Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies (COLA)

Mason Trailblazer: Jagadish Shukla

Colleen Rich — Mon, 04 Apr 2022 18:53:18 +0000

Mason Trailblazer: Jagadish Shukla Colleen Rich Mon, 04/04/2022 - 14:53

Distinguished University Professor Jagadish Shukla speaks about climate change science during the "Climate 3.0: the Science, the Politics, and the Policy Agenda" panel. Photo by Lathan Goumas/Strategic Communications

A remarkable journey has brought ��AV Professor Jagadish Shukla from his childhood in rural India to world prominence as a climate researcher.

Shukla, a professor since 1994 and founder of the university’s Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Earth Sciences (AOES), has gained international recognition for Mason in that field. He established the Climate Dynamics PhD program at Mason—first in the country—which has produced 50 PhDs.

In 1979, Shukla joined the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, becoming head of the climate modeling group. There he pioneered an influential insight, an exception to the famed “butterfly effect,” which describes the unpredictable nature of long-term weather conditions.

Using early versions of climate models, Shukla demonstrated that phenomena such as seasonal mean temperature and rainfall, especially in tropical regions, were more predictable than previously understood—what he called “predictability in the midst of chaos.”

In 1984, Shukla co-founded the Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies (COLA), then at the University of Maryland. Later, he and his colleagues began collaborating with Mason students and researchers. In 2014, COLA officially became a center in Mason's College of Science.

Along the way, Shukla’s reputation grew. The author or coauthor of more than 250 scientific papers, he received the International Meteorological Organization Prize, the field’s highest honor. He modernized India’s weather enterprise by helping the establishment of a center for numerical weather prediction and monsoon forecasting on India’s first supercomputer in New Delhi.

Education has always been a priority for Shukla. Growing up in a village without roads or electricity, Shukla attended a school started by his father, the only person in the village who could read. For the past 40 years, he has returned to India each year, visiting his home village of Mirdha, where he and his wife, Anastasia, fund education and women’s empowerment programs. In 1999, he founded Gandhi College, which has about 800 students, the majority women.

The Shuklas have also created the Jagadish and Anastasia Shukla AOES Fellowship Endowment in the College of Science, which will support graduate students pursuing the PhD in climate dynamics, a degree he helped establish. Theirs is among the largest philanthropic commitments ever from a Mason faculty member.

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Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies (COLA)

Mason’s Virginia Climate Center will help local communities meet the challenges of climate change

Colleen Rich — Wed, 30 Mar 2022 19:05:19 +0000

Mason’s Virginia Climate Center will help local communities meet the challenges of climate change Colleen Rich Wed, 03/30/2022 - 15:05

Illustration by Getty Images

��AV will bring its array of resources and expertise to bear in the state’s efforts to increase resilience to the impacts of climate change with the creation of the Virginia Climate Center.

Local municipal leaders will have access to an unprecedented range of observational data, environmental models, and experts in climate science, sustainability and engineering solution through the center, said Jim Kinter, the director of the Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies (COLA) within Mason’s College of Science. They can then better make data-driven decisions that will help them save tax dollars and help Virginians increase resilience to severe weather, degraded air quality, drought and flooding, with an emphasis on serving the underprivileged communities within the commonwealth that are more susceptible to adverse effects of climate change.

“It’s Virginia’s communities that are going to be most severely affected by climate change,” Kinter said. “We can help them understand the challenges and potential solutions, so the intent is to partner with each of the municipalities to learn what keeps them up at night.”

The center will receive just under $2 million in federal funding to provide products and services to Virginia companies and municipalities to help them adopt climate risk prevention and mitigation strategies for sustainable entrepreneurship, enhanced profitability, and wise resource management. The center will offer advice on risk prevention and mitigation strategies, actionable information on current and projected future climate, and assessments of the likely climate change impacts on human health, buildings, infrastructure, transportation, agriculture and natural resources.

The Virginia Climate Center, which will serve as a climate extension service for communities in the commonwealth to increase their resilience to the impacts of climate change, came to fruition as part of a nearly $12 million federal funding package for Fiscal Year 2022 for nine projects in Virginia’s 11th District, which includes Fairfax. The center was established in partnership with the City of Fairfax, Fairfax County and the Northern Virginia Regional Commission.

