Article
Environmental Sciences
Richard Massey, Brendan M. Rogers, Logan T. Berner, Sol Cooperdock, Michelle C. Mack, Xanthe J. Walker, Scott J. Goetz
Summary: Deciduous tree cover is expected to increase in North American boreal forests with climate warming and wildfire, potentially generating biophysical cooling. However, recent decades have seen a small net decrease in deciduous fraction and near-neutral net biophysical change in radiative forcing associated with albedo, indicating no systematic negative feedbacks to climate warming.
NATURE CLIMATE CHANGE
(2023)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Hamid Dashti, William K. Smith, Xueli Huo, Andrew M. Fox, Mostafa Javadian, Charles J. Devine, Ali Behrangi, David J. P. Moore
Summary: The Arctic and Boreal Region (ABR) undergoes extensive land cover change (LCC) due to factors such as wildfire, permafrost thaw, and shrubification. These LCCs alter important biophysical variables including land surface temperature (LST), albedo, and evapotranspiration (ET), which have a significant impact on the warming trend over the ABR. The sensitivity of these variables to different types of LCC in heterogeneous systems like ABR remains uncertain.
ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH LETTERS
(2023)
Article
Energy & Fuels
Christian A. Gueymard, Vicente Lara-Fanego, Manajit Sengupta, Aron Habte
Summary: This study evaluates the adequacy and performance of two MODIS white-sky albedo products and the NSRDB product over North America for large-scale deployment of bifacial photovoltaic modules. The research found marked differences between daily albedo observations and gridded estimates, as well as discrepancies in seasonal behavior and between different albedo types, impacting accuracy. The study also highlighted significant discrepancies at snow-impacted sites, particularly in the case of NSRDB albedo estimates.
Article
Environmental Sciences
Scott N. Williamson, Brian Menounos
Summary: Over the past decade, western North America glaciers have experienced strong mass loss, with changes in surface albedo being an important factor. The study found that temperature strongly correlates with albedo in most regions, while aerosols optical depth plays a significant role in certain areas. Moreover, forest fire generated aerosols were linked to declines in visible and near infrared portions of the spectrum in the Central and Southern Rockies.
REMOTE SENSING OF ENVIRONMENT
(2021)
Article
Oceanography
Bingkun Luo, Peter J. Minnett, Paquita Zuidema, Nicholas R. Nalli, Santha Akella
Summary: This study investigates the impact of Saharan dust aerosols on surface radiative fluxes and sea surface temperature, revealing significant effects on shortwave radiation and potential cooling and warming effects on surface temperature. The findings provide important insights for improving predictive capabilities in regional weather and climate studies.
JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH-OCEANS
(2021)
Article
Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
Tao Wang, Xiaohua Gou, Wenshou Tian, Xuejia Wang, Fei Xie
Summary: This study obtained the first leading mode and principal component 1 (PC1) of North Pacific sea surface temperature (SST). The PC1-related SST anomalies, referred to as North/South PC1 events, have different effects on atmospheric circulations and surface temperatures over North America due to the different positions of the Aleutian low and southerly anomalies. The meridional position of PC1 events should be considered in future studies on PC1 and its related climate changes.
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS
(2023)
Article
Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
Ting-Chen Chen, Alejandro Di Luca, Katja Winger, Rene Laprise, Julie M. Theriault
Summary: This study examines the seasonality of near-surface wind speeds associated with extratropical cyclones (ETCs) in northeastern North America. Contrary to previous studies, the results show that ETCs during the fall season have stronger winds due to stronger continental cyclones and weaker low-level stability. Additionally, ETCs are found to favor inland lakes and Hudson Bay during the low-ice-content fall season, resulting in lower surface roughness. The study also presents a simple linear regression formula to predict 10-m wind speed, which can be used for cyclone near-surface wind risk assessment.
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS
(2022)
Article
Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
Koichi Sakaguchi, L. Ruby Leung, Colin M. Zarzycki, Jihyeon Jang, Seth McGinnis, Bryce E. Harrop, William C. Skamarock, Andrew Gettelman, Chun Zhao, William J. Gutowski, Stephen Leak, Linda Mearns
Summary: Comprehensive assessment of climate datasets is crucial for communicating model projections and uncertainties to stakeholders. The study focuses on understanding the sources of uncertainties in global variable-resolution dynamical downscaling and provides technical details of the model configuration, simulations, computational requirements, post-processing, and data archive of the CAM-MPAS downscaling data.
