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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 127 records · Page 7
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1994

Possible implications of global climate change on global lightning distributions and frequencies

The Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) general circulation model (GCM) is used to study the possible implications of past and future climate change on global lightning frequencies. Two climate change experiments were conducted: one for a 2 x CO2 climate (representing a 4.2 degs C global warming) and one for a 2% decrease in the solar constant (representing a 5.9 degs C global cooling). The results suggest at 30% increase in global lightning activity for the warmer climate and a 24% decrease in global lightning activity for the colder climate. This implies an approximate 5-6% change in global lightning frequencies for every 1 degs C global warming/cooling. Both intracloud and cloud-to-ground frequencies are modeled, with cloud-to-ground lightning frequencies showing larger sensitivity to climate change than intracloud frequencies. The magnitude of the modeled lightning changes depends on season, location, and even time of day.

Price, Colin↗
NASA NTRS2000

Paleoproterozoic snowball earth: extreme climatic and geochemical global change and its biological consequences

Geological, geophysical, and geochemical data support a theory that Earth experienced several intervals of intense, global glaciation ("snowball Earth" conditions) during Precambrian time. This snowball model predicts that postglacial, greenhouse-induced warming would lead to the deposition of banded iron formations and cap carbonates. Although global glaciation would have drastically curtailed biological productivity, melting of the oceanic ice would also have induced a cyanobacterial bloom, leading to an oxygen spike in the euphotic zone and to the oxidative precipitation of iron and manganese. A Paleoproterozoic snowball Earth at 2.4 Giga-annum before present (Ga) immediately precedes the Kalahari Manganese Field in southern Africa, suggesting that this rapid and massive change in global climate was responsible for its deposition. As large quantities of O(2) are needed to precipitate this Mn, photosystem II and oxygen radical protection mechanisms must have evolved before 2.4 Ga. This geochemical event may have triggered a compensatory evolutionary branching in the Fe/Mn superoxide dismutase enzyme, providing a Paleoproterozoic calibration point for studies of molecular evolution.

Earth (Planet)↗
NASA NTRS2003

Global Changes of the Water Cycle Intensity

In this study, we evaluate numerical simulations of the twentieth century climate, focusing on the changes in the intensity of the global water cycle. A new diagnostic of atmospheric water vapor cycling rate is developed and employed, that relies on constituent tracers predicted at the model time step. This diagnostic is compared to a simplified traditional calculation of cycling rate, based on monthly averages of precipitation and total water content. The mean sensitivity of both diagnostics to variations in climate forcing is comparable. However, the new diagnostic produces systematically larger values and more variability than the traditional average approach. Climate simulations were performed using SSTs of the early (1902-1921) and late (1979- 1998) twentieth century along with the appropriate C02 forcing. In general, the increase of global precipitation with the increases in SST that occurred between the early and late twentieth century is small. However, an increase of atmospheric temperature leads to a systematic increase in total precipitable water. As a result, the residence time of water in the atmosphere increased, indicating a reduction of the global cycling rate. This result was explored further using a number of 50-year climate simulations from different models forced with observed SST. The anomalies and trends in the cycling rate and hydrologic variables of different GCMs are remarkably similar. The global annual anomalies of precipitation show a significant upward trend related to the upward trend of surface temperature, during the latter half of the twentieth century. While this implies an increase in the hydrologic cycle intensity, a concomitant increase of total precipitable water again leads to a decrease in the calculated global cycling rate. An analysis of the land/sea differences shows that the simulated precipitation over land has a decreasing trend while the oceanic precipitation has an upward trend consistent with previous studies and the available observations. The decreasing continental trend in precipitation is located primarily over tropical land regions, with some other regions, such as North America experiencing an increasing trend. Precipitation trends are diagnosed further using the water tracers to delineate the precipitation that occurs because of continental evaporation, as opposed to oceanic evaporation. These diagnostics show that over global land areas, the recycling of continental moisture is decreasing in time. However, the recycling changes are not spatially uniform so that some regions, most notably over the United States, experience continental recycling of water that increases in time.

Bosilovich, Michael G.↗
NASA NTRS2009

Sequential Imaging of Earth by Astronauts: 50 Years of Global Change

For nearly 50 years, astronauts have collected sequential imagery of the Earth. In fact, the collection of astronaut photography comprises one of the earliest sets of data (1961 to present) available to scientists to study the regional context of the Earth s surface and how it changes. While today s availability of global high resolution satellite imagery enables anyone with an internet connection to examine specific features on the Earth s surface with a regional context, historical satellite imagery adds another dimension (time) that provides researchers and students insight about the features and processes of a region. For example, one of the geographic areas with the longest length of record contained within the astronaut photography database is the lower Nile River. The database contains images that document the flooding of Lake Nasser (an analog to today s flooding behind China s Three Gorges Dam), the changing levels of Lake Nasser s water with multiyear cycles of flood and drought, the recent flooding and drying of the Toshka Lakes, as well as urban growth, changes in agriculture and coastal subsidence. The imagery database allows investigations using different time scales (hours to decades) and spatial scales (resolutions and fields of view) as variables. To continue the imagery collection, the astronauts on the International Space Station are trained to understand basic the Earth Sciences and look for and photograph major events such as tropical storms, landslides, and volcanic eruptions, and document landscapes undergoing change (e.g., coastal systems, cities, changing forest cover). We present examples of selected sequences of astronaut imagery that illustrate the interdependence of geological processes, climate cycles, human geography and development, and prompt additional questions about the underlying elements of change.

