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ITT Industries Aerospace/Communications Division has joined the Society as an AMS Corporate Patron. ITT has been a longtime supporter of AMS Activities, as a fellowship sponsor since 1992, and as a major exhibitor at AMS Annual Meetings for several years.
Corporate Patron status is achieved when the contributions toward AMS programs and activities reach $100,000 per year. ITT joins Subaru of America who was the first Corporate Patron. ITT, the first Corporate Patron from atmospheric science industry, will receive special recognition at the Opening Ceremony and Ribbon Cutting at the AMS Annual Meeting in Long Beach on Monday, 10 February 2003 at 5:30 PM at Exhibit Hall A. They will also be recognized at the AMS 21st Century Campaign Club Donor’s Reception on Monday evening. ITT’s corporate logo will be displayed on a Corporate Patron Banner in the Lobby of the Long Beach Convention and Entertainment Center and the logo will also appear on the opening page of the AMS home page with a link to their corporate Web site.
ITT’s generous donation demonstrates their strong commitment to the atmospheric and related sciences and as a corporate patron, ITT will continue their support of the AMS fellowship and exhibit program, as well as become a strong supporter of the AMS Atmospheric Policy Program (APP). The APP conducts studies of policy issues and provides education on policies that are affected by advances in atmospheric understanding and the provision of meteorological services by both the public and private sectors.
ITT has long played an important role in the weather and climate community. On 28 August 1964, NASA launched the first operational weather satellite, the NIMBUS. Almost immediately, ITT’s supplied images from NIMBUS became an essential part of the U.S. Weather Bureau forecasting.
For nearly 40 years, ITT Industries Aerospace/Communications Division has designed and produced meteorological sensing and navigation satellite payloads. ITT developed the two primary instruments for TIROS (now POES) the polar-orbiting workhorse of satellite meteorology. The Advanced Very High Resolution Imaging Radiometer (AVHRR) is the standard, 24-hour global imager of clouds, land, oceans and vegetation. The High-Resolution Infrared Sounder is the first instrument to render a vertical temperature–altitude profile of the atmosphere. When NPOESS replaces POES, it will be an ITT designed and built Cross Track Infrared Sounder that advances forecasting even further.
ITT also provided advances on payload instrumentation for the GOES satellites. The company’s imagers and sounders are critical to the U.S. weather system. ITT advanced payloads have also drawn the interest of foreign governments and soon will fly on EUMETSAT for Europe and MTSAT for Japan.
With more than 100 years of cumulative on-orbit experience, ITT is committed to American’s space program and being a mission partner with the American Meteorological Society.
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The AMS has posted two new draft statements for public comment on the AMS Web site at http://www.ametsoc.org/ams/POLICY/draftstatements/. The statements are on
The statements will be posted for 30 days and then reviewed and considered by the AMS council. AMS members are encouraged to review the statements and provide comments to the AMS Council within the comment period.
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The Houston chapter of the American Meteorological Society is helping The Children’s Museum of Houston bring wacky weather to children all over the city. Scholastic’s The Magic School Bus Kicks Up a Storm traveling exhibit on weather will open in Houston in January 2003. In addition to offering expert advice through planning and development stages of the exhibit over the past year and a half, local AMS members are now stepping up to demonstrate fun weather experiments with museum visitors during the opening of the exhibit in Houston, 25–26 January 2003.
Houston AMS is also helping The Children’s Museum of Houston with staff training before and during the exhibit run. Staff will be introduced to the key ingredients of weather, basic principles of weather science and various tools of the meteorologist.
Scholastic’s The Magic School Bus Kicks Up a Storm is being created by the Children’s Museum of Houston in a collaborative effort with Scholastic Entertainment, the NOAA National Weather Service, and the American Meteorological Society. The exhibit will introduce children to the study of meteorology, namely, what weather is, what causes different types of weather, what types of safety precautions should be taken during weather emergencies, and how to predict the weather.
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New Weather Stations to Aid Florida HazMat and Wildland Firefighting Efforts
The Florida State Department of Community Affairs (DCA), Division of Emergency Management has purchased 24 new weather stations to help emergency response teams during emergency management activities, including responding to hazardous materials incidents and in support of wildland firefighting activities.
The WEATHERPAK®-400s were provided by Coastal Environmental Systems, based in Seattle, Washington. The WEATHERPAK® is mounted on a three-meter tripod and designed to be deployed in or near the “hot zone.” The system can be deployed by one person, in less than one minute, without any tools. Once assembled, the WEATHERPAK® uses an onboard electronic compass, which automatically aligns the weather station to true north. Data is transmitted back to the command post or HazMat vehicle via UHF radio (5–7-mile range). The receiver/display unit outputs data to the computer to automatically update CAMEO/ALOHA (or other) plume modeling software.
For more information see: http://www.coastalenvironmental.com/cgi/index2.php?section=hazmat&content=index.
