Knowledge Transfer

Third Term Renewal Proposal,
July 1, 1997 - June 30, 2002

Knowledge Transfer


Knowledge Transfer and Linkages to Other Sectors (1994-1997)


The NSF Site Review Panel visited C4 on December 4-5, 1995, and reported:
"The Panel commends C4 for its significant activities in knowledge transfer and application, which directly benefit federally-sponsored laboratories and other academic climate research centers. The open and timely manner in which C4 shares its research and research tools with the broader community of climate scientists is excellent. C4 provides a very good example of the capacity of an S&T Center to carry out fundamental research in the broad context of ideas, discoveries and knowledge transfer. For example, a Canadian convective parameterization scheme (modified with new knowledge gained from C4's CEPEX and using the C4-developed tool CIDS) was applied by C4 scientists to the National Center for Atmospheric Research's Community Climate Model (CCM). This was accomplished in a little over two-years after the field measurements were made, a fraction of the time it usually takes for observations from a field program to have an impact on GCM parameterization. This modified parameterization scheme has produced significant improvements in the CCM, which is used by many climate scientists and which will serve as the atmospheric component of a new Climate System Model, being developed with US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) funding. This success fits well the USGCRP paradigm of observations, leading to analysis and understanding leading to improved predictive modeling and benefits to society."

Outreach to Mission Agencies and Research Institutions
The influence of C4 research programs in the past five years was summarized in "Our Changing Planet, The FY 1996 U.S. Global Change Research Program." In the section on "Highlights of Recent USGCRP Research Results," the committees involved answered the question, "What has been Learned About the Influence of Clouds and Other Feedbacks on Climate?", by citing two research projects in which C4 scientists participated or led.

"New discrepancy noted between predicted and observed absorption of solar radiation by clouds", or the research in the so called "excess absorption by clouds" involving V. Ramanathan, J.T. Kielh, F.P.J. Valero, G. Zhang, B. Subasilar, W. Conant, L. Shi, and others who have collaborated with C4 such as R. Cess (State University of New York, Stoney Brooks) and P. Pilewski (NASA-Ames Research Center); and

"High clouds found to be important to the stabilization of sea surface temperatures": this is essentially the results of the Central Equatorial Pacific Experiment (CEPEX), led by C4, with V. Ramanathan as the Chief Scientist.

General Circulation Model (GCM) improvement
Knowledge gained through combining observational and modeling studies using CEPEX, TOGA and other in situ surface data enabled improvements of the NCAR Community Climate Model. In collaboration with the NCAR climate modeling group, C4 members (G. Zhang, J. Kiehl and P. Rasch) implemented a new convective parameterization scheme developed by Zhang and McFarlane (1995). Many significant improvements in simulating the surface climate of the tropical Pacific and Indian Oceans have been adopted in the standard CCM3. This accomplishment occurred approximately two years after the CEPEX field measurements were complete, a fraction of the time usually necessary for observations from a field program to impact GCM parameterization.

The new convection scheme reduces several long standing systematic errors in the simulation of surface climate parameters by the NCAR model, including surface evaporation in the western Pacific warm pool, and precipitation in the western Pacific, Indian monsoon and central American monsoon. Specifically, precipitation in the Indian monsoon is more realistically simulated in CCM3, both in magnitude and phase. Also, precipitation maximum in major tropical convective regimes is reduced in CCM3 to give closer agreement with the observations, and the precipitation distribution is smoother. The previous NCAR CCM has been known to produce excessive surface evaporation over the warm pool (Kiehl et al., 1995), yet the new simulation agrees more with the observations (Zhang and McPhaden, 1995; Ramanathan et al., 1995). Even a relatively low evaporation zone over the equatorial Pacific observed in the climatology is better simulated in the new version. Significant improvements were also made in the simulation of the surface wind stress.

The NCAR CCM, used by many climate scientists, serves as the atmospheric component of a new Climate System Model under development with US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) funding. Deparment of Energy-Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (DOE-ARM) C4 members (V. Ramanathan and G. Zhang) are involved in research sponsored by the DOE ARM program. Use of the CEPEX data has been instrumental in several significant achievements, including the adoption of a new convective parameterization (Zhang and McFarlane, 1995) in the NCAR CCM3; the identification of excess solar absorption in cloudy atmosphere; and the development of a new understanding of the role of surface evaporation in maintaining the warm pool sea surface temperature.