Evans, Cynthia A.↗
NASA NTRS2018

Arctic Sea Ice and Its Role in Global Change

Sea ice is an important component of the global climate system. Sea ice forms, grows, and melts in the ocean. Sea ice grows during the fall and winter and melts during the spring and summer. Sea ice can melt completely in summer or survive multiple years. Sea ice can be classified by stages of development (thickness and age), that is, first-year sea ice (ice thickness typically <1.8 m) and multiyear sea ice (ice thickness typically >1.8 m). Sea ice occurs in both hemispheres. In the Northern Hemisphere, sea ice develops in the Arctic Ocean and surrounding bodies including Hudson and Baffin Bay, Gulf of St. Lawrence, the Greenland Sea, the Bering Sea, and the Sea of Okhotsk (sea ice can be observed as far south as Bohai Bay, China, ~38°N). In the Southern Hemisphere, sea ice only develops around Antarctica, reaching a maximum equatorward extension at around ~55°S).

Liu, Jiping↗
NASA NTRS1984

The influence of ocean surface temperature gradient and continentality on the Walker circulation. II - Prescribed global changes

The series of experiments presently used to investigate the mechanisms responsible for forcing the global Walker circulation features worldwide changes in ocean surface temperatures (OSTs), topography, and/or continents. The primary factor affecting circulation is noted to be the global distribution of continents and oceans; while OST gradients are also important, topography emerges as comparatively unimportant. Continentality and OST gradients force the model atmosphere through the introduction of zonal variations in surface heating. The vertical motions to which they give rise yield moisture convergence and condensation variations which reinforce vertical motions. The forcing by OST gradients is partly nonlocal, and the atmospheric response is effected by continentality. In all cases, vertical motion zonal variations correlate with precipitation.

Stone, P. H.↗
NASA NTRS1994

Stellar activity: Astrophysics relevant to global change

FRESIP will obtain a great deal of data on stellar activity and flares on F, G and K dwarfs. Rotation periods, flare distributions and possibly stellar cycles will emerge. This apparently curiosity-driven research actually has implications for our understanding of global climate change. Significant climate change during the seventeenth-century Maunder Minimum is thought to be related to a change in the solar condition. Recently acquired data from the Greenland Ice-core Project suggest that far greater climate changes on decade time scales may have occurred during the previous interglacial. It is possible that a yet more drastic change in state of the Sun was responsible. We have no relevant solar data, but can begin to explore this possibility by observing an ensemble of solar-like stars.

Haisch, Bernhard M.↗
NASA NTRS2009

Surface Emissivity Retrieved with Satellite Ultraspectral IR Measurements for Monitoring Global Change

Surface and atmospheric thermodynamic parameters retrieved with advanced ultraspectral remote sensors aboard Earth observing satellites are critical to general atmospheric and Earth science research, climate monitoring, and weather prediction. Ultraspectral resolution infrared radiance obtained from nadir observations provide atmospheric, surface, and cloud information. Presented here is the global surface IR emissivity retrieved from Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI) measurements under "clear-sky" conditions. Fast radiative transfer models, applied to the cloud-free (or clouded) atmosphere, are used for atmospheric profile and surface parameter (or cloud parameter) retrieval. The inversion scheme, dealing with cloudy as well as cloud-free radiances observed with ultraspectral infrared sounders, has been developed to simultaneously retrieve atmospheric thermodynamic and surface (or cloud microphysical) parameters. Rapidly produced surface emissivity is initially evaluated through quality control checks on the retrievals of other impacted atmospheric and surface parameters. Surface emissivity and surface skin temperature from the current and future operational satellites can and will reveal critical information on the Earth s ecosystem and land surface type properties, which can be utilized as part of long-term monitoring for the Earth s environment and global climate change.

Zhou, Daniel K.↗
DOE OSTI2024

Microbial Evolution Drives Adaptation of Substrate Degradation on Decadal to Centennial Time Scales Relevant to Global Change

ABSTRACT Understanding microbial adaptation is crucial for predicting how soil carbon dynamics and global biogeochemical cycles will respond to climate change. This study employs the DEMENT model of microbial decomposition, along with empirical mutation and dispersal rates, to explore the roles of mutation and dispersal in the adaptation of soil microbial populations to shifts in litter chemistry, changes that are anticipated with climate‐driven vegetation dynamics. Following a change in litter chemistry, mutation generally allows for a higher rate of litter decomposition than dispersal, especially when dispersal predominantly introduces genotypes already present in the population. These findings challenge the common idea that mutation rates are too low to affect ecosystem processes on ecological timescales. These results demonstrate that evolutionary processes, such as mutation, can help maintain ecosystem functioning as the climate changes.

