Editor: Jim Elliott
Contributor: Stephanie Kenitzer
Copy Editor: Marcie Bernstein
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The AMS and the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) are putting the finishing touches on the Summer Policy Colloquium, to be held in Washington, D.C., 3–12 June. The colloquium will bring together a select group of scientists, federal managers, private-sector executives, students, and faculty in Washington, D.C., for an intense immersion in atmospheric public policy.
The Colloquium will bring together future leaders in the field of atmospheric sciences. Participants will be drawn from midlevel to senior managers from government and the private sector, as well as university faculty. Graduate students, selected competitively, along with a few top undergraduate students, will also prominently participate.
Participants will visit Capitol Hill and the White House to learn and to engage staff in dialogue. Through case studies on the creation of the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) and how the World Meteorological Organization is working with the question of free and open data exchange, through role-playing exercises, as well as through other interactive instruments, participants will develop understanding of the policy process, and at the same time contribute to building the public policy capabilities of the weather and climate community, broadly defined.
Also included in this period is a one-day meeting of corporate members with policy-level agency officials of the Bush administration, scheduled for 11 June. The final day of the colloquium, 12 June, will be devoted to presentations and dialog on the role of policy, weather and climate events, and entrepreneurial vision in fostering the development of the private sector.
Applications are still being accepted—register as soon as possible to facilitate precolloquium planning and communications with participants. Complete details on the colloquium and the application process are available on the AMS Web site at http://www.ametsoc.org/AMS (under the Atmospheric Policy Program link) or contact Dr. William Hooke at (202) 682-9006, e-mail: hooke@dc.ametsoc.org.
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The AMS and University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) received 10 applications for the 2002 AMS–UCAR Congressional Fellow program. The two organizations are currently reviewing all the applications and will make a selection by the end of April.
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The AMS and University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) hosted a Capitol Hill luncheon on “Energy Policy and Weather Information” last month. This was the third in a series of briefings for congressional staff and Members to highlight issues of importance to AMS and UCAR. More than 40 staff attended the event.
Bryan Hannegan, science advisor to the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, introduced the panel of speakers: David Rogers, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Office of Weather and Air Quality Research; Woodrow Whitlatch, senior meteorologist at Pacific Gas & Electric; William Neff, chief of NOAA’s Weather and Climate Applications Division at the Environmental Technology Laboratory; Brad Hoggatt, senior meteorologist with Aquila Energy’s Weather Derivatives group; and Nick Keener, manager of meteorological services at Duke Power Company.
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In something of a surprise to insiders as well as outside observers, the Senate Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space will be chaired by a newcomer this Congress. Defying what had been the general expectations of earlier this year, Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) will not, in fact, chair the subcommittee. That duty has been given to first-term Senator George Allen (R-Virginia), who will now head the panel that oversees, among other agencies and duties, the atmospheric portion of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (the National Weather Service), NASA, the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the Office of Science and Technology Policy.
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The House Science Committee tried to find answers to global climate change at a hearing in Washington on 14 March, but in the end, came up with more questions than answers.
Testifying were Daniel Albritton, director of NOAA’s Aeronomy Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado; Berrien Moore III, director of the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space, University of New Hampshire; and Charles Kennel, chairman, Committee on Global Change Research, National Research Council and director, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California.
Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert (R-New York) said he hoped to assess whether the federal government’s research program needs to be restructured or redirected and whether its funding is adequate. “We’re here to discuss science, not debate,” he said. “Obviously, the science of policy change has policy implications...But policy is not what we are focusing on at today’s hearing.” He said also that additional hearings are planned.
All three witnesses emphasized that there is an obvious need for more and better observational systems, bigger and better computers, and more research if definitive answers are to be found about the controversial subject of global warming. The point that differences exist among scientists on global warming was brought up throughout the hearing.
Albritton said there is new, stronger evidence of continued growth of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and emphasized that a recent assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—which he said had been developed by 122 lead authors from around the world based on input from 516 contributing authors and had gone through extensive review by experts and governments—presents a collective picture of a warming world.
He said the greenhouse gases are increasing because of human activities and increasingly trapping more heat. He argued the measurements over the last 40 years documented “impeccably” the steady growth in the atmospheric abundance of carbon dioxide. Also, he said, ice cores have revealed carbon dioxide concentrations of the distant past that show that atmospheric carbon dioxide had increased about 30% over the Industrial Era (since 1750) compared to the relatively constant abundance that it had over the preceding 750 years of the past millennium. The predominant cause of this increase, he noted, is the combustion of fossil fuels and the burning of forests. Moreover, he continued, methane has doubled over the Industrial Era and other heat-trapping gases also are increasing as a result of human activities.
