Author: Travis Swaim

On November 2-3, 2011,  both the Maryland and North Carolina divisions of CICS met in what was their 2nd Annual CICS Science Meeting at the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina. For two days, scientists from both groups collaborated and gave presentations on current climate models and initiatives as well as goals and policies of CICS. The Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites, better known as CICS, is made up of two distinct branches of the organization, one …

250 – Integration of FEWS-NET into the Land Information System
Principal Investigator(s): B. Wind

A USGS famine early warning system (FEWS-NET) drought model, Water Requirement Satisfaction Index (WRSI), stood to benefit from being integrated into NASA (Code 614.3) ‘s Land Information System (LIS), which is a software framework for high performance land surface modeling and data assimilation. LIS brings to bear a host of flexible modeling and computing capabilities for those models privileged enough to be integrated into the LIS framework. However, LIS is a general-purpose Fortran (LINUX/UNIX) batch-queue submission shell executable. Whereas, USGS’s most up-to-the-minute implementation of WRSI was a custom Visual Basic .Net (Windows) graphical user interactive (GUI) application. A phased conversion and integration process was required.

247 – GPM Algorithm Development
Principal Investigator(s): J. Munchak

The general objective is to develop a general framework and state-of-the-art algorithms to advance precipitation observations from space using combined information from active and passive microwave sensors. In particular, two areas of investigation have been selected: 1) determining the limits of detection of snowfall from passive-only microwave sensors; and 2) analyzing the sensitivity of the combined radar-radiometer algorithm to non-precipitation parameters such as cloud water and water vapor.

246 – GEOS-5 atmospheric modeling and diagnostics
Principal Investigator(s): A. Molod

An overarching goal of the GMAO atmospheric modeling effort is to develop a single atmospheric model suitable for data assimilation, weather forecasting and climate simulation. Climate simulation includes atmosphere only, coupled ocean atmosphere, and coupled chemistry-climate modes. The model’s collection of physical parameterizations is of central importance to the success of the GMAO’s modeling effort.

Part of this year’s effort was focused on the final model changes that led to improved atmosphere-ocean coupled climate simulations, and resulted in the release of the model to be used for decadal climate prediction. This year’s effort was also focused on the analysis and development of the model in data assimilation mode and at higher resolution.