| NSF Org: |
AGS Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | September 14, 2007 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | September 14, 2007 |
| Award Number: | 0739846 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Walter A. Robinson
AGS Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences GEO Directorate for Geosciences |
| Start Date: | September 15, 2007 |
| End Date: | August 31, 2008 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $29,982.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $29,982.00 |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
21 N PARK ST STE 6301 MADISON WI US 53715-1218 (608)262-3822 |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
21 N PARK ST STE 6301 MADISON WI US 53715-1218 |
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Performance Congressional District: |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.050 |
ABSTRACT
This is a grant under a Climate Variability and Predictability (CLIVAR) Program pilot project called DRICOMP, for the Drought in Coupled Models Project, which focuses on making initial explorations into the mechanisms of drought as they are represented in the output of global climate models and on attempting to assess the reliability of these models in simulating drought.
The objective of this project is to attempt to understand and determine the role of land-atmosphere coupling in perpetuating drought in climate models and in observations. Because soil moisture anomalies have large persistence, regions with strong (positive) soil moisture-precipitation coupling will have this persistence imparted to the precipitation variability; this will act to perpetuate both droughts and wet spells. The effect of soil moisture on precipitation is extremely variable among current climate models.
This research represents a first exploratory effort to address several important questions: are climate models with strong land-atmosphere coupling more likely to have longer and more intense droughts than models with weak coupling, are regions of strong land-atmosphere coupling more likely to suffer droughts of long duration compared to other regions, and are climate models with large land-atmosphere coupling more likely to experience longer and more intense droughts in response to climate change?
The principal investigators will analyze the climate models participating in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) fourth assessment report and the high-resolution model datasets that are part of the North American Regional Climate Assessment Program (NARCAP). For observations they will use the North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR), a retrospective Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) model simulation of the land surface hydrological cycle, global data from the Global Land Data Assimilation Systems (GLDAS) project and data from the Southern Great Plains Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) site. They will apply lagged correlation and regression analyses to quantify the effect of local soil moisture and evaporation on later precipitation.
Three drought indices, based on precipitation, soil moisture or runoff, will be defined. These three variables are used in the literature as the basis for defining "meteorological", "agricultural" and "hydrological" droughts. For each month, location and dataset, they will calculate monthly percentiles of occurrence for the entire period of record. They will relate the strength of land-atmosphere coupling to the duration and intensity of droughts.
Broader impacts of the studies are in their contribution to assessing the reliability of climate models in projecting future droughts. The project will provide partial support for a graduate student.
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