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Program Domain

Biosphere-Atmosphere Interactions

Setting up a portable eddy-covariance system to measure carbon and water flux in the San Francisco Delta. Portable solar panels provide power.
Setting up a portable eddy-covariance system to measure carbon and water flux in the San Francisco Delta

To advance understanding of dynamic biosphere-atmosphere interactions involving greenhouse gases, water and energy, such as respiration, photosynthesis, and ecosystem carbon storage.

Programs

Program

Terrestrial Ecosystem Science

This program’s focus is to understand and explain mechanisms and processes controlling primary production, carbon cycling, and soil biogeochemistry; the impacts of disturbance on terrestrial ecosystems; and ecosystem feedbacks to climate in vulnerable environments. In addition, it seeks to establish and maintain environmental field observatories.

Margaret Torn

Margaret S. Torn [email protected] 510-495-2223

Program

Climate Modeling

This program aims to develop global process-resolving models to help quantify the roles of climate feedbacks in anthropogenic climate change. Abrupt and extreme climate changes from anthropogenic warming pose some of the greatest risks to society and the environment. Understanding of the complex interactions involved with feedbacks is critical.

Private: Christina Marie Patricola [email protected] 510-486-5983

lightening strike in Great Plains Oklahoma
Program

Atmospheric System Research

The Earth and Environmental Sciences Area’s, Atmospheric System Research Program advances fundamental understanding of atmospheric radiation, clouds, and precipitation, and their interactions with Earth’s surface and climate.

Margaret Torn

Margaret S. Torn [email protected] 510-495-2223

Background

The Biosphere-Atmosphere Interactions (BAI) Program Domain was initiated early 2016, within the new Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division (Fall 2015). Programs and projects within this program domain use measurements, theory and models to deepen understanding of complex terrestrial ecosystem processes that have profound impacts on atmospheric composition and climate.

Research endeavors involve both large and small teams of researchers, assessing factors for ecosystem response to climate change, such as disturbance impacts on terrestrial ecosystems in vulnerable environments, or carbon storage changes in response to warming soils. Scientists work from molecular to regional to global spatial scales, and from diurnal to centennial timescales. Collaborations involve big data sets and international networks.

BAI is one of four Program Domains within the Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division.

Current research activities

  • Use atmospheric measurements and process understanding to evaluate and improve Earth system models.
  • Advance basic understanding of the role of the land surface in cloud and precipitation processes, including drought and heat extremes.
  • Measure heterogeneous soil moisture and surface fluxes for process understanding, model implementation, and uncertainty analysis.

Program Domain Leads

Margaret Torn

Margaret S. Torn
Senior Scientist

News & Events

EESA Climate Experts Co-Author Study Predicting 100% Increase in Arctic Lightning

April 5, 2021

EESA climate scientists contributed to the stunning discovery that lightning strikes will increase by 100% this century above the Arctic Circle, where lightning is practically unheard of, due to climate warming. A paper published today in the journal Nature Climate Change describes how such an increase in lightning will drive further warming and wildfires across…

CSA News Calls Out Recent NGEE-Tropics Research

February 22, 2021

  CSA News, the magazine of three related societies: the Agronomy Society of America, Crop Science Society of America, and Soil Science Society of America, published an article in its January 2021 issue describing research led by research scientist Robinson Negrón Juárez, on behalf of the NGEE-Tropics project. The article highlights a paper published recently…

New Watershed Function SFA Study Holds Implications for Future Western Water Supply

February 3, 2021

This news release was published by the Desert Research Institute on February 1, 2021. Rosemary Carroll of DRI worked in partnership with Kenneth Williams, deputy director of the Berkeley Lab-led DOE Watershed Function SFA project, to explore explore the importance of monsoon rain in streamflow generation in a Colorado River headwater basin. In the summer of…

Getting to Net Zero – and Even Net Negative – is Surprisingly Feasible, and Affordable

January 29, 2021

Reaching zero net emissions of carbon dioxide from energy and industry by 2050 can be accomplished by rebuilding U.S. energy infrastructure to run primarily on renewable energy, at a net cost of about $1 per person per day, according to new research published by the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), the University…

Sigrid Dengel Receives Award at NGEE-Arctic All-Hands Meeting

January 28, 2021

At the 10th annual NGEE-Arctic all-hands meeting this week, EESA scientific engineering associate Sigrid Dengel was honored with an NGEE-Arctic Data Award for having the most popular data set ever for the project, assessed by downloads from the project data portal! The data was obtained from an eddy flux site in Utqiagvik (Barrow), Alaska, at…

EESA Members Invited to Join Pod: Unlearning Racism in Geoscience

January 27, 2021

  This week marks the launch of a new education and training course called Unlearning Racism in Geoscience (URGE). Funded by the National Science Foundation and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, URGE‘s primary objectives are to (1) deepen the community’s knowledge of the effects of racism on the participation and retention of Black, Brown, and…

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