Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Atmospheric Sciences
Characteristics of Dust Storms Generated by Trapped Waves in the Lee of Mountains
Published: 2022-09-29
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Meteorology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
Dust storms are ubiquitous in the Earth's atmosphere, yet the physical processes underlying dust emission and subsequent transport are not always understood, in-part due to the wide variety of meteorological processes that can generate high winds and dust. Here we use in-situ measurements and numerical modeling to demonstrate that vertically trapped atmospheric waves generated by air flowing over [...]
Rapid estimation of climate-air quality interactions in integrated assessment using a response surface model
Published: 2022-09-16
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Public Health, Environmental Studies
Air quality and climate change are substantial and linked sustainability challenges, and there is a need for improved tools to assess the implications of addressing them in combination. High-fidelity chemistry-climate simulations can capture combined climate-air quality responses to policy change, but computational cost has prevented integration of accurate air quality impacts into integrated [...]
Unified theoretical framework for mixing state of black carbon
Published: 2022-08-31
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences
Black carbon (BC) plays an important role in the climate system due to its strong warming effect, yet the magnitude of this effect is highly uncertain due to the complex mixing state of aerosols. Here we build a unified theoretical framework to describe BC’s mixing states, linking dynamic processes to BC coating thickness distribution, and show its self-similarity for sites in diverse [...]
Thermal forcing expected to modulate convection in a mechanically forced stationary wave
Published: 2022-08-17
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
This is a reply to the comment by Lofverstrom and Thirumalai on our publication in Nature. That comment and this reply underwent peer review at Nature, and Nature declined to publish the exchange
Distinct roles of cyclones and anticyclones in setting the midwinter minimum of the North Pacific eddy activity. Part II: Eulerian eddy statistics and energetics
Published: 2022-08-14
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences
The characteristics and dynamics of midlatitude storm-tracks have been long investigated. Nevertheless, our understandings of the storm-tracks, especially the midwinter minimum of the North Pacific storm-track activity, are still limited, partly because Eulerian eddy statistics are incapable of separating cyclonic and anticyclonic contributions. Here we investigate the detailed seasonal evolution [...]
A Technical Overview of the North Carolina ECONet
Published: 2022-07-20
Subjects: Agricultural Science, Agriculture, Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Education, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Public Health, Environmental Sciences, Forest Management, Meteorology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Plant Sciences
Regional weather networks–also referred to as mesonets–are imperative for filling in the spatial and temporal data gaps between nationally supported weather stations. The North Carolina Environment and Climate Observing Network (ECONet) fills this regional role; it is a mesoscale network of 44 (as of 2023) automated stations collecting 12 environmental variables every minute across North [...]
Single-blind validation of space-based point-source methane emissions detection and quantification
Published: 2022-07-14
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences
Satellites are increasingly seen as a tool for identifying large greenhouse gas point sources for mitigation, but independent verification of satellite performance is needed for acceptance and use by policy makers and stakeholders. We conduct to our knowledge the first single-blind controlled methane release testing of satellite-based methane emissions detection and quantification, with five [...]
Advecting Superspecies: Efficiently Modeling Transport of Organic Aerosol with a Mass-Conserving Dimensionality Reduction Method
Published: 2022-06-26
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Chemistry, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Other Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The chemical transport model LOTOS-EUROS uses a volatility basis set (VBS) approach to represent the formation of secondary organic aerosol (SOA) in the atmosphere. Inclusion of the VBS approximately doubles the dimensionality of LOTOS-EUROS and slows computation of the advection operator by a factor of two. This complexity limits SOA representation in operational forecasts. We develop a [...]
Potential for Perceived Failure of Stratospheric Aerosol Injection Deployment
Published: 2022-06-18
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Sustainability
As anthropogenic activities warm the Earth, the fundamental solution of reducing greenhouse gas emissions remains elusive. Given this mitigation gap, global warming may lead to intolerable climate changes as adaptive capacity is exceeded. Thus, there is emerging interest in solar radiation modification, which is the process of deliberately increasing Earth's albedo to cool the planet. [...]
Robust Probabilities of Detection and Quantification Uncertainty for Aerial Methane Detection: Examples for Three Airborne Technologies
Published: 2022-06-18
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Environmental Monitoring, Mechanical Engineering, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models
Thorough characterization of probabilities of detection (POD) and quantification uncertainties is fundamentally important to understand the place of aerial measurement technologies in alternative means of emission limitation (AMEL) or alternate fugitive emissions management programs (Alt-FEMP); monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) efforts; and surveys designed to support [...]
Validation of glacial-interglacial rainfall variations in southwest Sulawesi using Mg/Ca and δ18O in speleothems
Published: 2022-06-17
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Hydrology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Speleology
The final version of this article is now published with Communications. Earth and Environment. To view this open access article, please use the Published Article DOI. Speleothem δ18O is widely used as a proxy for rainfall amount in the tropics on glacial-interglacial to interannual scales. However, uncertainties in the interpretation of this renowned proxy pose a vexing problem in tropical [...]
Sub-seasonal Prediction of Central European Summer Heatwaves with Linear and Random Forest Machine Learning Models
Published: 2022-06-02
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Atmospheric Sciences
Heatwaves are extreme near-surface temperature events that can have substantial impacts on ecosystems and society. Early Warning Systems help to reduce these impacts by helping communities prepare for hazardous climate-related events. However, state-of-the-art prediction systems can often not make accurate forecasts of heatwaves more than two weeks in advance, which are required for advance [...]
Efficient Probabilistic Prediction and Uncertainty Quantification of Hurricane Surge and Inundation
Published: 2022-05-31
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
This study proposes a methodology for efficient probabilistic prediction of near-landfall hurricane-driven storm surge, tide, and inundation. We perturb forecasts of hurricane track, intensity, and size according to quasi-random low-discrepancy Korobov sequences of historical forecast errors with assumed Gaussian and uniform statistical distributions. These perturbations are run in an ensemble of [...]
Development of a machine learning approach for local-scale ozone and PM2.5 forecasting: Application to multiple AQS sites in the Pacific Northwest
Published: 2022-05-24
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences
A machine learning (ML) based modeling framework has been successfully used to provide operational forecasts of O3 at Kennewick, WA. This paper shows its performance when applied to other observation locations to predict O3 and PM2.5 concentrations. The 10-time, 10-fold cross-validation method was used to evaluate the model performance in the Pacific Northwest (PNW). Similar to Kennewick, ML1 [...]
Automated machine learning to evaluate the information content of tropospheric trace gas columns for fine particle estimates over India: a modeling testbed
Published: 2022-03-20
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Atmospheric Sciences, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
India is largely devoid of high-quality and reliable on-the-ground measurements of fine particulate matter (PM2.5). Ground-level PM2.5 concentrations are estimated from publicly available satellite Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) products combined with other information. Prior research has largely overlooked the possibility of gaining additional accuracy and insights into the sources of PM using [...]