Increasingly, climate change is challenging society's resilience and adaptive ability. Atmospheric and Environmental Research (AER) helps clients address many critical issues, including sea level rise, the availability and quality of water resources, oil exploration in the Arctic, and changes in the planet's climate systems related to the increase in greenhouse gases.
No other organization has the decades' worth of weather, climate and environmental data that AER possesses. AER has leveraged this comprehensive, globally consistent set of baseline hazard metrics, early warning indicators and seasonal forecasts to become the preeminent climate-related problem solver for leading climate and environmental prediction centers throughout the world. In doing so, we have compiled an impressive list of accomplishments:
- Our highly accurate seasonal climate models are used to predict seasonal weather patterns.
- We are the world's leading nongovernment expert in satellite-based cloud property analysis.
- Our science team serves as the cloud remote sensing science partner to the U.S. Air Force Weather Agency.
- Our fast radiative transfer models are embedded in a number of climate prediction models used by scientists worldwide to assess potential climate change scenarios.
- Our stratospheric aerosol model has been used in conjunction with climate models to evaluate potential stratospheric aerosol injection scenarios to mitigate climate change.
- Our research on carbon transport modeling is directly applicable to designing models, measurements and systems for treaty verification.
- In recognition of our technical achievements, the American Meteorological Society honored AER with the "Outstanding Service to Meteorology by a Corporation" award.
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Radiative transfer expertise for global climate models |
AER innovations enable global climate model organizations to incorporate advanced radiative transfer modeling to improve the accuracy of energy circulation in weather and climate models. These organizations include:
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Climate model migration to high-performance computing |
AER is helping NOAA migrate the agency's climate models to a new high-performance computing system. AER is providing science and software expertise to support the migration and optimization of the models, and to validate the scientific integrity of the algorithms. |
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Remote Sensing |
Working with AER, government agencies worldwide are improving their remote sensing, sensor design and data analysis capabilities. Scientists at AER have developed new methods to retrieve data and perform end-to-end system modeling. These methods and models are used in numerical weather prediction (NWP), cloud layer analysis, ocean analysis and space weather assessment. |
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Climate change impacts on severe weather |
AER helps governments worldwide to understand climate change impacts on severe weather. |
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Carbon and greenhouse gases |
AER has worked with the U.S. Department of Energy and NOAA to improve remote sensing and modeling of carbon and other greenhouse gases. AER worked on the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Greenhouse Gases Observation Satellite (GOSAT) program, designing and validating remote sensing and laser techniques for satellite-based measurement of carbon dioxide and trace gases. |