CAREER: Quantifying Inadvertent Weather Modification and Education through Museum Programs

智慧价值大气扰动可能是由各种人类活动造成的。风力涡轮机下游产生的湍流导致变暖和干燥，城市热岛效应，以及灌溉农田附近露点的增加，都被证明是人类改变大气的方式。虽然以前的一些研究集中于人为强迫对当地气候的影响，但很少有人研究人类诱导的扰动如何演变成在各种空间和时间尺度上影响下游大气流动。支持这些下游影响可能是显著的观点的是，以前涉及伴随敏感性分析的工作表明，天气的高影响方面，如中纬度气旋的演变，可能对可能存在人为干扰的局部近地表地区高度敏感。这些情况、人为干扰及其迅速增长的潜力并存，表明无意中的天气影响可能是一个几乎未知的现实，具有严重的后果。由于地球上不断增长的人口可能会在未来几年加剧当今人为大气强迫的程度，理解无意中的天气影响现在至关重要。这项研究旨在全面了解人类修改高影响风暴尺度、中尺度和天气尺度天气的各种方法。实现这些目标的方法是独特的，因为它们侧重于估计的人为强迫和伴随敏感性分析的相互作用，这可以有效地阐明与不同人为扰动情景相关的重要动力学。广泛影响预计，这项研究将为社会负责任地减轻当前和未来的无意天气影响提供宝贵的科学成果基础。类似于人类目前正在处理人为温室气体排放对全球和当地气候的作用，通过这项工作产生的强大的知识基础可以提供必要的信息，以在扰乱大气的有益人类活动和这种扰动产生的对合理的日常天气的改变之间取得平衡。反过来，这个项目有可能与世界范围内重要的政府决策的制定密切相关。这项工作的教育部分，包括博物馆展览、夏令营和为地区学校提供的便携式教育工具包，可能会对学术界以外的社会产生积极影响。博物馆提供了一个休闲的学习环境，吸引了大量的非科学参观者。因此，预计博物馆教育活动将接触到许多人，否则他们将不会接触到重要的科学问题，如可能影响社会、经济和环境的无意中的天气影响。反过来，这项工作有可能以独特而有效的方式向普通公众提供科学教育，提高社会在未来几年智能地应对无意中的天气影响的能力。

Intellectual MeritAtmospheric perturbations can be created by a variety of human activities. Turbulence downstream of wind turbines that produces warming and drying, the urban heat island effect, and increased dew points near irrigated agricultural lands have all been shown to be ways that human beings change the atmosphere. Although some prior studies have focused on the effects of anthropogenic forcing on local climate, few have addressed how human-induced perturbations evolve to affect downstream atmospheric flow on a variety of spatial and temporal scales. Supporting the idea that these downstream effects may be significant, previous work involving adjoint sensitivity analysis has shown that high-impact aspects of the weather, such as the evolution of midlatitude cyclones, can be highly sensitive to localized, near-surface regions where human-induced perturbations can exist. The coexistence of these circumstances, anthropogenic perturbations and their potential to grow rapidly, suggest inadvertent weather modification may be a virtually unknown reality with serious consequences. As Earth's growing population will likely exacerbate the degree of present-day anthropogenic atmospheric forcing in the coming years, understanding inadvertent weather modification now is crucial.This research aims to gain a holistic understanding of the various means by which humans modify high-impact storm-scale, mesoscale, and synoptic-scale aspects of the weather. The approaches to achieving these goals are unique in that they focus on the interaction of estimated anthropogenic forcing and adjoint sensitivity analysis, which can effectively elucidate the important dynamics associated with different anthropogenic perturbation scenarios.Broader ImpactsIt is expected that this research will leads to an invaluable foundation of scientific results needed for society to responsibly mitigate current and future inadvertent weather modification. Similar to how the human race is currently addressing the role of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emission on global and local climate, a strong base of knowledge produced through this work can provide the information needed to strike a balance between beneficial human activities that perturb the atmosphere and the modification of sensible day-to-day weather such perturbations produce. In turn, this project has the potential to be intimately connected with the development of important government policy decisions worldwide.The educational component of this work, which includes a museum exhibit, summer science camps, and portable educational kits for area schools, will likely make positive impacts to society well outside the confines of academia. Museums provide a casual learning environment that attracts a large number of mostly nonscientific visitors. Thus, it is expected that the museum education activities will reach many who would otherwise be unexposed to important scientific issues like inadvertent weather modification that can affect society, the economy, and the environment. In turn, this work has the potential to provide science education to the general public in a unique and effective way, improving the ability for society to intelligently address inadvertent weather modification in the coming years.