E. Boer and V. Ramanathan (Boer and Ramanathan, 1996) developed an algorithm to determine the life time of convective-stratiform cloud systems and the size distribution and properties of the individual clouds that compose each system. If validated using observational data, this approach could provide a strong constraint on fundamental cloud statistics for GCM cloud parameterization and simulation. Preliminary application of the algorithm using one month of satellite data from CEPEX has yielded some very promising results. For example, deep convective cloud systems with cloud shields greater than 104 km2 are found to be responsible for more than 60% of the total daily cloud reflected solar energy.

Department of Energy-ARM Enhanced Shortwave Experiment (DOE-ARESE)
C4 investigators have been closely involved with the planning, execution, and analysis of the ARM Enhanced Shortwave Experiment. Members of the ARESE science team, F.P.J. Valero, ARESE Chief Scientist, W.D. Collins and J.T. Kiehl, guided the experiments for this project. W.D. Collins attended portions of the field phase, and served as both mission scientist and chief scientist for several of the ARESE fight missions.

In collaboration with R. Cess (SUNY), M. Zhang (SUNY), and F.P.J. Valero (SIO), C4 investigators have four submitted or in preparation publications concerning ARESE.

Tropical Ocean Global Atmosphere/Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere Response Experiment (TOGA-COARE)
Using data from the TOGA TAO moored buoys for the period of 1991-93, scientists found that in the high SST regime (SST > 301 K), surface evaporation decreases with SST (Zhang and McPhaden, 1995). This result has led to some new understanding on the fundamental climate issue of what limits the tropical warm pool SST. The low evaporation at high SST is well related to the large-scale effect of convection on the surface circulation (Zhang et al. 1995).

NASA-Cloud and Earth's Radiant Energy System (NASA-CERES)
A. Inamdar and V. Ramanathan developed analysis techniques to monitor the planetary greenhouse effect using space-based radiometric observations and other correlative meteorological variables (Inamdar and Ramanathan, 1994; 1996). In particular, their techniques can be applied to data from the proposed Cloud and Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) instrument, a vital component of the NASA-EOS program. Further, their studies demonstrated how to use the potential of top-of-atmosphere measurements of the broadband and window fluxes (8 - 12 microns) from the CERES to understand the physics of the greenhouse effect and water vapor feedback in the earth's atmosphere. Data from different platforms in CEPEX were critical for validating some of these analytical techniques.

Indian Ocean Experiment (INDOEX), an International Outreach
The INDOEX program has attracted commitments from 45 institutions in 8 countries (Table 3). The total INDOEX budget could reach $20-25 million with possibly $8-9 million in support requested from U.S. agencies. For complete details of the program, please see the INDOEX Experimental Design Document submitted to NSF in June 1996.

Pre-INDOEX Activities
Pre-INDOEX activities provide opportunities for international collaborative efforts, specifically offering research opportunities for over three graduate students and their advisors.

Before conducting the Intensive Field Phase of INDOEX in the winter of 1999, several long term surface measurements will be collected, including surface solar radiation, aerosol composition and size distribution, and trace species and pollutant concentrations. Monitoring began with pre-INDOEX cruises by the NOAA R/V M. Baldrige in April, 1995 (please see detailed report from R. Dickerson in the C4 June 1996 Annual Report) and the Indian R/V Sagar Kanya (Cruise #109) in January 1996. The future cruise #120 of the R/V Sagar Kanya from December 26, 1996 through January 23, 1997, continues the pre- INDOEX experimental phase by incorporating a multi-institutional observing platform. Consistent with the previous cruises, Cruise #120 will collect:
* Boundary layer chemistry measurements and aerosol dry deposition rates (A.P. Mitra and K.S. Zalpuri, Indian National Physical Laboratory),
* Aerosol size distributions and extinction optical depths (A. Jayaraman, Indian Physical Research Laboratory), and
* Surface solar irradiance measurements for seven narrow and broad spectral regions (D. Lubin and W. Conant, SIO).

