Inclusive, multi-stakeholder dialogue, participatory planning and actionable science are necessary for just and effective climate resilience outcomes. How can we support that in practice? The Resilience Dialogues launched a public Beta in 2016-2017 to allow scientists and resilience practitioners to engage with local leaders from 10 communities around the US through a series of facilitated, online dialogues. We developed two, one-week dialogues for each community: one to consider ways to respond to observed and anticipated climate impacts through a resilience lens, and one to identify next steps and resources to advance key priorities. We divided the communities into three cohorts and refined the structure and facilitation strategy for these dialogues from one to the next based on participant feedback. This adaptive method helped participants engage in the dialogues more effectively and develop useful results. We distributed a survey to all participants following each cohort to capture feedback on the use and utility of the dialogues. While there was room for improvement in the program’s technical interface, survey participants valued the dialogues and the opportunity to engage as equals. Local leaders said the dialogues helped identify new local pathways to approach resilience priorities. They felt they benefited from focused conversation and personalized introductions to best-matched resources. Practitioners learned how local leaders seek to apply climate science, and how to effectively communicate their expertise to community leaders in support of local planning efforts. We learned there is demand for specialized dialogues on issues like communication, financing and extreme weather. Overall, the desire of participants to continue to engage through this program, and others to enter, indicates that facilitated, open conversations between experts and local leaders can break down communication and access barriers between climate services providers and end-users. This presentation will share lessons learned from this process and methods that we found most effective.

Climate data records typically exhibit considerable variation over short time scales both from natural variability and from instrumentation issues. The use of linear least squares regression can provide overall trend information from noisy data, however assessing intermediate time periods can also provide useful information unavailable from basic trend calculations. Extracting the short term information in these data for assessing changes to climate or for comparison of data series from different sources requires the application of filters to separate short period variations from longer period trends. A common method used to smooth data is the moving average, which is a simple digital filter that can distort the resulting series due to the aliasing of the sampling period into the output series. We utilized Hamming filters to compare MSU/AMSU satellite time series developed by three research groups (UAH, RSS and NOAA STAR), the results published in January 2017 (Swanson 2017).

The kinetic theory of twisted wave instability is developed for the nonthermal dusty plasmas in the presence of helical electric field carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM). The Laguerre Gaussian (LG) mode function is employed to decompose the mode into its longitudinal and azimuthal components. The longitudinal component illustrates the spatial while the azimuthal component describes the phasor variation of the wave. The dielectric functions of quasi-electrostatic dust ion acoustic (DIA) and dust acoustic (DA) twisted modes are obtained and solved analytically to calculate the growth rates. The numerical results are also shown pictorially.

The Middle–Upper Jurassic sedimentary strata in the southwestern Colorado Plateau recorded pervasive eolian to fluvio-lacustrine deposition in the Paradox Basin. While paleocurrents preserved in the Entrada Sandstone, an eolian deposition in the Middle Jurassic, has been well constrained and show a northwesterly to northeasterly migration of ergs from the south onto the Colorado Plateau, there is yet no clear resolution of the paleocurrents preserved in the Wanakah Formation and Tidwell Member of the Morrison Formation, both of which are important sedimentary sequences in the paleogeographic framework of the Colorado Plateau. New U–Pb detrital zircon geochronology of sandstones from these sequences suggests that an abrupt change in provenance occurred in the early Late Jurassic, with sediments largely sourced from eroding highlands in central Colorado. We measured the anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility (AMS) of sediments in oriented sandstone samples from these three successive sequences; first, to determine the paleocurrents from the orientations of the AMS fabrics in order to delineate the source area and sediments dispersal pattern and second, to determine the depositional mechanisms of the sediments. Preliminary AMS data from two study sites show consistency and clustering of the AMS axes in all the sedimentary sequences. The orientations of the Kmin – Kint planes in the Entrada Sandstone sample point to a NNE–NNW paleocurrent directions, which is in agreement with earlier studies. The orientations of the Kmin – Kint planes in the Wanakah Formation and Tidwell Member samples show W–SW trending paleocurrent directions, corroborating our hypothesis of a shift in provenance to the eroding Ancestral Front Range Mountain, located northeast of the Paradox Basin, during the Late Jurassic. Isothermal remanence magnetization (IRM) of the samples indicate that the primary AMS carriers are detrital, syndepositional ferromagnetic minerals. Thus, we contend that AMS can be successfully deployed in constraining paleocurrents in lacustrine sedimentary strata, which lacks traditional sedimentary structures for paleocurrent analyses.

