1996: Pinatubo and Other Forcings on the Earth's Climate

Team Members: Kwaku Asamoah, Kirk Beckford, Sam Borenstein, Errol Brown, Brendan Curran, Stanley DeCastro, Pratima Etwarrow, Thomas Ferede, Mitch Fox, Carrie Johnson, Max Kelly, Nichola Lawrence, Anthony Luckett, Ishram Ramberran, Josh Wilder

Research Objectives 1

Paper on the "man in the street" manifestation of decadal warming.

Tasks: Analyze heating degree days, cooling days and extreme temperature behavior of about 12 cities, as obtained on CD-Rom from NCDC

Research Objectives 2

We will see if there is a noticeable change in the frequency of daily record temperatures in cities of the United States over a period of a century. It is relevant to the man on the street.

Tools: We have gathered data from NOAA, and also climate data for New Jersey.

Tasks: The investigation of twelve cities in the United States for maximum/minimum temperatures. a) for a specific day. b) for a specific year. c) decadal frequency (decade by decade in frequency of daily records)

Research Objectives 3

Define NAO. Find evidence of model replication of NAO. Find which ocean run has the best correlation with the real world.

Tools: GCM, NMC, MSU for Tsurf, UV winds, and SLP. With varying time periods. Looking both globally and in the North Atlantic.

Tasks: 1) Identify the temperature see-saw that exist in the NAO. Check our model to see if it is simulating the see-saw. 2) Identify the anomalous winds and pressure structure associated with the NAO. Compare our model with real data. 3) If our model does a good match, we will do similar tests on other models. 4) We will look for evidence of the ocean's role in forcing the NAO.

Research Objectives 4

1) To employ drought index values as a forcing in the GCM in order to simulate and predict the occurrence of regional climate fluctuations. 2) To validate the accuracy of the GCM as a climate simulation tool. 3) To focus on drought occurrence in the Midwest, Great Plains (Texas plus Oklahoma Panhandle) to validate the output of the GCM.

Tools: GCM, NCDC data - soil moisture, PDSI. Midwest and Great Plains, USA (Texas, Oklahoma)

Tasks: 1) Create graphs comparing GCM soil moisture content and Palmer Drought Indices. 2) Attempt to correlate these values using histograms. 3)Feed correlated index values into the GCM to provide a summer 1996 prediction. 4) Validate the prediction by comparison to actual observed data.

Research Objectives 5

We are validating the changes of the GCM that are currently being implemented. Our input to this problem will aid in updating the model. This project will help us (Pinatubo Team) understand the atmospheric processes, and the processes that are more difficult to simulate on the GCM level.

Tools: We will be using GCM, ISCCP and NMC data.

Tasks: Comparisons between the SI94 model and model candidates will be looked at. Where available, we will compare these model runs with observational data.

Research Objectives 6

Using the EarthInfo's Summary of the Day dataset, we are attempting to determining if there have been increases in the number of "extreme" events in the three decades of rapid global warming (approx. 0.4°C over 1965-1994), where "extreme" is defined by our specifications. The existence of trends will be validated.

Tools: For this research task, we will be employing the EarthInfo's Summary of the Day (NCDC) dataset which provides data on temperature and precipitation for the United States.

Tasks: We will be charting time series for the three decades as well as histograms to see if we can observe trends. In order to get an as unbiased picture as possible, we will be averaging over as many stations as possible for specified regions/seasons across the U.S. Following normalizing our data, we will look for changes in the curves.