Coastal regions are continuously under the threat of flooding induced by tropical cyclones worldwide. These threats continue to increase due to the effects of climate change such as sea-level rise. A number of available protective or mitigation strategies have been examined to address this threat and protect coastlines around the world. However, identifying the most effective strategy given limited resources is a complex question. Optimization methodologies as we have proposed integrate physical analysis and stakeholder feedback to come to a set of best mitigation strategies. This study examines physical and socio-economical aspects of flooding impacts to optimize these strategies. These are then examined including seawalls, elevated promenades, and strategic retreats.

Knowing the heterogeneous crustal structure is essential for understanding the ice dynamics, glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) and tectonic history in Antarctica. For example, geothermal heat flux (GHF) is a major boundary condition for ice dynamics and the crust thickness and its composition (mafic or felsic) are important factors in GHF. Meanwhile, the GIA signal and its gravity response are essential for detecting mass-balance change and predicting future sea-level change. Errors in the density model used, which may be over 10%, will propagate into the gravity calculations. In this study, we use gravity inversion constrained by seismic depth estimation to recover the heterogeneous crustal structure of Antarctica, and estimate its uncertainties. Specifically, we modify by inversion the density of the uppermost mantle, the crustal density, the Moho depth, and the sedimentary cover thickness with an ensemble model with different density/geometry variation constraints. The output models indicate the most representative model of Antarctic crustal structure within the capacity of the method and current data constraints. Our preliminary results show that crustal density varies between 2.75 to 2.95 g/cm3 while the Moho depth varies between 22 km in Ross Ice Shelf and 54 km in Gamburtsev Subglacial Mountains. Low-density sedimentary basins are modelled at up to 10 km thickness beneath the ice shelf, and 3 km inland of Antarctica. Model also shows mantle density varies from 3.25 to 3.35 g/cm3. These density and thickness variations indicate likely substantial differences in crustal heat production, crustal rheology, and the expected GIA response of Antarctica’s crust.

The UN identified water as a human right in 2010; however, the bodies analyzing and designing water management often do not represent a diverse spectrum of the populations they serve. Villanova Center for Resilient Water Systems (VCRWS) research focuses on supplying resilient and sustainable solutions to global water and stormwater challenges. A diverse team of faculty, staff and students created a group that discusses diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the context of water resources engineering and associated design and solution considerations. The group has discussed a wide array of topics through the biweekly meetings. Some benefits of this group included the opportunity for personal growth and development, education on incorporating DEI into engineering thought, and re-education on DEI issues. This group served as a mechanism for members to share their grief and concerns over the political, social, and environmental issues that impede positive change. Outputs from this group include (1) competing in the Schiller Challenge through writing a paper on DEI in water engineering as a group, (2) drawing an action plan to further incorporate DEI in the activities of VCRWS through research, symposiums, conferences, public outreach programs, articles and papers, and engineering education, and (3) creating a guideline for creating DEI groups in other departments, research centers and institutions. This presentation will discuss lessons learned from creating and implementing a successful DEI focused working group within the water resource research center and will include some of the future work planned by the VCRWS group, such as incorporating DEI into the Water and Environmental Engineering curriculum through curating audiovisual materials on DEI concepts, and case studies of successes stories of DEI.

Rain gardens are green stormwater infrastructure that are designed to leverage natural processes to mitigate the impacts of urban stormwater through capturing, infiltrating, and filtering run off. Overtime these systems have the potential to buildup fines and nutrients, impacting their sustainable function. A rain garden’s performance depends on its ability to infiltrate runoff which can be reduced by clogging. Another concern is the potential transport of contaminants from rain gardens to groundwater through deep drainage. This study analyses the spatial and temporal distribution of fines and nutrients in three rain gardens through comprehensive field tests, laboratory testing, and computation analysis. Geomorphic studies were performed by integrating the digital elevation models, derived from Lidar surveys, with the FastMech solver within International River Interface Cooperative (iRIC) software, to model shear stress distribution and sediment transport relative to spatial observations of soil texture and nutrient concentrations within the rain garden. The soil properties were also used in creating models of water infiltration and nutrient sorption using Hydrus 1D. Results show that shear stresses in localized sections of each rain garden can be correlated with fines and nutrient distributions, allowing for prioritizing locations for maintenance. To conclude, LiDAR scans, flow and shear stress models, infiltration and nutrient transport models, field and laboratory soil tests can help us understand the surface dynamics and soil attributes, and gradually gain insight into the GSI performance with time.

