| 英文摘要: | This five-year proposed project will promote collaborative interdisciplinary research, education, and outreach activities designed to advance scientific understanding of the multiscale atmospheric processes responsible for precipitation delivery in the tropical Andes Mountains. Initial research led by the PI focused in the Cordillera Vilcanota of Peru has identified that most precipitation occurs at night, is likely stratiform rather than convective in structure, and is associated with Amazonian moisture transport arriving from the northwest. These findings upend conventional understanding on regional precipitation in the scientific literature; however, it is unclear whether these patterns also hold for other regions in the tropical Andes. For this CAREER proposal, project activities aim to address the following research questions:
1) How do the temporal patterns, moisture source regions, and ENSO relationships with precipitation occurrence vary in the tropical Andes? 2) What is the vertical structure (e.g., echo top heights, moist layer depths, melting layer heights) of tropical Andean precipitation and how does it evolve temporally? The tropical Andes Mountains will serve as the study site, with in-situ observations focusing on the glacierized regions above 4,000 m in the Cordillera Vilcanota (Peru) and Cordillera Real (Bolivia) and adjacent populated valleys.
The educational activities of the proposed project will be based in both the tropical Andes and the southern Appalachian Mountains and include the following: 1) Involvement of undergraduate and graduate students in all phases of the proposed research, including extensive field experiences, 2) Development of collaborative partnerships with the Universidad Nacional de San Antonio de Abad de Cusco
(Peru) and the Universidad Mayor de San Andres (Bolivia), 3) Education and outreach programs with exposure to 250,000 annual visitors at Grandfather Mountain, North Carolina, and 4) K-12 education activities in a rural mountain school district in conjunction with the 2012 North Carolina Teacher of the Year.
Intellectual Merit :
Precipitation variability in tropical high mountains is a fundamental, yet poorly understood, factor influencing local climatic expression and a variety of environmental processes, including glacier behavior and water resources. Precipitation phase (e.g., rain vs. snow), timing (e.g., afternoon vs. overnight), frequency, and amount influence surface albedo and soil moisture, whereas cloud cover associated with precipitation events reduces solar irradiance. Considerable uncertainty remains in the multiscale atmospheric processes influencing precipitation patterns and their associated regional variability in the tropical Andes -- particularly related to
precipitation phase, timing, and vertical structure. The proposed research is transformative in that it aims to investigate the multiple spatiotemporal atmospheric processes associated with precipitation delivery in the tropical Andes, which is of considerable importance to climate variability and change, glacier behavior, hydrology, agriculture, ecosystems, and paleoclimatic reconstructions.
Broader Impacts :
The proposed research, education, and outreach activities will build on the mission of Appalachian State University, which is to resourcefully blend teaching and scholarship. In particular, the proposed activities will promote collaborative interdisciplinary research, education, and outreach with a variety of partner organizations, both abroad and in the U.S., thereby
fostering global learning. The proposed project will engage underrepresented groups from the tropical Andes Mountains and rural southern Appalachian Mountains in citizen science and educational activities through local schools and partner organizations. The PI will actively involve undergraduate and graduate students in all phases of the proposed project, providing them with valuable
international research, outreach, and field experience, thereby furthering their professional development. The proposed instrumentation and citizen science observations will also significantly expand the observational networks in a severely data-limited mountain region, providing an important long-term contribution to the atmospheric science community. Broader scientific
benefits from the proposed activities include improved precipitation forecasts, increased scientific understanding of precipitation-climate-glacier interactions in the context of ongoing climate variability and change, and improved ice core-based reconstructions of past climates in tropical mountain environments. |