Strategic Guidance for the National Science Foundation's Support of the Atmospheric Sciences (2007) / Chapter Skim
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2 Major Advances in the Atmospheric Sciences
2 Major Advances in the Atmospheric Sciences
Pages 14-70
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From page 14... ...
The committee devoted considerable thought to the appropriate methodology for dealing with this "balance question" in the context of strategic guidance. It decided that the most useful approach would be to create a list of major research accomplishments in the atmospheric sciences, supported at least in part by NSF, and then analyze the role of ATM's modes and activities.
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From page 15... ...
While advances in understanding of climate variability and change are certainly among the most significant accomplishments of the past few decades and a few of the case studies cover aspects of climate TABLE 2-1 List of Selected Major Achievements in the Atmospheric Sciences List of Selected Major Achievements 1. Improvements in severe weather forecasting 2.
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The committee notes also that certain significant achievements in atmospheric sciences lend themselves to quantitative assessment; that is, objective measures of progress over time are available. Quantitative improvement measures are immediately apparent for items 1, 2, 4, and 5 in Table 2-1.
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and the nearby School of Meteorology at the University of Oklahoma (OU) , other universities, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)
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The results of these experiments led to an increased awareness and understanding of the conditions leading to damaging, straight-line surface winds. BOX 2-1 Improving Severe-Weather Forecasting Morris L
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. Early collaborative annual spring field programs led to a conceptual model of supercells used by spotters and nowcasters, and in situ verification of severe weather events that eventually instigated the development of a national network of Doppler radars (NEXRAD)
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/FM-CW, X-band (3-cm wavelength) Doppler radar from the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
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The results of the numerical-simulation efforts and the storm-intercept field programs have been applied to severe-storm forecasting through the efforts of COMET, a University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) program.
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It aims to create a distributed, adaptive network of low-power phased-array Doppler radars on existing infrastructure (e.g., cellular towers) to improve severe-weather forecasting and warnings by sensing the region from the ground to 3 km altitude.
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Advances were spurred by the needs of NSFsponsored field campaigns, international field campaigns, or requests by the Air Force, NOAA, or the Deutsche Luft-und Raumfahrt (DLR) ; and by improvements in technology.
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GUIDANCE FOR NSF'S SUPPORT OF THE ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES BOX 2-2 Development of Aircraft Dropsondes for Atmospheric and Hurricane Research Harold L Cole, Senior Engineer National Center for Atmospheric Research MS, Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University I was hired by NCAR in September of 1970, on a half-time basis, to support the V iking Meteorology Experiment for the Viking Mars Lander program.
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MAJOR ADVANCES IN THE ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES the interaction of ocean and atmosphere in the warm pool and its role in determining global climate, I led the development of the Integrated Sounding System (ISS)
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From page 26... ...
sonde for deployment by the new NOAA Gulfstream-IV aircraft and DLR's proposed stratospheric research aircraft. While the stratospheric research aircraft was cancelled for cost reasons; DLR has continued to deploy the GPS dropsonde from their Falcon research aircraft.
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. In 1997, use of dropsondes became operational, with GPS sondes deployed from NOAA's new G-IV aircraft and the Air Force Hurricane Hunter C-130s.
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From page 28... ...
ATM, through the resources provided by a large national center, initiated multiple improvements in the design and effectiveness of the technology, and the private sector leveraged these improvements to manufacture a higher-quality instrument. Coordinated use of the improved technology through many international field campaigns has led to great improvements in understanding and forecast capabilities.
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From page 29... ...
in the Antarctic ozone hole. The vertical profile of the ozone depletion was also measured for the first time (Hofmann et al., 1987)
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From page 30... ...
Understanding the Antarctic ozone hole is a case in which the NSF, with significant interagency cooperation, spearheaded an extensive and high-risk research effort to understand and address an issue of vital international importance. Further, the effective partnering of ATM and OPP made it possible to bring the resources and expertise of both divisions to quickly move the research forward.
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From page 31... ...
While there are significant differences between the two, they still share the same physics packages and software framework. For mesoscale meteorology researchers, the availability of community models, local access to single- and multiprocessor workstations and gridded analysis, and forecast data enables the university investigator to run mesoscale models at universities for research and education (Mass and Kuo, 1998)
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From page 32... ...
GUIDANCE FOR NSF'S SUPPORT OF THE ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES BOX 2-3 Community Models -- from Hurricanes to Climate Richard A Anthes, President University Corporation for Atmospheric Research Ph.D., Meteorology, University of Wisconsin–Madison In the mid 1960s I was working on the first three-dimensional numerical model of hurricanes.
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From page 33... ...
MAJOR ADVANCES IN THE ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES 130 640 960 T = 90–282 Hours 9 Hour Intervals Box 2-3 The original type could not be altered, so we covered it with white and replaced it.
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From page 34... ...