The MHD with embedded PIC (MHD-EPIC) model makes it feasible to incorporate kinetic physics into a global simulation. Still, this requires a large enough box-shaped PIC domain to accommodate the movement and changes of the magnetic reconnection regions over time. This wastes computational resources on simulating regions with the expensive PIC model where MHD would be sufficient to describe the physics. We have developed a new MHD with Adaptively Embedded PIC (MHD-AEPIC) algorithm that couples the BATS-R-US MHD model with the new FLexible Exascale Kinetic Simulator (FLEKS) PIC code. In the new coupled model the PIC domains can move with the magnetic reconnection regions and adapt to them with an arbitrary shape. In this work, we will first introduce the algorithms for selecting the reconnection regions in the MHD model that need to be resolved with the kinetic PIC model. Then we will compare simulations obtained with MHD-EPIC using fixed PIC regions versus MHD-AEPIC employing adaptive PIC regions to verify that the new model generates reliable results. Finally, we will apply the MHD-AEPIC model to a global magnetic storm simulation and demonstrate the improved efficiency.

Worldwide coastal land-margins are prone to many flood hazards such as astronomical tides, tropical cyclones, sea-level rise, and extreme precipitation events. Compound flood events, in which two or more flooding mechanisms occur simultaneously or in close succession (Santiago-Collazo et al., 2019, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft. 2019.06.002), can exacerbate the inundation impacts due to the highly non-linear interaction of coastal and hydrologic processes. Furthermore, sea-level rise will increase the hazard at low-gradient coastal land-margins when assessing future projections due to its non-linear nuance on the compound flood (Santiago-Collazo et al., 2021, https://doi.org/10.3389/fclim.2021.684035). Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop new technologies capable of comprehensively studying compound flood events and identifying hotspots prone to these inundations. This research aims to develop a technique capable of defining and classifying coastal land- margins based on physically-based criteria due to surface flow hydrodynamics. A one-dimensional (1-D) hydrodynamic model was used to quantify the hydrodynamic response of thousands of different combinations of input parameters (e.g., astronomical tides, storm surge, precipitation, and landscape) that define a coastal land-margin. This 1-D fully-coupled model, based on the shallow water equations, was applied at a national spatial scale, considering several coastal watersheds within the Gulf of Mexico and the US East coast. One of the main goals of this tool is to identify coastal land-margins vulnerable to compound flood hazards over broad spatial scales (e.g., national or global scale). Findings suggest that low-gradient (e.g., slopes less than 0.01 m km-1) coastal land-margins are more susceptible to compound flood impacts than ones with a steeper gradient under most flooding scenarios. Future research will focus on applying this tool on a worldwide basis to test its capabilities at low-resolution, scarce data regions. A worldwide classification of coastal land-margins may help authorities, policy-makers, and professionals converge on better coastal resilience measures, such as comprehensive compound flood analysis to delineate accurate compound flood hazard maps.Full online poster version at agu2021fallmeeting-agu.ipostersessions.com/Default.aspx?s=FA-1F-20-67-21-4E-E7-69-9F-89-1E-33-BB-3D-2D-40

The Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) mission has shown that variations in the ENA flux from the outer heliosphere are associated with the solar cycle and longer-term variations in the solar wind. In particular, there is a good correlation between the dynamic pressure of the outbound solar wind and variations in the later-observed IBEX ENA flux. The time difference between observations of the outbound solar wind and the heliospheric ENAs with which they correlate ranges from approximately two to six years or more, depending on ENA energy and look direction. This time difference can be used as a means of “sounding” the heliosheath, that is, finding the average distance to the ENA source region in a particular direction. We apply this method to build a three-dimensional map of the heliosphere. We use IBEX ENA data collected over a complete solar cycle, from 2009 through 2019, corrected for survival probability to the inner heliosphere. We divide the data into 56 “macro-pixels” covering the entire sky, and as each point in the sky is sampled once every six months, this gives us a time series of 22 points per macro-pixel on which to time-correlate. Consistent with prior studies and heliospheric models, we find that the shortest distance to the heliopause dHP is slightly south of the nose direction (dHP ~ 110 – 120 au), with a flaring toward the flanks and poles (dHP ~ 160 – 180 au). The heliosphere extends at least ~350 au tailward, which is the distance limit of the technique.

