Scholars@Duke
Peter Kalmus

Peter Kalmus

Adjunct Professor in the Division of Earth and Climate Science
Earth and Climate Sciences

Selected Publications

Impacts of warming on outdoor worker well-being in the tropics and adaptation options

Journal Article One Earth · March 15, 2024 Over a billion outdoor workers live in the tropics, where nearly a fifth of all hours in the year are hot and humid enough to exceed recommended safety thresholds for workers conducting heavy labor. Reviews have focused on heat impacts on worker health, we ... Full text Open Access Cite

Facing Difficult Climate Truths

Chapter · January 1, 2024 This chapter gives a resumé of the science behind climate breakdown and its irreversible impact on all global life, particularly the global poor. It discusses the causes of climate change, warming trends and the role of the fossil fuel and agricultural ind ... Full text Cite

Mesoscale air motion and thermodynamics predict heavy hourly U.S. precipitation.

Journal Article Communications earth & environment · January 2024 Predicting heavy precipitation remains scientifically challenging. Here we combine Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) temperature and moisture soundings and weather forecast winds to predict the formation of thermodynamic conditions favourable for convect ... Full text Cite

Ecopro: Ecological Projection Digital Twin

Conference International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS) · January 1, 2024 EcoPro is a digital twin to perform an ecological projection which is to predict changes in ecosystems in response to environmental drivers. EcoPro provides a platform to access Earth Systems Model (ESM) outputs and Earth Systems observation datasets, to d ... Full text Cite

Investigating whether the inclusion of humid heat metrics improves estimates of AC penetration rates: a case study of Southern California

Journal Article Environmental Research Letters · October 1, 2023 Global cooling capacity is expected to triple by 2050, as rising temperatures and humidity levels intensify the heat stress that populations experience. Although air conditioning (AC) is a key adaptation tool for reducing exposure to extreme heat, we curre ... Full text Cite

A Nowcasting Approach for Low-Earth-Orbiting Hyperspectral Infrared Soundings within the Convective Environment

Journal Article Weather and Forecasting · August 1, 2023 Low-Earth-orbiting (LEO) hyperspectral infrared (IR) sounders have significant yet untapped potential for characterizing thermodynamic environments of convective initiation and ongoing convection. While LEO soundings are of value to weather forecasters, th ... Full text Cite

Trajectory enhancement of low-earth orbiter thermodynamic retrievals to predict convection: A simulation experiment

Journal Article Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics · July 13, 2023 The 3-D fields of temperature (T) and specific humidity (q) retrieved by instruments such as the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) are predictive of convection, but convection often triggers during the multi-hour gaps between satellite overpasses. Here w ... Full text Cite

Data Fusion of AIRS and CrIMSS Near Surface Air Temperature

Journal Article Earth and Space Science · October 1, 2022 We present a near surface air temperature (NSAT) fused data product over the contiguous United States using Level 2 data from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder, on the Aqua satellite, and the Cross-track Infrared Microwave Sounding Suite (CrIMSS), on the Su ... Full text Cite

A high-resolution planetary boundary layer height seasonal climatology from GNSS radio occultations

Journal Article Remote Sensing of Environment · July 1, 2022 We present a new seasonal planetary boundary layer height (PBLH) climatology product derived from 14 years of Global Navigation Satellite System radio occultation (GNSS-RO) data from multiple missions including COSMIC, TerraSAR-X, KOMPSAT-5, and PAZ. PBLH ... Full text Cite

Past the Precipice? Projected Coral Habitability Under Global Heating.

