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.

Errata: 10.35 μm: an atmospheric window on the GOES-R Advanced Baseline Imager with less moisture attenuation

Abstract: With the launch of GOES-R expected in 2015, research is currently under way to fully understand the characteristics of every channel on its Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI). The ABI will have two infrared (IR) window bands centered near 10.35 and 11.2 μm. Since no broad-band space-borne sensor has a channel near 10.35 μm, radiative transfer model simulations are used to study the clear-sky gaseous absorption properties in this wavelength range. It is shown that water vapor preferentially absorbs radiation at 11.2 μm compared to 10.35 μm, making the 10.35 μm a "cleaner" window IR band.

An Overview of a Demographic Study of United States Emergency Managers

Abstract: R ESPONSE TO WEATHER WARNINGS. The National Weather Service (NWS) is responsible for issuing public warnings for all hazardous weather events across the United States. Advances in technology and basic scientific research over the years have allowed for significant improvements in this assignment. But while the NWS continues to focus much of its strategic planning toward improved warnings, most of those associated with the process are aware that there are a number of steps beyond increased accuracy to make their warnings effective. These include assuring that the target audience hears their message, understands it, believes it, and responds to it properly. One useful means of addressing these issues involves working directly with community response organizations, whose job it is to direct and allocate emergency services during catastrophic events. Often, the primary responsibility for identifying risks and managing vulnerabilities within a community is entrusted to a local emergency manager. With an emergency management system in place, disaster response can be more coordinated, flexible, and professional. However, one crucial factor in effectively managing emergencies is collaboration with organizational partners, and breakdowns in collaboration can adversely impact outcomes. In recent weather-related incidents, communications between the NWS and emergency managers have become confused. For example, in the case of the 2008 Windsor, Colorado, tornado, NWS forecasters tried to convey the urgency of a developing situation, while emergency managers awaited confirmation that a damaging event was actually underway. In that situation, it appears that emergency managers didn’t entirely understand how strongly forecasters felt about the potential threat, and NWS forecasters didn’t understand why emergency managers were not implementing emergency response immediately. The premise of the present study is that NWS forecasters can benefit from knowing more about their emergency management counterparts, including a general overview of the nature of that community, along with characteristics that might influence collaboration. To this end, a nationwide survey was conducted to learn more about the diversity of individual emergency managers and of the communities they serve.

Representing Grass- and Shrub-Snow-Atmosphere Interactions in Climate System Models

Abstract: A vegetation-protruding-above-snow parameterization for earth system models was developed to improve energy budget calculations of interactions among vegetation, snow, and the atmosphere in nonforested areas. These areas include shrublands, grasslands, and croplands, which represent 68% of the seasonally snow-covered Northern Hemisphere land surface (excluding Greenland). Snow depth observations throughout nonforested areas suggest that mid- to late-winter snowpack depths are often comparable or lower than the vegetation heights. As a consequence, vegetation protruding above the snow cover has an important impact on snow-season surface energy budgets. The protruding vegetation parameterization uses disparate energy balances for snow-covered and protruding vegetation fractions of each model grid cell, and fractionally weights these fluxes to define grid-average quantities. SnowModel, a spatially distributed snow-evolution modeling system, was used to test and assess the parameterization. Simulation...

Splitting Methods for Problems with Different Timescales

Abstract: The time step for the leapfrog scheme for a symmetric hyperbolic system with multiple timescales is limited by the Courant-Friedlichs-Lewy condition based on the fastest speed present. However, in many physical cases, most of the energy is in the slowest wave, and for this wave the use of the above time step implies that the time truncation error is much smaller than the spatial truncation error. A number of methods have been proposed to overcome this imbalance—for example, the semi-implicit method and the additive splitting technique originally proposed by Marchuk with variations attributable to Strang, and Klemp and Wilhelmson. An analysis of the Marchuk splitting method for multiple timescale systems shows that if a time step based on the slow speed is used, the accuracy of the method cannot be proved, and in practice the method is quite inaccurate. If a time step is chosen that is between the two extremes, then the Klemp and Wilhelmson method can be used, but only if an ad hoc stabilization m...