• Nitrogen is the main component of the atmosphere, a key nutrient for organisms, and exerts con- trol over climate via direct warming, as N2O, and indirect effects, including pressure-broadening • Previous models linked N to C, and typically only considered biologic or geologic fluxes in detail, focusing on sedimentary rocks. These studies suggest atmospheric mass steady over Earth history, which does not match new geochemical and physical paleobarometers • New approach is to more completely include biologic and geologic fluxes, and link N behavior to PO4 and O2 abundance through time • This approach is consistent with large-scale changes in atmospheric mass through time, up to 3 present atmospheric masses of nitrogen (1 PAN = 4 × 10^18 kg N) supporting geochemical proxies that indicate atmospheric drawdown through time

In case of nuclear accidents like Fukushima disaster, the influence of 137Cs depositional forms (soluble and/or solid forms) on mineral soil of forest environment on its availability have not reported yet. Soluble (137Cs tagged ultra-pure water) and solid (137Cs contaminated litter-OL and fragmented litter-OF) input forms were mixed with the mineral soils collected under Fukushima coniferous and broadleaf forests. The mixtures then incubated under controlled laboratory condition to evaluate the extractability of 137Cs in soil over time in the presence of decomposition process through two extracting reagents- water and ammonium acetate. Results show that extracted 137Cs fraction with water was less than 1% for soluble input form and below detection limit for solid input form. On the same way with acetate reagent, the extracted 137Cs fraction ranged from 46 to 56% for soluble input and 2 to 15% for solid input, implying the nature of 137Cs contamination strongly influences the extractability and hence the mobility of 137Cs in soil. Although the degradation rate of the organic materials has been calculated in the range of 0.18 ± 0.1 to 0.24 ± 0.1 y-1, its impact on 137Cs extractability appeared very weak at least within the observation period, probably due to shorter observation period. Concerning the treatments of solid 137Cs input forms through acetate extraction, relatively more 137Cs has been extracted from broadleaf organic materials mixes (BL-OL & BL-OF) than the coniferous counterparts. This probably is due to the fact that the lignified coniferous organic materials (CED-OL & CED-OF) components tend to retain more 137Cs than that of the broadleaf. Generally, by extrapolating these observations in to a field context, one can expect more available 137Cs fraction in forest soil from wet depositional pathways such as throughfall and stemflow than those attached with organic materials like litter (OL) and its eco-processed forms (OF).

Acoustic Doppler Current Profilers (ADCPs) are oceanographic tools that are capable of collecting large amounts of current profile data. Using unsupervised machine learning techniques such as principal component analysis, fuzzy c-means clustering, and self-organizing maps, patterns and trends in an ADCP dataset were discovered. Cluster validity algorithms such as visual assessment of cluster tendency and clustering index were used to determine the optimal number of clusters in the ADCP dataset. These techniques proved to be useful in analysis of ADCP data and may be of further use in the oceanographic field.

By solving Laplace’s tidal equations along the equatorial Pacific thermocline, assuming a delayed-differential effective gravity forcing due to a combined lunar+solar (lunisolar) stimulus, we are able to precisely match ENSO periodic variations over wide intervals. The underlying pattern is difficult to decode by conventional means such as spectral analysis, which is why it has remained hidden for so long, despite the excellent agreement in the time-domain. What occurs is that a non-linear seasonal modulation with monthly and fortnightly lunar impulses along with a biennially-aligned “see-saw” is enough to cause a physical aliasing and thus multiple folding in the frequency spectrum. So, instead of a conventional spectral tidal decomposition, we opted for a time-domain cross-validating approach to calibrate the amplitude and phasing of the lunisolar cycles. As the lunar forcing consists of three fundamental periods (draconic, anomalistic, synodic), we used the measured Earth’s length-of-day (LOD) decomposed and resolved at a monthly time-scale [1] to align the amplitude and phase precisely. Even slight variations from the known values of the long-period tides will degrade the fit, so a high-resolution calibration is possible. Moreover, a narrow training segment from 1880-1920 using NINO34/SOI data is adequate to extrapolate the cycles of the past 100 years (see attached figure). To further understand the biennial impact of a yearly differential-delay, we were able to also decompose using difference equations the historical sea-level-height readings at Sydney harbor to clearly expose the ENSO behavior. Finally, the ENSO lunisolar model was validated by back-extrapolating to Unified ENSO coral proxy (UEP) records dating to 1650. The quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO) behavior of equatorial stratospheric winds derives following a similar pattern to ENSO via the tidal equations, but with an emphasis on draconic forcing. This improvement in ENSO and QBO understanding has implications for vastly simplifying global climate models due to the straightforward application of a well-known and well-calibrated forcing. [1] Na, Sung-Ho, et al. “Characteristics of Perturbations in Recent Length of Day and Polar Motion.” Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences 30 (2013): 33-41.