Journal Article Earth's future · May 2022 Coral reefs are rapidly declining due to local environmental degradation and global climate change. In particular, corals are vulnerable to ocean heating. Anomalously hot sea surface temperatures (SSTs) create conditions for severe bleaching or direct ther ... Full text Cite

Trajectory-enhanced AIRS observations of environmental factors driving severe convective storms

Journal Article Monthly Weather Review · May 1, 2019 We investigate environmental factors of severe convective weather using temperature and moisture retrievals from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) that lie along parcel trajectories traced from tornado, large hail, and severe wind producing events in ... Full text Cite

Single-footprint retrievals of temperature, water vapor and cloud properties from AIRS

Journal Article Atmospheric Measurement Techniques · February 19, 2018 Single-footprint Atmospheric Infrared Sounder spectra are used in an optimal estimation-based algorithm (AIRS-OE) for simultaneous retrieval of atmospheric temperature, water vapor, surface temperature, cloud-top temperature, effective cloud optical depth ... Full text Cite

Correcting Biased Evaporation in CloudSat Warm Rain

Journal Article IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing · November 1, 2017 The CloudSat mission's Cloud Profiling Radar has provided the first global-scale estimates of light rainfall from warm marine clouds. Because surface radar reflection prevents hydrometeor detection below 720 m, the CloudSat 2C-RAIN-PROFILE retrieval uses a ... Full text Cite

Quantifying marine boundary layer water vapor beneath low clouds with near-infrared and microwave imagery

Journal Article Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology · January 1, 2016 This study investigates the synergy of collocated microwave radiometry and near-infrared imagery to estimate the marine boundary layer water vapor beneath uniform cloud fields. Microwave radiometry provides the total column water vapor, while the near-infr ... Full text Cite

The feasibility of water vapor sounding of the cloudy boundary layer using a differential absorption radar technique

Journal Article Atmospheric Measurement Techniques · September 8, 2015 The feasibility of differential absorption radar (DAR) for the spaceborne remote profiling of water vapor within the cloudy boundary layer is assessed by applying a radar instrument simulator to large eddy simulations (LES). Frequencies near the 183 GHz wa ... Full text Cite

The Pacific Subtropical Cloud Transition: A MAGIC Assessment of AIRS and ECMWF Thermodynamic Structure

Journal Article IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters · July 1, 2015 We use radiosonde data from the ship-based Marine ARM GPCI Investigation of Clouds (MAGIC) campaign in the northeast Pacific to validate temperature and moisture profiles from the satellite-based Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument and from Euro ... Full text Cite

Improved upper limits on the stochastic gravitational-wave background from 2009-2010 LIGO and Virgo data.

Journal Article Physical review letters · December 2014 Gravitational waves from a variety of sources are predicted to superpose to create a stochastic background. This background is expected to contain unique information from throughout the history of the Universe that is unavailable through standard electroma ... Full text Cite

Search for gravitational waves associated with γ-ray bursts detected by the interplanetary network.

Journal Article Physical review letters · July 2014 We present the results of a search for gravitational waves associated with 223 γ-ray bursts (GRBs) detected by the InterPlanetary Network (IPN) in 2005-2010 during LIGO's fifth and sixth science runs and Virgo's first, second, and third science runs. The I ... Full text Cite

A fixed false alarm probability figure of merit for gravitational wave detectors

Journal Article Classical and Quantum Gravity · April 21, 2014 Performance of gravitational wave (GW) detectors can be characterized by several figures of merit (FOMs) which are used to guide the detector's commissioning and operations, and to gauge astrophysical sensitivity. One key FOM is the range in Mpc, averaged ... Full text Cite

Gravitational waves from known pulsars: Results from the initial detector era

Journal Article Astrophysical Journal · April 20, 2014 We present the results of searches for gravitational waves from a large selection of pulsars using data from the most recent science runs (S6, VSR2 and VSR4) of the initial generation of interferometric gravitational wave detectors LIGO (Laser Interferomet ... Full text Cite

Constraints on cosmic strings from the LIGO-Virgo gravitational-wave detectors.

