Evapotranspiration from land surface and vegetation plays an important role as a source of precipitation at continental scale in South America, and more so over the Andes cordillera. We evaluate the local recycling of moisture in a complex orography region located in the Central Andes of Colombia (CAC; 4.5N to 7.5N, 78.6W to 71.4W), comprising the East, Central and West Andean ranges and the two inter-Andean valleys of the Magdalena and Cauca Rivers. To this end, we apply the offline atmospheric moisture tracking model, WAM-2layers (Water Accounting Model-2layers). The model input data comes from the ERA-Interim Reanalysis spanning the period 1980-2016 and at 0.125 x 0.125 degrees resolution. We estimate the spatial distribution of the evaporation recycling ratio εc (source moisture zones) and the precipitation recycling ratio ρc (sink moisture zones) at annual and seasonal timescales. According with our results, up to 63% of the average annual evapotranspiration returns as local precipitation in the CAC. Some specific zones of the Western Cordillera and the eastern hillside of the Central Cordillera are “hot spots” for local moisture recycling given the high values of both εc and ρc. At seasonal timescales, there is more activity of the identified source moisture zones during March-April-May (MAM) and June-July-August (JJA). The higher moisture recycling activity in those seasons interconnects two source regions of moisture: the eastern piedmont of the Eastern Cordillera with the eastern piedmont of the Central Cordillera. Both piedmonts also show high intensity rainfall rates. Finally, our work confirms the fundamental role of local recycled moisture to enhance the midnight and early morning peak of the diurnal cycle of precipitation in the CAC during JJA.

As scientists are confronted with increasingly massive datasets from observations to simulations, one of the biggest challenges is having the right tools to gain scientific insight from the data and communicate the understanding to stakeholders. Recent developments in web technologies make it easy to manage, analyze, visualize, and share large data sets with the public. Web technologies, intelligent systems, artificial intelligence, and virtual and augmented reality techniques provide advanced capabilities for big data analytics, knowledge discovery and smart communication platforms. This talk provides an overview of developments in web systems for hydrological analysis and communication, and presents real-world applications of these techniques in water resources and disaster mitigation.

Large Igneous Provinces (LIPs) are among the greatest magmatic events in Earth history withvolumes in excess of ∼500,000 km3 of predominantly basaltic lavas covering hugecontinental and ocean regions (>100,000 km2). Field observations suggest that lava flowfields in LIPs are made largely of sheet pāhoehoe lava lobes and the 10-100 m thick flows areformed by inflation. Understanding the emplacement history of these lava lobes can help usinfer the magnitude and temporal dynamics of past events.We use a phase-field model to describe solidification and re-melting of sequentially emplacedlava flows. We calibrate model parameters using field measurements at Makaopuhi lava lakeand perform extensive numerical simulations by varying the thickness of individual flow and thetime intervals between eruptions. These results help quantify the complex interplay betweenthermal evolution, flow thickness and emplacement frequency. If flows are thick enough andthe interval between emplacement short enough, reheating and re-melting may remove thetextural record of flow contacts – making flows appear thicker than they actually were. Guidedby field observations in Columbia River Basalt and Deccan Traps, we illustrate how the finalmorphology of sequentially emplaced lava is controlled by both the time scale of emplacementintervals and the time scale of cooling. We summarize our results to provide theoreticalconstraints on the thickness and emplacement intervals of individual LIP lava flows.

SubSahara Africa has been the last continent to experience a significant number of cases in the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19). Several studies have suggested that air pollution is related to COVID-19 mortality; poor air quality has been linked to cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, and respiratory disease, which are considered co-morbidities linked to COVID-19 death. We examine potential connections between country-wide COVID-19 mortality and environmental conditions in Senegal, Cabo Verde, Nigeria, Cote D’Ivoire, and Angola. We analyze PM2.5 concentrations from cost-effective in situ measurements, aerosol optical depth (AOD), and fire count from space-borne platforms during the dry season when dust and biomass burning aerosols are present in Southern Africa. In addition, we examine the COVID-19 mortality during the wet season using space-borne rain measurements to determine potential linkages which might occur as a result of time spent indoors and concurrent cases of flu, waterborne and vector-borne diseases in West Africa. Results are presented from March through December of 2020.

