Weekly Report for the Week Ending April 24, 2009
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GSFC Laboratory for Atmospheres, Code 613
Noteworthy science achievements/awards
Noteworthy personnel awards and staff changes
Projects/missions
Significant planned events
Proposals
Highlights of inter-Directorate teaming
External interactions (HQ, universities, other Gov't organizations, etc.)
- William Lau (Code 613.0) attended the Aerosol-Cloud-Precipitation-Climate (ACPC) Science Steering Committee meeting, BERN, Switzerland, to complete the writing of an ACPC Science Implementation Plan. The ACPC is a cross-cut initiative between the World Climate Research Program (WCRP) and the Intenational Geosphere-Biosphere Program (IGBP) involving the integrated use of satellite, aircraft remote sensing, in situ observations and modeling to study interaction of aerosol and climate.
- On April 15, Dr. Matthew McGill / 613.1 hosted a tour of the Cloud Physics Lidar lab for Center management and visiting House Science and Technology Committee staffers. Their interest was in seeing the new lidar instrument for the Global Hawk unmanned aircraft, as well as to discuss new science applications that will be possible using the Global Hawk.
Accepted papers
- Water vapor measurements by Howard University Raman Lidar during the WAVES 2006 campaign, M. Adam, Howard University, D. N. Whiteman (NASA/GSFC, 613.1), et. al., submitted to the Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology.
- Importance : The lidar system that is the subject of this paper was developed collaboratively by Howard Univeristy and NASA/GSFC. The paper demonstrates that a modest, relatively inexpensive Raman lidar system can provide useful measurements of atmospheric evolution during daytime and nighttime for mesoscale studies and satellite validation.
Noteworthy talks/presentations
- B.T. Johnson, G. Skofronick-Jackson, 2009: The influence of non-spherical particles and land surface emissivity on combined radar / radiometer precipitation retrievals, European Geosciences Union General Assembly, Vienna Austria, Friday, April 24, 2009.
- Importance: Oral presentation describing recent advances of falling snowretrieval over land surfaces, using combined radar and radiometerobservations. The simulations/retrievals are based on GlobalPrecipitation Measurement Mission (GPM) instruments and observations,and are part of the path toward developing the official GPM combinedradar/radiometer retrieval algorithm.
- Notable Seminar: Toshi Matsui/613.1, Satellite Data Simulation Unit: multi-sensor and multi–frequency satellite simulators for aerosol-cloud-precipitation satellite missions, NASA Mesoscale Branch Seminar, Apr 14, 2009. Talk described SDSU developments that link activities between Labs and Branches in 610. Attendance was very high (~80-100) and discussions lasted for 20 minutes.
Major events in the coming week
Education and Outreach
Issues and Concerns
- The JPL TeamX group will report to NASA HQ tomorrow, Friday, April 24, regarding options for an Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) replacement mission including the option of flying the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS) on the same platform as the OCO spectrometers. The OCO replacement options were discussed in Dr. Freilich’s written testimony to the House Committee on Science Technology dated this Wednesday, April 22.
Status of any major actions
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