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Oceanology International Americas will host its annual meeting in New Orleans, 4–6 June 2003. The conference will bring together all sides of industry, science, research, and academia from the ocean and related communities. The main meeting will also feature several smaller meetings including those held by the Alliance of Marine Remote Sensing, the Minerals Management Service, the Alliance of Coastal Technology, and the Geoforum. There are no registration fees. For more information see: www.oiamericas.com.
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On 19 December 2002, President Bush signed into law legislation that provides for a doubling of funding for the National Science Foundation (NSF) over the next five years. This is of profound significance to science, mathematics, and technology, as it outlines a plan for tremendous increases in funding for the nation’s preeminent federal agency supporting these disciplines.
According to the chairman of the science committee in the U.S. House of Representatives Sherwood Boehlert (R-New York), “This is landmark legislation. From our nation’s students, to our economy, and to our security, the fruits of this effort will be enjoyed for many years to come.”
The significance of this bill should not be underestimated. While it does not actually provide funding for a 100% increase in federal support for NSF, it strongly expresses the will of overwhelming numbers of members of both the Senate and House to provide for these sums, and there is strong reason to believe that, in fact, NSF will receive increases at or near these levels in the near future.
An authorization bill such as this does not, in and of itself, provide funding for the agency. Every year, monies will have to be provided in bills produced by the Appropriations Committees in both Houses of Congress, passed by the full Senate and full House, and then signed by the president. The purpose of an authorization bill is to direct the Appropriations Committees to include funding in their yearly legislation and also to specify the outlines of particular programs for which it requests funds.
In actual practice, the Appropriations Committees may ignore authorizations or may actually appropriate funds for agencies that are not authorized (this is a simplified version of a process that includes a number of legislative quirks and byways). There are so many agencies that are not authorized, that when an agency does have a specific authorization, it is a powerful statement to the appropriations committees to actually provide funding.
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An estimated 1300 people attended the U.S. Climate Change Science workshop in Washington, D.C., on 3–5 December 2002, both to hear the Bush administration present its strategies for climate change research and to have some community-wide input into those strategies. The conference moved from highlight to highlight, leaving many attendees feeling that both purposes were accomplished.
As a “Planning Workshop for Scientists and Stakeholders,” the workshop channeled participants into a series of parallel sessions to discuss objectives in scientific areas such as climate variability, carbon cycle, and scenario development. Each of these “breakout” sessions featured a panel discussion and open commentary about a chapter of the draft plan for climate research circulated by the workshop’s host, the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (USCCSP) headed by James R. Mahoney, assistant secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere, and former AMS president.
This planning session for U.S. government–funded climate science is intended to steer the direction of research in the field for five or more years. Feedback from the workshop and follow-up discussion via the Internet may be incorporated into a master climate science plan due to be finalized in April.
The 170-page draft plan under discussion, posted on the USCCSP’s Web site (www.climatescience.gov) since 11 November 2002, maps the strategic direction for climate research under the Bush administration and beyond. Part of the plan focuses on research aimed at providing useful information for policymakers and others who are making decisions about climate change mitigation or adaptation. These short term goals, for a three- to five-year time frame under the purview of the new U.S. Climate Change Research Initiative (CCRI), were established by the Bush administration in 2002. CCRI involves more than a dozen federal agencies, such as NOAA, NSF, NASA, and the U.S. Geological Service. Goals for research with longer-term results, also discussed in the plan, are to be managed by the ongoing U.S. Global Change Research Program. All of these efforts are to be coordinated by the USCCSP.
The meeting at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel was not only extraordinary in size but in prominence. As fitting for a discussion that involves so many Federal agencies, an unusual array of high-level administration officials gave speeches, including Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham, EPA Administrator Christie Todd Whitman, NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe, NSF Director Rita Colwell, and Deputy Secretary of Commerce Samuel Bodman. Attendees included an international array of environmentalists, industry representatives, tribal organizations, and government contractors, in addition to the core scientific cadre from the U.S. government and academia. Media coverage was also extensive, with CNN broadcasts and articles in major newspapers from New York and Washington to Portland and Seattle.
The cumulative message from the assembled dignitaries was clear: the Bush administration intends to be seen as taking climate change seriously. The collective message of participants and the plan, said John Marburger, presidential science advisor, “will be heard by the president.” To reassure a journalist questioning the environmental resolve of the administration, Marburger later pointed out, “If we didn’t think there was a problem, we wouldn’t be here today.” He later added, “We know we have to move toward having a net zero carbon emission economy.” Reiterating language from both the plan and the administration’s the FY03 report on climate change science budgeting, Mahoney promised that the administration sees climate change as a “capstone” environmental issue and is interested in the “possibility of resolving this issue given the potential of technology to make sustainable prosperity around the world.” He emphasized that “The long term solution is going to be technology breakthroughs.”
