| NSF Org: |
AGS Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | August 31, 2009 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | July 6, 2012 |
| Award Number: | 0902197 |
| Award Instrument: | Continuing Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Anjuli Bamzai
AGS Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences GEO Directorate for Geosciences |
| Start Date: | September 1, 2009 |
| End Date: | August 31, 2015 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $869,791.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $869,791.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
FY 2012 = $234,289.00 |
| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
1251 MEMORIAL DR CORAL GABLES FL US 33146-2509 (305)421-4089 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
1251 MEMORIAL DR CORAL GABLES FL US 33146-2509 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): |
Hydrologic Sciences, Climate & Large-Scale Dynamics, MULTI-SCALE MODELING, NEON-Concept & Development |
| Primary Program Source: |
01001213DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT |
| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.050 |
ABSTRACT
Numerical experiments of tropical deforestation with general circulation models (GCMs) and Regional Climate Models (RCMs) show the importance of land-cover teleconnections in the climate system but ignore multiscale feedbacks of regional-global and Eco-Hydro-Climatological (EHC) processes. In parallel to these scientific investigations, the evaluation and improvement of the Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Model (OLAM) has continued. Unlike typical GCMs, OLAM is uniquely designed to simulate multiscale interactions with its unstructured grid that can change resolution in any part of the global domain, as well as its fully interactive vegetation dynamics parameterization. Both features are essential for understanding the intricate processes that govern land-atmosphere interactions (including vegetation dynamics, clouds, precipitation and radiative processes) in a changing climate.
This project will understand and quantify the global EHC changes under a changing climate driven by increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and deforestation of tropical regions. Specifically, the investigators use OLAM to address two main issues: (i) What are the impacts of evolving deforestation in the Amazon basin on the multiscale EHC processes and feedbacks (including fires and other ecosystem disturbances), can we explain them and quantify them? (ii) Are these impacts affected by climate change (triggered by increasing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide)? In the numerical experiments to be conducted for this investigation, deforestation patterns will be derived from socio-economical scenarios of the Amazon basin development, and the carbon dioxide scenarios adopted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)will be used.
The work will contribute to the evaluation and improvement of OLAM, which will help advance future climate research and operational weather prediction. It will be disseminated though seminars, lectures, teaching, and standard forums of publication. OLAM fulfills the criteria of a "community" model as it is freely available and supported. A post-doc will be trained and supported.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
The purpose of this project was to investigate regional and global land-atmosphere interactions at multiple scales. Its ultimate goal was to understand and quantify the Eco-Hydro-Climatological (EHC) changes in all continental regions under a changing climate driven by increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration and deforestation of tropical regions.
We conducted this investigation with the Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Model (OLAM), a new generation of Earth System Model capable of simulating simultaneously the global climate and the regional climate of one or more specific regions of interest. This investifation was aimed at addressing two main scientific issues: (1) What are the impacts of evolving deforestation in the Amazon basin on the multiscale EHC processes and feedbacks, and can we explain them and quantify them? (2) Are these impacts affected by climate change (triggered by increasing atmospheric concentrations of CO2)? The proposed numerical experiments were designed to utilize deforestation patterns derived from socio-economical scenarios of the Amazon basin development and CO2 scenarios adopted by IPCC.
This project was motivated by previous global and regional investigations of the EHC effects of Amazon deforestation and global atmospheric CO2 increases. In a prior study, we had showed that global "teleconnections" (i.e., effects observed far away from the location of the climate disturbance - a good example of such teleconnection is the impact of an unusual warming of the sea surface in the eastern Pacific ocean, known as the El Niño effect that is felt at many locations around the planet) from land cover change in tropical regions were identified at almost all latitudes with various climate models. Using high-resolution regional climate models, we also revealed regional teleconnections inside the Amazon basin. Deforesting the basin even partially was found to cause a significant decrease of precipitation in Western and Central Amazonia, especially during El Niño events, but to moderately increase precipitation in Eastern and Southern Amazonia. However, these regional experiments ignored the feedbacks between regional and global scale processes because of inherent limitations of regional modeling. They also ignored the radiative effects of increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations, and the synergetic effects of EHC feedbacks under changing CO2.
The development of OLAM by our research team made it possible to unify the global and regional investigations. With this new investigative tool, deforestation in Amazonia and its local and regional impacts can be represented at high resolution as in regional simulations, while regional-global interactions and global teleconnections can simultaneously be represented in a fully interactive modeling framework. This NSF project was constructed around this new modeling capability and aimed at further exploring and understanding the impacts of Amazon deforestation and global CO2 increase both at regional and global scales.
Multiple new discoveries were made as part of this project. On the engineering side, we considerably improved OLAM so that the results of our own investigation would be more realistic and credible and, not less importantly, the scientific community interested in using OLAM for their own research projects would benefit from our improvements. A few scientific publications describing these improvements and their impacts on the simulated regional and global climate were described in high-quality, peer-reviewed journal articles. On the scientific side, we discovered new potential impacts of Amazon deforestation outside of the Amazon basin (e.g., a significant decrease of precipitation in the northwestern continental US and extreme cold events in southern South America, with significant repercussions on the agricultural productivity of these ...
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