Weekly Report for the Week of May 19, 2008
Print 
CODE 613 LABORATORY FOR ATMOSPHERES
Proposals Submitted
The following proposal was submitted for a 3 month study designed to help define the instrument specs to meet science requirements of the ICESat-II mission as a member of the Ad Hoc Science Definition Team.
ICESat Laser Energy and Cloud Penetration
PI : Steve Palm (613.1/SSAI)
CoI : Bill Hart (613.1/SSAI)
Three proposals were submitted to the ROSES-08 Hurricane Science Research element:
“Analysis of Atlantic tropical cyclone genesis and evolution using NASA satellite and field program data “, PI: Scott Braun (613.1)
“Multiscale Analysis of Tropical Storm Hot Tower and Warm Core Interactions Using Field Campaign Observations”, PI: Gerald Heymsfield (613.1)
“Investigating Relationships Between Eyewall Replacement, Intensification, and Precipitation Production in Atlantic Hurricanes Using Satellite/Aircraft Observations and GFS Model Analyses”, PI: Eric Smith (613.1)
Participation in Workshops
Bill Olsen (613.1/UMBC) participated in the Precipitation Measurement Missions Algorithm Team Meeting on GPM L1/L2 products, May 15-16, here at GSFC, and presented summaries of PMM Working Group activities.
News Items
"The Department of Energy's Atmospheric Radiation Measurements (ARM) Program Prepares for the Highest Land-based Field Campaign in History"
Submitted by Warren Wiscombe (613.2) and Chief Scientist, DOE's ARM Program
URL: http://climate.gsfc.nasa.gov/viewImage.php?id=233
European Geophysical Society General Assembly, Vienna, Austria.
Robert Cahalan (613.2) gave three talks at the European Geophysical Society General Assembly in Vienna, Austria, during the week of April 13, entitled "Apparent Bluing of Aerosols Near Clouds," "The Lunar Borehole Experiment," and "Modeling the Wavelength and Time Dependence of Solar Forcing of Earth's Climate." These talks were given in sessions on "Atmospheric Sciences," "Climate, Past, Present and Future," and "Solar-Terrestrial Sciences," respectively. NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center scientists also gave talks in several other sessions, including "Biogeosciences," "Cryospheric Sciences," and others.
SORCE Mission Results Highlighted.
SORCE mission results were highlighted on the nasa.gov front-page in a recent press release and video entitled "Solar Variability: Striking a Balance with Climate Change" which can be viewed here. The article and video features comments by the SORCE P.I., Thomas Woods, from the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at University of Colorado, and the SORCE Project Scientist Robert Cahalan (613.2), and Deputy Project Scientist Douglas Rabin (671.0), of NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center. The article describes the role of solar forcing in the context of global warming of recent decades and coming decades, and also highlights future sun-climate missions such as Glory, and TSIS. TSIS, the Total and Spectral Irradiance Sensor, will be the primary follow-on to SORCE, carrying two SORCE instruments (TIM and SIM) onboard the first or "C1" mission of the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS), thus making TSIS the first climate mission that will be transitioned from NASA's Earth Observing System to NPOESS longterm operations. (CERES is also expected to make this transition.) The PI of TSIS is Peter Pilewskie, of the University of Colorado's LASP. More on Sun-Climate can be found at Goddard's Sun-Climate Web.
Discussions of the results of concluded field campaign
On May 15 Matthew McGill (613.1) presented the Laboratory for Atmospheres seminar series entitled "Recent results from cloud/aerosol lidar." Lidar profiling of clouds and aerosols from high-altitude aircraft and satellite platforms is revolutionizing the way we observe atmospheric phenomena. A particular strength of lidar remote sensing arises when lidar data is combined with coincident data from radar and imagers. This presentation focused on results from the airborne Cloud Physics Lidar and from the CALIPSO satellite. Specific science topics discussed were validation of CALIPSO measurements, examination of lidar color ratio, and combining data from the lidar and cloud radar. Results focused heavily on the recent TC4 field campaign. A shortened (30 min) version of this seminar will be one of the presentations given to the AMS Fellowship Winners during their annual visit to Goddard on June 4th.
Calendar Events
May 21, 2008 - Leo Donner (NOAA/GFDL) "³Toward AM3: GFDL's Next-Generation Atmospheric General Circulation Model²
Publications
The radiative susceptibility of cloudy atmospheres to droplet number perturbations, Part I: Theoretical analysis and examples from MODIS, Platnick, S (613.2); Oreopoulos, L., J. Geophys. Res., 2008 [In press]
How small is a small cloud?, Koren, I.; Oreopoulos, L.; Feingold, G.; Remer, L. A. (613.2); Altaratz, O., Atmos. Chem. Phys. Disc., Vol. 8, pp. 6379-6407, 2008
David A. Marks (SSAI/613.1), D. B. Wolff (SSAI/613.1), D. S. Silberstein (SSAI/613.1), A. Tokay (UMBC/613.1), J. L. Pippitt (SSAI/613.1), and J. Wang (SSAI/613.1) Availability of high quality TRMM ground validation data from Kwajalein, RMI: A practical application of the Relative Calibration Adjustment technique. Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology [Submitted]
Travel
Lorraine Remer (613.2) is participating in the CALIPSO Validation Experiment, New Delhi, India, May 13-26, 2008.
Print-friendly
page
(new window)
