2011 - Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences ...

asins (about 32,000 km 2 ), giving a major boost to 20 years of
flood research. Remote sensing plays a key role in estimating
rainfall intensities in time and space in this theory. The findings
offer a new approach for real-time flood forecasting and
estimation of annual flood frequencies for the management
of flood plains in a changing climate.
Atmospheric Lidar Development and Application
The atmosphere is the essential part to make the Earth a
habitable planet for humankind. It also has been increasingly
and largely impacted by anthropic activities. The ability to
understand and predict the short- and long-term changes of
the atmosphere, the weather and the climate is critical for the
well-being of modern society. To advance the atmosphere
physics and chemistry, Xinzhao Chu’s research group within
ESOC are developing and deploying three resonancefluorescence
lidars. First, we are developing the National
Science Foundation (NSF) Major Research Instrumentation
Fe-resonance/Rayleigh/Mie Doppler lidar. It focuses on the
measurements of middle and upper atmosphere with extended
coverage to the lower atmosphere. The lidar technology
development was truly innovative, and the group won
the Best Paper Award at the 25th International Laser Radar
Conference in St. Petersburg, Russia, in July 2010. Secondly,
we have deployed an Fe Boltzmann lidar to McMurdo,
Antarctica, to measure the polar atmosphere for at least three
years. This lidar was developed by Chu and her colleagues
more than 10 years ago, and then upgraded with advanced
technologies in 2010 before this deployment. In combination
with the previous lidar measurements made by Chu at the
South Pole and Rothera, Antarctica, the McMurdo lidar campaign
is completing an observational chain and exploring
new science frontiers in Antarctica. Exciting science discoveries
have already emerged from the first year measurements,
including new findings on polar mesospheric clouds, neutral
Fe layers, temperatures and gravity waves. Thirdly, a STAR
(Student Training and Atmospheric Research) Na Doppler
lidar has been developed and is being further improved by
graduate students at CU. They have achieved 800 counts
per shot of Na signal levels, nearly 10 times what other lidar
groups achieved under similar conditions. The STAR lidar
has been successfully used as a community education/training
tool and equipment/technology test bed. It also provided
valuable data for science study.
Water Cycle and Climate
Appreciating the changing relationships between the
Earth’s water cycles and climate is central to adapting to
environmental change. We seek to improve understanding of
the mechanisms that control the exchange of water between
the Earth’s surface and the atmosphere and in clouds. A
critical limitation in climate models is accurately simulating
exchange of water and other gases through the boundary
layer. We have established a monitoring station at the 300-m
tower at the NOAA Boulder Atmospheric Observatory
in Colorado to provide data on the isotopic composition
of water vapor and CO2 concentration alongside surface
energy balance to provide the critical tests of climate model
parameterizations. A second site at the NSF Long Term
Ecological Research station at Niwot Ridge, Colo., is being
established to compare the grassland environments with
alpine forest conditions. The data show that state-of-the-art
climate models inadequately capture the gas transport, and
they offer guidance as to how the models can be improved.
Using remote-sensing estimates of the isotopic composition
of water vapor, we have tested the sequencing of some of the
mechanisms associated with propagation of the Madden-
Julien oscillation in the Tropics, which is a phenomenon that
is poorly simulated in all climate models. We have used the
unique information provided by the isotope ratios of water
to identify which processes are responsible for the “moist
bias” that plagues state-of-the-art climate models.
Satellite and Aircraft Missions
We continue to play an important scientific leadership
role for NASA’s Ice Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2
(ICESat-2) laser altimetry mission, planned for launch in
2015. In this capacity, we lead the science team, defining
mission requirements that will drive ICESat-2’s capabilities
in measuring ice sheets, sea ice and vegetation,
and provide input to NASA and the ICESat-2 project on
scientific matters. We are actively involved in the planning
of NASA’s IceBridge aircraft mission to survey the Arctic
and Antarctic land and sea-ice cover, providing scientific
and technical guidance on measurement approaches and
priorities. We work extensively with data from NASA’s
Gravity, Recovery, and Climate Experiment (GRACE)
mission; the Total Emission Spectrometer (TES) on the
Aura Spacecraft; and MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging
Spectroradiometer). We are also actively involved in
NASA’s Deformation Ecosystem Structure and Dynamics
of Ice mission. This year, a new area for us is in detection
of potential geothermal heat sources using high-resolution
thermal infrared data from Landsat, MODIS and ASTER
(Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection
Radiometer). We partnered with Flint Geothermal, LLC,
on a $5 million grant. We participated in the NSF Ice in
Clouds Experiment–Tropics (ICE-T) aircraft mission and
made measurements of the isotopic composition of water
vapor and cloud particles to understand the differences in
the dynamics of developing convective clouds associated
with the availability of ice condensation nuclei. This work
built on the success of a deployment at the Storm Peak
Laboratory in Steamboat Springs, Colo., to measure the
isotopic composition of snow and mixed-phase cloud as
part of the Department of Energy’s Storm Peak Laboratory
Cloud Property Validation Experiment (StormVEX).
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