The Bering Strait oceanic heat transport influences seasonal sea ice retreat and advance in the Chukchi Sea. Monitored since 1990, it depends on water temperature and factors controlling the volume transport, assumed to be local winds in the strait and an oceanic pressure difference between the Pacific and Arctic oceans (the “pressure head”). Recent work suggests that variability in the pressure head, especially during summer, relates to the strength of the zonal wind in the East Siberian Sea that raises or drops sea surface height in this area via Ekman transport. We confirm that westward winds in the East Siberian Sea relate to a broader central Arctic pattern of high sea level pressure and note that anticyclonic winds over the central Arctic Ocean also favor low September sea ice extent for the Arctic as a whole by promoting ice convergence and positive temperature anomalies. Month‐to‐month persistence in the volume transport and atmospheric circulation patterns is low, but the period 1980–2017 had a significant summertime (June–August) trend toward higher sea level pressure over the central Arctic Ocean, favoring increased transports. Some recent large heat transports are associated with high water temperatures, consistent with persistence of open water in the Chukchi Sea into winter and early ice retreat in spring. The highest heat transport recorded, October 2016, resulted from high water temperatures and ideal wind conditions yielding a record‐high volume transport. November and December 2005, the only months with southward volume (and thus heat) transports, were associated with southward winds in the strait.
Thompson, Elizabeth J.; Moum, James N.; Fairall, Christopher W.; Rutledge, Steven A.;
Published Date:
2019
Source:
Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans,;
124, 897–924;
Description:
Stratification of the upper few meters of the ocean limits the penetration depth of wind mixing and the vertical distribution of atmospheric fluxes. Significant density stratification at depths ≤ 5 m was observed in 38% of a 2‐month data set from...
We used data from 333 continuous Global Positioning System stations, including 26 stations installed in 2006–2007 as part of a collaborative EarthScope experiment, to investigate how deformation is distributed near the Rio Grande Rift. Our previous...
Observations of shallow fault creep reveal increasingly complex time‐dependent slip histories that include quasi‐steady creep and triggered as well as spontaneous accelerated slip events. Here we report a recent slow slip event on the southern Sa...
Ryu, Y. H.; Hodzic, A.; Descombes, G.; Hu, M.; Barre, J.;
Published Date:
2019
Source:
Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 124, 13576-13592
Description:
Accuracy of cloud predictions in numerical weather models can considerably impact ozone (O-3) forecast skill. This study assesses the benefits in surface O-3 predictions of using the Rapid Refresh (RAP) forecasting system that assimilates clouds as w...
Thompson, Anne M.; Smit, Herman G. J.; Witte, Jacquelyn C.; Stauffer, Ryan M.; Johnson, Bryan J.; Morris, Gary; von der Gathen, Peter; Van Malderen, Roeland; Davies, Jonathan; Allaart, Ankie Piters Marc; Posny, Françoise; Kivi, Rigel; Cullis, Patrick; Nguyen, Thi Hoang Anh; Corrales, Ernesto; Machinini, Tshidi; da Silva, Francisco R.; Paiman, George; Thiong’o, Kennedy; Zainal, Zamuna; Brothers, George B.; Wolff, Katherine R.; Nakano, Tatsumi; Stübi, Rene; Romanens, Gonzague; Coetzee, Gert J. R.; Diaz, Jorge A.; Mitro, Sukarni; Mohamad, Maznorizan; Ogino, Shin-Ya;
Published Date:
2019
Source:
Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc. (2019) 100 (1): 155–171.
Description:
The ozonesonde is a small balloon-borne instrument that is attached to a standard radiosonde to measure profiles of ozone from the surface to 35 km with ∼100-m vertical resolution. Ozonesonde data constitute a mainstay of satellite calibration and ...
White, Allen B.; Moore, Benjamin J.; Gottas, Daniel J.; Neiman, Paul J.;
Published Date:
2019
Source:
Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc. (2019) 100 (1): 55–70.
Description:
During winter 2016/17, California experienced numerous heavy precipitation events linked to land-falling atmospheric rivers (ARs) that filled reservoirs and ended a severe, multiyear drought. These events also caused floods, mudslides, and debris flo...
Yu, P. F.; Froyd, K. D.; Portmann, R. W.; Toon, O. B.; Freitas, S. R.; Bardeen, C. G.; Brock, C.; Fan, T. Y.; Gao, R. S.; Katich, J. M.; Kupc, A.; Liu, S.; Maloney, C.; Murphy, D. M.; Rosenlof, K. H.; Schill, G.; Schwarz, J. P.; Williamson, C.;
Published Date:
2019
Source:
Geophysical Research Letters, 46, 1061-1069.
Description:
Convective systems dominate the vertical transport of aerosols and trace gases. The most recent in situ aerosol measurements presented here show that the concentrations of primary aerosols including sea salt and black carbon drop by factors of 10 to ...