Indeed, technology has moved to the fore of this environmental agenda in new ways and is a substantial part of the $4.5 billion that the administration is earmarking for funding on this issue. “Any effort to address greenhouse gas emissions necessarily involves energy,” David Garman, head of DOE’s Climate Change Technology Program, reminded the crowd. Garman outlined goals to reduce costs of electricity from solar photovoltaic technology as well as wind, biomass, and geothermal energy. Secretary Abraham highlighted the new emphasis on developing automobiles that run on hydrogen-based fuel cells—a “four freedoms” car that promises solutions to more than just the environmental crisis: freedom from foreign oil and expensive trips to the fuel pump are among the motivations for the project.
While the meeting made clear the administration’s resolve to work through the environmental impact of climate change by pursuing future technological development and continued economic growth, officials made clear that there were plenty of scientific issues to address. The main thrust of the research plan seemed to many to be the new short term focus of the CCRI. While Mahoney strongly steered the group away from searching for prescriptions to the climate change dilemma, he said the administration was actively looking for information it can use. “The mantra we work to,” Mahoney said, “is that we want our science to be relevant to policy issues. At the same time we want the science to remain strictly neutral,” and added that, “We take a question-based approach, not fixed on particular programs.”
Not surprisingly, the draft plan, which had been assembled in only a few months, was strong on questions and weaker on directions and priorities, according to a number of the comments voiced at the meeting. Mahoney promised that this aspect of the plan will take better shape in the months leading to the April deadline and also outlined the process by which the National Academy of Sciences will independently review the draft and final plans over the coming year.
In part the emphasis on questions was due to the need to identify uncertainties. A consistent theme of the CCRI portion of the plan is to reduce uncertainties about future climate change, through scenario development, for instance, in order to help policy makers in the near term. Another reason, frequently mentioned in the comments and underscored by NOAA Administrator Conrad Lautenbacher, Jr. (vice admiral, retired), was that climate science still does not have much of the necessary information at its fingertips. Lautenbacher and others pointed out the priority of creating such a global observing system good enough for climate monitoring.
Numerous comments also centered around the difficulty of achieving short term goals in climate change science and in particular because of the long list of questions requiring modeling with better resolution and better models and ensembles of models. Rick Anthes, president of UCAR, and others made a strong pitch for better computing power and trained personnel, given the computational expense of the myriad goals in the plan. “Resources are limiting the progress of the science,” Anthes said. Furthermore, despite the comprehensiveness of the questions posed in the plan, there were many omissions, according to some. Ecologists noted the word “wildlife” was nearly completely absent from the plan and worried that not enough emphasis was being put on the complete environmental costs rather than only traditional economic impacts
While the draft plan so far does not promise any large increases in resources for climate research, many at the meeting were encouraged by the effort to coordinate inherently fragmented research efforts. For instance, the plan includes consolidation of modeling efforts into two centers, a feature that was lauded by some. Others were encouraged by the smoothly run, relatively rancor-free gathering of so many people with a stake in the federal direction of climate change research. Mahoney was frequently lauded for the quality of the discussion and presentations at the workshop.
World Meteorological Organization Secretary G.O.P. Obasi, like many, praised the plan and the meeting as a good basis for renewing climate change research and progress in this country. “I think the present workshop will help the United States to come into partnership with the rest of the world,” he said. — Jeff Rosenfeld, BAMS editor
More information on CCSP and the workshop is available at http://www.climatescience.gov.
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A report on communication of uncertainty in weather and climate information by the National Academies Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate will be available after 20 January.
The report is the result of a 2001 workshop where participants examined five case studies that were chosen to illustrate a range of forecast timescales, certainty levels, and issues. The cases included the Red River Flood, Grand Forks, April 1997; East Coast Winter Storm, March 2001; Oklahoma–Kansas Tornado Outbreak, 3 May 1999; El Niño 1997/98, and Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions, a National Academies report issued in 2001. In each of these cases, participants examined who said what, when, to whom, how, and with what effect.
The workshop report (NRC 2002) includes an overview of the five cases and lessons learned about communicating uncertainties in weather and climate forecasts. Among other things, the report stresses that communication and appropriate dissemination of information on uncertainty in the forecasts and forecaster confidence in the product should be an integral, ongoing part of the forecasting process, not an afterthought; and that two-way communication between information providers and users is essential. Understanding, communicating, and explaining uncertainty is essential if weather and climate forecasters are to deliver accurate and useful information.
This report should be of interest to all weather forecasters and weathercasters. Improving communications of uncertainties can improve confidence in the science of weather forecasting. After 20 January, the report can be purchased from the National Academies Press (http://www.nap.edu/info/browse.htm).
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Projected increases in rainfall variability resulting from changes in global climate can rapidly reduce productivity and alter the composition of grassland plants, according to scientists funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Although the diversity of plant species is increased in this scenario, the most important or dominant grasses were more water-stressed and their growth was reduced. Carbon dioxide release by roots and microbes below ground also was reduced.
