Atmospheric Interaction of Energy and Water

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Under this award, Dr. Betts will pursue a wide range of problems involving primarily the thermodynamics of atmospheric energy and water interactions from the surface through the troposphere, in support of programs such as the Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment Continental-Scale International Project (GCIP) and the Boreal Forest Ecosystem-Atmosphere Study (BOREAS). The overarching objective is to improve the surface boundary condition over land in large-scale models. At present, forecast and climate models have serious deficiencies in their physical parameterizations, particularly in the modeling of energy and water transports at the earth's surface (more so over land than over the ocean), and in the coupling of convective processes to the large-scale dynamic and radiation fields. The principal investigator will tackle these issues by first analyzing observations from several field programs and then using them to test and develop physical parameterizations in large-scale models. Operational forecast models will be used primarily so that the research directly benefits the forecasting of weather on timescales of a few days, as well as the global model data bases, which are used for climate studies. This research is supported under NSF's Water and Energy: Atmospheric, Vegetative, and Earth Interactions (WEAVE) Program.***