Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere

About: Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere is a based out in . It is known for research contribution in the topics: Snow & Data assimilation. The organization has 332 authors who have published 997 publications receiving 38835 citations. The organization is also known as: CIRA.

A warm core in a polar low observed with a satellite microwave sounding unit

Abstract: A polar low which occurred over the Labrador Sea on 17 and 18 January 1989 was examined with the Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU) on the satellites NOAA-10 and 11. Surface reports indicated a pressure deficit of at least 4 mb with the polar low, and surface wind speeds of at least 20 m/s were retrieved with the Special Sensor Microwave/Imager. MSU brightness temperatures at 53.74 GHz were warmer over the polar low than in all of the adjacent MSU field-of-views. The 53.74 GHz brightness temperatures over the polar low were between 1 and 2 K warmer than the adjacent values. Since some polar lows are warm core systems, results of this type are expected. The possibility that the warming observed in the 53.74 GHz data was caused by factors other than warming of the air column was investigated. MSU 50.30 GHz brightness temperatures did not show a maximum over the polar low, as would be expected if the 53.74 GHz warming was caused by surface and precipitation effects. A sensitivity analysis indicates that the measured warming is greater than that expected from cloud and surface effects. This type of measurement should be a useful tool for monitoring polar lows, particularly when the higher resolution Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit becomes available. DOI: 10.1034/j.1600-0870.1996.t01-1-00001.x

Discontinuous Forcing Generating Rough Initial Conditions in 4DVAR Data Assimilation

Abstract: The impact of discontinuous model forcing on the initial conditions obtained from 4DVAR data assimilation is studied with mathematic analyses, idealized numerical examples, and more realistic meteorological cases. The results show that a discontinuity in a parameterization, like a model bias, can introduce a systematic error in the assimilated initial fields. However, the most detrimental effect of a model discontinuity is the retention of roughness in the assimilated initial fields, although in some cases the 4DVAR procedure provides some smoothing effect. The obvious consequences of this roughness is that it will introduce spurious modes in the ensuing forecast, and derivatives of the assimilated initial data will be unrealistically large, which can lead to large errors in data analysis. The smoothing effect on the initial conditions with the addition of artificial diffusion to the constraining model is also studied. Possible solutions to the problem of 4DVAR data assimilation with discontinuou...

Impact of a Detailed Urban Parameterization on Modeling the Urban Heat Island in Beijing Using TEB-RAMS

Abstract: The Town Energy Budget (TEB) model coupled with the Regional Atmospheric Modeling System (RAMS) is applied to simulate the Urban Heat Island (UHI) phenomenon in the metropolitan area of Beijing. This new model with complex and detailed surface conditions, called TEB-RAMS, is from Colorado State University (CSU) and the ASTER division of Mission Research Corporation. The spatial-temporal distributions of daily mean 2 m air temperature are simulated by TEB-RAMS during the period from 0000 UTC 01 to 0000 UTC 02 July 2003 over the area of 116°E~116.8°E, 39.6°N~40.2°N in Beijing. The TEB-RAMS was run with four levels of two-way nested grids, and the finest grid is at 1 km grid increment. An Anthropogenic Heat (AH) source is introduced into TEB-RAMS. A comparison between the Land Ecosystem-Atmosphere Feedback model (LEAF) and the detailed TEB parameterization scheme is presented. The daily variations and spatial distribution of the 2 m air temperature agree well with the observations of the Beijing area. The daily mean 2 m air temperature simulated by TEB-RAMS with the AH source is 0.6 K higher than that without specifying TEB and AH over the metropolitan area of Beijing. The presence of urban underlying surfaces plays an important role in the UHI formation. The geometric morphology of an urban area characterized by road, roof, and wall also seems to have notable effects on the UHI intensity. Furthermore, the land-use dataset from USGS is replaced in the model by a new land-use map for the year 2010 which is produced by the Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth (RADI), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). The simulated regional mean 2 m air temperature is 0.68 K higher from 01 to 02 July 2003 with the new land cover map.

Implications of Organic Mass to Carbon Ratios Increasing Over Time in the Rural United States

Abstract: The thermal evolution procedure used by most monitoring programs in the United States to determine carbonaceous aerosol concentrations is referred to as the thermal‐optical reflectance method, where an aerosol sample that has been collected on a quartz filter is heated and evolved carbon is characterized as either organic (OC) or light absorbing carbon (LAC). Evolved carbon assigned to OC is multiplied by a factor, Roc, to achieve an estimate of organic mass. Over the last 10–15 years, Roc, estimated through multiple linear regression analysis of data collected in the Interagency Monitoring of Protected Visual Environments (IMPROVE) program, has increased at about a rate of about 0.02 per year, reaching values above 2.0 in many regions of the United States. Analysis of evolved carbon concentration temporal trends suggests that thermal‐optical reflectance analysis, on the average, inaccurately bifurcates particulate carbon into the OC and LAC fractions with some LAC being inadvertently and wrongly assigned to the OC fraction. It is shown that misapportioned LAC assigned to OC is decreasing faster than true OC, resulting in a compensating increase in the Roc assigned to reported OC over time. A first‐order model is proposed to correct for the misapportioned carbon.

Derivation of Slope Flow Equations Using Two Different Coordinate Representations

Abstract: This paper examines two coordinate representations for slope flow models, one a rotation of the coordinate axes, the other a generalized vertical coordinate transformation. An analytic solution is developed in both representations for a uniform slope to examine the differences due to slightly different forms of a generalised hydrostatic equation. For the first transformation, velocity acclerations in the direction of the generalized vertical coordinate are ignored, while for the second transformation, velocity accelerations perpendicular to the terrain are neglected. Surprisingly, only the period of flow oscillation and not the mean strength of the slope flow was changed in using the first coordinate representation instead of the second. Only for slopes greater than 45° does the difference in periods between the two transformations 30%. Differences which may occur for nonuniform slopes, however, still need to be examined.