In recent years it has been recognised that parts of slow spreading ridges such as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge (MAR) are characterised by typical magmatic spreading, while other parts are characterised by the formation of detachment faults and Oceanic Core Complexes (OCC). These different spreading modes can be clearly identified in the near-ridge environment in the bathymetry, with magmatic mode crust characterised by linear fault-bounded ridges, and detachment mode crust by more chaotic bathymetric signatures. The aim of this project is to characterise the magnetic and gravity signatures of lithosphere created by different modes of spreading, with the aim of using these signatures to identify if the structures still remain in ocean-continent transitions, where they have been covered by sediments coming from the continental crust. We first characterise different modes of spreading using available high-resolution bathymetry data of the MAR up to 20 My of age. The identified characteristics are then related to the corresponding ship-borne gravity and magnetic data in the same area. From the gravity anomalies, thinner crust is observed where the OCCs are in place. This allows the mantle to be exhumed to the sea-floor. As for the magnetic anomalies, it is found that in places where OCCs are present, the anomalies are not as symmetrical as those found in magmatic mode regions. We present a range of parameters extracted from the data that characterise different spreading modes, and use these to test whether transitions between detachment and magmatic mode crust identified in the bathymetry can be readily identified in gravity and magnetic data.

For over half a century, the bedding plane orientation was believed to be the main cause of the mechanical anisotropy in shales. However, the in situ stress may also play an important role on the mechanical anisotropy. In this paper, shales from the Longmaxi formation were sampled from Fulin, Chongqing, China. The axial orientations of all the cylinder samples (50mm, 100mm height) of Longmaxi Shale are parallel to the bedding plane. The cylinder samples were compressed in a triaxial apparatus of under confining pressures from 0 to 25MPa and at a strain rate of 4*10-2mm*min-1. The only difference of the samples in this study is the in situ stress orientations in the way that the samples in the X group are along the major principle stress while those in the Y group are along the minor principal stress. The Young’s modulus, failure strength, and Poisson’s ratio as a function of confining pressure were determined for both the two groups of samples. The result shows that, for all confining pressures, Young’s moduli in the X group are higher than those of Y group if confining pressures are the same and the differences are 2.89 GPa in average. For confining pressures within 20MPa, the failure strengths and Poisson’s ratios are higher in the X group. The differences of failure strengths and Poisson’s ratios between the two groups for the same confining pressures decrease with the increase of confining pressures. When confining pressures exceed 20MPa, the failure strengths and Poisson’s ratios in the Y group are higher than those in the X group, and the differences of failure strengths and Poisson’s ratios between the two groups for the same confining pressures increase with the increase of confining pressures. Therefore, the differences of mechanical properties of the samples along different directions of in situ stress suggest the Longmaxi gas shale is not transversely isotropic but anisotropic in three dimensions. Considering that all samples have the same bedding plane, the mechanical anisotropy of samples detected in the experiments may be owing to the divergences of the minerals and micro- cracks in the bedding plane. As there were changes of the differences between X group and Y group, the variations might be an indicator of the in situ stress.

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.

A new Arts/Lab Student Residence program was developed that brings artists into a research lab. Science and Engineering undergraduate and graduate students working in the lab describe their research and allow the artists to shadow them to learn more about the work. The Arts/Lab Student Residencies are designed to be unique and fun, while encouraging interdisciplinary learning and creative production by exposing students to life and work in an alternate discipline’s maker space - i.e. the artist in the engineering lab, the engineer in the artist’s studio or performance space. Each residency comes with a cash prize and the expectation that a work of some kind will be produced as a response to experience. The Moldwin Prize is designed for an undergraduate student currently enrolled in the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design, the Taubman School of Architecture and Urban Planning or the School of Music, Theatre and Dance who is interested in exchange and collaboration with students engaged in research practice in an engineering lab. No previous science or engineering experience is required, although curiosity and a willingness to explore are essential! Students receiving the residency spend 20 hours over 8 weeks (February-April) participating with the undergraduate research team in the lab of Professor Mark Moldwin, which is currently doing work in the areas of space weather (how the Sun influences the space environment of Earth and society) and magnetic sensor development. The resident student artist will gain a greater understanding of research methodologies in the space and climate fields, data visualization and communication techniques, and how the collision of disciplinary knowledge in the arts, engineering and sciences deepens the creative practice and production of each discipline. The student is expected to produce a final work of some kind within their discipline that reflects, builds on, explores, integrates or traces their experience in the residency. This talk will describe the program, the inaugural year’s outcomes, and plans to expand the program to other research labs.

