SOARS Manuscripts

Severe thunderstorms are almost always associated with lightning and frequently occur throughout the continental U.S. The threat of lightning increases due to the randomness of a strike, making forecasting lightning difficult, which is why this study examines a possibly more effective way to forecas…

Tropospheric ozone has adverse human and ecological health impacts, making it one of the six criteria pollutants regulated by the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) under the Clean Air Act (CAA). The objective of this study is to assess how the Global Monitoring Laboratory's aircraft ozo…

Weather-related vehicle crashes represent a significant public safety burden in the United States, accounting for 21% of all crashes and 16% of all fatal crashes, with over 1.2 million yearly incidents and more than 5,300 casualties recorded annually between 2007 and 2016 -- the majority occurring o…

The ocean absorbs roughly one-third of anthropogenic CO2 emissions annually, providing a critical but imperfect buffer against climate change with significant consequences for marine ecosystems. This study investigates the role of internal climate variability in shaping the ocean's anthropogenic car…

The purpose of this research is to evaluate and validate a new weather algorithm, the Terminal Area Icing Weather Information for NextGen (TAIWIN), which will be used to diagnose and eventually forecast icing conditions in and around the terminal area of an airport. This new weather algorithm, once …

Projected changes in precipitation by 2100 pose major risks to agriculture, infrastructure, and society, motivating the need for improved precipitation prediction models. This study evaluates whether Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) — an ensemble machine learning method combining supervised decis…

Sea surface temperature (SST) is known to be the essential fuel that drives tropical cyclone (TC) development and intensification. Because TCs interact with the underlying ocean and decrease SSTs, leaving behind a cold wake, a subsequent TC passing over the same region could encounter the cold wake …

Hurricanes have presented grave risks to coastal communities in the U.S. Strong winds, storm surge, flooding, and heavy rainfall have resulted in billions of dollars of damage to homes, infrastructure, and agricultural resources, as well as casualties. Forecast models have been used by meteorologist…

Atmospheric Rivers (ARs) are important sources of moisture in the Western United States. Inland-penetrating ARs influence the microphysics and dynamics of orographic clouds leading to precipitation in this region. As the inland west is experiencing a long-standing drought, insight into the processes…

In July of 2013, a marine heat wave, a period of anomalously warm sea surface temperatures, emerged in the northeastern Pacific Ocean and lasted until June of 2016. This significant event, referred to as the North Pacific Blob, had a large influence on marine ecosystems across the North Pacific Ocea…

Several models such as NCAR's Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled with Chemistry (WRFChem) and NOAA's National Air Quality Forecasting Capability (NAQFC) have been developed and evaluated to provide forecasts for potentially hazardous species such as ozone (O3) and fine particulate matter…

Current modeling of land use and land cover of rangelands is limited by shortcomings in the ontological and methodological approaches to classification. For example, current classification schemes often limit rangeland cover types into one of a small number of categories; typically, grassland, shrub…

Small scale gravity waves impact the ionosphere in ways that affect GPS functions, radio communication and satellite communication. It is therefore important to understand how well global climate models that extend into the ionosphere can simulate small scale waves. In this paper we compare the high…

A warming climate is expected to increase the risk of extreme drought events in ecosystems with a high climate variability, like the Northern Great Plains (NGP). We examined decadal-scale projections in drought-related climate metrics for the NGP, in the early-to-mid 21st century period. First, we c…

Fires impact atmospheric composition through the emissions of gases and aerosols, affecting air quality close to the location of fires, as well as in areas downwind through transported pollution. The wildfire season in the Western United States (U.S.) was anomalously large in 2020, with some areas e…

The Arctic has accumulated many climate changes over a short period of time. This research focuses on Utqiaġvik, in the North Slope of Alaska, which is one of the few places in the Arctic where people have collected weather observations. We wanted to help give an understanding about the Arctic weath…

Adverse weather conditions negatively impact mobility and safety of drivers on roads. In an average year, approximately 21% of U.S. highway crashes are weather-related. Collectively, these crashes result in over 5,300 fatalities each year. Using 2019 weather and traffic data along Colorado Highway 1…

Atmospheric rivers (AR) are elongated, concentrated bands of water vapor located in the lower troposphere of the atmosphere. Atmospheric rivers are important sources water supply in western North America, replenishing lakes, reservoirs, soil moisture and groundwater. Since the new millennium, wester…

Tropical cyclones (TCs) under the influence of moderate environmental vertical wind shear (VWS) generally have storm-relative flow through the vortex and a vertical tilt, both of which can change a TC's structure. Studies have shown that this storm-relative flow and tilt can lead to dry air entrainm…

Air-sea moisture, heat and momentum exchanges that govern hurricane intensification occur within the hurricane boundary layer (HBL). However, the HBL is under-sampled due to the dangers of flying crewed aircraft within this turbulent region. In 2017, a novel instrument called the Coyote, a small unc…

For decades, international scientific organizations like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have concluded that human activity, such as deforestation and carbon emissions, are causing the Earth's climate to change. Many climate models show that one of the most robust responses to c…

Extreme precipitation can cause major hazards and when many extreme precipitation events group into an episode, these impacts can be exacerbated and cause detrimental impacts to society. When precipitation becomes temporally clustered, those in charge of planning and strategizing against these event…

Ground-level ozone has been linked to increased mortality due to respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. Being able to predict when surface ozone will be higher than normal would allow us to better prepare for poor air quality days. To predict surface ozone weeks in advance, we need to identify glo…

Anthropogenic pollution can travel long distances through the troposphere to impact the air quality of communities, regions, and countries downwind of emissions sources. In this study, carbon monoxide (CO)— a tracer of anthropogenic emissions—is used to quantify the influence of transported anthropo…

Aircraft icing continues to be a serious problem resulting in multiple aviation accidents each year. Inflight icing conditions are created when supercooled liquid water (SLW) adheres to the aircraft, increasing its weight and drag while decreasing lift. Many products have been developed over the yea…