“This funding will be put toward critical efforts to bolster Northern Virginia’s response to climate change, expand affordable housing initiatives, invest in workforce development and training, and more,” said U.S. Congressman Gerry Connolly, the Democrat representing the district.

Northern Virginia is particularly susceptible to several impacts of climate change, most notably flash flooding. Additional impacts will be felt statewide in the form of coastal flooding and erosion due to sea-level rise, more frequent heat waves, and human health problems stemming from the increasing propagation of mosquitoes and ticks.

In forging partnerships with local communities, the Virginia Climate Center will engage subject matter experts in areas that include physical climate systems, air quality, climate change communication, ecosystems and biodiversity, engineering, public policy, resilience, sustainability, and other areas.

The project includes seed grants to local municipalities to provide resources they can use to address climate change impacts.

“We hope to scale it up statewide,” Kinter said. “The goal is that, ultimately, the center is something that municipalities around the state can call on as a resource.”

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Campus News

Institute for a Sustainable Earth (ISE)

Climate Change

Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies (COLA)

Climate change poses a real danger to U.S. national security, and the Virginia economy in particular, Mason scientist says

John Hollis — Wed, 23 Feb 2022 19:05:58 +0000

Climate change poses a real danger to U.S. national security, and the Virginia economy in particular, Mason scientist says John Hollis Wed, 02/23/2022 - 14:05

Jim Kinter

��AV’s Jim Kinter says an additional foot of rising sea levels by 2050 will adversely affect U.S. national security while simultaneously inflicting potentially “devastating” consequences to a Virginia economy dependent on a robust military presence.

“The rising relative sea level has several implications for infrastructure at the coast, including more frequent high-tide flooding, greater depth and area of inundation in case of severe weather, and Chesapeake Bay storm surge that can damage or destroy dry-dock, water treatment and other facilities at the water’s edge,” said Kinter, the director of Mason’s Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies (COLA) within Mason’s College of Science. “Nuisance flooding and catastrophic inundation also affect the residences of military personnel and the communities in which they live.”

Kinter's assessment follows the release of the latest climate change report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Thanks in large part to the burning of fossil fuels, human-caused climate change has accelerated global sea-level rise to the fastest rate in more than 3,000 years, and exacerbated the effects on relative sea levels in eastern North America in particular. By 2050, ocean levels along the U.S. coasts will increase by as much as they had over the previous century, according to the report.

And that directly affects Virginia's 27 military installations, more than half of which are in the Tidewater area, including the world’s largest navy base in Norfolk.

“The presence of so many military installations and personnel in Virginia obviously makes the U.S. military a substantial contributor to Virginia’s economy,” he said. “In the worst-case scenario, if the military finds it too costly or difficult to maintain bases in Virginia and it decides to relocate those bases, the cost to the Virginia economy would be devastating, as other areas experiencing base closures have discovered.”

Kinter said moving, elevating or protecting dry docks, roadways, and other infrastructure could cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Pentagon has repeatedly called global climate change a national security issue as infrastructure degradation due to climate change could potentially stop or hinder deployment of U.S. military forces in times of crisis.

Kinter suggested a multipronged approach that could potentially mitigate future damages to the commonwealth. One key is for Virginia and the U.S. to reach carbon neutrality by 2050 in the hopes of keeping the level of global warming from reaching 2 degrees centigrade. Another important step would be to curtail groundwater extraction in southern Virginia and identify alternative sources of water. Increasing the resilience of facilities and communities at risk to the inevitable impacts of climate change is also critically important, he said.

Jim Kinter can be reached at ikinter@gmu.edu.

For more information, contact John Hollis at jhollis2@gmu.edu.

About Mason

��AV is Virginia’s largest public research university. Located near Washington, D.C., Mason enrolls 39,000 students from 130 countries and all 50 states. Mason has grown rapidly over the past half-century and is recognized for its innovation and entrepreneurship, remarkable diversity and commitment to accessibility. In 2022, Mason celebrates 50 years as an independent institution. Learn more at www.gmu.edu.

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College of Science

Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies (COLA)

Climate Change

climate change; global warming

Research

Tip Sheet

Renewed Vision Series begins Sept. 27 with conversation on climate change

Colleen Rich — Wed, 22 Sep 2021 17:06:49 +0000

Renewed Vision Series begins Sept. 27 with conversation on climate change Colleen Rich Wed, 09/22/2021 - 13:06

��AV’s Office of the Provost is hosting the Mason Vision Series, a monthly forum to showcase exemplary real-world research and scholarship that takes place every day on ��AV campuses.

