Acquisition of High Performance Computational Cluster to Support Climate Change Research at Texas A&M International University

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This award supports acquisition of computational hardware to facilitate research and research training in watershed modeling, ecohydrology, soil science and atmospheric chemistry at Texas A&M International University, an undergraduate institution and Hispanic Serving Institution where over 90% of the student body are Hispanic. It serves a border area of south Texas where many of the students are first generation and non-traditional college students. Research focuses on computational modeling of hydrologic and soil mantle processes based on satellite remote sensing data and modeling studies of atmospheric chemical interactions with implications of understanding greenhouse gas interactions. This support is congruent with NSFs mission of promoting the progress of science and advancing the national health, prosperity and welfare given the importance of training the next generation scientific workforce in computational modeling techniques and the societal importance of understanding the impacts of changing climate on terrestrial hydrologic reservoirs and anthropogenic impacts on air quality.A limiting factor in agricultural production is the soil moisture maintained in the root zone of plants. Compute-intensive studies relying on remotely sensed observations of surface microwave emissions as a proxy for near surface soil moisture in the northern Great Plains will include new algorithm developments using advanced filtering techniques for extracting soil moisture estimates from multiple modality remote sensing observations and statistical investigation of time series of derived soil moisture data products in relation to known climatic oscillations including El Nino, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and the Atlantic Decadal Observations in order to better understand teleconnections between global oceanographic events and continental soil moisture. Additional research that will take advantage of parallel computing will include first principles thermodynamic modeling of interactions of greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous acid and fluorinated compounds and their decomposition products in the presence of water. Studies of the thermochemical properties of fluorocarbons in particular are if interest due to their very long residence times in the atmosphere and their absorption bands in the infrared. Modeling studies can result in improved atmosphere capture technologies and/or substitute compounds used in industrial processes.