A greenhouse gas warming could be reversed, he suggested, only very slowly. “This quasi-irreversibility arises because of the slow rate of removal from the atmosphere of many of the greenhouse gases and because of the large resistance of the oceans to thermal changes.
The carbon dioxide question gained wide attention outside the hearing because of a reversal by President Bush of a campaign pledge to curtail power plants’ carbon dioxide emissions. Bush revealed his decision in a letter to Senate Republicans. Bush’s promise came in a speech on the campaign trail last September in a speech titled “A Comprehensive National Energy Policy.” Near the end of his speech, he said, “With the help of Congress, environmental groups and Industry, we will require all power plants to meet clean air standards in order to reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury, and carbon dioxide within a reasonable period of time.”
Bush, who opposes the Kyoto agreement based on his conclusion that 80% of the world, including China and India, would be exempt from compliance and that the agreement would cause harm to the U.S. economy, noted in his letter to the senators that the Senate had voted 95–0, showing a “clear consensus” that it was unfair.
While he emphasized that he supports improving air quality and would work with Congress to develop a strategy to require power plants to reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and mercury, “I do not believe...that the government should impose on power plants mandatory emissions reductions for carbon dioxide, which is not a ‘pollutant’ under the Clean Air Act.”
After confessing that the committee needed help, Chairman Boehlert asked what three things should be done first if answers are to be found. Albritton said 1) a better understanding of the true aspect of climate forces, 2) a better understanding of water-related processes, and 3) better regional climate forecasts. Moore said 1) improved informational links, 2) better climate observations, and 3) improved computers.
Moore indicated that encouraging progress has been made in understanding better the coupling of the atmosphere and ocean as well as developing integrated-assessment models that couple economic activity with models of biogeochemical and climate systems. However, he said the challenges facing scientists remain significant.
“From the perspective of understanding the earth system,” he said, “determining the nature of the link between the biogeochemical system and the physical-climate system represents a fundamental scientific goal. Present understanding is incomplete, and a successful attack will require extensive interdisciplinary collaboration. It will also require global data that clearly documents the state of the system and how that state is changing as well as observations to illuminate more clearly important processes.”
In his prepared testimony, Moore noted there is a need for
Kennel indicated that the United States does not have observational and modeling capabilities that adequately serve society’s needs for reliable environmental predictions or precise estimation of ongoing changes. “This is in part because the federal government does not have mechanisms to establish and provide resources to key research, observational, and technological endeavors that either cross or transcend individual agency responsibilities,” he said.
To solve the problem, he continued, the National Research Council recommends establishing a high-level government authority to define the national priorities related to global and regional environmental research and decision making. This authority, he said, should ensure and direct adequate resources to those priorities.
“Without such an authority,” he said, “agencies will continue to find only those areas that fall within their purview, and the resulting patchwork of observing systems and research will not work as an effective decision-support system.”
The investment in global climate change has led to “limited, but valuable capabilities” for short-term climate prediction. But there is much more to be done, he noted.
“We cannot yet predict the start of an El Niño with precision,” he said. However, once it begins, we can identify it and assess its progress. We still have little idea how the strength or frequency of El Niño might change over the course of the next few decades, he suggested.
He said new partnerships are needed between physical and social science researchers and decision-makers in government and industry. “With the establishment of a high-level governing authority...there will be a focal point for these partnerships,” he concluded. “There will be an entity to coordinate global and regional environmental research and decision-making and to ensure that adequate resources are directed to the highest priority issues and that long-term capabilities are sustained.”
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President Bush’s FY02 budget blueprint proposes a new initiative for math and science partnerships in which states, local school districts, and institutions of higher education would work together to strengthen teaching, instruction, curricula, and standards for K–12 math and science.
The partnership proposal appears in “No Child Left Behind,” the president’s education reform plan, according to the 9 March issue of the American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Science Policy News. The proposal has been considered his outline for reform of Education Department programs through reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).
The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee has incorporated the partnerships into its ESEA legislation. However, in Bush’s request, the math and science partnerships appear within the National Science Foundation (NSF) section of the budget, according to the Bulletin. It is not clear how Congress will handle the partnership initiative, it reported, whether partnerships will be included in final Education Department or NSF authorization legislation, whether they will receive funding through the appropriations process and, if so, within which agency.
