Research Highlight
A Mechanistic Sea Spray Generation Function Based on the Sea State and the Physics of Bubble Bursting
May 24, 2023 – Bubbles bursting at the ocean surface are an important source of sea spray aerosols. They contribute to atmospheric aerosols and play a crucial role in radiative and cloud processes. Uncertainties related to the large range of scales involved, and the complexity of the processes, leads to open questions about the dependencies on wind speed, ocean wave properties and water temperature.
Research Highlight
Increases in Extreme Precipitation over the Northeast United States using High-resolution Climate Model Simulations
May 11, 2023 – Extreme precipitation is among the most destructive natural disasters. Simulating changes in regional extreme precipitation remains challenging, partially limited by the horizontal resolution in climate models. For this study, the authors used an ensemble of high-resolution (25-km) global climate model simulations to study extreme precipitation over the Northeastern United States, where extremes have increased rapidly since the mid-1990s.
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GFDL’s Journey for a Smaller Carbon Footprint
April 21, 2023 – The theme for Earth Day this year is “Invest In Our Planet,” and the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) is leading the way in environmental sustainability. As a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) research laboratory, we have implemented innovative, environmentally sustainable and energy-saving solutions that not only contribute to combating climate change but have also inspired others to act.
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Driving improvements in weather and climate forecasting with GFDL’s experimental models
April 6, 2023 – Operational models are the backbone of weather and climate prediction, allowing experts to make informed predictions about the weather a few days from now — or the climate several decades into the future. But there’s another type of model that’s important to the forecasting process: experimental models. These models allow scientists to conduct research, test new theories, and make improvements to the modeling process, learning lessons that can ultimately be incorporated into operational models used by NOAA and NASA.
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Explaining and Predicting Earth System Change, at the United Nations COP27 Climate Conference
February 7, 2023 – Last November, leaders and delegates from across the globe traveled to Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt with the important goal of discussing and agreeing upon policies to mitigate climate change. Virtually joining the approximately 92 heads of state and 35,000 representatives of 190 countries in attendance at the 27th Conference of the Parties (COP27) was NOAA GFDL physical scientist Kirsten Findell.
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NOAA scientists harness machine learning to advance climate models
March 1, 2023 – When you hear the term “machine learning,” you might think of controversial chatbots or the algorithms that govern your social media feeds. But NOAA GFDL scientists are investigating how to use machine learning in another way: to improve climate, weather and other earth system models. Unlike traditional climate models, which make predictions by simulating land, ocean and atmospheric processes, machine learning allows systems to “learn” from results of those simulations.
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National Academy of Science honors NOAA’s Kirk Bryan for pioneering ocean and climate science
January 23, 2023 – Former NOAA scientist Kirk Bryan Jr., Ph.D, has been named winner of the 2023 National Academy of Science’s (NAS) Alexander Agassiz Medal for his pioneering work in oceanography and climate science.Bryan is widely recognized as the founder of numerical ocean modeling, and his work in the late 1960s at NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) in Princeton, New Jersey led to the first-of-its-kind general circulation climate model – combining both oceanic and atmospheric processes to bring forth insights into how the ocean and atmosphere interact with each other to influence climate.
Research Highlight
The relative role of the subsurface Southern Ocean in driving negative Antarctic Sea ice extent anomalies in 2016–2021
January 19, 2023 – One of the most puzzling observed climate events in recent years was the dramatic decline in Antarctic Sea ice extent (SIE) in late 2016. It remains unclear to what extent this low sea ice extent can be attributed to changing ocean conditions. This SIE retreat persisted for several years after 2016, thus becoming a multiyear shift. In this study, the authors used a coupled climate model to reproduce these Antarctic SIE characteristics and found that the subsurface Southern Ocean (SO) plays a smaller role in the 2016 SIE extreme event than the atmosphere.