Defenses for Spring 2018
ASSESSMENT OF NUMERICAL WEATHER PREDICTION MODEL RE-FORECASTS OF ATMOSPHERIC RIVERS ALONG THE WEST COAST OF NORTH AMERICA
July 17, 2018
Kyle Nardi
Atmospheric rivers (ARs) - narrow corridors of high atmospheric water vapor transport - occur globally and are associated with flooding and maintenance of the regional water supply. Therefore, it is important to improve forecasts of AR occurrence and characteristics. Although prior work has examined the skill of numerical weather prediction (NWP) models in forecasting ARs, these studies only…
A SIMPLIFIED APPROACH TO UNDERSTANDING BOUNDARY LAYER STRUCTURE IMPACTS ON TROPICAL CYCLONE INTENSITY
June 26, 2018
Eleanor Delap
The relationship between tropical cyclone boundary layer (TCBL) structure and tropical cyclone (TC) intensity change is difficult to understand due to limited observations of the complex, non-linear interactions at both the top and bottom boundaries of the TCBL. Consequently, there are debates on how the TCBL interacts with surface friction and how these interactions affect TC intensity change.…
Evaluation of OCO-2 Small-Scale XCO2 Variability Using Lidar Retrievals from the ACT-America Flight Campaign
June 11, 2018
Emily Bell
With eight 1.25 x 3 kilometer footprints across its swath and nearly 1 million observations of column-mean carbon dioxide concentration (XCO2) per day, the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO-2) presents exciting possibilities for monitoring the global carbon cycle, including the detection of small-scale column CO2 variations. While the global OCO-2 dataset has been shown to be quite robust, and…
Climate and health impacts of particulate matter from residential combustion sources in developing countries
May 08, 2018
Jack Kodros
Globally, close to 2.8 billion people lack access to clean cooking technology, while 1.8 billion people lack access to electricity altogether. As a means to generate energy for residential tasks, it is common in many developing countries to rely on combustion of solid fuels (wood, dung, charcoal, trash, etc.). Solid fuel use (SFU) can emit substantial amounts of fine particulate matter…
OBJECTIVE ANALYSIS OF EXTREME PRECIPITATION EVENTS IN DIVERSE GEOGRAPHIC REGIONS
March 22, 2018
Nathan Kelly
Extreme precipitation events are a focus of much research in the atmospheric science community today. These events are extraordinarily impactful to society, damaging critical infrastructure and in the worst cases taking lives. The factors that lead to these destructive events are not the same everywhere, dependent on each regions unique geography and climatology. There are two critical…
Atmospheric Reactive Nitrogen in Rocky Mountain National Park
February 20, 2018
Yixing Shao
The Front Range urban corridor in Colorado, located east of Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP), includes a variety of urban sources of nitrogen oxides, while high emissions of ammonia are found in agricultural sources on the eastern plains of Colorado. The spatial distribution and temporal variation of ammonia and other reactive nitrogen species in the region is not well characterized. Periods…