Journal Article Physical review letters · April 2014 Cosmic strings can give rise to a large variety of interesting astrophysical phenomena. Among them, powerful bursts of gravitational waves (GWs) produced by cusps are a promising observational signature. In this Letter we present a search for GWs from cosm ... Full text Cite

First searches for optical counterparts to gravitational-wave candidate events

Journal Article Astrophysical Journal, Supplement Series · January 1, 2014 During the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory and Virgo joint science runs in 2009-2010, gravitational wave (GW) data from three interferometer detectors were analyzed within minutes to select GW candidate events and infer their apparent s ... Full text Cite

Observational boundary layer energy and water budgets of the stratocumulus-to-cumulus transition

Journal Article Journal of Climate · January 1, 2014 The authors estimate summer mean boundary layer water and energy budgets along a northeast Pacific transect from 35° to 15°N, which includes the transition from marine stratocumulus to trade cumulus clouds. Observational data is used from three A-Train sat ... Full text Cite

Search for long-lived gravitational-wave transients coincident with long gamma-ray bursts

Journal Article Physical Review D - Particles, Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology · December 13, 2013 Long gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) have been linked to extreme core-collapse supernovae from massive stars. Gravitational waves (GW) offer a probe of the physics behind long GRBs. We investigate models of long-lived (∼10-1000 s) GW emission associated with the a ... Full text Cite

Directed search for continuous gravitational waves from the Galactic center

Journal Article Physical Review D - Particles, Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology · November 18, 2013 We present the results of a directed search for continuous gravitational waves from unknown, isolated neutron stars in the Galactic center region, performed on two years of data from LIGO's fifth science run from two LIGO detectors. The search uses a semic ... Full text Cite

The transient gravitational-wave sky

Journal Article Classical and Quantum Gravity · October 7, 2013 Interferometric detectors will very soon give us an unprecedented view of the gravitational-wave sky, and in particular of the explosive and transient Universe. Now is the time to challenge our theoretical understanding of short-duration gravitational-wave ... Full text Cite

Parameter estimation for compact binary coalescence signals with the first generation gravitational-wave detector network

Journal Article Physical Review D - Particles, Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology · September 4, 2013 Compact binary systems with neutron stars or black holes are one of the most promising sources for ground-based gravitational-wave detectors. Gravitational radiation encodes rich information about source physics; thus parameter estimation and model selecti ... Full text Cite

Einstein@Home all-sky search for periodic gravitational waves in LIGO S5 data

Journal Article Physical Review D - Particles, Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology · February 13, 2013 This paper presents results of an all-sky search for periodic gravitational waves in the frequency range [50,1 190] Hz and with frequency derivative range of ∼[-20,1.1]×10-10 Hz s-1 for the fifth LIGO science run (S5). The search uses a noncoherent Hough-t ... Full text Cite

Search for gravitational waves from binary black hole inspiral, merger, and ringdown in LIGO-Virgo data from 2009-2010

Journal Article Physical Review D - Particles, Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology · January 23, 2013 We report a search for gravitational waves from the inspiral, merger and ringdown of binary black holes (BBH) with total mass between 25 and 100 solar masses, in data taken at the LIGO and Virgo observatories between July 7, 2009 and October 20, 2010. The ... Full text Cite

A first search for coincident gravitational waves and high energy neutrinos using LIGO, Virgo and ANTARES data from 2007

Journal Article Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics · January 1, 2013 We present the results of the first search for gravitational wave bursts associated with high energy neutrinos. Together, these messengers could reveal new, hidden sources that are not observed by conventional photon astronomy, particularly at high energy. ... Full text Cite

Enhanced sensitivity of the LIGO gravitational wave detector by using squeezed states of light

Journal Article Nature Photonics · January 1, 2013 Nearly a century after Einstein first predicted the existence of gravitational waves, a global network of Earth-based gravitational wave observatories1-4 is seeking to directly detect this faint radiation using precision laser interferometry. Photon shot n ... Full text Cite

Swift follow-up observations of candidate gravitational-wave transient events

Journal Article Astrophysical Journal, Supplement Series · December 1, 2012 We present the first multi-wavelength follow-up observations of two candidate gravitational-wave (GW) transient events recorded by LIGO and Virgo in their 2009-2010 science run. The events were selected with low latency by the network of GW detectors (with ... Full text Cite

