Research Highlights
Dec 2015
Kelvin Waves and Tropical Cyclogenesis: A Global Survey
A new study by Carl Schreck III of the North Carolina Institute for Climate Studies and North Carolina State University provides important insights into the…
Dec 2015
Global Land Surface Extremes of Precipitation
In an article published in the Journal of Extreme Events, CICS-NC’s Kenneth Kunkel and Rebekah Frankson analyze trends in heavy precipitation events and their relationships…
Nov 2015
Comparing AMSR-E Soil Moisture Estimates to the Extended Record of the U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN)
Building on previous work by the same author team, a paper in Advances in Water Resources reports on the use of satellite data to validate…
Oct 2015
The Mental Health Outcomes of Drought: A Systematic Review and Causal Process Diagram
Working with colleagues at Emory University, CICS-NC’s Jesse Bell contributed to a recent paper on the impacts of drought on mental health. After performing a…
Oct 2015
Comparing CMIP3 and CMIP5 Climate Simulations
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has released a new report comparing results for the United States from two generations of climate model simulations.…
Oct 2015
MODIS: A Decade of Sea Surface Temperatures
Satellite-based instruments are the best tools we have for measuring sea surface temperatures (SSTs) on a global scale, but turning infrared sensor data into accurate…
Aug 2015
Net Surface Shortwave Radiation from GOES Imagery—Product Evaluation Using Ground-Based Measurements from SURFRAD
The balance of incoming and outgoing radiation at the Earth’s surface plays a crucial role in how energy and water is exchanged between the surface…
Jul 2015
Extending the Soil Moisture Record
Long-term data on soil moisture can be invaluable for making decisions about agricultural irrigation, understanding and predicting drought, and improving global climate models. Unfortunately, accurate…
Jul 2015
Calibrating Satellite Data to Better Understand Clouds
The International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP) collects and analyzes satellite data in order to advance our understanding of clouds—how they are distributed around the…
Apr 2015
Winter Severity and Frost Depth in a Warming Climate
In many areas of the country, proper building design and construction depend on accurate expectations of how deeply the ground will freeze in the winter.…