Results of the experiment, conducted at NSF’s Konza Prairie Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) site, were published in the 13 December 2002 issue of Science. The biologists, Alan Knapp, Philip Fay, and John Blair and colleagues of Kansas State University, Scott Collins of NSF, and Melinda Smith at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis at the University of California, Santa Barbara, found that more extreme swings in rainfall patterns, without any changes in the total amount of rainfall received in a growing season, reduced the biomass of plants but increased the variety of species able to live in a particular experimental plot of land.
“This study is the first to focus on and manipulate climate variability in an intact ecosystem, without altering the average climate,” said Quentin Wheeler, director of NSF’s division of environmental biology, which funded the research along with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Energy. “Because these responses are similar to those that would occur under drought conditions, the results suggest that increased rainfall variability combined with projected higher temperatures and decreased rainfall amounts, may lead to even greater impacts on ecosystems than previously anticipated.”
In this study of how grasslands respond to more variation in rainfall patterns, the scientists hoped to better understand how rapidly and to what extent ecosystems might respond to a future with more climate extremes. In the four-year field study, the researchers altered rainfall variability by increasing the amount of precipitation that falls in one storm, and lengthened the periods of time between rainfalls by 50%. That effectively increased the severity of dry periods between storms without altering the total amount of precipitation received during a growing season.
The results show that plant community structure can be significantly changed, and the cycling of carbon slowed, in as little as four years when grasslands are exposed to a more variable climate.
Concerns about predicted climate changes resulting from human activities often focus on the effects of increases in average air temperatures or changes in average precipitation amounts. But widely used climate models also predict increases in climate extremes, said Knapp, such as more frequent large rainfall events or more severe droughts.
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The climate of 2002 in the United States was characterized by warmer than normal temperatures and below-average precipitation that led to persistent or worsening drought throughout much of the nation, according to scientists from the National Climatic Data Center.
NOAA scientists also found that 2002 is very likely to be the second warmest year on record for the globe. The return of El Niño affected hurricanes in the Atlantic and precipitation patterns in some parts of the world.
The average temperature for the contiguous United States in 2002 is expected to be near 53.6°F (12.0°C), one of the 20 warmest years since national records began in 1895, but significantly cooler than last year, which was the seventh warmest year. The average temperature during the 1895–present record is 52.8°F, with the warmest year on record occurring in 1998.
The year 2002 began with anomalously warm winter, the fourth much warmer than average winter in the last five years, and the summer season was one of the warmest since the 1930s. Temperatures in Alaska were above average in all four seasons, and 2002 will approach or exceed the warmest year on record for the state.
Overall the contiguous United States temperature has risen at a rate of 1.0°F per century (0.6°C per century) since 1895. Much of that increase has occurred in two periods, 1910–40 and again from the 1970s to the present. Temperatures in Alaska have increased at a rate near 2.8°F per century (1.5°C per century) since the early 1900s, most rapidly in the past 25 to 30 years.
As the year began, moderate to extreme drought covered one-third of the contiguous United States, including much of the eastern seaboard and northwestern United States. This drought statistic is based on the Palmer Drought Index, a widely used measure of drought. The Palmer Drought Index uses numerical values derived from weather and climate data to classify moisture conditions throughout the contiguous United States and includes drought categories on a scale from mild to moderate, severe, and extreme.
The combination of generally warmer and drier than average conditions led to the total drought area growing to slightly more than 50% during the summer months, largely due to a rapid intensification of drought in the Southwest. This value fell to 36% by the end of November as precipitation from land-falling tropical systems and a more active storm track helped alleviate drought in much of the eastern part of the country.
The most extensive national drought coverage during the past 100 years (the period of instrumental record) occurred in July 1934 when 80% of the contiguous United States was in moderate to extreme drought. Although the current drought and others of the 20th century have been widespread and of lengthy duration, tree ring records indicate that the severity of these droughts was likely surpassed by other droughts, including that of the 1570s and 1580s over much of the Southwest and northern Mexico.
In the western United States, where precipitation for 2002 was on pace to set record or near-record lows in many states, the lack of adequate rain and snow and the resulting low snowpack stressed water supplies and caused devastating impacts on agriculture. Severe drought in Montana that began in some places more than four years ago forced farmers to abandon more than 20% of the winter wheat crop for the second consecutive year, the first such occurrence since the Dust Bowl era of the 1930s. The extremely dry conditions also contributed to an extremely active wildfire season that included the largest wildfires of the past century for the states of Colorado, Arizona, and Oregon.
Extremely dry conditions in the Northeast improved with four consecutive months of above-normal precipitation for the region from March through June, and abnormally dry conditions were largely absent near the end of the year. Above-average rainfall from September through November also brought significant drought relief to the Southeast, where more than four years of drought had affected much of the region from Georgia to Virginia.
In Texas, heavy rainfall alleviated drought but led to severe flooding in southern and central parts of the state in early July. Strong thunderstorms also brought widespread flooding to western Minnesota and North Dakota and resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in damage and crop losses in June.
