Theses and Dissertations - Department of Atmospheric Science
Recent Submissions
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Health-relevant pollutants in US landscape fire smoke: abundance, health impacts, and influence on indoor and outdoor air quality
Landscape (wild, prescribed, and agricultural) fires have a significant impact on air quality in the United States (US). As anthropogenic emissions decline and emissions from landscape fires increase across the coming ... -
Understanding the role of ocean dynamics in climate variability
The ocean plays a key role in regulating Earth's mean climate, both because of its massive heat capacity, but also its heat transport by slow-moving circulations and other dynamics. In principle, fluctuations in such ocean ... -
Nationwide decadal source apportionment of PM2.5 with a focus on iron
Fine particulate matter pollution (PM2.5) has detrimental effects on human health, visibility, and the environment. One component of PM2.5, aerosol-phase iron, also has a multi-faceted effect on climate. In its largely ... -
Mineral dust lofting and interactions with cold pools
Convective dust storms, or haboobs, form when strong surface winds loft loose soils in convective storm outflow boundaries. Haboobs are a public safety hazard and can cause a near instantaneous loss of visibility, inimical ... -
Influence of cloud radiative effects on hydrologic sensitivity and variability, The
The global-mean precipitation change in response to CO2-forced warming, normalized by global-mean surface warming, is referred to as the hydrologic sensitivity. It is estimated at 1-3% K-1, much lower than the rate of ... -
Using GOES-16 ABI data to detect convection, estimate latent heating, and initiate convection in a high resolution model
Convective-scale data assimilation has received more attention in recent years as spatial resolution of forecast models has become finer and more observation data are available at such fine scale. Significant amounts of ... -
Trends in regional atmospheric water cycles across ocean basins diagnosed using multiple products
The importance of water within the earth system, especially its direct impacts on weather and climate through its presence and transport in the atmosphere, cannot be overstated. Accordingly, it is critical to obtain an ... -
Links between atmospheric cloud radiative effects and tropical circulations
Atmospheric cloud radiative effects (ACRE) quantify the radiative heating or cooling due to clouds within the atmosphere. In this study, a framework is developed with which to analyze the ways that ACRE impact large-scale ... -
Analyzing the detection efficiency of the Geostationary Lightning Mapper in isolated convection
The Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) flying on GOES-16 and GOES-17 has provided near-hemispheric lightning detection for nearly two years. Since operation began, several attempts have been made to compare flash rate ... -
Quantifying internal climate variability and its changes using large-ensembles of climate change simulations
Increasing temperatures over the last 50 years have led to a multitude of studies on observed and future impacts on surface climate. However, any changes on the mean need to be placed in the context of its variability to ... -
Towards using neural networks for geoscientific discovery
How can we use computational methods to extract physically meaningful patterns from geoscientific data? This question has been asked in some form for decades within the geoscientific community, with many landmark discoveries ... -
On intensity change and the effects of shortwave radiation on tropical cyclone rainbands
In this dissertation, the effects of shortwave radiation and the diurnal cycle of radiation on tropical cyclone rainbands are explored. In order to improve short term forecasts of tropical cyclone intensity and size, a ... -
Environmental controls and aerosol impacts on tropical sea breeze convection
Nearly half of the world's human population resides within 150 km of the ocean, and this coastal population is expected to continue increasing over the next several decades. The accurate prediction of convection and its ... -
Quantifying and understanding current and future links between tropical convection and the large-scale circulation
Tropical deep convection plays an important role in the variability of the global circulation. The Madden Julian Oscillation (MJO) is a large tropical organized convective system that propagates eastward along the equator. ... -
Cloud property retrievals using polarimetric radar: untangling signals of pristine ice and snow
Ice and mixed phase clouds are critical components of Earth's climate system via their strong controls on global precipitation distribution and radiation budget. Their microphysical properties have been characterized ... -
Airborne radar quality control and analysis of the rapid intensification of Hurricane Michael (2018)
Improvements made by the National Hurricane Center (NHC) in track forecasts have outpaced advances in intensity forecasting. Rapid intensification (RI), an increase of at least 30 knots in the maximum sustained winds of a ... -
Daytime evolution of oxidized reactive nitrogen in western U.S. wildfire smoke plumes: in situ and satellite observations
The Western Wildfire Experiment for Cloud Chemistry, Aerosol Absorption, and Nitrogen (WE-CAN) deployed the NSF/NCAR C-130 aircraft in summer 2018 across the western U.S. to sample wildfire smoke during its first day of ... -
Intraseasonal and diurnal variations of precipitation features observed during DYNAMO
The diurnal cycle (DC) of rainfall over the tropical oceans and within the Madden–Julian oscillation (MJO) has been investigated in numerous studies, but there has been limited research on how the DC of precipitation and ... -
Synoptic through mesoscale environments of South American thunderstorms
Subtropical South America east of the Andes Mountains is a global hotspot for deep convection owing to frequent mesoscale convective systems (MCSs) that contribute to over 90% of the region's rainfall and produce severe ... -
Investigating emissions and evolution of reactive nitrogen in western U.S. wildfire smoke plumes
Wildfires are an important source of reactive nitrogen (Nr) to the atmosphere. Large wildfires are becoming more frequent in the western U.S. and smoke from large western U.S. wildfires is becoming a proportionately larger ...
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