1. Climate research, engagement, & tools
Vasu Misra
Climate research, engagement, & tools

2. Topics of research
Role of landfalling tropical cyclones in southeastern US droughts
Can Geo-Engineering be affected by irrigation?
Decadal variations of Wheat Yield. Are there connections to climate variability?

3. An SST recipe that causes drought in the US but also more Atlantic tropical cyclones!
Top panel: Average SST between May 1998-June Insets: are monthly mean time series of SST in western and eastern Pacific.
Simulated annually averaged surface temperature (left) and precipitation (right) for May 1998-June 2002 from three different models (ECHAM4.5, NCEP, NASA).
Hoerling and Kumar 2003

4. Geo-Engineering with irrigation
Volume of soil moisture added to maintain it at field capacity
Change in monthly mean precipitation between control and irrigation model integration

5. The influence of decadal climate variation on winter and summer crops in the southeast USA
AMO
PDO
NAO
Decadal variations (10-22 years) of winter crop yields: correlated with AMO, PDO & NAO
Opens the potential to leverage decadal climate predictions for winter seasonal yields
Di Tian, Senthold Asseng, Chris Martinez (UF), Vasu Misra (FSU),
Davide Cammarano (UF), Brenda V. Ortiz (AU)

6. Though Scorned by Colleagues, a Climate-Change Skeptic Is Unbowed
Testimony given to House Science Committee Dec 2013, including quotes from testimony given 18 years prior before same committee
Upper left - testified before House Science Committee in past year on climate. A key part of the testimony was the fact I quoted from my testimony before the same committee 18 years before - demonstrating I was correct back then.
Lower left - I was one of six national climate scientists chosen by the American Physical Society to make a presentation to their committee on climate change.
Right - the New York Times presented a favorable article on our research in July. Alabama (and 16 other states) are in a number of desperate legal battles with the EPA in which I am involved to protect our economy.

7. New Dateset: Alabama Summer Daily Maximum Temperature °F
Average of 4, 100-mile-diameter regions centered on
MOB, MGM, BHM and HSV,
UAH takes ownership, operations and maintenance of 16 Regional Climate Reference Stations from NOAA/NCDC to avoid termination of the 10-year climate records.
Left - NOAA/NCDC decided to terminate the Regional Climate Reference Network program.  Rather than letting Alabama's stations die, UAH took over the 16-station network, including operations and maintenance, while NOAA agreed to continue ingesting/archiving the data.
Upper right - We reconstructed the time series of Alabama temperatures (summer TMax here) from 1883 using some data not available through NCDC.  The downward shift in temperatures in the mid-1950s is prominent and unexplained.
Lower right - we accessed output from all 102 rcp4.5 simulations and generated satellite layer temperatures for direct comparison with observations.  The layer depicted here has the largest response to greenhouse gas increases in models ( ) and thus is a clear signal to test.  All 102 runs individually (not shown) and in the family averages were warmer than observations.  The average model response was over three times too large.
Example of significant, pervasive, systematic model error in fundamental response to greenhouse gases

8. Bombogenesis

10. Polar Vortex