Other climate signatures typical of El Niño also emerged in countries such as Australia, India, and Indonesia as the El Niño episode evolved during the year. Drought in Australia became more widespread and severe, and a new record warm winter maximum temperature for Australia occurred.
Other conditions common during an El Niño episode included a drier than average summer monsoon season in India and drier than normal conditions in Indonesia during May–October. The June–September monsoon season for India, as a whole, was characterized by large-scale drought with seasonal rainfall (June–September) 19% below normal.
In contrast, heavy rainfall in northeastern India, Nepal, and Bangladesh brought severe flooding and caused approximately one thousand deaths in June. The most damaging typhoon to affect Korea since 1959, Typhoon Rusa, made landfall on the Korean Peninsula at the end of August.
In parts of central Europe, heavy rains fell during the first 13 days of August, causing disastrous floods on the Elbe and Danube rivers with more than 100 lives lost and damages estimated at $30 billion.
In Africa, severe drought continued across parts of the Greater Horn of Africa, and widespread flooding occurred in Morocco during November, and in parts of Madagascar during January–May as four tropical cyclones impacted the island nation.
Data collected from weather and climate stations, satellites, ships, buoys, and floats indicate that the 2002 average global temperature will very likely be the second warmest on record, slightly cooler than the record warm year of 1998. The 10 warmest years have all occurred since 1987, with nine of them since 1990.
During the past century, global surface temperatures have increased at a rate near 1.0°F per century (0.6°C per century), but the trend has been three times larger since 1976, with some of the largest temperature increases occurring in the high latitudes. In 2002, warmer temperatures and shifts in atmospheric circulation patterns contributed to the greatest surface melt on the Greenland Ice Sheet in the 24-year satellite record. There was also a record low level of Arctic sea ice extent in September, the lowest since satellite monitoring began in 1978, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
Data collected by NOAA polar orbiting satellites and analyzed for NOAA by the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) and Remote Sensing Systems in Santa Rosa, California, indicate that temperatures centered in the middle troposphere at altitudes from 2 to 6 miles are also on pace to make 2002 the second-warmest year for the globe. The average lower troposphere temperature (surface to about 5 miles) for 2002 will also very likely be the second warmest on record.
Analysis of the satellite record that began in 1979 shows that the global average temperature in the middle troposphere has increased, but the differing analysis techniques of the two teams result in different trends. The UAH team found an increase of 0.06°F per decade (0.035°C per decade) while a trend of 0.21°F per decade (0.115°C per decade) was found by the RSS team. This compares to surface temperature increases approaching 0.3°F per decade during the same period.
National and global data are online at http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2002/ann/ann02.html.
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Weather and climate experts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) expect that El Niño will set the stage for increased storm activity across the south this winter. At a press conference in Washington in early December 2002, NOAA officials updated its winter outlook, first issued in September, and said El Niño remains a key influence.
El Niño occurs when sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean remain above average for more than several months. This usually triggers a chain reaction of atmospheric and weather changes around the globe.
Based on NOAA’s latest El Niño forecast and its updated December–February winter outlook, forecasters said the nation can expect warmer than normal temperatures across the northern half of the country, wetter and stormier than normal weather across the south from California through the Carolinas, and drier than normal conditions in the northern Rockies and Midwest.
NOAA forecasters said 9% of the area east of the Mississippi River remains in drought, while 53% of the region west of the river remains in drought. In September, approximately 55% of each region was affected by drought.
The U.S. 2002/03 winter outlook for December–February calls for
States and regions in the continental United States not mentioned above will have equal chances for precipitation to be above normal, near normal, or below normal:
The Climate Prediction Center updates its El Niño Diagnostic Discussion and seasonal outlooks each month and they are available online at www.cpc.noaa.gov.
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The broad-scale warming expected from increased greenhouse gases may actually sap the strength of a typical El Niño, according to researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado. In contrast, the average El Niño during the last ice age may have packed more punch than today’s. The scientists have examined the past and future behavior of El Niño using a sophisticated computer model of global climate. Their research was presented at the American Geophysical Union meeting in early December 2002
NCAR scientist Esther Brady is lead author of a study that uses the NCAR Climate System Model to track how global air and ocean circulation could evolve at increasing levels of carbon dioxide, the most prevalent of the industrial greenhouse gases. The scientists simulated earth’s climate with atmospheric carbon dioxide at one, two, and six times its preindustrial level of about 280 parts per million.
As greenhouse gases increase and global air temperatures rise, Brady’s results show a significant weakening of the average El Niño event. El Niño typically shifts warm water from the western Pacific toward the central and eastern Tropics, as east–west trade winds weaken. Her simulations show an increase in cold upwelling off the coasts of Ecuador and Peru. This helps keep the eastern tropical Pacific from warming up as much as the west, sharpening the oceanic contrast that feeds the trade winds and helps keep El Niño at bay. Brady also found that greenhouse warming in the model led to a decoupling of the link between Pacific trade winds and the underlying sea surface temperatures. This ocean–atmosphere link is believed to help drive the cycle of El Niño and its cool water counterpart, La Niña.