The first event this semester features Jagadish Shukla, Distinguished University Professor and managing director of the Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies, who will address “Climate Change: Science, Politics and Ethics.”

Shukla will talk about the physical science of climate change, as well as the many social, economic, ethical, political, and social justice challenges it presents. There are reasons to be hopeful about climate solutions, he said.

“What we do in the next few decades will determine which planet we will leave to our children,” he said. “If we act decisively and dramatically to achieve net zero emissions by mid-century, we still have a chance to avoid climate change’s most catastrophic impacts"

The Mason Vision Series will be livestreamed through GMU-TV at 7 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 27. Individuals will have the opportunity to participate and engage in the discussion by submitting questions via email (GMUProv@gmu.edu) or Twitter by using #VisionSeriesMason. To RSVP, click here.

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Faculty and Staff News

Office of the Provost

Climate Change

Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies (COLA)

College of Science

NOAA taps Mason COLA scientists to analyze, update drought prediction models

Colleen Rich — Thu, 19 Aug 2021 17:05:47 +0000

NOAA taps Mason COLA scientists to analyze, update drought prediction models Colleen Rich Thu, 08/19/2021 - 13:05

Photo by Getty Images

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is working with a group of ��AV scientists to update its drought forecasting system. The researchers leading this effort are all from Mason’s Center for Ocean Land Atmosphere Studies (COLA), which is known for its decades of experience running these types of models.

Mason climate systems scientist Paul Dirmeyer is working with colleagues Bohua Huang and Chul-Su Shin to understand the ways ocean and land interact with the atmosphere and the role each contributes to predicting droughts in the United States. Their work is funded by a three-year, $510,000 grant from the NOAA Climate Program Office’s Modeling, Analysis, Prediction, and Projection (MAPP).

Weather models are known to reliably predict the weather one week out and provide seasonal outlooks. However, there is much less reliability in between those periods, called “subseasonal.” Dirmeyer and the team aim to improve this reliability by focusing on the interplay between atmosphere, land and ocean while while analyzing current model behaviors and working to improve the technology's accuracy at drought forcasting.

“The atmosphere evolves quickly, so predictability is lost quickly, which is why weather forecasts beyond a week are usually not as useful,” said Dirmeyer, who is also a professor in the Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic, and Earth Sciences in the College of Science. “This is why we want to look to ocean and land, and better incorporate their interactions into prediction models.”

The research will address drought research priority areas by identifying:

surface-atmosphere interactions and their related processes that lead to drought;
key parameters and methodologies for metrics that can contribute to the capacity of the National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) to identify situations of elevated drought predictability and risk; and
processes and feedbacks between land, ocean and atmosphere that contribute to drought predictability, prediction and useful warnings.

The NOAA Unified Forecast System (UFS), currently under development, will also be evaluated and used for sensitivity studies to explore specific U.S. drought cases.

Dirmeyer said that historically meteorologists and oceanographers have given the state of the land little attention.

“Moisture in the soil is particularly relevant at subseasonal time scales—greatly affecting whether there is predominantly evaporation, which increases humidity in the atmosphere, versus heating of the air, which drives up temperatures, or some combination,” Dirmeyer said.

He added that land states tend to create feedbacks with the atmosphere, particularly during summer. For instance, dry soil can make heat waves and droughts more intense and last longer than they would otherwise.

“Mason is among only a few universities to conduct seasonal reforecasts using operational models like UFS to support a study of this magnitude,” said Huang.

Because the coupled ocean-land-atmosphere version of UFS is more sophisticated and has a much higher resolution than the current National Weather Service operational forecast system, it could generate five terabytes of output data each day.

The team has already reforecast weather from 1958 to 2017 to test the current prediction model’s ability to predict previous droughts.

“We found that the current model has difficulty representing the oceanic influence over land,” said Huang, which further emphasized a need for the new model to take both land and ocean atmospheres into account.

Instead of relying on data provided to them by others, Dirmeyer, Huang, and Shin are running the UFS model themselves and testing the model until they’re confident in its validity.

”Severe droughts are also linked to heat waves, wildfires, crop losses; their impacts are growing in severity and cost,” said Dirmeyer. “There is a pressing need to address the drought prediction problem, and improving models that incorporate more information from land and ocean conditions is a crucial part of the solution.”