Collaborative Research: Diagnosing the Impacts of Blowing Snow in the Northern Great Plains Using Novel Instrumentation and Coupled Models

吹雪是大平原北部冬季常见的灾害。虽然人们了解造成这一过程的一般条件，但最近的观察表明，吹雪和暴风雪的条件在时间和空间上可能会有很大差异。预测这些事件是困难的；天气模型不包括这一过程，这意味着预报员依赖不完善的技术来预测危险。此外，人们认为，吹雪可能会改变低层大气，这表明下游预报可能会出现额外的误差。除了这些对社会的直接影响外，在地球上开阔、寒冷的地区，吹雪也是一个关键过程，因为它影响了地球表面的水和能量的分配。需要创新性的观测来更好地理解吹雪，并提供推进建模过程所需的地面真相。这一合作项目旨在了解大平原北部吹雪的物理机制和影响。该项目将研究吹雪层的微物理结构，以及地形、大气状态和升华对这些事件演变的作用。将在北达科他州东部/明尼苏达州西北部及其周边地区进行创新观测，该地区经常发生暴风雪和暴雪事件。该项目将继续开发负担得起的地面和气球载微物理成像仪。与传统的无线电探空仪和垂直指向的激光雷达一起，观测将被用来评估和改进天气研究和预报(WRF)模式中的完全耦合的吹雪参数化，改进的模式将被应用于识别决定吹雪行为的关键因素。多名研究生和众多本科生将通过实地工作、数据分析、数值模拟以及将水流星成像仪部署到其他学术机构而受到影响。该项目将促进其他公共宣传努力，并包括州立部落学院和国家气象局等合作伙伴，确保将知识传播给不同的群体。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Blowing snow is a common wintertime hazard in the Northern Great Plains. While the general conditions responsible for the process are understood, recent observations have demonstrated that blowing snow and blizzard conditions can vary significantly in time and space. Forecasting these events is difficult; weather models do not include the process, meaning that forecasters are reliant on imperfect techniques to predict the hazard. Further, it is believed that blowing snow can modify the lower atmosphere suggesting that additional downstream errors in forecasts are possible. Besides these immediate impacts on society, blowing snow is a critical process in open, cold regions of the globe by impacting the distribution of water and energy at the Earth’s surface. Innovative observations are needed to better understand blowing snow and provide the ground truth needed to advance efforts to model the process. This collaborative project seeks to understand the physical mechanisms and impacts of blowing snow in the Northern Great Plains. The project will investigate the microphysical structure of blowing snow layers and the roles that terrain, atmospheric state, and sublimation have on the evolution of these events. Innovative observations will be made in and around eastern North Dakota/northwestern Minnesota, a region prone to blizzards and blowing snow events. The project will continue development of affordable, ground-based and balloon-borne microphysical imagers. Collectively with traditional radiosondes and vertically pointing lidars, observations will be used to evaluate and improve a fully coupled blowing snow parameterization within the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, and the improved model will be applied to identify the key aspects determining blowing snow behavior. Multiple graduate students and numerous undergraduate students will be impacted through field work, analysis of data, numerical modeling, and deployment of hydrometeor imagers to other academic institutions. The project will promote other public outreach efforts and includes partners such as state tribal colleges and the National Weather Service, ensuring dissemination of knowledge to diverse groups.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.