Other significant community models are being developed. The Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model involves NCAR (Atmospheric Chemistry Division, High Altitude Observatory [HAO]
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In the case of limited domain mesoscale models, technological developments eventually allowed university PIs to conduct research independent of the large national center, yet the center still serves as a maintainer of the "official" version of model code. In the case of coupled climate models, NCAR serves an important role as a provider of computing resources and coordinator of research activities.
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From page 36... ...
, Colorado, and Chatanika, Alaska, as well as further studies at the Jicamarca Radio Observatory and the Arecibo Radio Observatory. The Platteville, Colorado system was the first continuously running, unmanned wind profiler and served as a prototype for the Poker Flat, Alaska wind profiler, which ran continuously from 1979 to 1986.
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During this outbreak, the wind profilers were critical in identifying the evolving atmospheric wind patterns, leading to a quick upgrade in the forecast for severe weather. It is estimated that the death toll,
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GUIDANCE FOR NSF'S SUPPORT OF THE ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES BOX 2-4 The Upper Atmospheric Facility at Jicamarca Ronald Woodman, Presidente Ejecutivo Instituto Geofisico del Peru Ph.D., Harvard I have enjoyed the sponsorship of NSF for my over 40 years of scientific research. It started in 1966 when I was doing research at Harvard University's Engineering Sci ence Laboratory for my Ph.D.
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From page 39... ...
MAJOR ADVANCES IN THE ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES Appleton Prize. The capabilities of these two observatories, originally designed and built to measure a few state parameters in the ionosphere are now capable -- thanks mainly to the "core" staff -- of making important contributions to our observational capabilities and understanding of both the upper and lower atmosphere, capabilities which were not even dreamed by their original promoters.
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From page 40... ...
The historical experience with the rise of terrestrial meteorology provides a roadmap for the emergence of space weather prediction (Siscoe, 2006)
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From page 41... ...
. Outside of NSF, ATM has also partnered with NASA's Living with a Star program to solicit proposals to create specific products for space weather prediction, and provided support for the Community Coordinated Modeling Center that makes space weather simulations available to the community at large and which also provides support for validation and metric-based evaluation of the codes.
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From page 42... ...
that led to a major advance in understanding and predicting the solar cycle was supported by joint NSF/NASA funding. There is also a close working relationship with the SEC, and participation in SEC's Space Weather Week, which brings together researchers, forecasters, and customers of space weather predictions.
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From page 43... ...
The emergence of space weather as a predictive science is a clear success of farsighted ATM leadership in the public interest. Case Study 7: Understanding the Oxidative Capacity of the Troposphere The Earth's lower atmosphere has an amazing capacity to oxidize a wide range of chemical compounds emitted by both human-induced and natural processes.
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From page 44... ...
. The understanding of oxidation chemistry in the lower atmosphere and how this chemistry changes under varying environmental conditions forms the foundation for photochemical models of the lower atmosphere that are critical to air quality assessment.
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From page 45... ...
Starting even earlier, in the late 1970s, the agency took a strong lead in supporting direct ambient OH and HO2 radical measurement techniques, eventually funding or co-funding pioneering LIF instrument development at Georgia Tech, Ford Motor Co., Portland State, and Penn State, as well as supporting the seminal work on CIMS detection at Georgia Tech and NCAR. Currently, field studies and related modeling efforts funded or co-funded by NSF are characterizing the lower atmosphere's oxidative capacity for a full range of ambient conditions from the remote arctic to the world's megacities.
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From page 46... ...
. Atmospheric aerosols exist
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From page 47... ...
MAJOR ADVANCES IN THE ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES I have always felt that, although we have stumbled on our own, they have been partners in our successes. They have given us the opportunities to advance the atmospheric sciences, which is what NSF's ATM should be all about.
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From page 48... ...
Furthermore, aerosols are a major component of air pollution with well-documented effects on human health, ecosystems, and visibility. A major catalyst for advancing understanding of atmospheric aerosols was the INDian Ocean EXperiment (INDOEX)
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support for a testbed experiment preceding INDOEX to demonstrate capabilities in the field. Moreover, STC funds helped support the analysis part of INDOEX, whereas many field programs suffer in this regard.
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0 GUIDANCE FOR NSF'S SUPPORT OF THE ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES BOX 2-7 Serendipitous Path to Atmospheric Brown Clouds Veerabhadran Ramanathan, Professor of Climate and Atmospheric Sciences Scripps Oceanography Institute Ph.D., Planetary Atmospheres, State University of New York at Stony Brook Occasionally, scientists start an enquiry into a problem which leads to deviations from that path and ultimately to an unexpected discovery on a different problem. This is the case with respect to my work on atmospheric brown clouds (ABCs)
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MAJOR ADVANCES IN THE ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES because of its vicinity to populated southern Asia. Another reason was the challenge by Peter Webster that maximum temperatures in the NIO were not limited by the cloud thermostat.