Search for gravitational waves associated with gamma-ray bursts during Ligo science run 6 and Virgo science runs 2 and 3

Journal Article Astrophysical Journal · November 20, 2012 We present the results of a search for gravitational waves associated with 154 gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) that were detected by satellite-based gamma-ray experiments in 2009-2010, during the sixth LIGO science run and the second and third Virgo science runs. ... Full text Cite

Inferring core-collapse supernova physics with gravitational waves

Journal Article Physical Review D - Particles, Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology · August 17, 2012 Stellar collapse and the subsequent development of a core-collapse supernova explosion emit bursts of gravitational waves (GWs) that might be detected by the advanced generation of laser interferometer gravitational-wave observatories such as Advanced LIGO ... Full text Cite

The characterization of Virgo data and its impact on gravitational-wave searches

Journal Article Classical and Quantum Gravity · August 7, 2012 Between 2007 and 2010 Virgo collected data in coincidence with the LIGO and GEO gravitational-wave (GW) detectors. These data have been searched for GWs emitted by cataclysmic phenomena in the universe, by non-axisymmetric rotating neutron stars or from a ... Full text Cite

Correlated gravitational wave and neutrino signals from general-relativistic rapidly rotating iron core collapse

Journal Article Physical Review D - Particles, Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology · July 13, 2012 We present results from a new set of three-dimensional general-relativistic hydrodynamic simulations of rotating iron core collapse. We assume octant symmetry and focus on axisymmetric collapse, bounce, the early postbounce evolution, and the associated gr ... Full text Cite

All-sky search for gravitational-wave bursts in the second joint LIGO-Virgo run

Journal Article Physical Review D - Particles, Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology · June 20, 2012 We present results from a search for gravitational-wave bursts in the data collected by the LIGO and Virgo detectors between July 7, 2009 and October 20, 2010: data are analyzed when at least two of the three LIGO-Virgo detectors are in coincident operatio ... Full text Cite

Upper limits on a stochastic gravitational-wave background using LIGO and Virgo interferometers at 600-1000 Hz

Journal Article Physical Review D - Particles, Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology · June 4, 2012 A stochastic background of gravitational waves is expected to arise from a superposition of many incoherent sources of gravitational waves, of either cosmological or astrophysical origin. This background is a target for the current generation of ground-bas ... Full text Cite

First low-latency LIGO+Virgo search for binary inspirals and their electromagnetic counterparts

Journal Article Astronomy and Astrophysics · May 28, 2012 Aims. The detection and measurement of gravitational-waves from coalescing neutron-star binary systems is an important science goal for ground-based gravitational-wave detectors. In addition to emitting gravitational-waves at frequencies that span the most ... Full text Cite

Search for gravitational waves from intermediate mass binary black holes

Journal Article Physical Review D - Particles, Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology · May 24, 2012 We present the results of a weakly modeled burst search for gravitational waves from mergers of nonspinning intermediate mass black holes in the total mass range 100-450M and with the component mass ratios between 11 and 41. The search was conducted on dat ... Full text Cite

Directional limits on persistent gravitational waves using LIGO S5 science data.

Journal Article Physical review letters · December 2011 The gravitational-wave (GW) sky may include nearby pointlike sources as well as stochastic backgrounds. We perform two directional searches for persistent GWs using data from the LIGO S5 science run: one optimized for pointlike sources and one for arbitrar ... Full text Cite

X-Pipeline: An analysis package for autonomous gravitational-wave burst searches

Journal Article New Journal of Physics · May 21, 2010 Autonomous gravitational-wave searches-fully automated analyses of data that run without human intervention or assistance-are desirable for a number of reasons. They are necessary for the rapid identification of gravitational-wave burst candidates, which i ... Full text Cite

