Browsing by Subject "Weather"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Coordinating the Uncoordinated Giant: Applying the Four Flows Model of Communicative Constitution of Organizations to the United States Weather Enterprise
    (2019-10) Rothrock, Matthew Carter; Parrish-Sprowl, John; Goering, Elizabeth; Sandwina, Ronald
    The US weather enterprise includes academia, the private weather industry, and government-funded forecasting, research, and dissemination agencies. While not an organization in its own right, the enterprise behaves like an organization of organizations. This thesis applies the communicative constitution of organizations, and McPhee and Zaug’s four flows model in particular, to the US weather enterprise. Each organization in the weather enterprise behaves like individual members of an organization would, which extends this theory to a conceptualization of organization that increases innovation, collaboration, and coordination. The weather is a constitutive force which calls the US weather enterprise into being. Finally, CCO is extended to other collaborative, coordinated efforts among the public and private sectors, indicating the possibilities of CCO as an attractive answer to the great organizational questions of the 21st century and beyond. Future research areas are considered, including how the US weather enterprise manages the unexpected and reduces uncertainty organizationally. Also, considerations as to how CCO can be applied to the incident command structure, often called forward during high-impact weather events, will be made.
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    Identifying enhanced urban heat island convection areas for Indianapolis, Indiana using space-borne thermal remote sensing methods
    (2015-04-02) Boyd, Kelly D.; Johnson, Daniel P.; Wilson, Jeffery S.; Martin, Pamela A.
    Heat is one of the most important factors in our atmosphere for precipitation (thunderstorm) formation. Thermal energy from local urban land-cover is also a common source of heat in the lower atmosphere. This phenomenon is known as the urban heat island effect (UHI) and is identified as a substantial cause to a changing climate in surface weather modification. The proceeding study investigates this connection between the UHI and surface weather using remote sensing platforms A ten-year analysis of the Indianapolis UHI and thunderstorms were studied from the summer months of May, June, July, August and September (MJJAS) from 2002 until 2011. LANDSAT space borne satellite technology and land-surface based weather radar technology was used in this analysis for thunderstorm investigation. Precipitation areas identified from land-based NEXRAD WSR-88D technology were used to identify convection from non-synoptic forcing and non-normal surface diurnal heating scenarios. Only convection appearing from the UHI were studied and analyzed. Results showed twenty-one events over eighteen days with the year 2005 and 2011 having the largest frequency of events. The month of August had the largest concentration with seven events during the late afternoon hours. UHI results showed July had the largest heat island magnitude with April and September having the lowest magnitude in UHI temperatures. Three events of the twenty-one storm paths did not had a significant mean temperature difference in the heat island below the storm reflectivity. The nineteen storm paths that were significant had a warmer area underneath storm path development by an average 6.2°C than surrounding areas. UHI initiation points showed twelve of the twenty-one events having statistically significant differences between 2 km initiation areas and the rest of the study areas. Land-cover results showed low intensity developed areas had the most land-cover type (48%) in the 2km initiation buffer regions.
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