This is the final technical report for the project entitled: "High-Performance Computing and Four-Dimensional Data Assimilation: The Impact on Future and Current Problems," funded at NPAC by the DAO at NASA/GSFC. First, the motivation for the project is given in the introductory section, followed by the executive summary of major accomplishments and the list of project-related publications. Detailed analysis and description of research results is given in subsequent chapters and in the Appendix. Makivic, Miloje S. Goddard Space Flight Center

In a rapidly changing world, there is an ever-increasing need to monitor the Earth’s resources and manage it sustainably for future generations. Earth observation from satellites is critical to provide information required for informed and timely decision making in this regard. Satellite-based earth observation has advanced rapidly over the last 50 years, and there is a plethora of satellite sensors imaging the Earth at finer spatial and spectral resolutions as well as high temporal resolutions. The amount of data available for any single location on the Earth is now at the petabyte-scale. An ever-increasing capacity and computing power is needed to handle such large datasets. The Google Earth Engine (GEE) is a cloud-based computing platform that was established by Google to support such data processing. This facility allows for the storage, processing and analysis of spatial data using centralized high-power computing resources, allowing scientists, researchers, hobbyists and anyone else interested in such fields to mine this data and understand the changes occurring on the Earth’s surface. This book presents research that applies the Google Earth Engine in mining, storing, retrieving and processing spatial data for a variety of applications that include vegetation monitoring, cropland mapping, ecosystem assessment, and gross primary productivity, among others. Datasets used range from coarse spatial resolution data, such as MODIS, to medium resolution datasets (Worldview -2), and the studies cover the entire globe at varying spatial and temporal scales.

Roughly a billion people around the world continue to live in state of chronic hunger and food insecurity. Unfortunately, efforts to improve their livelihoods must now unfold in the context of a rapidly changing climate, in which warming temperatures and changing rainfall regimes could threaten the basic productivity of the agricultural systems on which most of the world’s poor directly depend. But whether climate change represents a minor impediment or an existential threat to development is an area of substantial controversy, with different conclusions wrought from different methodologies and based on different data. This book aims to resolve some of the controversy by exploring and comparing the different methodologies and data that scientists use to understand climate’s effects on food security. In explains the nature of the climate threat, the ways in which crops and farmers might respond, and the potential role for public and private investment to help agriculture adapt to a warmer world. This broader understanding should prove useful to both scientists charged with quantifying climate threats, and policy-makers responsible for crucial decisions about how to respond. The book is especially suitable as a companion to an interdisciplinary undergraduate or graduate level class.

As global climate change proliferates, so too do the health risks associated with the changing world around us. Called for in the President’s Climate Action Plan and put together by experts from eight different Federal agencies, The Impacts of Climate Change on Human Health: A Scientific Assessment is a comprehensive report on these evolving health risks, including: Temperature-related death and illness Air quality deterioration Impacts of extreme events on human health Vector-borne diseases Climate impacts on water-related Illness Food safety, nutrition, and distribution Mental health and well-being This report summarizes scientific data in a concise and accessible fashion for the general public, providing executive summaries, key takeaways, and full-color diagrams and charts. Learn what health risks face you and your family as a result of global climate change and start preparing now with The Impacts of Climate Change on Human Health.

When considering biosphere–atmosphere exchange of trace gases and volatile aerosols, significant advances have been made both from an experimental and modelling point of view and on several scales. This was particularly stimulated by the availability of new datasets generated from improvements in analytical methods and flux measurement techniques. Recent research advances allow us, not only to identify major mechanisms and factors affecting the exchanges between the biosphere and the atmosphere, but also to recognize several gaps in the methodologies used in accounting for emissions and deposition in landscape and global scale models. This work aims at (i) reviewing exchange processes and modelling schemes, parameterisations and datasets, (ii) presenting a common conceptual framework to model soil-vegetation-atmosphere exchange of reactive trace gases and aerosols accounting for in-canopy transfer chemical interactions and (iii) discussing the key elements of the agreed framework.

This Special Issue “Atmospheric Conditions for Wind Energy Applications” hosts papers on aspects of remote sensing for atmospheric conditions for wind energy applications. Wind lidar technology is presented from a theoretical view on the coherent focused Doppler lidar principles. Furthermore, wind lidar for applied use for wind turbine control, wind farm wake, and gust characterizations is presented, as well as methods to reduce uncertainty when using lidar in complex terrain. Wind lidar observations are used to validate numerical model results. Wind Doppler lidar mounted on aircraft used for observing winds in hurricane conditions and Doppler radar on the ground used for very short-term wind forecasting are presented. For the offshore environment, floating lidar data processing is presented as well as an experiment with wind-profiling lidar on a ferry for model validation. Assessments of wind resources in the coastal zone using wind-profiling lidar and global wind maps using satellite data are presented.

Hydrogen and fuel cells are vital technologies to ensure a secure and CO2-free energy future. Their development will take decades of extensive public and private effort to achieve technology breakthroughs and commercial maturity. Government research programs are indispensable for catalyzing the development process. This report maps the IEA countries' current efforts to research, develop and deploy the interlocking elements that constitute a "hydrogen economy", including CO2 capture and storage when hydrogen is produced out of fossil fuels. It provides an overview of what is being done, and by whom, covering an extensive complexity of national government R & D programs. The survey highlights the potential for exploiting the benefits of the international cooperation. This book draws primarily upon information contributed by IEA governments. In virtually all the IEA countries, important R & D and policy efforts on hydrogen and fuel cells are in place and expanding. Some are fully-integrated, government-funded programs, some are a key element in an overall strategy spread among multiple public and private efforts. The large amount of information provided in this publication reflects the vast array of technologies and logistics required to build the "hydrogen economy."--Publisher description.