Abs, Elsa↗
NASA NTRS2019

Can We Use the QA4ECV Black-sky Fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (FAPAR) using AVHRR Surface Reflectance to Assess Terrestrial Global Change?

NOAA platforms provide the longest period of terrestrial observation since the 1980s. The progress in calibration, atmospheric corrections and physically based land retrieval offers the opportunity to reprocess these data for extending terrestrial product time series. Within the Quality Assurance for Essential Climate Variables (QA4ECV) project, the black-sky Joint Research Centre (JRC)-fraction of absorbed photosynthetically active radiation (FAPAR) algorithm was developed for the AVHRR sensors on-board NOAA-07 to -16 using the Land Surface Reflectance Climate Data Record. The retrieval algorithm was based on the radiative transfer theory, and uncertainties were included in the products. We proposed a time and spatial composite for providing both 10-day and monthly products at 0.05º × 0.05º. Quality control and validation were achieved through benchmarking against third-party products, including Sea-Viewing Wide Field-of-View Sensor (SeaWiFS) datasets produced with the same retrieval algorithm. Past ground-based measurements, providing a proxy of FAPAR, showed good agreement of seasonality values over short homogeneous canopies and mixed vegetation. The average difference between SeaWiFS and QA4ECV monthly products over 2002–2005 is about 0.075 with a standard deviation of 0.091. We proposed a monthly linear bias correction that reduced these statistics to 0.02 and 0.001. The complete harmonized long-term time series was then used to address its fitness for the purpose of analysis of global terrestrial change.

AVHRR↗
DOE OSTI2024

Thermal responses of dissolved organic matter under global change

The diversity of intrinsic traits of different organic matter molecules makes it challenging to predict how they, and therefore the global carbon cycle, will respond to climate change. Here we develop an indicator of compositional-level environmental response for dissolved organic matter to quantify the aggregated response of individual molecules that positively and negatively associate with warming. We apply the indicator to assess the thermal response of sediment dissolved organic matter in 480 aquatic microcosms along nutrient gradients on three Eurasian mountainsides. Organic molecules consistently respond to temperature change within and across contrasting climate zones. At a compositional level, dissolved organic matter in warmer sites has a stronger thermal response and shows functional reorganization towards molecules with lower thermodynamic favorability for microbial decomposition. The thermal response is more sensitive to warming at higher nutrients, with increased sensitivity of up to 22% for each additional 1 mg L -1 of nitrogen loading. The utility of the thermal response indicator is further confirmed by laboratory experiments and reveals its positive links to greenhouse gas emissions.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2024

Anthromes and forest carbon responses to global change

Human effects on ecosystems date back thousands of years, and anthropogenic biomes—anthromes—broadly incorporate the effects of human population density and land use on ecosystems. Forests are integral to the global carbon cycle, containing large biomass carbon stocks, yet their responses to land use and climate change are uncertain but critical to informing climate change mitigation strategies, ecosystem management, and Earth system modeling. Using an anthromes perspective and the site locations from the Global Forest Carbon (ForC) Database, we compare intensively used, cultured, and wildland forest lands in tropical and extratropical regions. We summarize recent past (1900-present) patterns of land use intensification, and we use a feedback analysis of Earth system models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 to estimate the sensitivity of forest carbon stocks to CO 2 and temperature change for different anthromes among regions. Modeled global forest carbon stock responses are positive for CO 2 increase but neutral to negative for temperature increase. Across anthromes (intensively used, cultured, and wildland forest areas), modeled forest carbon stock responses of temperate and boreal forests are less variable than those of tropical forests. Tropical wildland forest areas appear especially sensitive to CO 2 and temperature change, with the negative temperature response highlighting the potential vulnerability of the globally significant carbon stock in tropical forests. The net effect of anthropogenic activities—including land-use intensification and environmental change and their interactions with natural forest dynamics—will shape future forest carbon stock changes. These interactive effects will likely be strongest in tropical wildlands.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
NASA NTRS1995

Remote Sensing and halocene Vegetation: History of Global Change

Predictions of the future evolution of the earth's atmospheric chemistry and its impact on global circulation patterns are based on Global Climate Models (GCMs) that integrate the complex interactions of the biosphere, atmosphere and the oceans. Most of the available records of climate and environment are short-term records (from decades to a few hundred years) with convolved information of real trends and short-term fluctuations. GCMs must be tested beyond the short-term record of climate and environment to insure that predictions are based on trends and therefore are appropriate to support long term policy making. Unfortunately different parts of the world, weather stations are scattered, records extend over a period of only few years, and there are no systematic climate records for large portions of the globe.

D'Antoni, Hector L.↗