Kyle Hemes joined the CMMAP summer internship program from just down the road at
Colorado College in Colorado Springs where he is a senior majoring in
environmental science with a concentration in chemistry. Professor Scott
Denning was his advisor and he worked with graduate student Nick Parazoo and
research scientist Ian Baker on spatiotemporal influence of vegetation on global
surface-atmosphere exchange.
Global vegetation cover is a key element in the exchange of carbon and other
trace gases between the land and atmosphere. Kyle found that an accurate
understanding of the phenology within our global carbon models can help us to
better represent the movement of carbon and our anthropogenic effects on the
carbon cycle. He ran three separate phenology treatments through SiB3, the
simple biosphere surface-atmosphere interaction model. While two of these
treatments were traditional top down satellite remote sensing data sets, the
third was a prognostic treatment, which computes leaf area index (LAI) and
fraction of photosynthetically active radiation absorbed (fPAR) from basic
temperature, radiation, and humidity data.
Upon comparing the surface-atmosphere fluxes of these treatments run through the
same model, he concluded that the tropical and savannah regions are those with
the most significant disagreement between diagnostic and prognostic phenology
treatments. Regions that are largely boreal or temperate agree highly between
treatments. This research paves the way for a more focused adjustment of
prognostic phenology and an eventual comparison to observational flask data.
His research poster is here,
Spatiotemporal
influence of vegetation on global surface-atmosphere exchange (8MB PDF).
Kyle's other research interests include atmospheric chemistry, ozone
dynamics/PSC's, energy retrofitting and tropical ecology. Outside of school,
he enjoys big mountains, ultimate frisbee, cycling, southeast Asia and reading
books.
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