Welcome to the South America affinity group website. This group was established to accelerate research and discoveries focusing on the water and energy cycle of South America. This effort is led by NCAR's Water Systems program and the Hydrometeorological Applications Program (HAP) and fosters collaborations across NCAR and the international research community. NCAR's role in this project is the development of a high-resolution, convection-permitting modeling system for South America, that enables unprecedented insights into atmospheric and hydro-climatologic processes in South America. NCAR closely collaborates with university patterns in the U.S. and South America and supports international research activities such as ANDEX, which is a prospective GEWEX Regional Hydroclimate Project (RHP).

NCAR is organizing regular meetings to foster collaborations on key research challenges in South America and to gather feedback on the project's progress and future direction. Agendas and recordings from past meetings can be found under the "Resources" tab.

A collection of science topics that are proposed by the group can be found in this Google Document. You have to be a group member to view and edit the document. 

This page contains meeting minutes and presentation records. The meetings are organized chronologically starting with the most recent on top.

October 21, 2020

October 7, 2020

Agenda

• Review of Agenda (Roy)
• Introduction of new members of the community
• Discussion about land surface changes in the Amazon basin
  Andreas - New York Times article
  Francina - Animation of moisture transport in South America
• Discussion of Proposed Science Topics

Recording

Video recording

Recording of chat discussion

September 23, 2020

Agenda

September 9, 2020

Agenda

• Presentation - Luis Fita Borrel
  WRF modeling in South America - using the Orchedee land surface model
• Update on 3 km WRF simulations - Kyoko Ikeda and Changhai Liu
• Update on simulating the diurnal cycle of precipitation - Andreas Prein

Recording

 Video Recording

August 27, 2020

Agenda

• Update from Roy

• Review webpage content
• Changhai and Kyoko will present an update on the model test simulations.
  Analysis of warm bias dependence on aerosol treatment
• Andreas - sub-daily precipitation characteristic in South America test runs

Recording

Video Recording

July 29, 2020

Agenda

• Andy Newman
  GMET - Overview of the Gridded Meteorological Ensemble Tool 
• Kristen Rasmussen
  Ingredients supporting the upscale growth of organized convection in subtropical South America
• Changhai Liu and Kyoko Ikeda
  Update of WRF model performance over South America

Recording

Video recording

Recording of chat discussion

July 8, 2020

Agenda

• Roy Rasmussen - NCAR
  Updates including new member introduction
• Chris Castro - U. of Arizona
  Presentation of planned convective permitting work using CORDEX framework
• Web-site
  Address:   https://ral.ucar.edu/projects/south-america
  Powerpoint and meeting recordings will be uploaded by Monday

• Changhai Liu and Kyoko Ikeda
  Update presentation on convective permitting modeling over South America

• Next meeting: July 29, 2020, 10-11 a.m.

      

   

  Main focus: Group discussion on the next computer request to NCAR Computer Laboratory to perform the twenty-year historical and twenty-year future simulations at 3 km (PGW?). Need to submit in   September 2020.

Recording

Video recording

Audio recording

Recording of chat discussion

June 24, 2020

Agenda

• Roy Rasmussen - NCAR
  Welcome and introduction
• Jeremiah Piesante - CSU
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
  Synoptic and mesoscale environments associated with South American Thunderstorms
• Web-site update (Roy and Andreas)
• Changhai and Kyoko
  Test simulation update
• Next meeting
  July 8th,10-11.

Recordings

Video recording (not available)

Recording of chat discussion

May 13, 2020

Agenda

• Roy Rasmussen - NCAR
  Welcome and introduction
• Yazmina Rojas - University of Albany
  Assessment of GPM IMERG satellite precipitation estimation and its dependence on microphysical rain regimes, over the mountains of south-central Chile
• Lucia Scaff - University of Saskatchewan
  Observational data availability
• Kate Halladay - Met Office, Hadley Centre
  Convection-permitting climate simulations for CSSP Brazil
• Changhai Liu - NCAR
  South America Simulations for Nov-Dec 2018: PBL Parameterizations & Spectral Nudging Testing

Recordings

Video recording

Recording of chat discussion

Observational Datasets in South America

Many of the regular precipitation and temperature observations in South America are operated by governmental institutions dedicated to water management and forecasting operations. We have gathered some of the publicly available data and combined them with the global datasets that are available in this region.

A summary of observations datasets in South America is published in Condom et al. (2020).

The following table summarizes observational datasets in South America. For further information contact Lucia Scaff (lucia.scaff@usask.ca) or Kyoko Ikeda (kyoko@ucar.edu).

 *many of the websites are in Spanish or Portuguese and need registration

Connecting Mountain Hydroclimate Through the American Cordilleras

In preparation for the ANDEX RHP, a series of research articles was published in a special issue in Frontiers on the topic of "Connecting Mountain Hydroclimate Through the American Cordilleras". 

https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/9969/connecting-mountain-hydroclimate-through-the-american-cordilleras#articles

A Proposed Regional Hydroclimate Project for the United States

This is an NCAR lead effort to establish a GEWEX Regional Hydroclimate Project over the United States. More information can be found in an article that by Schneider and van Oevelen published in GEWEX News Vol. 30, No. 2 | Quarter 2, 2020

https://www.gewex.org/gewex-content/files_mf/1590612006May2020.pdf

Land use and Land Surface Changes in the Amazon Basin

Aguiar, A.P.D., Vieira, I.C.G., Assis, T.O., Dalla‐Nora, E.L., Toledo, P.M., Oliveira Santos‐Junior, R.A., Batistella, M., Coelho, A.S., Savaget, E.K., Aragão, L.E.O.C. and Nobre, C.A., 2016. Land use change emission scenarios: anticipating a forest transition process in the Brazilian Amazon. Global change biology, 22(5), pp.1821-1840.

Alves, L.M., Marengo, J.A., Fu, R. and Bombardi, R.J., 2017. Sensitivity of Amazon regional climate to deforestation. American Journal of Climate Change, 6(1), pp.75-98. 

Eiras‐Barca, J., Dominguez, F., Yang, Z., Chug, D., Nieto, R., Gimeno, L. and Miguez‐Macho, G., 2020. Changes in South American hydroclimate under projected Amazonian deforestation. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

Guimberteau, M., Ciais, P., Ducharne, A., Boisier, J.P., Aguiar, A.P.D., Biemans, H., De Deurwaerder, H., Galbraith, D., Kruijt, B., Langerwisch, F. and Poveda, G., 2017. Impacts of future deforestation and climate change on the hydrology of the Amazon Basin: a multi-model analysis with a new set of land-cover change scenarios.

Ruiz-Vásquez, M., Arias, P.A., Martínez, J.A. and Espinoza, J.C., 2020. Effects of Amazon basin deforestation on regional atmospheric circulation and water vapor transport towards tropical South America. Climate Dynamics, pp.1-21.

New York Times article - IN THE AMAZON, TODAY’S ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS BECOME TOMORROW’S CATASTROPHES.

Severe storms in Argentina

Net York Times article - What’s Going on Inside the Fearsome Thunderstorms of Córdoba Province?