News

The high-latitude carbon cycle

carbon cycle

The movement and exchange of carbon through living organisms, the ocean, the atmosphere, rocks and minerals, and other parts of the Earth.

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

is an important, complex, and highly uncertain component of the global climate system. A growing number of studies have relied on machine learning

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 to create regional estimates of current and future 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

properties (e.g., carbon balance) based on a small number of site measurements.

2022 marks the JGI’s 25th anniversary. Over the last year, we’ve been revisiting a number of notable achievements that showcase our collaborations and capabilities to enable great science that will help solve energy and environmental challenges. Over the last two-and-a-half decades, the JGI has been facilitating the creation, growth and expansion of research communities by producing and sharing high-quality genomes.

The ice cloud feedback in weather and climate models is strongly affected by the size of cloud particles. The DWR–hydrometeor size relations developed in this study can be used for sizing ice hydrometeors at different research facilities that have dual-wavelength radar measurements. Such facilities are deployed at different U.S. Department of Energy Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) sites.

Like animals, forests breathe; unlike animals, which breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide,

carbon dioxide (CO2)

An important heat-trapping gas, also known as a greenhouse gas, that comes from the extraction and burning of fossil fuels (such as coal, oil, and natural gas), from wildfires, and natural processes like volcanic eruptions.

Source: NASA Source

forests take in carbon dioxide and release water vapor and oxygen through tiny openings on leaf surfaces called stomata. Forests actively regulate the opening and closing of stomata in response to environmental variations.

Snow has the highest albedo, or reflective ability, of any part of the land surface. Most Earth system models

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

assume that snow grains are spherical and that light-absorbing particles (LAPs) are separate from the snow grains. This study improves the Energy Exascale Earth System Model

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’s snow albedo model by considering non-spherical snow grain shapes and internally mixed dust–snow.

Through a partnership with the National GEM Consortium to support graduate studies for students from underrepresented groups, Argonne helps students gain skills in artificial intelligence.

artificial intelligence

A machine-based system that can, for a given set of human-defined objectives, make predictions, recommendations or decisions influencing real or virtual environments.

Source: U.S. Department of State Source

When Jason Ortiz went back to school to complete his doctorate after five years of working at Microsoft as a software engineer, he was excited but apprehensive.

Approximately one-fifth of the world's land contains permafrost

permafrost

Any ground that remains completely frozen—32°F (0°C) or colder—for at least two years straight. These permanently frozen grounds are commonly found in regions with high mountains and near the North and South Poles.

Source: USGS Source

or permanently frozen ground. To track the pace of permafrost thaw, scientists measure the thickness of the so-called active layer of thawed soil on top of the frozen-solid permafrost. This research developed a new method to track the pace of permafrost thaw using streamflow measurements.

Partitioning the globe into a mesh consisting of cells of different sizes based on the level of accuracy desired in a given region is useful for many applications. The largest step forward in time an ocean model can take is governed by the size of the smallest cell in the mesh. To increase the efficiency of the time-stepping process, researchers use a local time-stepping (LTS).

Tropical cyclones (TCs) alter upper-ocean temperature and influence ocean heat content via enhanced turbulent mixing. A better understanding of the role of TCs within the climate system requires a fully coupled modeling framework, where TC-induced ocean responses feed back to the atmosphere and subsequently to the climate mean state and variability.

Puget Sound is the second-largest estuary

estuaries

A partially enclosed, coastal water body where freshwater from rivers and streams mixes with salt water from the ocean.

Source: EPA Source

in the United States and is surrounded by major mountain ranges as well as a highly populated coastal plain. The region’s complex 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

is strongly influenced by Pacific Ocean weather systems and climate patterns, complex topography,

topography

The land's physical attributes within a specific area or region, comprising both natural formations like mountains, valleys, and rivers, alongside human-made additions such as roads and buildings.

Source: Source

a unique land use history, and strong rural-to-urban gradients.

Population downscaling allows researchers to derive higher spatial resolution population data based on coarser resolution population data. Landscape metrics calculated from land cover maps can be used to quantify urban spatial structural characteristics such as clustering, fragmentation, and patchiness. Scientists hypothesize that these metrics correlate with population density.

Very high-resolution simulations with the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model are performed and subject to uniquely detailed fidelity assessment. Although this simulation exhibits fidelity for the marginal probabilities of wind speed, rainfall rates, and hail occurrence, the joint probabilities of these properties and the maximum size of hail are.