Hollow glass microspheres (HGMs) are promising materials for arctic ice restoration. When spread in a thin layer on top of ice, these materials can increase the albedo of arctic ice, potentially slowing the rate of ice melt and enhancing the formation of multiyear ice in the polar region.[1] The effect of particle diameter and wall thickness of glass for backscatter efficiency in the visible and IR regions is evaluated by Mie scattering calculations and UV-Vis spectrophotometry of several candidate materials. The design of HGMs for highest backscatter efficiency and albedo enhancement is discussed. For use in arctic environments, both the fate of HGMs and their ecotoxicological impact must also be considered. HGMs with density <1 g/cc are preferred as they will float on the surface of melted ice pools. However, HGMs with very low density and thin walls may not be sufficiently robust to withstand significant weathering in the environment. Design considerations of tradeoff for density, reflectivity, and crush strength will be discussed. [1] Field, L., Ivanova, D., Bhattacharyya, S., Mlaker, V., Sholtz, A., Decca, R., et al. (2018). Increasing Arctic sea ice albedo using localized reversible geoengineering. Earth’s Future, 6, 882–901. https://doi.org/10.1029/2018EF000820

Interoperability between datasets in Heliophysics and Planetary archives is increasingly important to address complex science questions about space weather and planetary plasma environments. Yet for cross-disciplinary studies, data ingestion is often a tedious, time-consuming process. We have developed the Heliophysics Application Programmer’s Interface (HAPI), a standard specification that captures a lowest common denominator method for accessing time series data. HAPI offers the ability to request data from multiple sources using a single interface, coupled with the ability to get identically formatted data from each source. HAPI has been recognized as a standard by the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) and has gained adoption at multiple institutions in the US, including Goddard Space Flight Center’s Coordinated Data Analysis Web (GSFC/CDAWeb), the Planetary Data System Planetary Plasma Interactions Node (PDS/PPI), and the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) Interactive Solar Irradiance Data Center (LISIRD). European plasma data centers such as the French Plasma Physics Data Centre (CDPP) and European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC) are also in the process of adopting HAPI. We present an overview of the HAPI specification and describe how data centers can add HAPI access to their content. We also present how scientists can plot or download HAPI data using Python or using existing analysis tools such as Autoplot (Faden, 2010) and Space Physics Environment Data Analysis Software (SPEDAS) (Angelopoulos, 2019). Faden, J.B., Weigel, R.S., Merka, J. et al. Autoplot: a browser for scientific data on the web. Earth Sci Inform 3, 41–49 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12145-010-0049-0 Angelopoulos V, Cruce P, Drozdov A, et al. The Space Physics Environment Data Analysis System (SPEDAS). Space Sci Rev. 2019;215(1):9. doi:10.1007/s11214-018-0576-4

When will a particular city on the Eastern Seaboard have a 70% chance of flooding at least one hour on at least 70 days of the year? This jam-packed question drives this study, as coastal flooding is becoming increasingly frequent in many East Coast U.S. cities. The frequency of floods that were once categorized as high tide or “nuisance” flooding is rapidly increasing, and many events are escalating to the moderate and major/severe flooding thresholds, putting life and property at risk. This study focuses on flooding events prone to causing property damage and hazardous conditions to make improvements for the subseasonal and seasonal outlooks that are most impactful. A number of East Coast cities are employed as case studies, such as Key West, FL, Charleston, SC, and Annapolis, MD, to analyze current and projected flooding rates. The spatial extent of flooding is considered by using high-resolution topographical data in combination with National Ocean Service tidal datums. NOAA sea level rise scenarios are used to determine the probable time period at which a portion of each city will be experiencing flooding for at least one hour per day frequently throughout the year. Additionally, tide gauge data from the case study cities is decomposed to understand which physical components are contributing to the regional coastal flooding on timescales from subseasonal to seasonal and beyond.

During recent droughts in North Carolina, various audiences have articulated needs for information that explains current or anticipated impacts, droughts’ geographic extent and timing, and how the State monitors drought. This is despite there being a regular process in place to evaluate statewide conditions and seemingly abundant information available through federal, state, and local agency websites; media outlets; and other channels. This presentation provides findings from a research project designed to improve the availability, understandability, and usability of drought communications products for North Carolina audiences, focusing on the US Drought Monitor map of North Carolina as an example. The North Carolina Drought Management Advisory Council (DMAC) technical committee has met weekly to assess drought conditions since the 1990s and has recommended the state’s drought designations to the US Drought Monitor since 2000. The DMAC recommendations typically align with the weekly USDM map. Through surveys, focus groups, usability studies, and other engagement methods, we collected information from groups such as extension agents and water utility staff about 1) their communications preferences - resources that are concise, easily readable, and readily shareable through email, listservs, and social media - and 2) infographic prototypes created to address those preferences. User feedback on the prototypes informed iterative refinements to their content and design and provided information about their potential use for communications and management decisions. Ultimately, understanding the monitoring process and how drought designations are made was a key factor affecting the extent to which extension and other communication professionals apply, share, and value the information produced by monitoring groups and scientific agencies. This research suggests that addressing transparency questions can support efforts to communicate complex problems, such as drought.

