CIMAS Researchers Focus on Oceanic Heat to Improve Hurricane Forecasting

Building on prior research conducted in the Atlantic Ocean that has shown that hurricane intensity forecasts are greatly improved when oceanic heat content (OHC) data are included in statistical prediction models, researchers at the Cooperative Institute of Marine and Atmospheric Science (CIMAS) at the University of Miami are now adapting this approach for use in the Eastern Pacific Ocean.  [more]

CIFAR Provides Alaskan Input to Climate Change Synthesis Report

The leadership of the Climate Change Science Program, in coordination with the Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Council on Environmental Quality, has called for an integrative report, or Unified Synthesis Product that provides a coherent analysis of the current understanding of climate change in the United States. Dr. John Walsh, Director of the Cooperative Institute for Arctic Research (CIFAR), has been appointed to the Synthesis Product Development Committee, established by NOAA and tasked with producing the report by the end of 2008. The committee held its first meeting in Chicago on March 31-April 1, 2008.  [more]

New CICOR Data to Aid in Understanding Ocean’s Role in Climate Change

Researchers at the Cooperative Institute for Climate and Ocean Research (CICOR) at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) recently released nearly 50 years of data that may significantly increase scientific knowledge of the ocean’s role in climate change. These data allow researchers to estimate the amounts of heat exchange resulting from various thermal interactions between the atmosphere and the ocean, known as “air-sea heat flux.”  [more]

CICAR Researchers Enhance Understanding of Dust Bowl Climate Dynamics

In a forthcoming article in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, researchers at the Cooperative Institute for Climate Applications and Research (CICAR) suggest that drought was not only a primary cause of the Great Plains Dust Bowl of the 1930s, but also a primary effect of the catastrophic dust storms that swept across 100 million acres in Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas. While it is widely acknowledged that drought and poor land-use practices among the region’s farmers were the main drivers of the onset of the Dust Bowl, little research has been done on whether the dust storms brought on by the initial drought, in fact, intensified drought conditions even further.  [more]