In addition, Cruise #120 will provide the following new measurements:
* Daily profiles of temperature and humidity to 25 km provided by the Mobile-CLASS balloon sounding system from National Center for Atmospheric Research (V. Ramanathan, SIO, A. Heymsfield, NCAR, and S. Raman of NC State Univ.),
* Cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) spectrometry measurements (G. Shaw and W. Cantrell, University of Alaska, and A. Heymsfield, NCAR),
* High volume aerosol samples measurements for sulfate isotopes (M. Thiemens and C. Lee, UCSD), and
* Aerosol sampling of Cl- (M. Wahlen, Geological Research Division, SIO).

Development of the C4 Integrated Data System (CIDS)
CIDS facilitates interdisciplinary research by providing a common world wide web interface to complex and heterogeneous data sets. Unlike other data base management systems, it automatically collocates and merges measurements from arbitrary sets of observing platforms or model output. A summary of CIDS Statistics demonstrates the widespread applicability of CIDS as well as the popularity of its high quality data sets (Table 4).

Originally developed to store CEPEX data, CIDS software now has been generalized to handle other data as well. Several programs import measurements from buoys, atmospheric soundings, ships, and aircraft. Results from NSF funded research on TOGA COARE have assisted C4 in developing other applications to incorporate GCM results into CIDS. Scientists now use CIDS to test NCAR CCM3 with CEPEX and COARE observations, and to develop a comprehensive data set for INDOEX from pre-INDOEX experiments and satellite observations. The availability of CIDS for INDOEX significantly lowers programming efforts normally associated with calculating derived quantities (e.g., cloud and aerosol radiative forcing) from heterogeneous sets of measurements.

Knowledge Transfer and Linkages to Other Sectors (1997-2002)


Outreach to Mission Agencies and Research Institutions
Outreach to DOE-ARM

In addition to the new FTS system at C4, several advanced spectral radiometric instruments, similar to the C4 FTS, are in routine operation at the ARM Southern Great Plains site (two of these, the AERI and SORTI, are also FTS systems). Because C4 and ARM collect their spectrographic data under different environmental conditions, they may pool this data to investigate solar absorption by clouds.


Outreach to NASA-TOMS
A collaborative effort proposed by Dr. Pawan K. Bhartia, Branch Head of the TOMS Project with NASA Goddard, could make TOMS data available to INDOEX. Additionally, NASA may establish a tropical ozone lidar at the INDOEX surface observation site. In turn, this data will be used to calibrate TOMS.

Outreach to NASA-CERES
C4 researchers are investigating spatial and temporal variations in atmospheric greenhouse forcing over land and water using NASA's CERES instrument. In the future, this study will be extended by using ground-based synoptic cloud reports to examine cloud radiative forcing at the top-of-the-atmosphere and at the surface.

Outreach to GOALS (NOAA Program)
At the INDOEX Workshop in Paris, 1996, Professor P. Webster of NOAA's GOALS recommended several topics for collaborative work between GOALS and INDOEX, including the heat balance of the Indian Ocean, and intra-seasonal transitions of monsoons and the southern ITCZ. Webster also proposed deploying research platforms, such as drone aircraft for flux measurements and buoys, across the Indian Ocean. The system would operate at least one year with intensive data collection during INDOEX and the northern summer monsoon in 1999.

Outreach to Industry
Industrial Outreach of the C4 Surface Observation Program

D. Lubin and J. Coakley, working with FLIR Systems, Inc. (FSI, Portland, Oregon) will develop an automated, surface-based infrared imager for characterizing cloud cover. The imager will be developed from an instrument manufactured by FSI for night vision and other infrared imaging applications. Such an instrument will augment the automated observing systems now used by the weather service and the FAA. In its implementation at the C4 site, this imager will provide observations to distinguish between single uniform or broken, and multiple cloud layers. This information will be combined with satellite observations to characterize conditions under which specific radiation field studies occur.

Industrial Outreach of the Advanced Satellite and Surface Remote Sensing Program
SeaSpace Corporation
(Dr. R. Bernstein) will establish strong ties with C4 in this mutually beneficial effort. C4 will purchase SeaSpace system for collecting satellite data during INDOEX. SeaSpace in turn will provide NOAA and GOES data over La Jolla for the CARPOS site. A SeaSpace scientist will be invited to participate in C4 meetings. J. Coakley and D. Lubin will combine the surface-based observations from CARPOS with satellite observations from NOAA overpasses and GOES multispectral imagery.


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