GEOSCIENTIFIC MODEL DEVELOPMENT
(2023)
Article
Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
Guoqiang Tang, Martyn P. Clark, Simon Michael Papalexiou, Andrew J. Newman, Andrew W. Wood, Dominique Brunet, Paul H. Whitfield
Summary: Probabilistic methods are useful for estimating uncertainty in spatial meteorological fields. This study developed the Ensemble Meteorological Dataset for North America (EMDNA) with 100 ensemble members, showing good performance with notable improvements in high latitudes, mountainous regions, and sparsely gauged areas.
EARTH SYSTEM SCIENCE DATA
(2021)
Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Haijin Dai, Jun Zhao, Qiang Yao, Xueyan Zhang
Summary: Surface albedo reduction in the ice-covered polar ocean leads to Arctic amplification, with stronger warming at high latitudes and weakened warming at low latitudes. The meridional temperature gradient decreases at midlatitudes with stronger warming at both high and low latitudes. Changes in atmospheric circulation patterns result in anomalies in precipitation and temperature, leading to a seesaw pattern in North China and the southwest United States.
JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH-ATMOSPHERES
(2021)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Yuqi Sun, Yetang Wang, Zhaosheng Zhai, Min Zhou
Summary: The albedo changes in the Antarctic region are closely related to sea ice changes. The summer surface albedo of the entire ice sheet has been decreasing, while the sea ice region has shown an increasing trend. Different regions exhibit different albedo trends, with positive trends in the eastern Antarctica Peninsula and the margins of East Antarctica, and negative trends in the Ross and Ronne ice shelves.
Article
Environmental Sciences
M. F. Gonzalez Amador, L. Zavala Sanson
Summary: This research focuses on studying the surface dispersion of coastal discharges in North America that contribute to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Statistical simulations using transition matrices and dispersion ellipses based on historical surface drifter trajectories are used to calculate the evolution of discharged concentration. The study quantifies the preferential routes, arrival times, and relative contributions of each discharge site. It also proposes a new statistical delineation of the position, area, and orientation of the garbage patch. Additional experiments suggest that the retention of debris is influenced by atmospheric conditions, with stronger retention during summer and increased westward dispersal during winter.
MARINE POLLUTION BULLETIN
(2023)
Article
Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
Almudena Garcia-Garcia, Francisco Jose Cuesta-Valero, Hugo Beltrami, J. Fidel Gonzalez-Rouco, Elena Garcia-Bustamante
Summary: Understanding the differences between regional simulations of land-atmosphere interactions and near-surface conditions is crucial for a more reliable representation of past and future climate. Using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, the effect of changes in horizontal resolution on surface and near-surface conditions is explored. The results demonstrate that finer resolutions lead to increased surface net shortwave radiation and maximum temperatures at mid and high latitudes, and to lower values of sensible heat flux and higher values of latent heat flux, as well as lower surface temperatures and higher precipitation and soil moisture values at low latitudes over coastal areas. The choice of land surface model (LSM) has a larger impact on near-surface temperature conditions compared to horizontal resolution, while the effect of LSM choice on precipitation simulation is weaker than the effect of horizontal resolution.
GEOSCIENTIFIC MODEL DEVELOPMENT
(2022)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Shaoting Ren, Evan S. Miles, Li Jia, Massimo Menenti, Marin Kneib, Pascal Buri, Michael J. McCarthy, Thomas E. Shaw, Wei Yang, Francesca Pellicciotti
Summary: Glacier albedo plays a crucial role in energy and mass balance and remote sensing techniques are efficient means to study its variability. Anisotropy correction models were calibrated and evaluated for glacier snow and ice using BRDF datasets, with the updated model showing promising results for albedo retrieval from various satellite imagery. The updated model enables anisotropy correction of up to 10 multispectral bands and is implemented in Google Earth Engine, making it promising for large-scale observation and analysis of glacier albedo.
Article
Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
Ya Wang, Kaiming Hu, Gang Huang, Weichen Tao
Summary: This study highlights the contribution of nonlinear kinetic energy advection and synoptic-scale transient eddies to the asymmetric atmospheric responses in the PNA region induced by ENSO.
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS
(2023)
