Hosted by Professors Famiglietti and Pritchard at the University of California, Irvine, the principal investigator (P.I.) will seek to clarify the role of land surface coupling in the evolution of organized convection and rainfall in the Central United States (US). The strategy will be to employ novel methodological techniques to isolate and measure components of the energy exchange system between the land and atmosphere, in a uniquely multi-scale virtual laboratory. By deconstructing nonlinear complexities in land-atmosphere coupling feedbacks using individual component amplification, and attributing responses, the author will develop a holistic physical framework and apply it to the following questions:
1. What is the role of land surface coupling in generating and sustaining mesoscale convective systems and summer precipitation in the Central US? 2. How critical is explicitly resolved land heterogeneity for realistically representing mesoscale land-convection interactions in the context of regional and global hydrology? 3. Are irrigation-driven hydro-climate feedbacks robust to a realistic representation of the mechanisms that drive convective precipitation in the Central US? 4. How will mesoscale convection and its interaction with the natural and manmade water cycles change in future climate? Do land-surface feedbacks play a role in mediating the response?
Intellectual Merit: Land-atmosphere coupling in the Central US plays an especially critical role in mediating local weather and climate. How the hydrological cycle will respond to the anthropogenic influences of irrigation and climate change depends on a complex set of land-surface energy exchange mechanisms whose coupled behavior is difficult to understand. Advancing knowledge at this hydrologic interface requires insight into its nonlinear sensitivities through controlled multi-scale numerical experiments, including links to non-local and global feedbacks on column energetics. Focusing on Central US hydro-climate and its response to irrigation and climate change, the author seeks to make progress on this front. The research builds on the author's doctoral experience applying fundamental principles of atmospheric physics to investigate mesoscale convection, climate change, and aerosol-cloud interactions in simulations from conventional and super-parameterized global climate models. The co-mentoring strategy combines the diverse expertise of Professors Famiglietti and Pritchard in atmospheric and hydrologic science to address frontier scientific questions at the interface of their individual research foci.
Broader Impacts: The broader impact activities and co-mentoring plan will strengthen land-atmosphere coupling in research and graduate level education at the University of California, Irvine, and with policy makers who have a stake in the land-atmosphere interface in the Central US. The P.I. will help launch a graduate seminar series focused on land-atmosphere interactions, bringing together experts in hydrology and climate science to foster interdisciplinary research and cross-pollination of frontier science ideas. The P.I. will expand public partnerships with policy makers, researchers, and educators that have been developed by the NSF Center for Multiscale Modeling of Atmospheric Processes in the Central US to directly link the research to relevant stakeholders through public outreach activities. These efforts will help spread new research results and experience to both the scientific community and general public, and guide the P.I.'s own professional development.