Accurate calibration of test mass displacement in the LIGO interferometers

Journal Article Classical and Quantum Gravity · April 14, 2010 We describe three fundamentally different methods we have applied to calibrate the test mass displacement actuators to search for systematic errors in the calibration of the LIGO gravitational-wave detectors. The actuation frequencies tested range from 90 ... Full text Cite

Precise calibration of LIGO test mass actuators using photon radiation pressure

Journal Article Classical and Quantum Gravity · December 4, 2009 Precise calibration of kilometer-scale interferometric gravitational wave detectors is crucial for source localization and waveform reconstruction. A technique that uses the radiation pressure of a power-modulated auxiliary laser to induce calibrated displ ... Full text Cite

Accurate measurement of the time delay in the response of the LIGO gravitational wave detectors

Journal Article Classical and Quantum Gravity · August 24, 2009 We present a method to precisely calibrate the time delay in a long baseline gravitational-wave interferometer. An accurate time stamp is crucial for data analysis of gravitational wave detectors, especially when performing coincidence and correlation anal ... Full text Cite

Stacking gravitational wave signals from soft gamma repeater bursts

Journal Article Physical Review D - Particles, Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology · August 7, 2009 Soft gamma repeaters (SGRs) have unique properties that make them intriguing targets for gravitational wave (GW) searches. They are nearby, their burst emission mechanism may involve neutron star crust fractures and excitation of quasinormal modes, and the ... Full text Cite

An upper limit on the stochastic gravitational-wave background of cosmological origin.

Journal Article Nature · August 2009 A stochastic background of gravitational waves is expected to arise from a superposition of a large number of unresolved gravitational-wave sources of astrophysical and cosmological origin. It should carry unique signatures from the earliest epochs in the ... Full text Cite

All-sky LIGO search for periodic gravitational waves in the early fifth-science-run data.

Journal Article Physical review letters · March 2009 We report on an all-sky search with the LIGO detectors for periodic gravitational waves in the frequency range 50-1100 Hz and with the frequency's time derivative in the range -5 x 10{-9}-0 Hz s{-1}. Data from the first eight months of the fifth LIGO scien ... Full text Cite

Erratum: Beating the spin-down limit on gravitational wave emission from the crab pulsar (Astrophysical Journal (2008) 683 (L45))

Journal Article Astrophysical Journal · January 1, 2009 A processing error in the signal template used in this search led to upper limits about 30% lower than we now know is warranted by the early S5 data. We have re-analyzed that data and find new upper limits on the strain parameter h 0 of 4.9 × 10-25/3.9 × 1 ... Full text Cite

Search for gravitational-wave bursts from soft gamma repeaters.

Journal Article Physical review letters · November 2008 We present a LIGO search for short-duration gravitational waves (GWs) associated with soft gamma ray repeater (SGR) bursts. This is the first search sensitive to neutron star f modes, usually considered the most efficient GW emitting modes. We find no evid ... Full text Cite

Search method for unmodeled transient gravitational waves associated with SGR flares

Conference Classical and Quantum Gravity · October 7, 2007 We describe a method for searching for transient gravitational waves associated with soft gamma-ray repeater (SGR) flares or other burst-like events using data collected by interferometric gravitational wave detectors. The method can be used to analyze dat ... Full text Cite

Benefits of artificially generated gravity gradients for interferometric gravitational-wave detectors

Journal Article Classical and Quantum Gravity · May 7, 2007 We present an approach to experimentally evaluate gravity gradient noise, a potentially limiting noise source in advanced interferometric gravitational-wave detectors. In addition, the method can be used to provide sub-percent calibration in phase and ampl ... Full text Cite

Prospects of gravitational wave data mining and exploration via evolutionary computing

Conference Journal of Physics: Conference Series · March 2, 2006 Techniques of evolutionary computing have proven useful for a diverse array of fields in science and engineering. Because of the expected low signal to noise ratio of LIGO data and incomplete knowledge of gravitational waveforms, evolutionary computing is ... Full text Cite