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Case Study 9: The Role of Mauna Loa Measurements in Understanding the Global Carbon Cycle In 1958, Charles Keeling began making measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) at the Mauna Loa Observatory.
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From page 53... ...
This occurred just as the NSF was decreasing its support for Keeling's measurements because they were again considered to be routine. In 1980–1982, NOAA and DOE contributed 80 percent of the funding for the Mauna Loa measurements and NSF funding was slated to be eliminated at the end of 1982.
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From page 54... ...
Once more, Keeling successfully reapplied to NSF for support of the Mauna Loa measurements and the WMO CO2 program calibration. NOAA funding was secured once more, but only for one year.
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(1987) , applied advanced statistical methods to identify systematic lead-lag relationships between atmospheric and oceanic variables, and to exploit them to develop statistical prediction models for El Niño related sea surface temperature patterns.
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GUIDANCE FOR NSF'S SUPPORT OF THE ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES BOX 2-8 Carbon Cycle Research Inez Fung, Co-Director Berkeley Insitute of the Environment Sc.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Meteorology Guided by an extremely stimulating but often-absent mentor, Jule Charney, I earned my Doctor of Science (Sc.D.) in Meteorology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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From page 57... ...
MAJOR ADVANCES IN THE ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES and apply the resulting model to study carbon-climate feedbacks. The idea grew out of several events that happened at about the same time.
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From page 58... ...
. And, in order to study coupled processes in the so-called Warm Pool region of the western tropical Pacific -- processes poorly captured by existing models and believed to be a limiting factor in prediction -- the proposal was put forward to undertake a major observational field campaign: the Coupled Ocean Atmosphere Response Experiment (COARE; Godfrey et al.
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From page 59... ...
Birmingham Solar Oscillation Network; while efforts aimed at getting structure deeper in the Sun include the Mount Wilson-CrimeanKazakhstan mini-network, the high-degree helioseismometer operated by the NSO at Kitt Peak, and the low-and intermediate-degree experiment (LOWL) , operated at NCAR's HAO at Mauna Loa Observatory.
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. These predictions and future results coming from helioseismology-inspired research will provide significant contributions to predictions of Space Weather.
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simulated toroidal (zonal) magnetic flux at the bottom of the solar convection zone, which is the source of sunspots.
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GUIDANCE FOR NSF'S SUPPORT OF THE ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES BOX 2-9 Predicting Solar Cycles Mausumi Dikpati, Scientist NCAR Ph.D., Physics, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India After successfully completing my Ph.D. in India, I decided to come to the United States for my postdoctoral study.
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From page 63... ...
MAJOR ADVANCES IN THE ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES magazines such as New Scientist and National Geographic in 2004, have given me great encouragement that this research is of interest and value to society. After our prediction for the next solar cycle was published in Geophysical Research Letters on March 6, 2006, the work received great attention in the worldwide press.
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From page 64... ...
Case Study 12: Reading the Paleoclimate Record Given the relatively short instrumental climate data record, the ability to test climate models depends strongly on the availability of paleoclimate records. Advances in paleostudies over the past few decades have significantly extended the data record, providing a context for the instrumental climate record and the evolution of atmospheric composition (e.g., CO2,
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From page 65... ...
. Many of the field-intensive drilling expeditions, such as ocean sediment or glacial ice core drilling, were supported by international efforts and funded by multiple agencies such as NASA, NOAA, NSF, and DOE.
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From page 66... ...
This year we will conduct a cooperative ice core research program analysis of such ice cores, NSF's ATM supports most other paleoclimate studies, such as tree-ring, lake sediments, and coral paleoclimate studies. In fact, ATM has consistently led in the support of tree-ring research (e.g., Figure 2-7)
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From page 67... ...
ANALYSIS OF THE CASE STUDIES We turn now to the following questions: What light do these major accomplishments shed on the role of NSF ATM in its support of atmospheric sciences? In particular: What do they imply about the balance between the various modes of support, whether that balance has in fact been adjusted over time, and whether they provide evidence that there is a need to alter the balance?
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From page 68... ...
or supporting role but in the majority of these cases, NSF ATM's role has been central. Furthermore, the case studies demonstrate that all the modes of support -- PI grants, including those for exploratory projects and in response to focused solicitations; small centers; the large national center; cooperative observing facilities; and field programs -- have been important to one or more of these major science achievements.
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From page 69... ...
The U.S. participation and interagency coordination during TOGA, an effort to further the understanding of ocean–atmosphere processes related to ENSO, exemplifies the success and importance of international and interagency field campaigns in advancing atmospheric research.
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From page 70... ...
An important lesson to be gleaned from the research activities leading to these major accomplishments is that ATM has adjusted the balance from time to time as opportunities, needs, and scientific progress made necessary and possible. For example, when it became apparent that a concerted, coordinated effort could lead to significant advances in space weather predictions, ATM supported members of the scientific community in their bid for an STC, resulting in the recently formed CISM.
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