Some of the Earth system data products such as those from NASA airborne and field investigations (a.k.a. campaigns), are highly heterogeneous and cross-disciplinary, making the data extremely challenging to manage. For example, airborne and field campaign measurements tend to be sporadic over a period of time, with large gaps. Data products generated are of various processing levels and utilized for a wide range of inter- and cross-disciplinary research and applications. Data and derived products have been historically stored in a variety of domain-specific standard (and some non-standard) formats and in various locations such as NASA Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs), NASA airborne science facilities, field archives, or even individual scientists’ computer hard drives. As a result, airborne and field campaign data products have often been managed and represented differently, making it onerous for data users to find, access, and utilize campaign data. Some difficulties in discovering and accessing the campaign data originate from the incomplete data product and contextual metadata that may contain details relevant to the campaign (e.g. campaign acronym and instrument deployment locations), but tend to lack other significant information needed to understand conditions surrounding the data. Such details can be burdensome to locate after the conclusion of a campaign. Utilizing consistent terminology, essential for improved discovery and reuse, is also challenging due to the variety of involved disciplines. To help address the aforementioned challenges faced by many repositories and data managers handling airborne and field data, this presentation will describe stewardship practices developed by the Airborne Data Management Group (ADMG) within the Interagency Implementation and Advanced Concepts Team (IMPACT) under the NASA’s Earth Science Data systems (ESDS) Program.

Earthquake moment release is localized along a global fault system. This network of branching and anastomosing fractures defines the geometrically complex boundaries of tectonic plates and serves as the locus of contemporary elastic strain energy storage between earthquakes. The slow deformation of the earth’s crust in between earthquakes has been observed geodetically for decades and provides a filtered representation of the underlying earthquake behaviors. Here we describe efforts to model fault system activity at a global scale incorporating both tectonic plate motions and earthquake cycle effects. Interseismic earthquake cycle effects are represented using a first-order quasi-static elastic approximation, and these models yield a unified estimate of slip deficit rates and subduction zone coupling constrained by nominally interseismic geodetic surface velocity estimates. We present key findings from a kinematic global fault system model with 1.6×107 km2 of fault system area including 16 subduction zones and constrained by observations 22,500+ GPS velocities. Further, we describe new approaches to the efficient representation of viscoelastic deformation in large-scale block models and the prospects for high-resolution block scale models that directly image partial fault coupling across the entire global fault system. Because global geodetic observations capture faults behaviors at varying stages throughout the earthquake cycle, consideration of time-dependent deformation including viscous dissipation of coseismically induced stresses is important for accurate imaging of fault coupling. And, because concentrations of fault coupling have been shown to spatially correlate with recent significant earthquakes, being able to estimate partial coupling patterns on a global scale may highlight pending seismicity.

We study how ground frost affects the ambient seismic wavefield recorded by a three-component broadband sensor. By applying machine learning algorithms on continuous seismic data, we can retrieve the seismic signature of the continuous freeze and thaw process at the surface of the ground. The retrieved signature reveals that the presence of ground frost imprints the amplitude of the ambient seismic wavefield, and the energy ratio between horizontal and vertical components (H/V). A regression model can even predict diurnal freeze and thaw patterns based on the seismic data. Thus, we assume that slight changes in the physical properties of the frozen surface, such as the thickness, alter the seismic wavefield. Models of the subsurface with different properties of the ground frost agree with the observations from the field. The penetration depth of the ground frost, the temperature of the frozen ground, and the presence of different modes in the wavefield determine how the seismic wavefield is changing. The findings of this study show the potential of a single seismic station for monitoring frozen bodies near the surface, such as permafrosts.