Although this cycle might weaken on average in a greenhouse-warmed world, any given El Niño could still be intense, Brady notes. Even in the most extreme simulation, with six times the present-day level of carbon dioxide, large El Niños occur—but fewer overall.
It turns out there is a history of diminished El Niño events in a warming world, according to another climate system model study. Led by NCAR’s Bette Otto-Bliesner, this project examined the period around 11,000 years ago, when global temperatures were rebounding from the last ice age. The average El Niño during this period in the computer simulation was about 20% weaker than today.
The main factor responsible for the decrease is a slow shift in the earth’s asymmetric orbit around the sun. Nowadays, the earth’s orbit comes closest to the sun in early January, but 11,000 years ago, the closest approach came in the Northern Hemisphere summer, the season when most El Niños are just beginning to intensify. Along with other factors, the near-sun approach may have provided enough extra heating to warm the western Pacific, while the eastern Pacific—where upwelling of cold water dominates—remained chilly. Driven by this intensified contrast, the east–west trade winds would strengthen, hindering developing El Niños.
Looking even further back in time, Otto-Bliesner and colleagues found that a more vigorous El Niño may have held sway when the last ice age was at its peak. Simulations for 21,000 years ago show the typical El Niño about 20% stronger than today. In the model, cold water sinks as it drifts from ice-covered southern oceans into the tropical Pacific. The thermocline—an oceanic boundary that separates surface warmth and subsurface chill—is thus strengthened, and the effect, says Otto-Bliesner, is to ramp up the average intensity of both El Niños and La Niñas.
Previous studies have differed on how intense El Niño events might have been in the past. She adds that both weak and strong El Niños show up in each era studied thus far, and more work is needed to arrive at a solid history. “The observational record is pretty short. El Niño may be changing already, but I don’t think we really know that yet.”
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A new CD-ROM version of the Climate Atlas of the United States is now available from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The CD-ROM atlas consists of more than 2,000 maps that depict normal or mean temperature, precipitation, snow, and other parameters for all areas of the United States for the period 1961–90.
The atlas, produced by the NOAA National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) in Asheville, North Carolina, replaces the paper copy Climatic Atlas of the United States, which was published in 1968. It supersedes the earlier CD-ROM version published in 2000 that contained maps for the contiguous states only. The new CD-ROM atlas contains climate maps for all 50 states.
The new atlas contains weather station data for 7,700 locations, along with detailed documentation of the datasets used to generate the maps.
The CD-ROM is available from NCDC at a cost of $130 (online) or $175 (offline) plus $11 shipping and handling charge. To order online go to http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/ and visit the online store. For offline orders call (828) 271-4800 or write to National Climatic Data Center, NOAA/NESDIS, Veach-Baley Federal Building, 151 Patton Ave., Asheville, NC, 28801-5001. Individual atlas maps are also available online in PDF and in ESRI shape file formats from the online store.
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Wildland fires are taking tons of carbon out of storage and feeding it into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, a primary greenhouse gas, according to a study presented at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in December 2002. Drought makes things worse, stunting tree growth and turning forests into tinderboxes. And when human activity disturbs the environment, the ability of forests to store carbon is further diminished.
These are some of the preliminary findings from computer modeling studies of the Colorado wildfires of 2002 done by a team of researchers from Colorado State University, in Fort Collins; the U.S. Geological Survey, in Denver; and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), in Boulder.
The researchers developed a new computer model of a complex forest ecosystem to simulate the release of carbon during the 2002 fire season in Colorado. The findings estimate how much carbon would be stored in a normal year compared to a drought year, such as 2002. More carbon is freed from storage during droughts, not only because more tinder dry vegetation burns, but because plants deprived of water grow more slowly, absorbing and storing less carbon in their tissues.
The conclusion from these early studies is that the fires have had a significant effect on the regional carbon balance, changing Colorado from a storage area to a source of atmospheric carbon. And, since carbon circulates globally, the Colorado fires even had a very small effect on the global carbon budget.
The team is also using computer models to compare different approaches to reducing wildland fire risk. To simulate regrowth of burned areas over the next 30 years, they use a scenario that includes the effects on vegetation growth rates of elevated carbon dioxide. The researchers then compare different fire management strategies. “We don’t know which method takes more carbon out of storage, mechanical thinning or prescribed burning, but that’s one of the questions we’re looking at,” Schimel says.
“Land disturbance is a fundamental factor shaping ecosystems,” Schimel says. Computer models have been used before to estimate how much carbon dioxide is circulating in the atmosphere, how much is stored as carbon in vegetation and soils, and how much is shifting between land storage and the atmosphere. However, “it’s much harder to take the system apart than early modeling efforts suggested,” says Schimel.
