Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies

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Accomplishments During Calendar Year 2002

Peter J. Lamb, Director
Randy A. Peppler, Associate Director
John V. Cortinas Jr., Assistant Director

INFRASTRUCTURE ACCOMPLISHMENTS

The Special Award conditions that were placed on the new five-year (2001-2006) NOAA Cooperative Agreement (CA) in July 2001 were removed in September 2002. This action followed extensive discussions between the CIMMS leadership, NOAA officials, and U.S. Department of Commerce lawyers, during which CIMMS provided considerable documentation and written responses to questions concerning CIMMS activities. This protracted finalization of the new CA for CIMMS, along with similar delays that affected most of our sister NOAA Joint Institutes, prompted the submission to Congress in September 2002 of formalizing language stating “That the Secretary of Commerce may enter into cooperative agreements with the Joint and Cooperative Institutes as designated by the Secretary to use the personnel, services, or facilities of such organizations for research, education, training, and outreach”. Congress approved this language in early 2003, which is expected to facilitate greatly future CIMMS operations.

The high level of CIMMS scientific activity during 2002 continued to involve increased research and development within NOAA units participating in CIMMS. In particular, much collaborative research and development took place within the CIMMS research themes of (1) Basic Convective and Mesoscale Research, (2) Forecast Improvements, and (5) Doppler Weather Radar Research and Development. This research involved partnerships between CIMMS and federal employees at NSSL, ROC, SPC, WDTB, and SRH. An important new partnership with NCDC was initiated in late 2002 under themes (4) Socioeconomic Impacts of Mesoscale Weather Systems and Regional-Scale Climate Variations and (6) Climate Change Monitoring and Detection.

Consistent with the above, 2002 saw a continuation of the recently increased involvement of CIMMS scientists, engineers, students, and support personnel in the programs of the NSSL (94 individuals, who now substantially outnumber the Laboratory's employees), SPC (5), ROC (2), WDTB (7), and SRH (1). The leadership and management of these CIMMS employees, and CIMMS interactions with federal managers in these units, benefited greatly during 2002 from the efforts of the CIMMS Assistant Director, Dr. John Cortinas. Dr. Cortinas is located at NSSL. CIMMS’ linkage with the NOAA units was further strengthened in 2002 with the appointment of Ms. Tracy Reinke as CIMMS Financial Administrator. To handle all financial aspects of the NOAA grants and other grants that involve CIMMS personnel in the NOAA units, Ms. Reinke spends half of each week in a NSSL office.

INTERNATIONAL ACTIVITIES

For 6 weeks in mid-2002 (May 27-July 5), CIMMS hosted the “Fourth Workshop on Regional Climate Prediction and Applications -- Tropical Pacific Islands and Rim” at the OU College of Continuing Education. The Workshop goal was to improve the capabilities of national meteorological and hydrological services (NMHSs) around and in the Tropical Pacific to understand global climate system behavior, to use such knowledge to develop seasonal precipitation prediction schemes, and to collaborate with other national agencies to apply such prediction schemes in the management of agricultural production, water resources, energy generation, and public health. This Fourth Workshop had 20 NMHS participants, divided between western Latin America (8 participants representing 5 nations), Oceania (5 participants, 5 nations), and Southeast Asia (7 participants, 5 nations). The Workshop Series is judged to be very successful by its financial sponsors (NWS International Activities Office; OAR Office of Global Programs; CLIPS Program of World Meteorological Organization), which are encouraging its continuation on an annual basis. A Fifth Workshop will be held in Fall 2003. An article describing the Workshop Series appeared in the April 2002 issue of the WMO Bulletin, a 1-page report on the Fourth Workshop appeared in the October 2002 issue of the WMO Bulletin, and the Workshop Series was featured in the 2002 WMO Annual Report.

