News

Anthropogenic aerosol

anthropogenic aerosol

Tiny particles suspended in the atmosphere that are primarily generated by human activities.

Source: Source

(AA) emissions are expected to change rapidly over the coming decades, driven by a combination of industrialization, climate mitigation, and air quality efforts. These changes will drive strong, spatially complex trends in temperature, hydroclimate,

hydroclimate

The scientific field that brings together hydrology and climate, including the impacts that water and its processes have on Earth’s climate, and the impacts of climate patterns and change on the global hydrological (or water) cycle.

Source: National Weather Service Source

and extreme events both near and far from emission sources.

Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have determined from observations how much stronger the cloud feedback is in response to the homogeneous greenhouse warming pattern compared to that in response to the heterogeneous warming pattern observed recently. The team used real-world satellite observations to determine the sensitivity of clouds to their environmental controlling factors.

Pollen, one type of primary biological aerosol

aerosols

Small particles or droplets, such as wildfire smoke, volcanic gases, or salty sea spray, that float in the air. They are emitted by both natural events and human activities.

Source: NASA Global Climate Change Source

particle, is released from vegetation and can be physically transformed in the atmosphere by rupturing into smaller particles. This study uses an atmospheric model to understand how pollen breaks apart in the atmosphere and its effects on cloud formation processes.

Understanding the relationship between tropical cyclone

tropical cyclone

A warm-core non-frontal synoptic-scale cyclone, originating over tropical or subtropical waters, with organized deep convection and a closed surface wind circulation about a well-defined center.

Source: National Weather Service Source

(TC) precipitation and sea surface temperature (SST) is essential for both TC hazard forecasting and projecting how these hazards will change in the future due to climate change.

climate change

A change in the average conditions — such as temperature and rainfall — in a region over a long period of time.

Source: NASA Climate Kids Source

This work untangles how global TC precipitation is impacted by present-day, short-term SST variability and by long-term changes in SST caused by climate change.

On hiatus since 2020, Argonne’s annual Autonomous Vehicle Competition resumes at the Museum of Science and Industry, challenging high school students to work together to develop, test and present their own self-driving vehicles. Recently, visitors to the Museum of Science and Industry (MSI)

minority Serving Institution (MSI)

A term used to describe colleges and universities that primarily enroll and serve minority populations. These groups can include African Americans, Hispanics, American Indians, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, and Asian Americans.

Source: U.S. Department of the Interior Source

in Chicago found an unexpected surprise on the museum’s upper level.

The radar reflectivity factor quantifies the intensity of precipitation and is needed to study microphysical processes and vertical structure of precipitation. This work developed software to estimate and calibrate the radar reflectivity factor from radar wind profiler (RWP) observations.

Clouds are an important part of the weather and the climate system. This study explores the interactions among shallow cumulus clouds and how neighboring clouds influence the life cycle of convective clouds.

We evaluate seven state-of-the-art high-resolution (< 50km horizontal resolution) models for their simulation of the spatial diversity of El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) associated sea surface temperature anomalies and its teleconnections to US winter season precipitation extremes.

Michael Woodward, University of Arizona, SCGSR 2020 S2 (ASCR) in collaboration with Dr. Daniel Livescu of Los Alamos National Laboratory developed a novel approach constructing a hierarchy of learnable and parameterized physics-based models for turbulence, embedding neural networks within Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH).

There is growing interest in the scientific community to develop actionable sciences that inform actions related to critical environmental challenges. Yet, the actual connections between scientific knowledge, decision-making, and resulting outcomes are not straightforward.

We used an ensemble of five machine-learning models and satellite observations to model global fires and identify the driving factors from 2003-2019. Our model accurately predicted burned area, total fire numbers, and fire size while capturing spatial patterns and trends.

Three graduate students have earned Department of Energy Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) Program awards to perform their doctoral dissertation research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). They are three among the 87 graduate students representing 33 states for the SCGSR program’s 2022 Solicitation 2 cycle.