For example, increasing road density in the West has been correlated with increasing wildfires. Both the presence of more people to ignite fires and the impact of roads on surface and groundwater are implicated. Clear cutting and road building channel away water formerly held in place by the living forest floor, causing a drop in the water table. The current project incorporates land use, drought, soil health, and other factors to better capture the complexity of ecosystem interactions at the local level.
Projections of climate change in the West include hotter temperatures and increased drought, a recipe for more forest fires. If further research supports the project’s early findings, “We’re either going to be spending a lot more money on fire suppression or we’re going to be seeing a lot more carbon released by wildfires,” Schimel says.
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The U.S. Navy, National Severe Storms Laboratory, National Weather Service Radar Operations Center, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Lockheed Martin, and University of Oklahoma’s School of Meteorology and College of Engineering have set up a unique partnership to test the use of military radars for weather operations.
With $9.1 million in funding from the Office of Naval Research, and the loan of a U.S. Navy SPY-1 radar, the groups want to improve upon the existing Doppler radar system, to increase the warning time before a tornado strikes. ONR’s Marine Meteorology Program funded early tests of the SPY-1 phased array radar for weather detection aboard actual Navy ships. “The results have proved very promising,” said Dr. Ronald Ferek, ONR program manager for this effort.
By adapting and integrating the U.S. Navy’s SPY-1 radar technology with existing Doppler technology, the National Severe Storms Laboratory and its partners hope to bring about the next evolutionary step in the field of weather forecasting.
This next generation of weather radar, called a “phased array” uses multiple radar beams on multiple frequencies providing faster updates of weather features. It will also allow scans of the atmosphere with greater detail and at lower altitudes than is currently possible. All this provides not only a better image of a current storm, but will also collect data on the life cycle of severe weather patterns, giving critical insight and a better understanding of phenomena that generate storms in the hopes of increasing lead time even more in the future.
Currently the time needed for a Doppler radar scan is six minutes. The new phased array technology drops that to less than one minute. The average lead time before a tornado is only 11 minutes, but that should jump to 22 minutes with the phased array technology.
At present the project is still in its testing phase. Construction has begun on the National Weather Radar Testbed site in Norman, Oklahoma, where the first phased array radar will be installed. The $25 million facility is set to be operational by July 2003. If successful, upgrades to all existing Doppler radar towers could occur within the next 10–15 years.
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With the help of the Internet, the American public now has a new connection to U.S. government science and technology. Fourteen scientific and technical information organizations from 10 major science agencies have collaborated to create Science.gov (www.science.gov). Science.gov is the gateway for information about science and technology from across Federal government organizations.
From Science.gov, users can find over 1,000 government information resources about science. These resources include: technical reports, journal citations, databases, federal Web sites, and fact sheets. The information is free, and no registration is required.
Science.gov is for the educational and library communities, as well as business people, entrepreneurs, agency scientists, and anyone with an interest in science. Support for building the Science.gov gateway came from CENDI, an interagency committee of senior managers of federal science and technology information programs.
The agencies participating in Science.gov are the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, and Interior; the Environmental Protection Agency; the National Aeronautics and Space Administration; and the National Science Foundation.
Additional information is available at www.science.gov/communications/ or by contacting Valerie Allen (phone: 865-576-3469; e-mail: allenv@osti.gov) or Sharon Jordan (phone: 865-576-1194; e-mail: jordans@osti.gov).
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Researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and other institutions have pinpointed the locations of high concentrations of air pollutants around the world by combining data from four satellite imaging systems. Their findings were being presented at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in December 2002.
The researchers used information from instruments on NASA and European Space Agency satellites to measure atmospheric levels of three types of pollutants that can affect human health: carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, and aerosols. They found especially high concentrations of each over the eastern United States, western and southern Europe, and eastern China, which are among the most heavily industrialized regions in the world.
Steven Massie, an atmospheric chemist at NCAR on the data analysis team, says such satellite images of air pollutants are important for efforts to improve air quality. “As the capability of these imaging systems becomes more and more powerful, the international community will have a way of studying pollution on a global basis and the technical means to monitor emissions from each country,” he explains.
The pollutants vary somewhat by season. In eastern China, for example, urban-industrial emissions of nitrogen dioxide spike during the winter. In the spring, however, aerosol levels are especially high, both because of industrial activities and because of winds that blow in dust from the Gobi and other deserts to the west.
Once airborne, the pollutants often drift eastward and diminish the air quality in neighboring areas. The research, for example, shows that carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, and aerosols from China flow eastward over Japan and the north Pacific Ocean.
Nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide are produced largely by industrial activities and vehicle exhaust. Nitrogen dioxide leads to the formation of smog and can irritate the lungs; high levels of carbon monoxide cause a variety of health effects, especially for people with cardiovascular diseases.
Aerosols, or microscopic particles in the air, can cause respiratory ailments as well as reduce visibility and damage buildings. They are associated both with industrial activities and with such natural sources as desert dust and forest fires. Previous research has demonstrated that high aerosol concentrations in nonindustrialized regions over Africa, western China, and eastern Siberia are due to desert dust storms, wildfires, and burning of vegetation for agriculture, home heating, and cooking.