In the budget request, the partnership program within NSF would receive FY02 funding of $200 million, of which $110 million would be redirected from existing NSF education programs. Bush’s proposal does not specify a dollar amount for the partnerships, nor does it name a controlling agency.
Under the section “Strengthen and Reform Education,” his proposal would consolidate and increase general “funds for teacher training and recruiting into a $2.6 billion fund that provides states the flexibility to improve teacher quality while ensuring increased accountability.” He also would expand “existing student loan forgiveness limits from $5,000 to $17,500 for math and science majors who teach those subjects in high-need schools for five years.”
Under the NSF section, the blueprint reports:
“As America enters the 21st century, many of our neediest students are being left behind. The current state of grade K–12 mathematics and science education in the United States raises significant warning signs. The most recent evidence of deficiencies in U.S. math and science education is from the Third International Math and Science Study, which measured American students in the fourth, eighth and twelfth grades against comparable students in other countries.
“Although U.S. fourth graders did relatively well in both math and science, by 12th grade, the last year of mandatory schooling, U.S. students were among the very worst in the world, and in some areas, such as physics, were last. The evidence indicates that our schools are not preparing our students adequately for today’s knowledge-based, technologically rich society or to become future scientists and engineers.
“Among the underlying causes for the poor performance of U.S. students...three problems must be addressed: too many teachers teaching these subjects for which they have not been trained; too few students taking advanced coursework, and too few schools offering challenging curriculum and textbooks.
Bush’s NSF budget also would increase “graduate stipends for the Graduate Research Fellowships, the Graduate Teaching Fellowships in K–12 Education, and the Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeships programs. These funds will help attract the best students to pursue careers in science and engineering.”
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According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the White House, President Bush’s budget blueprint includes $83 million increase in NOAA’s budget for the next generation of weather satellites. The National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS), which is being jointly developed with the Defense Department, will provide improved real-time weather information 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This next-generation weather satellite will be launched by the end of the decade.
The President’s budget blueprint can be found at http://www.whitehouse.gov.
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Cray Inc. announced that it has signed a definitive agreement with NEC Corporation to market NEC vector supercomputers worldwide alongside the company’s current Cray SV1 and future Cray SV2 vector systems.
The 10-year agreement gives Cray exclusive rights to distribute the NEC SX-5 Series and successor vector products in North America, and nonexclusive rights in the rest of the world, including Japan. Cray will absorb the operations of NEC’s North American marketing arm, HNSX Supercomputers Inc., Littleton, Massachusetts.
The transaction does not provide for any technology transfer between Cray and NEC. As part of the agreement, NEC will invest $25 million cash in Cray, in exchange for 3.125 million nonvoting, preferred shares of Cray stock, convertible into Cray common stock at a fixed conversion price of $8.00 per share. Closing is expected to occur within 90 days, the companies said.
Outside of North America, Cray will be able to market the NEC SX-5 Series and successor products on a nonexclusive basis except at certain accounts in France where NEC has exclusive distribution arrangements with another party. Within North America, Cray will have exclusive rights to distribute the NEC SX-5 Series and its successors. Cray and NEC will work with NEC customers to facilitate a smooth transition of sales and service operations to Cray over the next 12 months.
To facilitate the agreement, Cray will ask the U.S. Government to remove antidumping duties now applying to U.S. sales of Japanese vector supercomputers.
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Arlington, Virginia, based Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES) recently announced that it would give funding to seven education organizations to offer online earth system science courses for educators.
IGES—working in partnership with the Center for Educational Technologies (CET), Wheeling, West Virginia, through funding from NASA’s Earth Science Enterprise—has created the Earth System Science Education Alliance (ESSEA) to facilitate the delivery of online graduate courses for teachers by universities, colleges, and science education organizations. CET at Wheeling Jesuit University designed the state-of-the-art online courses.
The seven selected organizations will have teams participate in extensive training, conduct two sessions of the courses each year, and provide evaluation of the effectiveness of the online courses. The selected organizations are the following:
The three ESS courses the ESSEA organizations offer use an innovative instructional design model. Delivered over the Internet, they feature student-centered, knowledge-building virtual communities, the optimal method for teaching and learning.
ESSEA is made possible by funding from NASA. The final ESSEA solicitation will be released in fall 2001. For more information, contact Claudia Dauksys, claudia_dauksys@strategies.org, or visit http://www.cet.edu/essea.
