Weekly Report for the Week of February 29, 2008
Print 
GSFC Laboratory for Atmospheres, Code 613
On February 19, 2008, a report using NASA MODIS and TOMS data written by Keith Potts of Cereal Electricity Pty Ltd of Australia was presented and tabled in the House of Representatives of the Parliament of Australia. The report titled, "Aerosol plumes, the cause of droughts and El Nino events by regional dimming" shows correlations between aerosol plumes, sea surface temperature and drought variables in southeastern Australia. The report was presented directly to the Australian Parliament and has not undergone scientific peer review. Drought is a serious concern in Australia as three major cities, Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney, are considering building desalination plants to guarantee water supplies. In the report's acknowledgments, the author "thanks NASA for their free data, a superb web interface, Giovanni, to access it and exceptionally fast responses to queries from a private researcher."
SORCE Science Meeting in Santa Fe
The annual SORCE (Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment) Science Meeting took place in Santa Fe, New Mexico February 5-7, 2008. The SORCE is a NASA-sponsored satellite mission that is providing state- of-the-art measurements of incoming total solar irradiance (TSI) and spectral solar irradiance (SSI) from UV, visible, to near-infrared of solar radiation. The measurements provided by SORCE specifically address questions about long-term climate change due to external forcing and that due to human activities. These measurements are critical to studies of the Sun; its effect on our Earth system; and its influence on humankind.
Two scientists from Climate and Radiation Branch participated in the SORCE Science Meeting. Robert Cahalan (613.2) gave a presentation on Modeling the Wavelength and Time Dependence of Solar Forcing of Earth’s Atmosphere and Ocean Mixed Layer. Guoyong Wen (613.2/UMBC) gave a presentation on reconstruction of TSI from lunar regolith temperatures, heat storage in lunar regolith during lunar day, and radiative-thermal non-equilibrium during lunar nighttime. Abstracts of their presentations can be downloaded from http:// lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/news/2008ScienceMeeting/. The next SORCE Science Meeting will be in Montreal, Canada, as part of the IAMAS Symposia, July 19-29, 2009.
On Feb. 1 NASA issued a news release concerning the paper by Tom Bell (613.2) et al. that was recently published in the Journal of Geophysical Research reporting changes in storm behavior with the day of the week. The release prompted several inquiries from media reporters and resulted in numerous web-page items related to the release.
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/midweek_rainfall.html
The following paper,
Kahn, R. (613.2), Y. Chen, D.L. Nelson, F-Y. Leung, Q. Li, D.J. Diner, and J.A. Logan, 2008. Wildfire smoke injection heights Two perspectives from space, Geophys. Res. Lett. 35, doi:10.1029/2007GL032165.
was just published. Its key contributions are (1) to point out that multi- angle imaging provides vastly more spatial coverage of aerosol source plume heights, compared to space-based lidar, and (2) to use this capability to assess the frequency with which smoke is injected above the atmospheric boundary layer for one significant region and season, Alaska-Yukon 2004.
Aura Deputy Project Scientists Joanna Joiner (613.3) and Anne Douglass (613.3), along with Project Scientist Mark Schoeberl and HQ representatives, traveled to JPL last week to conduct blue team reviews of the MLS and TES instruments. This activity was undertaken in preparation for the upcoming Senior Review Proposal that will be due next year. The main objective was to identify any problem areas and to direct work towards addressing those problems over the next 6-8 months before the proposal is due.
Items of Note:
Nick Krotkov (613.3/UMBC) has submitted the following:
There has been a public release of the re-processed (collection 3) OMI SO2 data, including new popular Users Guide (README file) and supporting documents.
TRAVEL:
Si-Chee Tsay (613.2) participated in International Asian Monsoon Year-2008 aerosol cloud interaction observations, DoE/ARM studies on Asian dust, Beijing, China, February 20-March 5.
Steven Platnick (613.2) attending the TC-4 Science Team Meeting, Virginia Beach, VA, February 20-March 1.
Winston Chao (613.2) gave a seminar entitled "A conceptual explanation for the double ITCZ bias in GCM simulations" at Environmental Modeling Center, National Centers for Environmental Predictions, National Weather Service, NOAA in Camp Spring, MD, on Feb. 12, 2008.
Print-friendly
page
(new window)