Lossless compression can reduce climate data storage by 30-40%. In general, further reductions require lossy compression that also reduces precision. Fortunately, geoscientific models and measurements generate false precision (scientifically meaningless data bits) that can be eliminated without sacrificing scientifically meaningful data. We introduce Bit Grooming, a lossy compression algorithm that removes the bloat due to false- precision, those bits and bytes beyond the meaningful precision of the data. We evaluated Bit Grooming against competitors Linear Packing, Layer Packing, and GRIB2/JPEG2000.

The Ganga plains represent the abode of more than 400 million people and a region of severe anthropogenic disturbance to natural processes. Changing agricultural practices, inefficient use of water, contamination of groundwater systems, and decrease in soil fertility are some of the issues that have affected the long-term resilience of hydrological processes. The quantification of these processes demands a network of hydro-meteorological instrumentation, low-cost sensors, continuous engagement of stakeholders and real time data transmission at a fine interval. We have therefore set up a Critical Zone Observatory (CZO) in a small watershed (21 square Km ) that forms an intensively managed rural landscape consisting of 92% of agricultural land in the Pandu River Basin (a small tributary of the Ganga River). Apart from setting up a hydrometeorological observatory, the major science questions we want to address relate to development of water balance model, understanding the soil-water interaction and estimation of nutrient fluxes in the watershed. This observatory currently has various types of sensors that are divided into three categories: (a) spatially not dense but temporally fine data, (b) spatially dense but temporally not fine data and(c) spatially dense and temporally fine data. The first category represent high cost sensors namely automatic weather stations that are deployed at two locations and provide data at 15 minute interval. The second category includes portable soil moisture, discharge and groundwater level at weekly/ biweekly interval. The third category comprises low-cost sensors including automatic surface and groundwater level sensors installed on open wells to monitor the continuous fluctuation of water level at every 15 minutes. In addition to involving the local communities in data collection (e.g. manual rainfall measurement, water and soil sampling), this CZO also aims to provide relevant information to them for improving their sustainability. The preliminary results show significant heterogeneity in soil type, cropping system, fertilizer application, water quality, irrigation source etc. within a small catchment.

The net surface water flux (evaporation minus precipitation minus runoff, E-P-R) of the Atlantic Ocean is approximately 0.4 – 0.6 Sv (1 Sv = 10^9 kg s-1) larger than that of the Pacific Ocean, as shown in atmospheric and oceanic reanalyses and by oceanographic estimates. This asymmetry is linked to the asymmetry in sea surface salinity and the existence of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. It is shown that the reason for the asymmetry in E-P-R is greater precipitation per unit area over the Pacific south of 30N, while evaporation rates are similar over both basins. It is further argued that the Pacific Ocean is anomalous compared to the Atlantic and Indian Oceans in terms of atmospheric moisture flux convergence and precipitation across the tropics and subtropics. To clarify the mechanism by which water vapour is exported out of the Atlantic basin and imported into the Pacific, we use an air mass trajectory model driven by ERA-Interim reanalysis. Using 12-hourly releases of 14-day back trajectories on the boundaries of ocean drainage basins over the period 2010-2014, we are able to partition the atmospheric moisture fluxes between basins according to their origins (i.e. last contact with the boundary layer). We show that at most a quarter of the E-P-R asymmetry is explained by higher moisture export to the Arctic and Southern basins from the Atlantic than from the Pacific. The main contributions come from differences in the longitudinal atmospheric transport of moisture between the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific basins. In particular, during the Asian summer monsoon the recurvature of the low level flow in the Somali Jet results in a much weaker westward moisture transport from the Indian into the Atlantic basin than across Central America (where it is similar to the zonal average) while there is stronger eastward transport from the Indian to Pacific basins. The net effect is stronger moisture convergence into the Pacific, but weaker into the Atlantic. In contrast to previous thinking, the role of the moisture flux across Central America in the asymmetry, albeit significant, is not dominant.

Studies of intraseasonal and annual cycles of meteorological variables, using projections of climate change, are nowadays extremely important to improve regional socio-economic planning for countries. This is particularly true in Costa Rica, as Central America has been identified as a climate change hot spot. Today many of the economic activities in the region, especially those related to agriculture, tourism and hydroelectric power generation are linked to the seasonal cycle of precipitation. Changes in rainfall (mm/day) and in the diurnal temperature range ($^{\circ}$C) for the periods 1970-1999 and 2070-2099 were investigated using the NASA Earth Exchange Global Daily Downscaled Projections (NEX-GDDP) constructed using the CMIP5 (Coupled Model Intercomparison Project version 5) data. Differences between the multi-model ensembles of the two prospective scenarios (RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5) and the retrospective baseline scenario were computed. This study highlights Costa Rica as an inflexion point of the climate change in the region and also suggests an early onset of the rainy season and future drying conditions.