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Because of unrelenting human demand for water, Africa’s Lake Chad, one of the continent’s largest bodies of freshwater, has shriveled to a ghost of a great lake, according to researchers.
In a few decades, the lake has shrunk from a surface area the size of Lake Erie to a size smaller than the Great Salt Lake, University of Wisconsin—Madison scientists Michael T. Coe and Jonathan A. Foley wrote in the 27 February issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research.
“It’s about one-twentieth the size it was 35 years ago,” noted Coe, who led the NASA-supported study by the university’s Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment. “It’s a huge change,” from 25 000 square kilometers (15 534 square miles) of surface area to 1350 square kilometers (838 square miles) today.
The human need for water, mostly through massive irrigation projects, and the competing demands of the four nations that share the lake, account for almost 30% of the observed decrease to the lake area since the early 1960s, the authors contend.
Bad as that is, they noted, the problem is expected to worsen as climate change forces an even heavier reliance on irrigated agriculture.
By merging historical climate data and water use in a computer model, the Wisconsin team charted the impact of a shifting pattern of climate over the past 40 years and the rapid growth of human consumption of water from Lake Chad and the rivers that flow into it. The Lake Chad drainage basin is a closed system that depends on monsoon rains to replenish the water. But the region is extremely sensitive to climate fluctuations and has experienced a significant decline in rainfall since the early 1960s, according to the researchers.
The amount of water diverted to nearby fields over the past 40 years has affected the lake’s equilibrium, they noted. Add poverty, political instability, and national rivalries over a scarce resource to the mix, and a recipe for ecological disaster results, Coe wrote.
“The Chad River and the lake are the important life-sustaining systems for this corner of the world,” Coe said. “Irrigation activity is significant, and they now have more capacity than they can use because there is less water.”
Until 1979, irrigation had a modest impact on the hydrology of the region. But between 1983 and 1994, the amount of water diverted for irrigation quadrupled over water used for the previous 25 years. In addition to the radically reduced lake surface area, the flow of water from the primary river system that feeds it has decreased by almost 75% over the past 40 years, the researchers wrote.
Because Lake Chad is shallow, it responds rapidly to changes in precipitation and runoff. A shifting climate, with fewer large rainfall events, will place the lake in serous jeopardy, they noted, threatening the well-being of the humans who depend on it and undermining lake and related ecosystems.
“The study illustrates the importance of considering human activities on water resources, even in very large hydrologic systems,” the researchers wrote.
“The take-home message,” they emphasized, ”is that humans have a big impact on these systems and now, through the use of computer simulations, we have some predictive abilities for what humans can do to them.”
The future of Lake Chad is gloomy, they noted. “It will be a puddle. It will be completely managed. You’ll get crops and drinking water out of it, but you’ll have no ecosystem left to speak of.”
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Work on Canada’s third RADARSAT earth-mapping satellite has gotten under way as the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) issued a feasibility studies contract to MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates (MDA), the Canadian-based corporation that built the robot arms for the international space station and NASA’s space shuttles.
“This investment towards a potential RADARSAT-3 mission supports the government’s commitment to building Canadian knowledge and expertise, strengthening the Canadian economy and leading the world in Earth observation to benefit Canadians and all humanity,” said W. M. (Mac) Evans, head of CSA, in an article if the 26 February issue of Spaceflight Now. “In partnership with MDA and the value-added sector, the design and operation of this leading-edge Canadian technology would continue to enhance our ability to map the present and help us to better manage our future.”
MDA currently is the prime contractor for RADARSAT-2, scheduled for launch into polar orbit aboard a Delta 2 rocket from California in 2003.
RADARSAT-3 will be launched into orbit to begin a seven-year mission to collect radar data all around the globe, while concentrating on the polar regions. The craft would be launched a few years after RADARSAT-2; then the two craft are planned to work together throughout their lifetimes to produce data on the earth’s elevation and terrain.
The data collected perhaps would create the most advanced space-based mapping information mission in history, officials suggested. Results of the mission are expected to have applications in natural resource exploration, civil engineering, land use planning, air traffic routing and navigation, flood monitoring, rescue missions and disaster relief, and telecommunications site planning.
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Taiwan plans to build a fleet of six microsatellites for the study of the earth’s atmosphere to help scientists in weather and climate forecasting and ionosphere and gravity research fields.
