experimental, and computational studies. This review will explore the future of modern turbulence theory by tracing its history, which began in earnest with Kolmogorov’s 1941 analysis of turbulence cascade and inertial range [A.N. Kolmogorov, Dokl. Akad. Nauk SSSR, 30, 299, (1941); 32, 19, (1941)]. The 80th Anniversary of Kolmogorov’s landmark study is a welcome opportunity to survey the achievements and evaluate the future of the theoretical approach of turbulence research. Over the years, turbulence theories have been critically important in laying the foundation of our understanding of the nature of turbulent flows. In particular, the Direct Interaction Approximation (DIA) [R.H. Kraichnan, J. Fluid Mech., 5, 497 (1959)] and its subsequent development, known as the statistical closure approach, can be identified as perhaps the most profound single advancement. The remarkable success of the statistical closure has furnished a platform to study such essential concepts as the energy transfer process and interacting scales, and the roles of the straining and sweeping motions. More recently, the quasi-Lagrangian formulation of V. L’vov & I. Procaccia and Kraichnan’s solvable passive scalar model provided powerful ways to explore another fundamental aspect of turbulent flows, the phenomena of intermittency, and the associated anomalous scaling exponents. In the meantime, the theory of fluid equilibria has been developed to describe the large-scale structures that can emerge from turbulent cascades of two-dimensional and geophysical flows at a later time. And yet, despite all these successes, analytical treatments suffer from mathematical complexities. As a result, the utility of theoretical approaches has been limited to relatively idealized flows. On the other hand, in recent decades, computational abilities and experimental facilities have reached an unprecedented scale. Looking beyond the horizon, the imminent deployment of exascale supercomputers will generate complete datasets of the entire flow field of key benchmark flows, allowing researchers to extract additional measurements concerning fully developed, complex turbulent flow fields far beyond those available from the statistical closure theories. Some other developments that could potentially influence the future course of turbulence theories include the advancement of machine learning, artificial intelligence, and data science; likely disruptions arising from the advent of quantum computation; and the increasingly prominent role of turbulence research in providing more accurate climate scientific data. Finally, turbulence theorists can leverage these developments by asking the right questions and developing advanced, sophisticated frameworks that will be able to predict and correlate vast amounts of data from the other two components of the trinity.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Market expectations of a warming climate

In this paper, we compare prices of financial derivatives whose payouts are based on future weather outcomes to CMIP5 climate model predictions as well as observed weather station data across eight cities in the US from 2001 through 2020. Derivative prices respond both to short-term weather forecasts for the next two weeks and longer-term warming trends. We show that the long-term trends in derivative prices are comparable to station-level data and climate model output. The one exception is February in the northeastern US, where financial markets price in a polar vortex-induced cooling effect, a recent scientific finding that was not present in the older CMIP5 climate output. When looking at the spatial and temporal heterogeneity in trends, futures prices are more aligned with climate model output than observed weather station trends, suggesting that market participants closely align their expectations with scientific projections rather than recent observations.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Learning to Correct Climate Projection Biases

The fidelity of climate projections is often undermined by biases in climate models due to their simplification or misrepresentation of unresolved climate processes. While various bias correction methods have been developed to post-process model outputs to match observations, existing approaches usually focus on limited, low-order statistics, or break either the spatiotemporal consistency of the target variable, or its dependency upon model resolved dynamics. We develop a Regularized Adversarial Domain Adaptation (RADA) methodology to overcome these deficiencies, and enhance efficient identification and correction of climate model biases. Instead of pre-assuming the spatiotemporal characteristics of model biases, we apply discriminative neural networks to distinguish historical climate simulation samples and observation samples. The evidences based on which the discriminative neural networks make distinctions are applied to train the domain adaptation neural networks to bias correct climate simulations. We regularize the domain adaptation neural networks using cycle-consistent statistical and dynamical constraints. An application to daily precipitation projection over the contiguous United States shows that our methodology can correct all the considered moments of daily precipitation at approximately $1^\circ$ resolution, ensures spatiotemporal consistency and inter-field correlations, and can discriminate between different dynamical conditions. Our methodology offers a powerful tool for disentangling model parameterization biases from their interactions with the chaotic evolution of climate dynamics, opening a novel avenue toward big-data enhanced climate predictions.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

Data and Code for: Observation-constrained agroecosystem model inversion reveals continental-scale variation of winter wheat traits

