SOARS Manuscripts

In a given hurricane season, several tropical disturbances propagate across environments favorable for development; however, only a few disturbances actually strengthen into tropical cyclones. The lack of a consolidated theory on tropical cyclogenesis makes it difficult for forecasters to predict a …

While it is common for tornadoes to occur in conjunction with land falling tropical cyclones (TCs), characteristics of the hurricane-spawned tornadoes themselves remain poorly documented. This study (i) documents and describes supercells embedded within the outer rainbands of Hurricane Katrina (2005…

By measuring vertical fluxes of carbon monoxide (CO), the amount of air pollutants that originate from local versus transported anthropogenic and biogenic sources can be traced. This study focused on improving the sensitivity of a commonly used instrument that utilizes fluorescence properties of CO …

The United States imports 60 percent of its seafood, leading to a $7 billion seafood trade deficit. To mitigate this deficit, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a branch of the U.S. Department of Commerce, has promoted the expansion of U.S. production of seafood by aqu…

Extreme dust events can play a significant role in altering the earth's radiative balance by lofting considerable amounts of mineral aerosols into the atmosphere. This study investigates the meteorological conditions that lead to the initiation of mineral dust events in the Chihuahuan desert region …

Due to the effect of mixed layer ocean depth in the Gulf of Mexico on hurricane intensity, it is important to understand how global warming will affect the ocean and how this in turn will affect hurricane intensity. We ran the ARW model for Hurricane Katrina with the Gulf of Mexico's mixed layer dep…

Multipath is a condition where the transmitted radio signal is reflected by physical features or structures, creating multiple reflections of the same signal arriving at the receiver at different times. The result is degradation in signal strength of the transmitted signal from the satellite to the …

While boundary layer convergence zones (BLCZs), which are areas of low-level convergence of air (at the surface), influence daily weather, their specific effects on wind, temperature, moisture, and thunderstorm formation are not well known. In order to address this problem, BLCZs that occurred in th…

Hydrological models and flash flood warning systems are largely dependent on accurate precipitation inputs. In the Colorado Front Range estimation of rainfall has been problematic due to the varying intensity and spatial distribution of the precipitation fields. The goal of this project was to condu…

The network common data form (netCDF) was created by Unidata at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research to simplify data access and sharing in the atmospheric science community. Even though the current full release of netCDF known as netCDF-3 has proven to be successful, increasing data …

The El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a well-known source of inter-annual climate variability for both precipitation and temperature in the northern Great Plains. The northern Great Plains also have the largest wind resource in the United States. With the continued growth of wind energy, ENSO's…

Research has indicated that there may be a relationship between water vapor and hurricane development; however, traditional methods of measuring water vapor lack the accuracy necessary to make direct correlations. In this study, GPS water vapor data from areas near the point of landfall of hurricane…

Aerosols are particles in the atmosphere that are responsible for many chemical reactions and play a key role in light reflection. However, even though aerosols are well known, the formation of aerosols is still unclear. The Chemical Emission. Loss. Transformation and Interactions within Canopies se…

There have been previous theoretical, experimental, and comparison studies to determine the precision of Global Positioning System (GPS) radio occultation (RO) but the current stage of the Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere, and Climate (COSMIC) satellites presented a unique …

One major pollutant of concern is in the Mexico City Metropolitan Area (MCMA) is tropospheric ozone. It is a secondary pollutant that damages local vegetation and the human respiratory system. Ozone is formed in the atmosphere by nitrogen oxides (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), but it is…

Although the East African Rift (EAR) is often cited as the premier example of incipient rifting, the shear size and often times inaccessibility of the rift imply limited analysis and interpretation of the physical processes controlling EAR deformation. Existing geodetic data are wholly inadequate to…

Ozone profiles obtained from the Central Equatorial Pacific Experiment (CEPEX) campaign in 1993 show near-zero ozone levels in the upper tropical troposphere. Ozone chemical destruction and undiluted vertical transport into the upper troposphere were thought to be the cause for the low ozone values …

Solar tides are thermally driven perturbations excited throughout the atmosphere that vary with local time and season; however not all sources of tidal variability are known. The Quasi-biennial Oscillation (QBO) is an oscillation in the stratospheric zonal winds near the equator with a 27.7-month cy…

Previous research showed that low-level flow over the Galápagos Islands was decoupled from that above during some time periods studied. When decoupling occurred, sea surface temperatures (SSTs) were cooler than 23ºC; during the coupled cases, SSTs were warmer than 24°C. Here six TAO buoys provided S…

GPS RO technique measures the bending of radio signals as they pass through the Earth's atmosphere. From the vertical profile of bending angles, one can derive vertical soundings of refractivity. GPS RO soundings are of very high accuracy and very high vertical resolution, and of uniform global cove…

Continuous satellite measurements now offer the opportunity to compare NO₂ concentrations to variables such as anthropogenic sources. Decadal population and NO₂ trends were analyzed for 14 regions by use of population data records from Columbia University and NO₂ column data from the Global Ozone Mo…

This study builds a local wind-field climatology and analyzes the resulting wind patterns at White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) in southern New Mexico. Mesoscale circulations in mountain-valley desert regions have been previously studied in several regions of the Intermountain West, none of which incl…

The Kirthar Range in western Pakistan is the result of east-west compression caused by the indentation of the Indian Plate into the Eurasian Plate. The 1931 Mw 7.3 Mach earthquake resulted in 65 cm of local uplift on a leveling line through the Bolan Pass in the northern Kirthar Range. Previous stud…

During abrupt climate changes, the climate system is forced across some threshold, causing evolution to a new, persistent state. Studies of abrupt climate changes are necessary to understand how these changes are transferred globally and to gain insight on future climate change. In this research, we…

Numerous studies have examined atmospheric conditions and patterns in tropical cyclogenesis. Although much has been accomplished, a complete understanding of tropical cyclogenesis is hindered by the lack of data in the regions where formation occurs. The GPS (Global Positioning System) radio occulta…