Weekly Report for the Week of November 3, 2008
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Noteworthy science achievements/awards
David (Tai) Zheng from the Montgomery Blair High School, who worked as summer intern in Code 613.3 (mentor: Mian Chin (613.3)), has been designated one of three Regional Finalists from Maryland in the prestigious Siemens/Westinghouse Science Competition. The region includes Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, and the rest of New England. David's research paper entitled "Determining Dust Sources through the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index" is the result of his summer intern project. David will be competing for the Regional Winner this coming weekend.
Noteworthy personnel awards and staff changes
- Dr. Lazaros Oraiopoulos has been hired as a Research Physical Scientist with the Climate & Radiation Branch. He will be the Working Group Team Leader of the International Intercomparison of 3-D Radiation Codes (I3RC) and the Continuous Intercomparison of Radiation Codes (CIRC) effort for the branch and for the International Radiation Commission (IRC), coordinating with SSED research scientists and the Earth science community, both domestic and international. He will also plan, direct and coordinate research that is intended to ultimately modify existing radiative transfer techniques, theories, and practice in the climate modeling efforts within the Climate Branch, and also for the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office.
Projects/missions
- Jose Vanderlei Martins (613.2/UMBC/JCET), Roberto Fernandez-Borda (Catholic University), and Eric Wilcox (613.2) are participating in the VOCALS-Rex field campaign (Variability of the American Monsoon System - Ocean-atmosphere-land Study) from October 15 to November 15, 2008 in Iquique, Chile. They are deploying the airborne Rainbow Polarimeter instrument for the study of stratocumulus cloud properties over the Southeastern Pacific Ocean. Interactions among aerosols, land/ocean surface fluxes and the persistent low stratocumulus clouds are being explored to understand the processes that maintain the cloud deck and determine its interactions with regional circulation and climate.
- Dr. David Whiteman presented a poster entitled “Satellite Validation Activities at the Howard University Beltsville Campus” at the Aura science team meeting last week in Columbia, MD. The activities at HUBC are important because HUBC has recently received a 5-yr NASA University Research Center grant that will permit the acquisition of reference quality atmospheric profiling and radiance data in support of NASA satellite retrieval modification and development of climate data records. HUBC has also been selected as one of the initial GCOS Reference Upper Air Network (GRUAN) sites.
Proposals
- Constraining the history of total solar irradiance variations since Galileo's 1610 sunspot observations by measuring the lunar regolith temperature to 10 meters depth with mK precision. Lunar Borehole Experiment to Derive the History of Total Solar Irradiance Variations Since Galileo's 1610 Sunspot Observations for Earth's Climate Study. PI: Robert Cahalan (613.2). Team members include Bruce Milam (NASA), Guoyong Wen (613.2/UMBC), Henning Leidecker (562.0/NASA) and Hiroko Miyahara (Univ. Of Tokyo).
Accepted papers
- Chapter in edited monograph:
Davis A.B., I.N. Polonski, and A. Marshak, 2009, Space-Time Green Functions for Diffusive Radiation Transport, in Application to Active and Passive Cloud Probing. In: A. Kokhanovsky, [Ed], “Light Scattering Reviews 4. Single Light Scattering and Radiative Transfer”, Springer, pp. 1-137.
Norris, P.M., L. Oreopoulos, A.Y. Hou, W-K. Tao, X. Zeng, 2008, Representation of 3D heterogeneous cloud fields using copulas: Theory for water clouds”, Q.J.R. Meteorol. Soc., Vol. 134, pp. 1843-1864.
Noteworthy talks/presentations
- Dr. W. Lau (613) attended the joint World Meteorological Organization (WMO)/World Climate Research Program (WRCP) International Monsoon Workshop in Beijing, Oct 19-26, 2008. The workshop is a monsoon summit, attended by key monsoon researchers and forecasters from China, India, Japan, Korea, UK, Australia, and the US. Dr. Lau is a member of the WMO expert team on climatic impacts on the Asian monsoon, and member of the Science Steering Group of the WCRP/GEWEX. He presented an invited keynote talk on “Impacts of natural and anthropogenic aerosols on the water cycle of the Asian Monsoon”. At the workshop, science and implementation plans in relation to the Asian Monsoon Year (AMY) and the Year of Tropical Convection (YOTC) jointly sponsored by WMO/WCRP were discussed. Dr. Lau is the chief scientist of the Joint Aerosol-Monsoon Experiment (JAMEX), with focused on coordinating international field campaigns and satellite observations and validation over the Asian monsoon region, adjacent oceans and deserts, in 2008 -2012.
- Dr. George Huffman (SSAI; 613.1) presented an invited talk at the 4th International Symposium on Precipitation Retrieval Algorithms and Global Precipitation, Huffman G.J., R.F. Adler (ESSIC; 613.1), D.T. Bolvin (SSAI; 613.1), E.J. Nelkin (SSAI; 613.1), 2009: Review and Update for the TMPA in Near-Real and Post-Real Time. . Map Using Sat. Microwave Radiometer, Radar and IR Data, 16-18 February 2009, Tokyo, Japan
- Lorraine Remer (613.2) presenting a paper regarding teaching the “MODIS Data Workshop” and scientific collaborations with colleagues in Sede Boker, Israel, October 27-November 11, 2008.
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