The state of weather, water and climate services in the U.S. and strategic challenges for the next decade: the perspective from the American Meteorological Society and U.S. National Weather Service

<p>This keynote presentation will discuss several key applications and operational systems in the U.S. National Weather Service (NWS) and how they fit in with the broader mission of providing science-based weather, water and climate services to the nation. In addition, the future evolution of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) and NWS will be discussed as it relates to future goals and priorities related to people, science, technology, operational concepts and practices, and partnerships between government/public sector, the private sector, and academia. Also, in his role as the current President of the American Meteorological Society (AMS), Dr. Farrar will address the theme for the 2022 AMS annual meeting, "Environmental Security: weather, water and climate for a more secure world", which will explore the national and human security impacts from extreme weather and climate events and intersections with health, energy, food, and water security.</p>

Characterization of the morning transition from downslope to upslope winds and its connection with the nocturnal inversion breakup at the foot of a gentle slope.

<p>Thermally driven winds observed in complex terrain are characterized by a daily cycle dominated by two main phases: a diurnal phase in which winds blow upslope (anabatic), and a nocturnal one in which they revert their direction and blow downslope (katabatic). This alternating pattern also implies two transition phases, following sunrise and sunset respectively. </p><p>Here we study the upslope component of the slope wind with a focus on the morning transition from the katabatic to the anabatic flow based on data from the MATERHORN experiment, performed in Salt Lake Desert (Utah) between Fall 2012 and Spring 2013 (Fernando et al, 2015). </p><p>First of all, a criterion for the selection of purely thermally driven slope wind days is proposed and adopted to select five case studies, taken from both the spring and the autumn periods. Then, the analysis allowed the investigation of the driving mechanisms through the connection with the patterns of erosion of the nocturnal inversion in the valley bed at the foot of the slope under analysis. Three main patterns of erosion of the inversion in the particular topography of a gentle and isolated slope are identified: a) erosion due to upward growth of a convective boundary layer, b) erosion due to descent of the inversion top, and c) erosion due to a mix of the two previous mechanisms. The three patterns are then linked to the initiation of the transition by two different and competing mechanisms: mixing from above (top-down dilution) and surface heating from below. Finally, an analytical model for the description of slope circulation (Zardi and Serafin, 2015) has been used to diagnose the time of the transition.</p><p>Zardi, D. and S. Serafin, 2015: An analytic solution for daily-periodic thermally-driven slope flow. Quart. J. Roy. Meteor. Soc., 141, 1968–1974. </p><p>Fernando, H. J. S., Pardyjak, E. R., Di Sabatino, S., Chow, F. K., De Wekker, S. F. J., Hoch, S. W, Zsedrovits, T., 2015, The MATERHORN: Unraveling the intricacies of mountain weather. <em>Bulletin Of The American Meteorological Society</em>, 96, 1945-1967. </p>

"Look at the Sky and Tell the Weather" The art and science of Eric Cloane

<p>Eric Sloane was a 20th century artist who created a unique style and provided interesting, idiosyncratic, and informative images of clouds. He was the author of many books, but also created massive cloud murals, including one on an entire wall at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum in Washington, DC. Sloane became interested in clouds when he flew as a passenger with some of the pioneers of aviation, including Amelia Earhart and Wiley Post. He also became weatherwise through his early employment as a painter of advertisements on yje sides of  barns, allowing him to observe many aspects of weather. Sloane received many awards for his contributions to science, including a special award from the American Meteorological Society in 185 for  “for pioneering contributions to public awareness of clouds, their beauty, complexity, and scientific importnace; for an artistic legacy to all who feel a sense of wonder when they look at a cloud filled sky.”</p>

Modeling the air pollutant concentration near a cement plant co-processing wastes

In this study, we conducted full life-cycle studies on pollutants in a cement plant co-processing hazardous waste (HW) via the combined use of thermodynamic equilibrium calculations and the American Meteorological Society/Environmental Protection Regulatory Model.

Dispersion Effects of Particulate Lead (Pb) from the Stack of a Lead Battery Recycling Plant

The contribution of emissions from the stack of a lead battery recycling plant to atmospheric lead concentrations and, eventually, to the topsoil of the surrounding area, were studied. A Gaussian dispersion model, of the American Meteorological Society/United States Environmental Protection Agency Regulatory Model, (AERMOD) was used to determine atmospheric total suspended particulate lead dispersion, which originated from stack emissions, over the wider study area. Stack emission parameters were obtained from online measurements of the industry control sensors. AERMOD simulated two scenarios for four calendar years, 2015 to 2018, one for the typical stack measured operating conditions and one for the legal limit operating conditions (emissions from the stack set by legislation to 0.5 mg m−3). Deposition fluxes modeled the input of atmospheric total suspended particulate Pb to the topsoil of the area. X-ray fluorescence (XRF) analyses were used to determine lead concentrations in the topsoil. The modeling results were compared with topsoil of six inhabited locations downwind from the stack in the direction of the prevailing winds to estimate the influence of lead deposition on topsoil near the industrial area.

DROP: a DROught Probabilistic near-real time monitoring tool

<p>Accurate and timely information of evolving drought conditions is crucial to take early actions and alleviate their impacts. A number of drought datasets is already available. They cover the last three decades and provide data in near-real time (using different sources), but they are all "deterministic" (i.e. single realisation), and data partly differ between them.  Here we first evaluate the quality of long-term and continuous climate data for timely meteorological drought monitoring considering the Standardized Precipitation Index. Then, by applying an ensemble approach, similarly to weather/climate prediction studies, we develop DROP (DROught Probabilistic; Turco et al. 2020), a new global land gridded dataset to monitor meteorological drought that gathers an ensemble of observation-based datasets providing near-real time estimates with associated uncertainty. This approach makes the most of the available information and brings it to the end-users. DROP, publicly available at https://drop.shinyapps.io/DROP/, is operationally updated every monthly and provides drought information in near-real time, i.e., up to the previous month. The high-quality and probabilistic information provided by DROP is useful for monitoring applications, and may help to develop global policy decisions on adaptation priorities in alleviating drought impacts, especially in countries where meteorological monitoring is still challenging.</p><p> </p><p>References</p><p>Turco M, Jerez S, Donat M, Toreti M, Vicente-Serrano S M, Doblas-Reyes, F J. (2020). A global probabilistic dataset for monitoring meteorological droughts. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. Under review.</p><p> </p><p>Acknowledgments</p><p>M.T. has received funding from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities through the project PREDFIRE (RTI2018-099711-J-I00).</p><p> </p>