This study identifies the role of mid-latitude teleconnection in determining the interannual variability of the Indian summer monsoon in the CFSv2 model. Since CFSv2 has been identified as a potential forecast model for the Indian summer monsoon, it is important to understand the factors that determine its prediction skills at seasonal timescales. ENSO is one of the most important factors driving Indian monsoon variability at seasonal timescales. It is represented realistically in CFSv2. The model, however, misses associated mid-latitude teleconnections. We show that the inadequate strength of mid-latitude teleconnections, especially from the North Atlantic and North-western Pacific can be the primary reasons for the weaker monsoon variability, despite strong ENSO-Monsoon relationship in the model.

The northernmost part of the Mediterranean Sea, the northern Adriatic shelf, is a complex area where the intensity of dense water formation and the consequent Adriatic-Ionian thermohaline circulation are shaped by a combination of extreme wintertime bora winds and substantial freshwater loads. To better understand the impact of global warming on extreme bora dynamics and the associated sea surface cooling, we applied the Adriatic Sea and Coast (AdriSC) kilometer-scale modelling suite to the far future climate (2060-2100) period. Under both Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 4.5 and RCP 8.5 greenhouse emission scenarios, the AdriSC simulations are carried out via the combination of a statistical approach – consisting of an ensemble of 3-day simulations for 22 extreme bora events, and a pseudo-global warning (PGW) methodology – imposing a climatological change to the forcing used to produce the evaluation (present climate) runs. Despite a noteworthy decrease in intensity of the bora winds (by up to 3 m/s), the intensity of the negative latent heat fluxes is simulated to increase (by up to 150 W/m2) due to the reduction in relative humidity in the northern Adriatic (by up to 3%). Consequently, the sea surface cooling associated with severe bora events and preconditioning the dense shelf water formation in the northern Adriatic is projected to not significantly change compared to present climate. Although these results need to be further confirmed, this study thus provides a new view on the future of processes driven by sea surface cooling, such as the dense shelf water formation or the Ionian-Adriatic thermohaline circulation, that were projected to decrease in the future climate by regional climate models an order of magnitude coarser than the AdriSC simulations.

Coronal mass ejections (CMEs), the large scale transient eruptions from the Sun, interact with the Earth’s magnetosphere while travelling into the heliosphere. The energetic interplanetary CME (ICME) at 1AU not only creates geomagnetic storms and disrupts the magnetic field structure around the Earth but also impacts the plasma environment, causes strong aurorae, and disturbs the radio and electrical transmission massively. We use 3D compressible magnetohydrodynamic simulation of a star-planet system and study the interesting magnetohydrodynamic processes like bow-shock, magnetopause, magnetotail, planet-bound current sheets, magnetic reconnections, atmospheric mass loss as well as particle injection, etc., when an ICME flux rope crosses the Earth at 1 AU. We use the uniformly twisted force-free flux rope model proposed by Gold and Hoyle in 1960 to initiate the ICME and vary the flux rope properties using actual observational data. We observe a change in magnetopause’s shape and the stand-off distance to the magnetopause. We notice twist helicity injection inside the magnetotail current system. We discover comparative increment in both the rates of atmospheric mass out-flow and solar wind in-flow in the vicinity of Earth during the geo-storm. Such studies will help us understand how energetic magnetic storms from a host star impact planetary magnetospheres and atmospheres with implications for planetary and exoplanetary habitability.

