Weekly Report for the Week Ending May 1, 2009
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GSFC Laboratory for Atmospheres, Code 613
613 Weekly Report – Week Ending 05/01/09
Noteworthy science achievements/awards
- Paul Newman (613.3) received a 2009 Ozone Layer Protection Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency at a special ceremony on the afternoon of Tuesday, April 21st at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.
Noteworthy personnel awards and staff changes
Projects/missions
- Si-Chee Tsay (613.2) and N. Christina Hsu (613.2) are participating in the International Field Deployment of JAMEX/RAJO-MEGHA in the India/Nepal regions, April 22-May 5, 2009.
Significant planned events
Proposals
Highlights of inter-Directorate teaming
External interactions (HQ, universities, other Gov't organizations, etc.)
- William Lau (613.0) was presented a Certification of Appreciation by the Forensic Science Laboratory, Alcohol, Firearms, Tobacco and Explosive Division, Justice Department for a keynote seminar entitled " What causes the rapid melting of Himalaya glaciers - A forensic science investigation" on Earth Day, April 22. During the seminar, he presented evidences gathered from the "crime scene" , and an increasing body of "circumstantial" evidences, from NASA satellites, field observations, and modeling results, all pointing towards dust and black carbon aerosols as the most probable suspect. The seminar was very well received and generated much discussion among the audience of forensic scientists.
- Santiago Gassó (613.2/UMBC-GEST) is hosting a visiting scientist from the Department of Marine Biology and Oceanography of the Institute of Marine Sciences, Barcelona, Spain to work on the link between phytoplankton aerosol production and changes in cloud properties.
- On April 16, 2009, Raymond Hoff, Charles Ichoku (613.2), Juying Warner, and Ralph Kahn (613.2) participated in the Chieko Kittaka Celebration of Life Memorial at Hampton College, Virginia which was sponsored by her colleagues at NASA/Langley. Ralph Kahn, on behalf of GSFC and the AeroCenter community, read the following statement:
- “I wanted to speak briefly for myself, and I think for many of Chieko’s scientific colleagues at NASA Goddard and elsewhere. Although we come from an enormous diversity of backgrounds, we share a common thread of extraordinary commitment and dedication to our science. Studying the climate of Earth, with its implied impact on Civilization, is a calling of immense significance that binds us into a fairly close-knit community. I think Chieko would have been surprised at how many fellow scientists she touched, just as many of us, some of whom knew her primarily through our joint research projects, have kept recalling during the past few weeks the positive energy and enthusiasm she brought to her work on air quality modeling and observation, and CALIPSO aerosol remote sensing. We will keep recalling her energy and her contributions, and through our ongoing efforts to better understand our planet, will continue honoring Chieko Kittaka, and ourselves.”
Accepted papers
- Han, M. (UMBC, 613.1), S. A. Braun (613.1), P. O. G. Persson, J.-W. Bao, 2009: Along-front variability of precipitation associated with a midlatitude frontal zone: TRMM observation and MM5 simulation. Mon. Wea. Rev., 137, 1008-1028.
- Oreopoulos, L (613.2), S. Platnick (613.2), Hong, Yang, and R. Cahalan (613.2), “The shortwave radiative forcing bias of liquid and ice clouds from MODIS observations" , Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions [In Press].
- Davis A.B., I.N. Polonski, and A. Marshak (613.2), 2009. Space-Time Green Functions for Diffusive Radiation Transport, in Application to Active and Passive Cloud Probing. In: A.A. Kokhanovsky, [Ed], “Light Scattering Reviews Vol. 4. Single Light Scattering and Radiative Transfer”, Springer, pp. 169-292.
- Jackman, C. H. (613.3), D. R. Marsh, F. M. Vitt, R. R. Garcia, C. E. Randall, E. L. Fleming (613.3/SSAI), and S. M. Frith (613.3/SSAI), Long-term Middle Atmospheric Influence of Very Large Solar Proton Events, J. Geophys. Res., in press, 2009.
- Flynn, L. E., D. McNamara, C.T. Beck, I. Petrapavlovskikh, E. Beach, Y. Pachensky, Y. P. Li, M. DeLand (613.3/SSAI), L. K. Huang, C. S. Long, C. S. Seftor, R. Tiruchirapalli, and S. Taylor, Measurements and products from the Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet (SBUV/2) and the Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS) iinstruments, J. Rem. Sens; accepted
Noteworthy talks/presentations
- M. Grecu (613.1/UMBC) and W. S. Olson (613.1/UMBC), 2009 Use of Passive Microwave Observations in a Dual Frequency Radar Rainfall-Profiling Algorithm, European Geosciences Union General Assembly, Vienna Austria, Friday, April 24, 2009.
- Importance: Oral presentation describing a methodology to incorporate satellite passive microwave observations into a dual-frequency space-borne radar retrieval algorithm.
- Dr. George J. Huffman (SSAI; 613.1) attended the 2009 Meeting of the European Geophysical Union, 19-24 April 2009, Vienna, Austria. He presented Huffman, G.J., R.F. Adler, D.T. Bolvin, E.J. Nelkin, 2009: Improvements to Reduce Bias in the Real-Time TMPA. EGU 2009, 19-24 April 2009, Vienna, Austria (both oral and poster)
- Importance: This was a rare opportunity to interact directly with European colleagues and dataset users regarding the highly popular real-time version of the TRMM Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis.
- Adler, R.F. (613.1/UMCP), G. Gu (613.1/UMBC), J.J. Wang (613.1/UMBC), G.J. Huffman (613.1/SSAI), 2009: Global Climatology of Precipitation-State of Knowledge and Issues. EGU 2009, 19-24 April 2009, Vienna, Austria.
- Importance: One of the remaining zero-order problems in global precipitation is to estimate bounds on the biases in current globally complete observational precipitation products. This study is a new approach to making such bias estimates.
- Thomas L. Bell (613.2) presented an Aerocenter Seminar, “The 'Weekend Effect' for Rain, Lightning, Winds, Clouds, and Storms over the Southeastern U.S.” on April 21, 2009.
- Robert Cahalan (613.2) and Ralph Kahn (613.2) attended the European Geosciences Union, General Assembly 2009 Meeting in Vienna, Austria, April 19-24, 2009.
- Steven Platnick (613.2) and Alexander Marshak (613.2) are attending the Hyperspectral Imaging and Sensing of the Environment (HISE) Meeting in Vancouver, BC, April 27-30, 2009. Dr. Platnick is presenting an invited talk: "The MODIS Cloud Optical and Microphysical Product: An Evaluation of Effective Radius Retrieval Statistics and Model Simulations".
- Santiago Gassó (613.2/UMBC-GEST) presented an Aerocenter Seminar entitled “Dr. Koren, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love “Torturing Data” on April 28, 2009.
Major events in the coming week
Education and Outreach
- April 29, 2009 marks the 10th anniversary of the launch of NASA’s Earth Observatory website. Over the past 10 years, the Earth Observatory has worked with scientists and education and outreach partners from across the agency to publish thousands of images and hundreds of articles about NASA’s Earth science and climate change research. Images from the Earth Observatory regularly appear in the mass media, popular science magazines, textbooks, and blogs.
URL: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/10thAnniversary/
Issues and Concerns
Status of any major actions
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