Floods are the most frequent, costliest natural disasters having devastating consequences on people, infrastructure, and the ecosystem. The accurate and rapid mapping of the flooded areas becomes more crucial when floods strike densely populated cities. During flood events near real-time satellite imagery has been proven to be an efficient management tool for disaster management authorities. However one of the challenges is accurate classification and segmentation of flooded water and permanent water. Binary segmentation using the threshold split-based method is commonly used in this regard, however, the generalization ability of this method is limited due to the effects of backscatter, geographical area, and time of image collection. Recent advancements in deep learning algorithms for image segmentation has demonstrated the excellent potential of Convolutional Neural Networks(CNN) for improving flood detection, although there have been limited studies in this domain due to the lack of large scale labeled flood event dataset. In this project, we present a U-net based deep learning approach by leveraging publicly available Sentinel-1 dataset provided jointly by NASA Interagency Implementation and Advanced Concepts Team and IEEE GRSS Earth Science Informatics Technical Committee. Dataset is composed of 66,810 tiles of 256×256 pixels, distributed respectively across the training, validation and test sets and cover flood events from Nebraska, North Alabama, Bangladesh, Red River North and Florence. Specifically we proposed an Unet architecture based convolutional neural network (CNN) with a backbone of EfficientNetb7, trained against the dataset. We then evaluated the performance of the model with multiple training, testing and validation. Two evaluation methods - Intersection over Union (IOU) and F-Score are adopted to evaluate the model performance. During testing, the model achieved the meanIOU score of 75.06% and F-Score of 74.98%. We hope to further improve the performance of the network by performing hyper-parameter tuning and to develop a model which can be used for near-real-time flood mapping.

Our objective is to test and improve cloud subcolumn generators used for greater realism of scales in the radiation schemes and satellite simulators GCMs. For this purpose, we use as guidance water content fields from active observations by the CloudSat radar (CPR) and the CALIPSO lidar (CALIOP). Cloud products from active sensors while suffering significant sampling and coverage drawbacks have the advantage of resolving both horizontal and vertical variability which is what the generators are designed to produce. Our first order goal is to test the ability of the generators to deliver realistic 2D cloud extinction (cloud optical thickness) fields using, as in GCMs, limited domain-averaged information. Our reference 2D cloud extinction fields fully resolving horizontal (along the track of the satellites) and vertical variability come from combining CloudSat’s 2B-CWC-RVOD (liquid clouds) and CALIPSO-enhanced 2C-ICE (ice clouds) products. The combined fields were improved by introducing a simple scheme to fill liquid cloud extinction values identified as missing by comparing with coincident 2D (phase-specific) cloud masks provided by the CALIPSO-enhanced 2B-CLDCLASS-LIDAR CloudSat product. Our presentation will demonstrate the substantial improvements for low clouds brought by the filling scheme through comparisons with MODIS-Aqua cloud fraction distributions expressed in terms of joint cloud top pressure – cloud optical thickness histograms. Beyond global comparisons, the nature of the improvements become clearer when comparing mean joint histograms segregated by MODIS Cloud Regime (CR): improvement is by design superior for MODIS CRs dominated by low clouds. With the improved 2D extinction fields at hand, we test the skill of two subcolumn generators, one used in the COSP satellite simulator package, and one with more sophisticated cloud overlap implemented in the GEOS global model, to reproduce joint histograms that are statistically similar to the observed counterparts described above (as interpreted by COSP’s MODIS simulator). Our main comparison metrics are the Euclidean distance between observed and generator-produced global or near-global mean joint histograms, and the statistics of Euclidean distances calculated for individual scenes. One full year of data is used to assess whether the more sophisticated cloud generator produces clouds with greater realism in 2D cloud variability.