It is accepted that the Perseids Meteor Shower each August is related to the comet Swift Tuttle. It is apparent that the outgassing as the comet travels spreads a cloud of dust along its 133 year long orbital path, and that as the Earth passes through the dust each year, the larger particles burn in the atmosphere creating the meteor shower. Fireballs are also common at the same time, associated with Comet Swift Tuttle. Fireballs are much larger objects than expected from comets outgassing, but the timing and association with the Perseids and Comet Swift Tuttle is significant enough to comfortably assign a large number of mid August fireballs to a relationship with Swift Tuttle. William Cooke of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office has plotted the orbits of the fireballs associated with Swift Tuttle as shown in the attached image. They show a large range of orbits, with only one common factor: They all intersect Earth’s orbit in mid-August. Some have very short periods and others long periods. The image shown in this abstract is a diagram of the orbital paths of the fireballs presented by NASA. Studies with iSALE impact hydrocode show that comets hitting Earth at low angles such as 5 degrees or less can skip and continue on a new path at similar speeds to the original orbital speeds. Such a skip will cause part of the comet to drag across the surface of Earth, and both portions of the comet and portions of the Earth’s surface will be carried into space at above Earth escape velocities. Such an occurrence would send some fragments at high speeds similar to or higher than the speed of the comet, and other fragments would be tossed at slower speeds, all depending on the location of the fragments during the impact event. It would be expected that such fragments would travel away from Earth on a wide range of orbits, with the common feature of all of the orbits being the initiation point of the event: the skip impact of Swift Tuttle with Earth. It is proposed that Comet Swift Tuttle has previously impacted Earth at a low angle, causing a skip event which sent fragments of the comet and of the Earth into the wide range of orbits seen in the fireball orbits associated with the Perseids Meteor Showers. The .gif image shows a graphic rendition of such a skip impact. The third image shows the calculated orbits of the resultant debris. The debris from a skip impact produces the same range of orbits as determined by NASA.

The drivers of tree growth are one critical question in forest ecology and conservation. However, the measurement of tree growth is a difficult task that requires novel methods to improve accuracy and broaden the understanding of the effect of climate on tree metabolism and carbon accumulation. In this context, isotopes variation along woody tissues is a strong tool that provides new information about tree metabolism, growth rate, and the effect of climatic variation on these processes at high temporal resolution. Here, we obtained woody samples of two tree species two individuals per species (n = 4) from the Biogeographic Choco; Region in Colombia, one of the most humid regions of the planet without dry periods (mean annual temperature 25.9C and rainfall over 7200 mm). We measured 18O and 13C on these samples across some rings in each one to obtain intra-annual variation. Using these data, we assessed if isotopes variation in wood is correlated with climatic variation, explicitly precipitation regimen indicators employing Pearson correlation and linear mixed effect models. We found that both isotopes are correlated negatively with ring width. We also found that 18O is high negative correlated with precipitation indicators, rather than 13C. Our results suggest that isotopes variation are surrogates of tree growth in humid and non-seasonal forests. Besides, the 18O accumulation, which is strongly related to rainfall during the less rainy month (February: 370 mm on average), could be a better indicator of the effect of precipitation on the woody tissue rate change. However, 13C is more related to tissue formation processes. In conclusion, we found evidence of intra-annual variation in isotopes and tree growth in one hyper-humid forest challenging the effect of the dry season of tree growth and potentially suggesting the water excess as an additional limiting factor controlling growth rhythms in tropical trees.

Fluctuations of the total water level in the U.S. East Coast depends on the complex interactions of freshwater flow, tide, storm surge and wave actions. In order to include all major forcings of water movement in this area, a coupled modeling system consisting of the National Water Model (NWM), the Advanced Circulation Ocean Model (ADCIRC), and the WAVEWATCH III model has been developed. In this system, a coupled inland hydrologic model is linked to an ocean hydrodynamic and wave model to compute total water levels in the coastal zones. In the freshwater component of the hydrodynamic model, 1D river components were included in the model to capture an accurate representation of tributaries to the 2D model of the estuary and oceans. The model domain included several states of the US East Coast starting from New Jersey to the St. Croix River at the US-Canada border. Model simulations were compared with 2012 superstorm Sandy measured tidal water levels and hurricane surge. Initial simulations reproduced satisfactory spatial and temporal variations of water levels due to riverine discharge and storm surge. The model predictions showed that using 1D component allowed better representations of the inland rivers and produced accurate river water levels. Simulations indicated that water levels in the inland areas depends on both river discharges and backwater effects of the ocean. These results showed the strengths of the coupled modeling system used in this research to compute total water levels during river flooding that coincides with extreme hurricane surge. Initial results showed that the coupled modeling framework used in this study is capable of total water estimation in the coastal zones and the accuracy of the water levels highly depends on the availability of reliable topographic, bathymetric, and bottom roughness data.

