| NSF Org: |
OPP Office of Polar Programs (OPP) |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | August 5, 2010 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | August 5, 2010 |
| Award Number: | 1023283 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
William J. Wiseman, Jr.
OPP Office of Polar Programs (OPP) GEO Directorate for Geosciences |
| Start Date: | September 1, 2010 |
| End Date: | August 31, 2015 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $543,203.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $543,203.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
4333 BROOKLYN AVE NE SEATTLE WA US 98195-1016 (206)543-4043 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
4333 BROOKLYN AVE NE SEATTLE WA US 98195-1016 |
| 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): | ANS-Arctic Natural Sciences |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| 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): | 47.078 |
ABSTRACT
Funds are provided to better understand how rapidly the extra summer heat absorbed in the Arctic Ocean in recent years is lost, where it goes, how precipitation patterns change, and what the feedbacks of these changes are on fall ice production. These objectives will be addressed through a series of carefully crafted regional atmospheric modeling studies. The Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model will be used in a domain covering the Arctic Ocean at a resolution of 60 km with a nested 20-km grid in the Pacific sector. Model evaluation will be performed using observations from SHEBA, Barrow, Eureka, and Tiksi as well as a new 2-m air temperature data set and a new compilation of quality-controlled radiosonde soundings. Lateral boundary conditions for the model will be taken from the ERA-Interim Reanalysis for the years 1989 ? 2010. Paired experiments will be run for the fall of each year (September ? December) in which the prescribed sea ice is set to either low-ice or high-ice conditions, defined as the 25th or 75th quantile of the observed ice concentration over the same period. The focus of study will be the difference for these paired runs in atmospheric properties such as temperature, stratification, precipitation, and the components of the heat budget of the atmospheric column. Composite analysis and heat budget calculations for different regions will be employed and the yearly difference fields will be related to the large-scale circulation as represented by the Arctic Oscillation. The implications of the different atmospheric conditions from the low-ice and high-ice runs will then be explored with a separate dynamic-thermodynamic Lagrangian ice model to determine if the ice growth in the fall and early winter is sufficient in the low-ice case to replenish the ice lost in the summer and if this replenishment has suffered in recent years due to winter warming. The results of this study will provide a first step in understanding the consequences of the dramatic and anomalous reductions in arctic sea ice extent observed in recent years.
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 primary objectives of the proposed research were to better understand how rapidly the extra summer heat absorbed in the Arctic Ocean in recent years is lost, where it goes, how precipitation patterns change, and what the feedbacks of these changes are on fall ice production. These objectives were addressed through a series of carefully crafted regional atmospheric modeling studies sing the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model.
We are collaborating with a new project that offers new and unique opportunities to validate the WRF model simulations. This project, sponsored by the Office of Naval Research, uses regular monthly C130 flights by the Coast Guard from Kodiak out over the Arctic Ocean, typically several hundred miles out along the 150W meridian. During these flights dropsondes are released that measure vertical profiles of atmospheric temperature, humidity and winds. Those profiles were use to validate our WRF model.
Two sets of lower boundary conditions were used in pairs of runs that differed only in the lower boundary sea ice extent, concentration, and thickness. As a sample of low-ice conditions the ice extent, concentration, and mean thickness were taken from the PIOMAS simulations for 2007 (“2007 ice”) for the months of July through December. As a sample of typical ice conditions the median ice concentration and mean thickness for the years 1980—2009 for each day of the year for the same months were used. An ensemble of 15 runs was constructed using both five different initial conditions and three different years for lateral forcing. From the pairs of runs for high and low ice conditions we can determine where the additional moisture that evaporates from open water regions is deposited. Does this moisture fall immediately as precipitation over the local area or is it transported to multiyear ice or land? Figure 1 shows the difference in the monthly precipitation for September through December. Only October shows a significant increase in precipitation with low ice (2007) conditions. Most of the increased precipitation is over the area that is ice free in 2007 but ice covered for the median ice conditions. There is very little change over land in any month.
We have just concluded a study that for the first time compares a variety of ice thickness observations and estimates the mean ice thickness for the Arctic Basin entirely from observations. These observations are used to validate the ice thickness fields used in our Polar WREF simulations. We found a dramatic 68% reduction in the annual mean sea ice thickness in the central Arctic Basin.
The project contributed to 3 peer reviewed papers and numerous presentations.
Broader Impacts:
This project has supported the development, testing, and distribution of a unique curriculum unit for high school students in collaboration with an award winning local high school teacher Mr Mark Buchli, honors physics, general physics and physical sciences teacher at Liberty High School in Issaquah WA.
The curriculum is a two-week module in which students download climate data and use spread sheet software to investigate the spatial and temporal patterns present in the data. The products of this effort are (a) multiple arctic data sets repackaged for ease of classroom use, (b) background material appropriate to the analysis of the data, and (c) a complete set of lesson plans for a two-week classroom module.
Work began on this project on 12/21/10. Two primary curriculum development avenues were developed: a) the physics heat and light transmission of sea ice and b) explorations of Arctic environmental and sea ice data sets. The goal of these avenues is to give high school chemistry and phy...
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