Arc-arc collision plays an important role in the formation and evolution of continents (e.g., Yamamoto et al., 2009; Tamura et al., 2010). The Izu collision zone central Japan, an active collision zone between the Honshu Arc and the Izu-Bonin Arc since the middle Miocene (Matsuda, 1978; Amano, 1991; Kano, 2002; Hirata et al., 2010), provides an excellent setting for reconstructing the earliest stages of continent formation. Multi-system geo-thermochronometry was applied to different domains of the Izu collision zone, together with some previously published data, in order to reveal mountain formation processes, i.e., vertical crustal movements. For this study nine granitic samples yielded zircon U–Pb ages of 10.2–5.8 Ma (n = 2), apatite (U–Th)/He ages of 42.8–2.6 Ma (n = 7), and apatite fission-track (AFT) ages of 44.1–3.0 Ma (n = 9). Thermal history inversion modelling based on the AFT data using HeFTy ver. 1.9.3 (Ketcham, 2005), suggests rapid cooling events confined to the study region at ~5 Ma and ~1 Ma. The Kanto Mountains are thought to be uplifted domally in association with collision of the Tanzawa Block at ~5 Ma. But this uplift may have slowed down following migration of the plate boundary and late Pliocene termination of the Tanzawa collision. The Minobu Mountains and possibly adjacent mountains may have been uplifted by collision of the Izu Block at ~1 Ma. Mountain formation in the Izu collision zone was mainly controlled by collisions of the Tanzawa and Izu Blocks and motional change of the Philippine Sea plate at ~3 Ma (Takahashi, 2006). Earlier collisions of the Kushigatayama Block at ~13 Ma and Misaka Block at ~10 Ma appear to have had little effect on mountain formation. Together with ~90° clockwise rotation of the Kanto Mountains at 12-6 Ma (Takahashi & Saito, 1997), these observations suggest that horizontal deformation predominated during the earlier stage of arc-arc collision, whereas vertical movements due to buoyancy resulting from crustal shortening and thickening developed at a later stage. References: Amano, K., 1991, Modern Geol., 15, 315-329; Hirata, D. et al., 2010, J. Geogr., 119, 1125-1160; Kano, K., 2002, Bull. EQ Res. Inst. Univ. Tokyo, 77, 231-248; Ketcham, R.A., 2005, Rev. Min. Geochem., 58, 275-314; Matsuda, T., 1978, J. Phys. Earth, 56, S409-S421; Takahashi, M., 2006, J. Geogr., 115, 116-123; Takahashi, M. & Saito, K., 1997, Isl. Arc, 6, 168-182; Tamura et al., 2010, J. Petrol., 51, 823, doi:10.1093/petrology/egq002; Yamamoto, S. et al., 2009, Gond. Res., 15, 443-453.

The Gabor transform can be utilized in an algorithm for compression due to its ability to allow the user to isolate high frequency information to filter. This transform can be implemented using FFT’s to aid in calculating the Gabor coefficients of a particular image. In the C++ programming language, an open source library exists called FFTW that is able to perform FFT’s quickly on the CPU. cuFFT does have a bottleneck during the initial allocation of the input, output, and plan for the desired FFT, but with larger images these became less and less impactful. Image compression algorithms using the Gabor transform can benefit in reduced computational time from cuFFT’s functions.

Recently, Anderson et al. (2012, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1222978, 2017, https://doi. org/10.1073/pnas.1619318114) and Anderson and Clapp (2018, https://doi.org/10.1039/C7CP08331A) proposed that summertime convectively injected water vapor over North America could lead to stratospheric ozone depletion through halogenic catalytic reactions. Such ozone loss would reduce the ozone column and increase erythemal daily dose (EDD). Using 10 years of observations over the North American monsoon region from the Aura Ozone Monitoring Instrument, we find that the column ozone and EDD has a ~0.8–0.9 spatial correlation with lower stratospheric water vapor measured by the Aura Microwave Limb Sounder. We show that this correlation appears to be due to the elevation of the monsoonal tropopause and associated monsoonal convection. The increase in tropopause altitude reduces the ozone column and increases EDD. We see no apparent evidence of substantial heterogeneous chemical ozone loss in lower stratospheric ozone coincident with the stratospheric monsoonal water vapor enhancement.