A high level of collaboration and cooperation continued between CIMMS and the African Centre of Meteorological Applications for Development (ACMAD, Niamey, Niger) during 2002. These activities are funded by an ongoing grant from the International Activities Office of the U.S. National Weather Service. The 2002 interactions included the following -- continuation of a 5-year project entitled "New Radio and Internet Technology for Communication of Weather and Climate Information to Rural Communities for Sustainable Development in Africa" (RANET), that is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development; a 1-week visit by the CIMMS Director to ACMAD; the transition of an ACMAD climatologist (Issa Lele Mohammedou) to become a CIMMS graduate student; and continued full-time research at CIMMS on aspects of African climate variability and predictability (for OU M.S. and Ph.D. degrees) by Ms. Pauline Agoh Dibi (Ivory Coast), Mr. Mostafa El Hamly (Morocco), and Mr. Zewdu Tessema Segele (Ethiopia). Mr. Tessema’s M.S. research on “Characteristics of the Kiremt (June-September) Rainy Season in Ethiopia” was completed in December 2002 and soon will be submitted to the International Journal of Climatology.

The involvement of CIMMS with the meteorological and oceanographic communities in Southeast Asia and Latin America increased during 2002. CIMMS Research Associates at NSSL began to develop a system that would provide Taiwan and Thailand with accurate quantitative precipitation estimates (QPE) and 3-D radar mosaics for their complex terrain. During October 7-15, CIMMS Director Peter J. Lamb taught a “Short Course on Climate Dynamics” at Vietnam’s Institute of Oceanography in Nha Trang. Dr. Lamb also is working with the several Vietnam government agencies in Hanoi and the OU Graduate Dean (Dr. T.H. Lee Williams) to bring four Vietnamese graduate students to CIMMS. Two new CIMMS graduate students from Peru and Colombia helped organize two small field experiments in the South American altiplano during 2002, as part of the NOAA-funded South American Low Level Jet Experiment (SALLJEX).

In addition to the above collaborations, CIMMS Scientists are actively working with counterparts at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (Israel), the National Climate Center and Institute of Atmospheric Physics (P. R. China), the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (Russia), and the Meteorological Service of Canada.

NATIONAL FIELD PROGRAM LEADERSHIP

As part of its Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program Site Scientist role, CIMMS scientists continued to provide essential day-to-day scientific guidance for the development and continuous operation of the Southern Great Plains ARM Cloud and Radiation Testbed (CART) site. This is the World's first comprehensive climate observatory, and now generates approximately 300 continuous data streams from 30 locations spread over 50,000 square miles in southern Kansas and northern and central Oklahoma. During 2002, the Site Scientist Team continued its increased responsibilities with respect to the quality assurance of the above data streams, and in the planning and execution of Intensive Operational Periods (IOPs) that focused on aspects of the hydrological cycle, the surface albedo and energy and carbon fluxes, meteorological radar performance, validation of satellite measurements, the meteorological utility of unmanned aerospace vehicles, and tropospheric water vapor and energy fluxes.

As an extension of its work as the ARM Program Southern Great Plains Site Scientist, CIMMS was awarded the ARM Program Data Quality Office in July 2000. The Data Quality Office continued its comprehensive operations during 2002, which involve inspecting, assessing, and reporting on the quality of ARM data from all three of its CART sites, including those on the North Slope of Alaska and in the Tropical Western Pacific. Data Quality Office staff work with CART Site Scientists and Instrument Mentors to perform these activities, and have developed a web-based tool (Data Quality Health and Status HandS system) to help automate and coordinate this process. It can be found at http://dq.arm.gov/. During 2002, Data Quality office staff participated in an ARM Program-wide effort to improve and automate data quality reporting.

During 2002, CIMMS scientists were involved in the International H20 Project (IHOP). IHOP was a field experiment that took place over the U.S. Southern Great Plains (SGP) from May 13 to June 25. The chief aim of IHOP 2002 was improved characterization of the four-dimensional (4-D) distribution of water vapor and its application to improving the understanding and prediction of convection. The SGP region was an optimal location due to existing experimental and operational facilities, strong variability in moisture, and active convection. CIMMS scientists helped design and supervise the construction of the SMART-Radar, a C-band dual polarization Doppler radar that was deployed during the experiment. Other CIMMS scientists collected data using mobile mesonets to study the role of storm initiation along various boundaries.