The researchers used four instruments to collect their data. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS), and Measurements of Pollution in the Troposphere (MOPITT) devices take atmospheric readings from aboard NASA satellites; the Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment (GOME) is a spectrometer on the second European Remote Sensing Satellite (ERS-2). MOPITT is a joint project of NCAR and the Canadian Space Agency.
In addition to NCAR, the research team includes scientists from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and the University of Bremen in Germany.
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Thomas R. Karl, director of NOAA National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) in Asheville, North Carolina, and AMS Fellow, received an honorary doctorate from North Carolina State University on 18 December 2002.
Karl received the honorary degree in recognition of his dedication to advance the scientific understanding of climate, his ability to provide climate and weather data to industrial and business operations, and for his steadfast leadership in the field of global climate change.
“Tom Karl is acknowledged worldwide for his expertise regarding the global climate. In awarding this honorary degree, North Carolina State recognizes his untiring efforts to increase the scientific community’s knowledge of this important issue,” said university Chancellor Marye Anne Fox. The honorary degree was awarded by Chancellor Fox and the NSCU Board of Trustees.
Karl holds a master’s degree in meteorology from the University of Wisconsin. He is a fellow of the AMS and the American Geophysical Union and past chair of the National Academy of Sciences Climate Research Committee. He is an associate member of the National Academies. He has received numerous awards for his scholarly work on climate, including the Helmut Landsberg Award, the Climate Institute’s Outstanding Scientific Achievements Award, three Department of Commerce Gold Medals, a Bronze Medal, and the NOAA Administrator’s Award. Earlier this year, he received the Presidential Rank of Distinguished Executive Award. This award is presented to senior federal executives committed to excellence in public service.
Karl is currently an associate editor for Climatic Change and has been an editor for the AMS Journal of Climate. He has been a lead author on several Intergovernmental Panel Assessments of Climate Change since 1990, and was the cochair of the U.S. National Assessment of Climate Variability and Change. He has authored over 100 peer-reviewed journal articles, been coauthor or coeditor on numerous texts, and published over 200 technical reports and atlases. He has been a called upon by Congress and the White House to testify and brief on matters related to climate variability and change, and he chairs the NOAA Council on Long-Term Climate Monitoring.
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The only meteorologist on national Spanish-language television in the United States left his position as Chief Meteorologist for the Univision Network effective 31 December 2002.
Toohey-Morales, an AMS Certified Consulting Meteorologist, will concentrate fully on ClimaData Corporation, a private weather forecasting and consulting firm he founded over 10 years ago. ClimaData specializes in Spanish language weather information and forecasts as well as tropical meteorology. The company serves over 60 radio stations, several newspapers, and some industrial clients in the U.S. and Caribbean.
During his career at Univision, Toohey-Morales won an Emmy award for “48 Hours Before the Storm,” a hurricane preparedness special. He was the first degreed meteorologist on Spanish language television, and was credited with saving lives of Hispanic residents of South Florida during Hurricane Andrew in 1992 through a 25-hour severe weather broadcast on WLTV, Channel 23—Miami’s Univision affiliate.
Toohey-Morales is a member of the Board of Certified Consulting Meteorologists. ClimaData funds one of the AMS Industry/Minority Scholarships for college students in the atmospheric sciences. For more information on ClimaData or a brief bio of John Toohey-Morales, please visit www.climadata.com.
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The Environmental Protection Agency’s SunWise School Program has received the Federal Council on Skin Cancer Prevention’s Annual Achievement Award. The award, which recognizes a federal agency or individual within an agency for outstanding skin cancer prevention efforts, acknowledged EPA’s SunWise School Program.
First launched nationally in May 2000, the SunWise School Program is an environmental and health education program. The program is designed to teach children and their caregivers how to protect themselves from overexposure to the sun’s harmful ultraviolet (UV) rays, which can cause serious health effects, including skin cancer.
According to the American Cancer Society, half of all new cancers are skin cancers. Each year, more than one million new cases of skin cancer are diagnosed in the United States, with one American dying every hour from this disease. Educating children is of particular importance since most of the average person’s lifetime sun exposure occurs before the age of 18. SunWise is a partnership program with schools, which in turn sponsor classroom, school, and community activities to raise children’s awareness of stratospheric ozone depletion, UV radiation, and simple sun-care strategies.
The SunWise School Program is currently open to all elementary and middle schools (grades K–8) in the United States. There are currently over 5000 schools in all 50 states, Puerto Rico, and Washington, D.C., registered for the program. Registered schools receive a free SunWise Tool Kit with suggested classroom activities and materials designed for grades K–8. The SunWise Web site has an online interactive database through which students may report UV measurements taken daily with hand-held UV meters, and compare them with UV index forecast data for their zip code. More information on EPA’s SunWise program, including instructions on how schools can register to participate, is available at http://www.epa.gov/sunwise/.
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