Weekly Report for the Week Ending March 27, 2009
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Noteworthy science achievements/awards
Noteworthy personnel awards and staff changes
Projects/missions
- The N-WAVES field campaign is underway at the Howard University Beltsville Campus. N-WAVES activities focus on the development and validation of a lidar-based technique for profiling atmospheric water vapor through the troposphere and into the lower stratosphere in support of the Network for the Detection of Atmospheric Composition Change (NDACC). Raman lidars, operational radiosondes and cryogenic chilled mirror hygrometers are being operated and compared to meet these goals. The launches of the Cryogenic Frostpoint Hygrometer are the first for a commercially produced version of this research instrument. Intense measurements will continue until the middle of April. Periodic measurements of lidar and balloon-borne sensors will continue thereafter into the summer. The NASA/GSFC ALVICE (David Whiteman/613.1) and AT (Tom McGee and Larry Twigg, 614) lidars are participating at the Beltsville site and are candidate instruments for roaming water vapor validation activities within the NDACC network. N-WAVES is being led by David Whiteman (613.1).
Significant planned events
Proposals
Highlights of inter-Directorate teaming
External interactions (HQ, universities, other Gov't organizations, etc.)
- Dr. Elian Wolfram of CEILAP in Buenos Aires, Argentina is visiting code 613.1 and participating in the N-WAVES field campaign. His activities here are include cryogenic frostpoint and Raman lidar measurements of water vapor, temperature and other atmospheric constituents.
- Drs. Paul A. Newman (613.3) and Richard S. Stolarski (613.3) spoke to 17 different TV stations on Thursday (March 19) to report on their recent paper, "What would have happened to the ozone layer if chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) had not been regulated?". The paper was authored by P. A. Newman (613.3), L. D. Oman, A. R. Douglass (613.3), E. L. Fleming, S. M. Frith, M. M. Hurwitz, S. R. Kawa (613.3), C. H. Jackman (613.3), N. A. Krotkov (UMBC-GEST / 613.3), E. R. Nash, J. E. Nielsen, S. Pawson (GMAO, 610.1), R. S. Stolarski1 (613.3), and G. J. M. Velders. The paper was accepted for publication in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.
Accepted papers
- Reale, O. (UMBC-GEST/613.0), W. K. Lau (613.0), J. Susskind (613.0), E. Brin, E. Liu, L. P. Riishojgaard, M. Fuentes, R. Rosenberg, 2009: AIRS Impact on the Analysis and Forecast Track of Tropical Cyclone Nargis in a global data assimilation and forecasting system. Geophysical Research Letters, doi:10.1029/2008GL037122, in press.
- Wilcox, E. M. (613.2); Harshvardhan; Platnick, S., (613.2), 2009, Estimate of the impact of absorbing aerosol over cloud on the MODIS retrievals of cloud optical thickness and effective radius using two independent retrievals of liquid water path, J. Geophys. Res., Vol. 114, D05210, doi:10.1029/2008JD010589, 2009 [Published]
Noteworthy talks/presentations
- A delegation of about 30 graduate and undergraduate students, who hail from various universities across the country, and who participate in the MS PHD’S (Minorities Striving and Pursuing Higher Degrees of Success in Earth System Science) program (http://www.msphds.org/), visited GSFC on March 17, 2009. Charles Ichoku (613.2) and Molly Brown (614.4) gave talks to the student delegation on “Aerosols, radiation, and climate”, and “Food security, agriculture and satellite remote sensing”, respectively.
- Dr. Paul Dirmeyer, Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies (COLA), presented "Land-Climate Interactions: Research at COLA" at a joint seminar between the Climate & Radiation Branch (613.3) Seminar Series and the Terrestrial Water Cycle Seminar Series held on March 18 at 3:30PM.
- AeroCenter (http://aerocenter.gsfc.nasa.gov) hosted the annual Aerosol Update on Tuesday, March 17. Aerocenter is the NASA GSFC Center for Aerosol Research. The event took place from 1 - 6 PM in Bldg. 33, H-114. About 70 people attended to hear 11 science talks and participate in a poster session with about 20 contributions from scientists at Goddard engaged in aerosol research. For more information, contact the AeroCenter chair, Peter Colarco (613.3) at Peter.R.Colarco@nasa.gov.
Major events in the coming week
Education and Outreach
Issues and Concerns
Status of any major actions
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