Next year marks the 50th anniversary of the detection of Coronal Mass Ejections from space. The discovery and subsequent observations of thousands of events from a stream of coronagraph telescopes marked a paradigm shift of our view of the corona, from a physical system changing gradually over a solar cycle, to a system marked with explosive transient activity on timescales from seconds to days to months. Thanks to coronagraphs, and more recently EUV imagers, Space Weather forecasting and research have become strong research areas within the Heliophysics discipline. adding to that, the transients and even the more quiescent background wind can now be imaged directly in the inner heliosphere thanks to the advent of heliospheric imaging since the mid-2000s. The recent deployment of the Parker Solar Probe and Solar Orbiter missions ushers a new era of coronal/heliospheric imaging from widely varying vantage points along with future missions, such as PUNCH, and operational mission at the L1 and L5 point. It is, therefore, an appropriate time to take stock of the lessons learned from the decades of imaging of the solar wind, both quiescent and transient. In this talk, I review those lessons/learned and discuss where to go next.

The broadband ocean bottom seismometer (BBOBS) and its new generation system (BBOBS-NX) have been developed in Japan, and we performed several test and practical observations to create and establish a new category of the ocean floor broadband seismology, since 1999. Now, the data obtained by our BBOBS and BBOBS-NX is proved to be adequate for broadband seismic analyses. Especially, the BBOBS- NX can obtain the horizontal data comparable to land sites in longer periods (10 s –). Moreover, the BBOBST-NX is in practical evaluation for the mobile tilt observation that enables dense geodetic monitoring. The BBOBS-NX system is a powerful tool, although, it has intrinsic limitation of the ROV operation. If this system can be used without the ROV, like as the BBOBS, it should lead us a true breakthrough of ocean bottom seismology. Hereafter, the new autonomous BBOBS-NX is noted as NX-2G in short. The main problem to realize the NX-2G is a tilt of the sensor unit on landing, which exceed the acceptable limit (±8°) in about 50%. As we had no evidence at which moment and how this tilt occurred, we tried to observe it during the BBOBST-NX landing in 2015 by attaching a video camera and an acceleration logger. The result shows that the tilt on landing was determined by the final posture of the system at the penetration into the sediment, and the large oscillating tilt more than ±10° was observed in descending. The function of the NX-2G system is based on 3 stage operations as shown in the image. The glass float is aimed not only to obtain enough buoyancy to extract the sensor unit, but also to suppress the oscillating tilt of the system in descending. In Oct. 2016, we made the first in-situ test of the NX-2G system with a ROV. It was dropped from the sea surface with the video camera and the acceleration logger. The ROV was used to watch the operation of the system at the seafloor. The landing looked well and it was examined from the acceleration data. As the maximum tilt in descending was about ±2.5°, the glass float effectively suppressed the oscillating tilt. The extraction of the sensor unit was also succeeded with the total buoyancy of about 75 kgf within about 2.5 minutes. As the final step experiment, the one-year-long observation of this NX-2G system has been started in this April with the BBOBS, to obtain simultaneous data for the noise level evaluation.

The Reykjanes Ridge is a major topographic feature that lies south of Iceland in the North- Atlantic Ocean and strongly influences the Subpolar Gyre (SPG) circulation. Based on velocity and hydrographic measurements carried out along the crest of the Ridge from the Icelandic continental shelf to 50°N during the RREX cruise in June-July 2015, we derived the first direct estimates of volume and water masses transports over the Ridge. The circulation was mainly westward north of 53.35°N and eastward south of it. The westward transport was estimated at 21.9 ± 2.5 Sv (Sv = 10 6 m 3 s -1 ) and represents the SPG intensity. The westward flows followed two main pathways at 57°N near Bight Fracture Zone and at 59 – 62°N. We argue that those pathways were respectively connected to the northern branch of the North Atlantic Current and to the Sub-Arctic Front that were intersected by the southern part of the section. In addition to this horizontal circulation, mixing and bathymetry shaped the water mass distribution. Water mass transformations in the Iceland Basin lead to the formation of weakly stratified SubPolar Mode Water (SPMW). We explain why SPMW, which was the main contributor in terms of water mass to the westward flow, was denser at 57°N than at 59–62°N along the Ridge. At higher densities, both Intermediate Water, defined by a dissolved oxygen minimum, and Icelandic Slope Water contributed as much to the westward transport across the Ridge as the sum of Labrador Sea Water and Iceland-Scotland Overflow Water.