SOARS Manuscripts

Aerosols impact the chemistry and physical processes of the atmosphere directly, indirectly and through chemical reactions. The estimates of aerosol effects on the planet are uncertain because the spatial distribution of aerosol size and composition are largely unknown. The Wet Impactor has been des…

Mexico City is plagued with both high ozone and aerosol concentrations. Ozone absorbs radiation in the ultraviolet (UV) spectrum, and aerosols can both absorb and scatter radiation in the UV spectrum. Urban chemistry models have largely neglected pollution effects on radiation. The Tropospheric Ultr…

Fluctuation in microphysical properties of Arctic Stratus was observed over different length scales. Liquid water content and effective radius data was implemented into a one-dimensional radiative transfer model and was processed for thin, medium, and thick clouds. Calculated standard deviations of …

The large-scale time and space patterns of tritium in rainfall can be characterized over land and ocean using precipitation data collected worldwide by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Water samples from the Global Network for Isotopes in…

Aerosol extinction data from the Halogen Occultation Experiment(HALOE), on the UARS satellite was used to examine the effects of El Niño by inspecting cloud distributions near the tropopause. Eastward longitudinal centroid values were calculated for the years 1994-1997 between pressure levels of 46h…

Winter weather hazards, including in-flight icing and low ceilings, represent significant threats to aviation safety and can often be mitigated through accurate cloud climatological information. This study presents a climatology of wintertime cloud base heights and temperatures, number of cloud laye…

This study examines the conditions necessary to produce a self-sustaining convective instability in the ocean using the coupled atmosphere-ocean-ice model (CAOIM). This one dimensional coupled model is used to examine the likelihood of producing such an oscillation under varying salinity perturbatio…

This research examines the EI Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon in the NCAR Climate System Model (CSM). The focus is on changes in ENSO amplitude and frequency on interdecadal (10 to 100 year) time scales, compared with the changes observed in the real system. Using a 300-year simulation f…

In the United States there has been a steady increase in flood-related damages during recent decades. Experts have provided various explanations of the primary contributors to the increased economic damage including: climate change, increased flood plain development, and flood policies. Although it …

The Significant Opportunities in Atmospheric Research and Science (SOARS) program, established in 1995 by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) in partnership with the National Science Foundation, addresses the severe underrepresentation of African Americans, Hispanic/Latino Ame…

Tropospheric chemistry models must be simplified to study the various processes which govern their behavior and to obtain a better understanding of their interdependence. The process of improving models involves comparing model derived results with observed data and performing sensitivity analysis, …

Biogenic and anthropogenic hydrocarbon emissions are precursors to tropospheric ozone and smog. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has dealt with the issue of volatile organic carbons (VOCs) by regulating anthropogenic emissions of organic solvent and gasoline evaporation. Unfortunately …

One important element of airplane safety is knowing the conditions in which it is unsafe 10 fly. The hazardous effects of supercooled liquid water freezing on aircraft are well-known. The National Centers for Environmetal Prediction (NCEP) mesoscale Eta model produces routine operational forecasts o…

We examine the effects of large-scale regional ozone depletion on atmospheric tides. We focus on a Northern Hemisphere depletion and we introduce an Antarctic depletion for comparison. In addition, we look briefly at the influence of a long-term global-scale depletion to put our results in context w…

An Ocean General Circulation Model (OGCM), forced by a simulation of Campanian (80 Ma) climate using the Global ENvironmental and Ecological Simulation of Interactive Systems (GENESIS) Global Climate Model, was compared to proxies for ocean temperature found in the Late Cretaceous geologic record. F…

Understanding the budgets of the chemical species that result from anthropogenic activities can aid in the proper characterization of interactions between the surface of the earth and boundary layer. To effectively maintain and monitor the budgets requires the calculation of surface fluxes. Ozone(0₃…

Plant productivity is strongly dependent upon moisture. Ecosystem models estimate the moisture content in the air from measurements or vapor pressure. Realistic vapor pressure values allow these models to more accurately estimate plant productivity. Observational measurements of vapor pressure are r…

Agriculture is one of the biggest economic sectors in the economy vulnerable to climate change. Previous projections of agricultural changes have been based on climate data from coarse resolution general circulation models (GCMs) which are inaccurate at the regional scale. The present study uses an …

Modem numerical weather prediction models must be necessarily specified initial and boundary conditions as basic state vectors. Errors in these conditions affect the model forecast at verification time. An adjoint model efficiently determines where these errors have the greatest impact on the foreca…

Nitrous oxide ( N₂0 ) flux from the soil with a wide range of soil moisture and soil temperature were measured in two Boulder parks. These measurements were conducted for seven days during the summer of 1996 at Scott Carpenter Park and North Boulder Park in Boulder, Colorado. The emission of nitrous…

This report describes the implications of acid rain in enhancing moss growth and the connection to forest dieback. This work is based on a holistic successional model which views succession as a developmental process culminating in climax peatland communities. Based on this model, the hypothesis is …

Expressing the intensity of rainfall is a difficult problem because rainfall is produced by atmospheric processes that operate and interact on a wide range of time and space scales. It has been suggested that dual-polarization techniques be utilized to provide a more accurate estimate of rainfall. M…

The Equilibrium Vegetation Ecology Model (EVE) has been coupled to the Global Environmental and Ecological Simulation of Interactive Systems (GENESIS) model version 2.0 to predict vegetation patterns during the Holocene. GMT polar maps of biomes and life-forms were made for comparison to reconstruct…

Whole-air samples have been collected from the stratosphere and troposphere from two different aircraft. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) P3 aircraft took samples from the Denver, Colorado area, while the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) ER-2 took sample…

The Latka-Volterra predator-prey model consists of two equations and three parameters. By first assigning random values to the three parameters, and then comparing the resulting data to a second set of data, we wish to recover the parameters used to form the second set of data. In order to do this, …