Atmospheric & Oceanic Science Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2747
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Item DEVELOPMENT AND APPLICATION OF PROPINQUITY MODELING FRAMEWORK FOR IDENTIFICATION AND ANALYSIS OF EXTREME EVENT PATTERNS(2024) kholodovsky, vitaly; Liang, Xin-Zhong; Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Extreme weather and climate events such as floods, droughts, and heat waves can cause extensive societal damage. While various statistical and climate models have been developed for the purpose of simulating extremes, a consistent definition of extreme events is still lacking. Furthermore, to better assess the performance of the climate models, a variety of spatial forecast verification measures have been developed. However, in most cases, the spatial verification measures that are widely used to compare mean states do not have sufficient theoretical justification to benchmark extreme events. In order to alleviate inconsistencies when defining extreme events within different scientific communities, we propose a new generalized Spatio-Temporal Threshold Clustering method for the identification of extreme event episodes, which uses machine learning techniques to couple existing pattern recognition indices with high or low threshold choices. The method consists of five main steps: construction of essential field quantities, dimension reduction, spatial domain mapping, time series clustering, and threshold selection. We develop and apply this method using a gridded daily precipitation dataset derived from rain gauge stations over the contiguous United States. We observe changes in the distribution of conditional frequency of extreme precipitation from large-scale, well-connected spatial patterns to smaller-scale, more isolated rainfall clusters, possibly leading to more localized droughts and heatwaves, especially during the summer months. Additionally, we compare empirical and statistical probabilities and intensities obtained through the Conventional Location Specific methods, which are deficient in geometric interconnectivity between individual spatial pixels and independent in time, with a new Propinquity modeling framework. We integrate the Spatio-Temporal Threshold Clustering algorithm and the conditional semi-parametric Heffernan and Tawn (2004) model into the Propinquity modeling framework to separate classes of models that can calculate process level dependence of large-scale extreme processes, primarily through the overall extreme spatial field. Our findings reveal significant differences between Propinquity and Conventional Location Specific methods, in both empirical and statistical approaches in shape and trend direction. We also find that the process of aggregating model results without considering interconnectivity between individual grid cells for trend construction can lead to significant variations in the overall trend pattern and direction compared with models that do account for interconnectivity. Based on these results, we recommend avoiding such practices and instead adopting the Propinquity modeling framework or other spatial EVA models that take into account the interconnectivity between individual grid cells. Our aim for the final application is to establish a connection between extreme essential field quantity intensity fields and large-scale circulation patterns. However, the Conventional Location Specific Threshold methods are not appropriate for this purpose as they are memoryless in time and not able to identify individual extreme episodes. To overcome this, we developed the Feature Finding Decomposition algorithm and used it in combination with the Propinquity modeling framework. The algorithm consists of the following three steps: feature finding, image decomposition, and large-scale circulation patterns connection. Our findings suggest that the Western Pacific Index, particularly its 5th percentile and 5th mode of decomposition, is the most significant teleconnection pattern that explains the variation in the trend pattern of the largest feature intensity.Item EVALUATING OCEANOGRAPHIC HYPOTHESES: THREE METHODS FOR TESTING IDEAS(2020) Johnson, Benjamin K; Kalnay, Eugenia E; Wenegrat, Jacob O; Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The disciplines of meteorology and oceanography are both vital to understanding the earth system. Throughout most of the last half century, meteorology has largely been a prognostic discipline. Forecasts made by meteorologists have been widely used and scrutinized, allowing for countless opportunities to test and improve ideas about atmospheric circulation and physics. Since weather forecasts involve integrating numerical models and updating the model state via data assimilation, forecasting demands frequent use of the principles of Bayesian inference. This requirement essentially confronts the physics contained within numerical models at recurring intervals and can reveal systematic model bias. In contrast, prognostic applications have been less prevalent in oceanography. Oceanographic forecasts are much rarer than atmospheric forecasts and, perhaps as a consequence of this disparity, many ideas concerning oceanic circulation have not been tested to the same degree as ideas concerning atmospheric circulation. This dissertation presents three methods for testing oceanographic ideas: applying common methodologies to analogous regions of different ocean basins; creating synthetic time series to mimic the properties of oceanographic time series in order to construct null distributions for hypothesis testing; and using water mass census information to interpret the results of water mass transformation analysis.Item Covariance Localization in Strongly Coupled Data Assimilation(2019) Yoshida, Takuma; Kalnay, Eugenia; Penny, Stephen G; Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The recent development of accurate coupled models of the Earth system and enhanced computation power have enabled numerical prediction with the coupled models in weather, sub-seasonal, seasonal, and interannual time scales as well as climate projection. In the shorter timescales, the initial condition, or the estimate of the present state of the system, is essential for accurate prediction. Coupled data assimilation (DA) based on an ensemble of forecasts seems to be a promising approach for this state estimate due to its inherent ability to estimate flow-dependent error covariance. Strongly coupled DA tries to incorporate more observations of the other subsystems into an analysis (e.g., ocean observations into the atmospheric analysis) using the coupled error covariances; the covariance is estimated with a finite ensemble, and spurious covariance must be eliminated by localization. Because the coupling strength between subsystems of the Earth is not a simple function of a distance, we develop a better localization strategy than the distance-dependent localization. Based on the estimated benefit of each observation into each analysis variable, we first propose the correlation-cutoff method, where localization of strongly coupled DA is guided by ensemble correlations of an offline DA cycle. The method achieves improved analysis accuracy when tested with a simple coupled model of the atmosphere and ocean. As a related topic, error growth and predictability of a coupled dynamical system with multiple timescales are explored using a simple chaotic model of the atmosphere and ocean. A discontinuous response of the attractor's characteristics to the coupling strength is reported. The characteristic of global atmosphere-ocean coupled error correlation is investigated using two sets of ensemble DA systems. This knowledge is essential for effectively implementing global strongly coupled atmosphere-ocean DA. We report and discuss common and uncommon features, and the importance of ocean model resolution is stressed. Finally, the correlation-cutoff method is realized for global atmosphere-ocean strongly coupled DA with neural networks. The combination of static information provided by the neural networks and flow-dependent error covariance estimated by the ensemble improves the atmospheric analysis in our proof-of-concept experiment. The neural networks' ability to reproduce the error statistics, computation cost in a DA system, as well as analysis quality are evaluated.