News

Hundreds of miles north of the Arctic Circle, Sandia National Laboratories researchers ensure the collection of important weather and climate data. By switching the gas used in their weather balloons, they have reduced their metaphorical footprint on the fragile Arctic ecosystem.

ecosystem

A natural community of plants, animals, and other living organisms and the physical environment in which they live and interact.

Source: A student's guide to Global Climate Change Source

Supersaturation is a key driver for cloud droplet activation and growth, and its nonlinear dependence on water vapor and temperature increases supersaturation fluctuations in the presence of relative water vapor and temperature fluxes

flux

The amount of some type of particle or energy crossing a unit area per unit time.

Source: NRC Library Source

in turbulent convection,

convection

The rising of warm air and the sinking of cool air. Convection can cause local breezes, winds, and thunderstorms.

Source: NASA earth observatory Source

as typically occurs during entrainment and mixing of environmental and cloudy air.

New research shows that the wettest and most extreme winter storms in the Western United States are only growing wetter and larger. These powerful storms are changing shape in a warmer world, sprawling to drench more land while simultaneously growing more intense at their cores.

UC Berkeley researchers provide a theory for the upper bound of midlatitude surface temperatures and a physically based rate at which the maximum temperature achieved each year over midlatitude land will change with global warming.

El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) can effectively modulate global 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) activity, but the role TCs may play in determining ENSO characteristics remains unclear. Here we investigate the impact of TC winds on ENSO using a suite of Earth system model

earth system model (ESM)

A model that simulates how chemistry, biology, and physical forces work together. These models are similar to, but much more comprehensive than, global climate models.

Source: U.S. Department of Energy Source

experiments where we insert TC winds, extracted from a TC-permitting high-resolution simulation, into a low-resolution model configuration with nearly no intrinsic TCs.

ARs are synoptic scale weather features, longer than wide, that serve as water and energy transport vehicles and are highly relevant to any populated region around the globe that depends on precipitation for a source of water. Despite the attention to ARs and 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

in the literature, much remains uncertain.

The E3SM

Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM)

The Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM) project includes Earth System Models, simulations, and predictions to investigate energy-relevant science using code optimized for DOE's advanced supercomputers.

Source: NVCL Web Page Source

version 2.0 water cycle simulation campaign’s standard set of Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) Diagnosis, Evaluation, and Characterization of Klima (DECK) simulations have been published and are free to download via the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) distributed and federated archives.

Most machine learning (ML)

machine learning (ML)

Machine Learning (ML) refers to the field and practice of using algorithms that are able to “learn” by extracting patterns from a large body of data.

Source: Center of Excellence Source

methods do not provide estimates of uncertainty, and those that do cannot analyze very large data sets due to computational limitations. We develop new machine learning methods that naturally include uncertainty quantification and can be applied to very large Earth science

earth science

The study of the Earth's structure, properties, processes, and four and a half billion years of biotic evolution.

Source: NSF Source

data sets.

The overturning circulation in the ocean is expected to change in response to anthropogenic forcings, but the lack of direct long-term monitoring makes it challenging to detect human-induced change. A diagnostic modeling approach is used here to demonstrate that Southern Ocean (SO) overturning has undergone significant interdecadal change since the mid-20th century.

The 6th Workshop on Coupling Technologies for Earth System Models was held on January 18-20, 2023, in a hybrid format. The in-person meeting was on the campus of Meteo France in Toulouse, France. Meteo France is also the home to CERFACS, the main developer of the OASIS coupler used by many European climate models.

Genetic engineers use synthetic biology to provide novel functions in microbes

microbe

Microbes are tiny living things that are found all around us and are too small to be seen by the naked eye. They live in water, soil, and in the air.

Source: NIH Source

by introducing new genes. Synthetic biology involves modifying biological parts and systems to create new ones. Its techniques include introducing a small number of genes into bacteria using small DNA molecules called plasmids. Scientists also use an approach called homologous recombination to introduce genes into the bacterial chromosome.

There are three main ingredients to tackle when it comes to breaking down a plant for energy: Cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin,

lignin

One of the main components of plant cell wall and it is a natural phenolic polymer with high molecular weight, complex composition and structure.

Source: NIH Source

cumulatively called lignocellulose, are the primary components of hardy cell walls. It’s the cellulose and hemicellulose that eventually yield fuels, and removing lignin in order to do so is a resource-intensive process.