Weekly Report for the Week Ending October 2, 2009
Print 
GSFC Laboratory for Atmospheres, Code 613
Noteworthy science achievements/awards
- Jose Rodriguez, Code 613.3, received the Robert H. Goddard Leadership Award for outstanding leadership as Head of the Atmospheric Chemistry and Dynamics Branch and for significant contributions to NASA objectives and the scientific community.
- Richard Stolarski, Code 613.3, received the RHG Award of Merit for outstanding and sustained contributions to our understanding of the stratospheric ozone layer, the Antarctic ozone hole, and the coupling between ozone and climate.
- Nickolay Krotkov, Code 613.3, GEST/UMBC, received the RHG Exceptional Achievement Award for Science for developing new methods for mapping sulfur dioxide emissions with NASA Aura Ozone Monitoring Instrument, and demonstrating scientific merits of OMI SO2 data.
Noteworthy personnel awards and staff changes
- Hans Mayr served on a NASA Planetary Atmospheres (PATM) Review panel on September 15-17, 2009 in Newport Beach, CA
Projects/missions
- The Code 613.1 (David Whiteman, PI) ALVICE and Code 613.3 AT and STROZ (PI, Tom McGee) Raman lidar systems will be participating in the Measurements of Humidity and Validation Experiments (MOHAVE) at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Table Mountain Facility in southern, CA from Oct 12 - 26. The systems will arrive at TMF on October 5 for setup and preparations. The objective of this experiment is validate the Raman water lidar technique for use within the Network for the Detection of Atmospheric Composition Change (NDACC), which is tasked with monitoring long term trends in upper troposphere and lower stratosphere water vapor concentrations using the Raman lidar technique.
Significant planned events
Proposals
- The IRAD proposal "Multispectral Scanner for BRDF, Albedo, Clouds and Aerosols: MSBACA" developed in collaboration with Eric Wilcox (613.2) and Charles Gatebe (UMBC-GEST/613.2), was selected.
- GEST Research Scientists Drs. Henry Selkirk, Code 613.3, (PI), Lesley Ott and Craig Benson (Co-Is), in collaboration with Dr. Luke Oman, Code 613.3, of the Johns Hopkins University and Drs. Anne Douglass, Steven Pawson and Richard Stolarski, Code 613.3, of NASA Goddard, have recently submitted to the Dept. of Transportation’s Aviation Climate Change Research Initiative (ACCRI) a proposal entitled “Modeling and observational studies of moisture in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere and the climatic effects of aviation.” The proposed research will include long-term simulations with the GEOS Chemistry Climate Model (GEOS CCM). Observational analyses of the structure and variability of humidity in both balloonsonde and aircraft in situ data will be used to test improvements in the GEOS moisture schemes. These improvements will be applied in order to reduce uncertainties in our understanding of the impact of a range of air traffic scenarios under conditions of changed.
Highlights of inter-Directorate teaming
External interactions (HQ, universities, other Gov't organizations, etc.)
Accepted papers
- Principal Component Analysis of Remote Sensing of Aerosols Over Oceans, Zubko, V. (GEST/613.2); Kaufman, Y. J. (613.2); Burg, R. I.; Martins, J. V. (JCET/613.2), IEEE TGRS, Vol. 45, No. 3, pp. 730-745, 2007 [published].
- An Assessment of the Surface Longwave Direct Radiative Effect of Airborne Saharan Dust during the NAMMA Field Campaign, Hansell, R. A. (ESSIC/613.2); Tsay, S. C. (613.2); Ji, Q. (GEST/613.2); Hsu, N. C. (613.2); Jeong, M. J. (GEST/613.2); Wang, S. H.; Reid, J. S.; Liou, K. N.; Ou, S. C., J. Atmos. Sci., NAMMA Special Issue [in press].
- Research Scientist Dr. Henry Selkirk Code 613.3/GEST has submitted a manuscript to the special TC4 section of the Journal of Geophysical Research entitled “The detailed structure of the tropical upper troposphere and lower stratosphere as revealed by balloonsonde observations of water vapor, ozone, temperature and winds during the NASA TCSP and TC4 campaigns”. Co-authors are Dr. Holger Vömel of the Deutscher Wetterdienst; Dra. Jessica Valverde of the Universidad Nacional, Costa Rica; Dr. Leonhard Pfister of NASA Ames Research Center; Drs. Jorge Andrés Diaz, Walter Fernández and Jorge Amador of the Universidad de Costa Rica; Werner Stolz of the Instituto Meteorológico Nacional, Costa Rica; and Dr. Grace Peng of The Aerospace Corporation.
- The paper describe series of balloonsonde launches of the Cryogenic Frostpoint Hygrometer (CFH) and electrochemical concentration cell (ECC) ozonesondes at Juan Santamaria International Airport near San José, Costa Rica during the TC4 airborne mission as well as during the Tropical Convective Systems and Processes (TCSP) mission in July 2005. In addition, high-resolution radiosondes were launched four times daily from mid-June through mid-August in both years. The CFH measurements show that the upper troposphere was frequently saturated in both campaigns, sometimes in layers with stratospheric levels of ozone and at other times with low ozone indicative of uplifted tropospheric layers. Dehydration was observed near the cold point tropopause (CPT) in many profiles, and these cold events are attributed to equatorial waves forced by regional convection. While the waves are responsible for large temporal variability in cold point water vapor mixing and saturation mixing ratios as well as ozone mixing ratio in the upper troposphere and at the CPT, dehydration of nascent stratospheric air occurred no higher than a kilometer above the mean level of the CPT which lay at 16.6 km and 375 K.
Noteworthy talks/presentations
- Eric Wilcox (613.2) gave an invited talk entitled "NASA Satellite Data for Disaster and Water Resources Management and Science" at the University of Cambridge, UK at a meeting of "The Global Water Initiative: Implications of regional climate variability on water resources in Africa", September 21-23.
- Eric Wilcox (613.2) will be giving a talk entitled "Strategies for testing model parameterizations of aerosol-cloud interactions for global models" and Clare Salustro (SSAI/613.2) will be presenting a poster entitled "Validation of MODIS-Aqua Deep Blue Aerosol Products over Bright Surfaces" at the 8th International AeroCom Workshop in Princeton, NJ, October 5-7.
Major events in the coming week
Education and Outreach
- On September 24th, 613.1/Dr. Matthew McGill presented "Space-borne and airborne lidar remote sensing" at the Graduate Student Research Program 2009 Annual Symposium. The students were awed.
- Image of the Week entitled “Shortwave cloud radiative forcing bias due to cloud inhomogeneity” submitted by Lazaros Oraiopoulos (613.2). URL: http://climate.gsfc.nasa.gov/
Issues and Concerns
Status of any major actions
Print-friendly
page
(new window)
