Monitoring and Modeling the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: A Record‐Breaking Enterprise

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Liu, Y., A. MacFadyen, Z.‐ G. Ji, and R. H. Weisberg (Eds.) (2011). Monitoring and Modeling the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: A Record‐Breaking Enterprise. Geophysical Monograph Series, 195.

Monitoring and Modeling the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: A Record-Breaking Enterprise presents an overview of some of the significant work that was conducted in immediate response to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.

Airborne Ocean Surveys of the Loop Current Complex From NOAA WP‐3D in Support of Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

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Shay, L. K., B. Jaimes, J. Brewster, P. Meyers, C. McCaskill, E. Uhlhorn, F. Marks, G. R. Halliwell, (2011). Airborne Ocean Surveys of the Loop Current Complex From NOAA WP‐3D in Support of Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. Geophysical Monograph Series.

At the time of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion, the Loop Current (LC), a warm ocean current in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM), extended to 27.5 N just south of the rig. To measure the regional scale variability of the LC, oceanographic missions were flown on a NOAA WP-3D research aircraft to obtain ocean structural data during the spill and provide thermal structure profiles to ocean forecasters aiding in the oil spill disaster at seven to ten day intervals.

Characteristics of Correlation Statistics Between Droplet Radius and Optical Thickness of Warm Clouds Simulated by a Three‐dimensional Regional‐scale Spectral Bin Microphysics Cloud Model

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Sato, Y., K. Suzuki, T. Iguchi, I.‐J. Choi, H. Kadowaki, T. Nakajima (2012). Characteristics of Correlation Statistics Between Droplet Radius and Optical Thickness of Warm Clouds Simulated by a Three‐dimensional Regional‐scale Spectral Bin Microphysics Cloud Model. Journal of Atmospheric Science, 69, 484–503.

Three-dimensional downscaling simulations using a spectral bin microphysics (SBM) model were conducted to investigate the effects of aerosol amount and dynamical stabilities of the atmosphere on the correlation statistics between cloud droplet effective radius (RE) and cloud optical thickness (COT) of warm clouds off the coast of California.

Statistical Prediction of the Storm Surge Associated with Cool Weather Storms at The Battery, New York

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Salmun, H., A. Molod, K. Wisniewska and F. Buonaiuto (2011). Statistical Prediction of the Storm Surge Associated with Cool Weather Storms at The Battery, New York. Journal Applied Climate and Meteorology, 50(2), 273–282.

The winter and early spring weather in the New York City metropolitan region is highly influenced by extratropical storm systems, and the storm surge associated with these systems is one of the main factors contributing to inundation of coastal areas. This study demonstrates the predictive capability of an established statistical relationship between the “storm maximum” storm surge associated with an extratropical storm system and the “average maximum” significant wave

Estimating Evapotranspiration Using an Observation Based Terrestrial Water Budget

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Rodell, M., E.B. McWilliams, J.S. Famiglietti, H.K. Beaudoing, and J. Nigro (2011). Estimating Evapotranspiration Using an Observation Based Terrestrial Water Budget. Hydrological Process, 25, 4082‐4092.

Evapotranspiration (ET) is difficult to measure at the scales of climate models and climate variability. While satellite retrieval algorithms do exist, their accuracy is limited by the sparseness of in situ observations available for calibration and validation, which themselves may be unrepresentative of 500 m and larger scale satellite footprints and grid pixels.

The Effect of Satellite Observing System Changes on MERRA Water and Energy Fluxes

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Robertson, F.R., M.G. Bosilovich, J. Chen and T.L. Miller (2011). The Effect of Satellite Observing System Changes on MERRA Water and Energy Fluxes. Journal of Climate.

Like all reanalysis efforts the Modern Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA) must contend with an inhomogeneous observing network. Here we examine the effects of the two most obvious observing system epoch changes, the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit-A (AMSU-A) series in late 1998 and, to a lesser extent, the earlier advent of Special Sensor Microwave Imager (SSMI) in late 1987.

MERRA ‐ NASA’s Modern‐Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications

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Rienecker, M., and A.M. Molod (2011). MERRA ‐ NASA’s Modern‐Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications. Journal of Climate, 24, 3624‐3648.

The Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA) was
undertaken by NASA’s Global Modeling and Assimilation Office with two primary
objectives: to place observations from NASA’s Earth Observing System satellites in a climate context, and to improve upon the hydrologic cycle represented in earlier
generations of reanalyses.

Climatic Effects on Lake Basins. Part I: Modeling Tropical Lake Levels

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Ricko, M., J., J. Carton, and C.M. Birkett (2011). Climatic Effects on Lake Basins. Part I: Modeling Tropical Lake Levels. Journal of Climate, 24, 2983‐2999.

The availability of satellite estimates of rainfall and lake levels offers exciting new opportunities to estimate the hydrologic properties of lake systems.