The prediction of natural disasters in general and earthquakes, in particular, is becoming increasingly critical in providing early warnings and mitigating catastrophes’ effects. This study investigates relations between earthquakes and ionospheric disturbances. Based on analyzing TEC disturbances, we search for the impact of the earthquake-related seismic waves on the ionosphere. The study is designed as cross-sectional investigations, in which the global earthquakes are randomly collected by the cluster sampling method. We use data of 54 permanent GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite Systems) stations and global earthquakes with magnitudes (Mw) from 4.0 to 9.0 in the period from 2006 to March 2020. The selected data ensure strict conditions such as accuracy, the distance from the GNSS stations to the epicenter, and the depth of hypocenter. Probability and statistics are applied to filter, classify and analyze data. The results indicate that TEC fluctuations at the regions occurring earthquakes with magnitudes greater than 6.0 Mw are significant. These TEC anomalies appear from 30 minutes to around two hours before the mainshocks, and the oscillations remain from five to eight minutes. These TEC variations occur from five to eleven days before the great earthquakes. The results reveal the relations between ionospheric anomalies and earthquake-related seismic waves. The findings are the base to filter TEC anomalies generated by earthquakes in building ionospheric models. The study also opens up a prospect for GNSS applications in studying TEC anomalies linked to earthquake precursors as well.

Satellite-derived data provide useful information about the rationale of Earth’s functioning. While satellite remote sensing has been regarded as the almost only means for observing the entire Earth in near-real-time, errors in satellite observations have limited their direct usage in applications. Merging two or more data sources has been regarded as a simple but effective way to decrease such errors (e. g. minimizing mean square errors between the observation and truth). The principle of data merging is to combine independent information of each data source, improving over each individual product by canceling out random errors, with effectiveness by the degree of independence over the data sources. In the case of linearly combining data, qualitative assessments of the error (i.e. error variance/covariance and data-truth correlation) are essential to calculate the optimal weight for each candidate product. However, such reference “truth” is rarely available in practical. To overcome this limitation, a triple collocation (TC) technique is often used to estimate data error by using a data triplet without the truth. Despite the usefulness and simplicity of the TC-based error estimation, the inherent assumptions (e.g. error independence) in the approach tend to induce sub-optimal results in the error estimation and/or data combination. There have been also further efforts to address the limitation such as quadruple collocation (QC) using a data quadruple to partially estimate error cross-correlation and single/double instrumental variable methods to lessen the difficulty in obtaining multiple datasets. In this presentation, we review the status of error estimation and data merging approaches based on the collocation methods and then present challenges to be addressed through future research.

On steep alluvial fans, debris floods happen rarely but are often catastrophic. Debris floods and their associated hazards are well documented, but the time between flood events has generally been considered a period of ‘dormancy’, and thus ignored. Here, we present results from a series of four alluvial fan experiments in which we examine the inter-flood period processes and their influence at both event and fan evolution timescales. We built each fan from the same number of debris floods, and the same volume of sediment, but varied the duration of the inter-flood period. This duration had a fundamental influence on fan morphology: in particular fan slope and fan area varied between the experiments. In addition, longer inter-flood periods led to increased flow channelization and channel incision near the fan apex. Our findings challenge the notion that inter-flood periods on steep alluvial fans may be considered dormant. Moreover, the results suggest that longer inter-flood periods may act to contain subsequent debris flood events, shift the locus of debris flood hazard, and reduce their severity.

In this study, we revisit the role of curvature in modifying frontal stability. We first consider the statement “fq < 0 implies potential for instability”, where f is the Coriolis parameter and q is the Ertel potential vorticity (PV). This is true for any inviscid baroclinic flow. It is also evident in the transition of a governing equation for circulation within a front from elliptic to hyperbolic form as the discriminant changes sign. However, for curved fronts, an additional scale factor enters the discriminant owing to conservation of absolute angular momentum, L, leading to Solberg’s (1936) generalization of the Rayleigh criterion. In non-dimensional form, this expression also generalizes the classical instability criterion of Hoskins (1974) by accounting for centrifugal forces: modification of the front’s vertical shear and stratification owing to curvature tilts the absolute vorticity vector away from its thermal wind state and, in an effort to conserve the product of non-dimensional PV (q’) and absolute angular momentum (L’), this alters Rossby and Richardson numbers permitted for stable flow. The criterion, Φ’=L’q’ < 0, is then investigated in non-dimensional parameter space representative of low-Richardson-number vortices. An interesting outcome is that, for Richardson numbers near one, anticyclonic flows increase in q’, while cyclonic flows decrease in q’. Though stabilization is muted for anticyclones (owing to multiplication by L’), the de-stabilization of cyclones is robust, and may help to explain an observed asymmetry in the distribution of submesoscale coherent vortices in the global ocean.