SCIENTIFIC HONORS, INNOVATION, AND ACTIVITY

A current CIMMS employee (Daphne Zaras) and a previous CIMMS employee (Michael Kay) each received a 2002 NOAA Silver Medal Award for their work with Dr. Harold Brooks of NSSL. Ms. Zaras and Mr. Kay worked with Dr. Brooks (NSSL) to develop web-based applications that would display the probability of severe weather across the United States through the year. This system provides the first ever, highly-accurate and accessible estimates of long-term threats from tornadoes, thunderstorm winds, and large hail on any day anywhere in the contiguous United States.

A CIMMS employee, Dr. Zhong Qui, was recognized as the NOAA Team Member of the Month for September 2002. The award states that “As a key member of a team responsible for establishing software architecture and design to help the National Weather Service improve its capability in areas of severe weather detection and warnings, Zack demonstrated scientific and engineering innovation, technical leadership and mentoring skills. His research and insight have been pivotal in the success of the Open Radar Product Generator Project, designed to upgrade a system nearing obsolescence and unable to accommodate new and important science.”

Two CIMMS students received poster presentation awards at the 2002 AMS Severe Local Storms Conference. The poster of Kevin Scharfenberg, a former graduate student and now full time CIMMS employee, was chosen as the “Outstanding Student Poster Presentation”; it was entitled “Polarimetric Radar Observations of a Downburst-Producing Thunderstorm during STEPS.” Valerie McCoy received Honorable Mention for her student poster presentation entitled “Using a GIS to Compare the May 3, 1999 Oklahoma City Tornado Damage Path to WSR-88D Signatures.”

Dr. Jeff Trapp received a 2002 NOAA/OAR Scientific Paper of the Year Award for a chapter he co-authored with Drs. Robert Davies-Jones (NSSL) and Howie Bluestein (OU/SOM) entitled “Tornadoes and Tornadic Storms”. This chapter appeared in the American Meteorological Society’s Monograph on Severe Convective Storms.

In April 2002, CIMMS Director Peter J. Lamb received a D.Sc. degree from the University of Canterbury (New Zealand) for his published research in Climate Science. His submission was entitled “Contributions to the ‘Climate Revolution’ -- Investigations of Regional Climate Variability, Predictability, and Applications”.

Several CIMMS employees working at NSSL received an NWS Appreciation Award “for outstanding support on the ORPG Project.”

Ms. Keli Tarp was awarded the NOAA Administrator’s Award “for successfully promoting the NOAA/NWS mission and helping save lives by educating the public of the hazards of severe weather.”

Two CIMMS Fellows were honored by the American Meteorological Society at its 2002 Annual Meeting. Dr. Kenneth C. Crawford received the Cleveland Abe Award for Distinguished Services to Atmospheric Sciences by an Individual “for nearly 40 years of visionary service as forecaster, researcher, teacher, and mentor dedicated to building bridges between operational and research meteorology.” Dr. John T. Snow received the Charles E. Anderson Award “for outstanding efforts in fostering programs and institutional relationships that enhance diversity within the atmospheric and related sciences.”

Four important research thrusts during 2002 are now highlighted:

Improving Numerical Guidance for Mesoscale Forecasting
CIMMS scientists continued to run an experimental, research version of NCEP’s Eta model. Our model configuration differs from the operational version in that it uses the Kain-Fritsch convective parameterization and higher-order, reduced-magnitude horizontal diffusion. It also uses somewhat coarser grid spacing, yet the different convective parameterization and diffusion algorithm allow this version of the Eta to produce finer scale structures than the operational model, in spite of its coarser grid. The differences in effective resolution have been quantified using spectral analysis techniques. For example, the spectral energy of Eta model precipitation features begins to fall below that of other models with comparable grid spacing at wavelengths below about 200 km. This analysis technique confirms the conclusions drawn from visual comparisons of output from the Eta model with other models of comparable grid spacing. The Eta tends to produce relatively smooth convective rainfall patterns that seem inconsistent with its comparatively high-resolution grid. Important questions that remain to be answered include 1) whether the smoothing evident in the Eta rainfall patterns results primarily from low-order horizontal diffusion or from the Betts-Miller-Janjic convective parameterization, and 2) whether the more detailed structures provided by experimental models offer more valuable guidance to forecasters. These issues will be investigated in collaboration with forecasters from the NWS/NCEP Storm Prediction Center.
Implementation of CIMMS Stratiform Cloud Parameterization into a Regional Forecast Model
A case study of summer season planetary boundary layer cloud was simulated by CIMMS scientists using the CIMMS stratiform cloud parameterization in COAMPS (Coupled Ocean/Atmosphere Mesoscale Prediction System - U.S. Navy). Results using a horizontal grid of 2 km showed a strong diurnal cycle and fair agreement with liquid water path. The finer the model resolution, the more important it was to use a more realistic microphysical parameterization. When drizzle processes were included, the model produced a transition from a well-mixed boundary layer topped by unbroken stratocumulus into a more potentially unstable, convective boundary layer regime. The transition produced is the mesoscale model analogue to the drizzle-induced cloud breakup demonstrated in large eddy simulation studies. The convective regime contains appreciable vertical velocity, linked to a weak decoupling of the cloud and subcloud layers, with the characteristic of an ensemble of cumulus updrafts. The results of the study demonstrate the potential of the CIMMS cloud physics parameterization in improving regional forecasting of stratocumulus cloud systems.
North Atlantic Climate Variability on Different Timescales
CIMMS scientists have investigated the seasonal/monthly signal of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), the dominant mode of atmospheric variability over the North Atlantic, over different timescales with a focus on identifying coherent behavior across calendar months. These coherences might indicate seasonal coordination between the atmosphere and boundary forcing by the ocean/cryosphere. Seasonal coordination has recently been proposed as a feedback mechanism to enable coupling between the high-frequency atmosphere and the other (low-frequency) components of the North Atlantic climate system. If such coordination exists, it would enhance the predictability of the NAO and its influential impact on regional climate. To address the seasonal aspects of the NAO signal, the above work’s results are based on a new mobile NAO index that better captures its seasonality by following the seasonal migration of the centers of action. Results include documentation of the strength of the monthly NAO signal and persistence across consecutive months over interannual, decadal, and interdecadal timescales. The work also investigates the existence of an internal seasonal oscillation that would allow for long-range seasonal predictability. The temporal variability or non-stationarity of the NAO signal was explored through wavelet analysis.
Polarimetric Radar Development
Several years of effort by CIMMS scientists at NSSL on the NOAA Research WSR-88D Radar culminated in the generation and display of dual polarization data during late spring 2002. The proposed polarization scheme uses simultaneous transmission and reception of horizontally and vertically polarized echoes. For expediency, the system was configured from several autonomous subsystems, including a custom IF offset generator and the Sigmet RVP& processor. Software was developed to transfer Sigmet data onto the local area network so that it could be further manipulated to produce hydrometeor classes and rain amounts. These products were then provided to NWS forecasters for evaluation. Polarimetric algorithms to process the raw data and generate hydrometeor classification and rainfall estimation products were developed for the CIMMS Warning Decision Support System-Integrated Information (WDSS-II) research display system. During the spring of 2002, polarimetric radar data were collected for several precipitation systems.

EXTERNAL FUNDING AND PUBLICATIONS

During 2002, the external research funding for CIMMS approached $12 million, which constituted 20 percent of the total external research funding for the OU Norman Campus. In addition to substantial support from NOAA, funding was received from several other federal agencies (NSF, ONR, DOE), the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, the World Meteorological Organization, and the Williams Companies. Some of the NOAA funding emanated originally from other federal agencies (State Department, USAID, FAA, DoD) and the Salt River Project (Phoenix, AZ).

This funding supported research that was reported in 40 refereed journal articles (published or accepted for publication) and many other articles that appeared in conference and workshop Proceedings.