An intensive coordinated airborne and ground-based measurement study was conducted in the Fayetteville Shale in northwestern Arkansas during September and October 2015 to compare and explain potential discrepancies between top-down and bottom-up esti...
Yang, H.; Waugh, D. W.; Orbe, C.; Patra, P. K.; Jockel, P.; Lamarque, J. F.; Tilmes, S.; Kinnison, D.; Elkins, J. W.; Dlugokencky, E. J.;
Published Date:
2019
Source:
Geophysical Research Letters, 46, 1113-1120.
Description:
Two recent studies using sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) observations to evaluate interhemispheric transport in two different ensembles of atmospheric chemistry models reached different conclusions on model performance. We show here that the different conc...
Reitman, Nadine G.; Mueller, Karl J.; Tucker, Gregory E.; Gold, Ryan D.; Briggs, Richard W.; Barnhart, Katherine R.;
Published Date:
2019
Source:
JGR Solid Earth (2019). 124(12): 13427-13451
Description:
Slip distribution, slip rate, and slip per event for strike‐slip faults are commonly determined by correlating offset stream channels—under the assumption that they record seismic slip—but offset channels are formed by the interplay of tectonic...
Stillwell, Robert A.; Neely III, Ryan R.; Thayer, Jeffrey P.; Walden, Von P.; Shupe, Matthew D.; Miller, Nathaniel B.;
Published Date:
2019
Source:
Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 124, 12141-12156
Description:
Ice crystals commonly adopt a horizontal orientation under certain aerodynamic and electrodynamic conditions that occur in the atmosphere. While the radiative impact of horizontally oriented ice crystals (HOIC) has been theoretically studied with res...
The yields of the six declared underground nuclear tests at the North Korean test site are estimated using high‐frequency teleseismic P wave amplitude modeling and waveform equalization of short‐period teleseismic P waves and regional Pn signals....
The cryosphere, which comprises a large portion of Earth’s surface, is rapidly changing as a consequence of global climate change. Ice, snow, and frozen ground in the polar and alpine regions of the planet are known to directly impact atmospheric c...
Mazzotti, Giulia; Currier, William Ryan; Deems, Jeffrey S.; Pflug, Justin M.; Lundquist, Jessica D.; Jonas, Tobias;
Published Date:
2019
Source:
Water Resources Research, 55(7): 6198–6216
Description:
The retrieval of detailed, co‐located snow depth and canopy cover information from airborne lidar has advanced our understanding of links between forest snow distribution and canopy structure. In this study, we present two recent high‐resolution ...
The Eastern Cordillera of Colombia, in the northern Andes, is an example of an orogen in which Mesozoic basins were compressed during the Cenozoic, forming a ~2,500‐m‐high plateau in its northern portion. Significant shortening and crustal thicke...
Yarce, J.; Sheehan, A. F.; Nakai, J. S.; Schwartz, S. Y.; Mochizuki, K.; Savage, M. K.; Wallace, L. M.; Henrys, S. A.; Webb, S. C.; Ito, Y.; Abercrombie, R. E.; Fry, B.; Shaddox, H.; Todd, E. K.;
Published Date:
2019
Source:
JGR Solid Earth (2019). 124(5): 4751-5766
Description:
In 2014–2015, the Hikurangi Ocean Bottom Investigation of Tremor and Slow Slip experiment deployed seafloor absolute pressure gauges and ocean bottom seismometers directly above a large slow slip event, allowing examination of the relationship betw...
We propose a time series modeling approach based on nonlinear dynamical systems to recover the underlying dynamics and predictability of streamflow and to produce projections with identifiable skill. First, a wavelet spectral analysis is performed on...
Morrison, A. L.; Kay, J. E.; Frey, W. R.; Chepfer, H.; Guzman, R.;
Published Date:
2019
Source:
Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 124, 1003-1020
Description:
Over the next century, the Arctic is projected to become seasonally sea ice‐free. Assessing feedback between clouds and sea ice as the Arctic loses sea ice cover is important because of clouds' radiative impacts on the Arctic surface. Here we inves...
Takahashi, H.; Lebsock, M. D.; Richardson, M.; Marchand, R.; Kay, J. E.;
Published Date:
2019
Source:
Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 124, 7270-7285
Description:
Cloud feedbacks remain the largest source of uncertainty in future climate predictions. Simulations robustly project an increase in cloud height, which is supported by some observational evidence. However, how much of this increasing trend is due to ...
Perkins, Jonathan P.; Finnegan, Noah J.; de Silva, Shanaka L.; Willis, Michael J.;
Published Date:
2019
Source:
Geophysical Research Letters, 46, 12012-12020.
Description:
Wind abrasion is important for planetary landscape evolution, and wind‐abraded bedrock landscapes contain many landforms that are difficult to interpret. Here we exploit a natural experiment in Chile where topographic shielding by an upwind lava fl...