Key Research Findings from the Collaboration Between the NOAA Air Resources Laboratory and Cooperative Institute for Severe and High-Impact Weather Research and Operations (CIWRO) at the University of Oklahoma

Since 2016, the NOAA Air Resources Laboratory’s (ARL) Atmospheric Turbulence and Diffusion Division (ATDD) has partnered with the University of Oklahoma’s Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies (CIMMS), which is now the Cooperative Institute for Severe and High-Impact Weather Research and Operations (CIWRO), to advance scientific understanding on boundary layer meteorology and land-atmosphere interactions. Two research scientists and two post-doctoral research associates have so far been employed through CIWRO to support ARL and have played a key role in making this collaboration successful. In this presentation, we will summarize key results that have emerged from this collaboration, including: (1) Analyses of the observations obtained from the field campaigns in which ARL has participated since 2016 that were focused on land-atmosphere interactions and boundary layer processes, including the Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment in the Southeast U.S. (VORTEX-SE) in 2016 and 2017, the Land Atmosphere Feedback Experiment (LAFE) in 2017, and Chequamegon Heterogeneous Ecosystem Energy-balance Study Enabled by a High-density Extensive Array of Detectors (CHEESEHEAD) in 2019; (2) The development of new parameterizations for representing surface-layer momentum, heat, and moisture exchange using observations from the above field campaigns coupled with large-eddy simulations using the University of Oklahoma’s Collaborative Model for Multiscale Atmospheric Simulation (COMMAS); (3) The use of uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS) for characterizing near-surface temperature, moisture, and wind fields, and the development of new UAS sampling strategies for studying boundary layer processes; (4) Syntheses of observations from the US Climate Reference Network (USCRN); and (5) Preliminary analyses of datasets obtained from the Study of Precipitation, the Lower Atmosphere and Surface for Hydrometeorology (SPLASH) campaign in the Colorado Rockies. We will conclude by summarizing how this partnership is mutually beneficial to both ARL and CIWRO/OU, and suggesting future directions for ARL/CIWRO collaborative research.