This repository contains the simulation outputs and processing scripts associated with the study of winter wheat traits across the United States, utilizing the Ecosys agroecosystem model. The dataset includes model results for both rainfed and irrigated winter wheat systems, supporting the findings presented in the manuscript titled "Observation-constrained agroecosystem model inversion reveals continental-scale variation of winter wheat traits." Data includes the original Ecosys simulation outputs (archived in .db format within the compressed .zip files) and extracted analysis data (stored in .pkl files for efficient processing). Python code for data processing and figure generation is provided in a Jupyter notebook. External Observational Datasets should refer to the following official repositories for the input and validation data used in this study. The eddy covariance data from the AmeriFlux network (https://ameriflux.lbl.gov/). Climate-forcing data of NLDAS-2 from NASA LDAS (https://ldas.gsfc.nasa.gov/nldas/nldas-2-forcing-data). Soil data from the Gridded Soil Survey Geographic Database (gSSURGO), available at (https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/resources/data-and-reports/gridded-soil-survey-geographic-gssurgo-database). Crop yields, planting and harvest dates from the USDA public databases (https://quickstats.nass.usda.gov/; https://webapp.rma.usda.gov/apps/actuarialinformationbrowser/CropCriteria.aspx). Satellite-derived SLOPE GPP data from ORNL DAAC (https://daac.ornl.gov/cgi-bin/dsviewer.pl?ds_id=1786). Land use and crop progress information from the USDA Crop Data Layer and Crop Progress and Condition Gridded Layers (https://www.nass.usda.gov/Research_and_Science/). The Ecosys model code is available online at https://github.com/jinyun1tang/ECOSYS.

Wheat↗

New York City Panel on Climate Change 2015 Report: Climate Observations and Projections - Chapter 1

During 2013 and 2014, numerous international (IPCC, 2013) and national (Melillo et al., 2014; Gordon, 2014) reports have concluded that human activities are changing the climate, leading to increased vulnerability and risk. Since the industrial revolution, fossil fuel burning, industrial activity, and land use changes have led to a 40% increase in heat-trapping carbon dioxide (CO2), and an approximately 150% increase in methane (CH4), another powerful greenhouse gas (GHG), has been observed. Global temperatures have increased by close to 1 C since 1880 as the upper oceans have warmed and polar ice has retreated. These and other climate changes are projected to accelerate as greenhouse gas concentrations continue to rise. In the coming decades, climate change is extremely likely to bring warmer temperatures in the New York metropolitan region (see Box. 1.1 and Fig.1.1 for key definitions and terms). Heat waves are very likely to increase; total annual precipitation will likely increase and brief, intense rainstorms are very likely to increase. Because of incomplete knowledge about exactly how much climate change will occur, choosing among policies for reducing future damages requires prudent risk management (Yohe and Leichenko, 2010; Kunreuther et al., 2013). Given differing risk tolerances among stakeholders, a risk management approach allows for a range of possible climate change outcomes to be examined with associated uncertainties surrounding their likelihoods. The New York City Panel on Climate Change 2 (NPCC2) projections can be used to inform planning across multiple governmental scales (e.g., city, county, state) in the New York metropolitan region. Such coordinated efforts can serve as test cases for successful local, state, and federal coordination for integrated climate adaptation initiatives. This chapter describes the global climate system, and presents observed temperature and precipitation trends and projections for the region. Chapter 2 (NPCC, 2015) focuses on sea level rise and possible changes in coastal storms. Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 (NPCC, 2015) describe efforts to better understand the region's vulnerability to coastal flooding during coastal storms. The treatment of likelihood related to the NPCC projections is similar to that developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth and Fifth Assessment Reports (IPCC, 2007; 2013), with six likelihood categories (Box 1.1 and Fig. 1.1). The assignment of climate hazards to these categories is based on observed data, global climate model simulations, published literature, and expert judgment.

climate change↗

A Machine Learning Approach to Determine Surface Radiative Fluxes based on CERES Observations

The Clouds and Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) projects provides satellite-based observations of the radiative fluxes and clouds systems. CERES climate quality data products typically take several months of calibration and validation before release to the public. An alternative data product, Fast Longwave and Shortwave radiative Flux (FLASHFlux), was created to provide data to the applied sciences and educational users. FLASHFlux provides Top-of-Atmosphere radiative fluxes, Clouds properties, and parameterized surface radiative fluxes within four days for footprint (Level 2) data. We investigate the use of Artificial Neural Network (ANN) using MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) derived clouds properties and meteorology from the Global Assimilation and Meteorology Office (GMAO) scaled to the CERES footprint from the CERES Clouds Radiative Swath (CRS) data product to compute surface radiative fluxes. We test ANN produce fluxes against surface fluxes produced from the Fu-Liou model used in CRS and the Langley Parameterized Shortwave Algorithm (LPSA) and Langley Parameterized Longwave Algorithm (LPLA) used in FLASHFlux. We also validated each model with ground-based observations. Furthermore, we investigate Leave-One-Feature-Out Importance (LOFO) to evaluate the significance of each feature in our training and provide insight for future models. Advances in machine learning, along with increases in computational capabilities and available data allow us to estimate effects of unresolved processes in our climate without direct modeling. This work evaluates the ability to create accurate data-driven models to supplement or replace current models that estimate surface radiative fluxes.

Climatology↗