The $56 million project is known as the Republic of China Satellite-3/Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere and Climate, or ROCSAT-3/COSMIC. COSMIC is a joint U.S.–Taiwan scientific project including partnership with UCAR.
Contract for the constellation was made with Orbital Sciences in Virginia. The mission will mark the third space mission in the history of Taiwan’s national space program and the first to employ a constellation of microsatellites, a specialty of Orbital Sciences.
Orbital will take part in the design and analysis of the six-satellite fleet, development of the spacecraft bus, the manufacturing of the instruments to fly aboard the spacecraft, satellite testing both on the ground and in orbit and possibly more, according to David W. Thompson, Orbital’s CEO and chairman.
The satellites’ construction will be based design of Orbital’s MicroStar spacecraft, which average around 150 pounds, but can vary in weight depending on the mission. The six craft are scheduled to launch in early 2005 to begin a five-year mission.
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An international, interagency team of scientists will study aerosols—particles in the air—and their effect on climate during a 40-day experiment centered in the western Pacific beginning this month. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Science Foundation are the major supporters of the ACE-Asia Project, which includes participants from nine nations.
The ACE-Asia experiment will collect samples off the coasts of Japan and Korea, where there are many types of aerosol particles of widely varying composition and sizes derived from one of the largest aerosol source regions on earth. These particles include those emitted by human activities and industrial sources, as well as wind-blown dust.
“Asian cities are large producers of material that gets caught up in major dust storms which lift vast amounts of aerosols high into the atmosphere,” said Jarvis Moyers, director of the Atmospheric Sciences Division at the National Science Foundation. “The aerosols from these Asian sources are transported from the continent vast distances across the Pacific Ocean, sometimes often even reaching the West Coast of North America.”
NOAA’s research vessel Ronald H. Brown will be used, along with two aircraft, a C-130 cargo plane owned by NSF and run by the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, and a twin otter that belongs to the Naval Postgraduate School, to collect air samples.
A new airborne inlet was developed for this experiment that will collect large particles, such as mineral dust and sea salt that were not efficiently sampled by previous collecting devices.
Accurately measuring the amount, composition, origin, and history of the aerosols will help increase understanding of their effect on climate, the scientists said.
“Particles out of Asia may warm certain atmospheric layers, change expected precipitation patterns, and cool the surface. Yet our ignorance of the composition and size of these aerosols has made it impossible to accurately predict their climatic effects,” said Barry Huebert of the University of Hawaii, along with Tim Bates, scientist from NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, Washington, ACE-Asia lead scientists. “These observations of Asian aerosols over wide spatial scales and at many altitudes will help all the participating nations make realistic predictions of these effects.”
In addition to the scientists, there will also be a science teacher on board. Susan Carty, a middle school teacher from West Chester, Pennsylvania, will send back daily dispatches via the project Web site (see below). Carty is part of NOAA’s Teacher at Sea program, which offers berth space aboard NOAA research vessels for teachers, who send back lesson plans and other information. Carty’s stint aboard the Brown is unusual because of its length—she is on sabbatical and may spend the entire 40 days at sea.
ACE-Asia is supported by scientific and research agencies from Australia, the People’s Republic of China, Chinese Taipei, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, and the United Kingdom. U.S. support, in addition to NOAA and NSF, comes from the Office of Naval Research, NASA, the Department of Energy, and the University of California Pacific Rim Program.
For more information about ACE-Asia and to follow the Teacher at Sea, visit http://saga.pmel.noaa.gov/aceasia/.
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Researchers are tracking pollution plumes around the world in a new study they hope will provide people more advance warning of unhealthy air.
The scientists have discovered that smoke and smog move in different ways through the atmosphere. A series of unusual events several years ago created a blanket of pollution over the Indian Ocean. In the second half of 1997, smoke from Indonesian fires remained stagnant over Southeast Asia while smog—which is tropospheric, low-level ozone—spread more rapidly across the Indian Ocean toward India.
The situation was exacerbated by El Niño, which had increased the thickness of smog over the region. At the same time, additional smog from African fires streamed over the Indian Ocean and combined with the smog from Indonesia, creating an aerial canopy of pollutants.
Researchers tracked the pollution using data from NASA’s Earth Probe Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) satellite instrument. “TOMS is the only satellite instrument that follows both smoke and smog globally,” said Anne Thompson of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland. “The extreme pollution generated during the Indonesian fires was the first time we saw smoke move more slowly and in different directions from where smog moved.”
The different movement occurred because the pollutants were in different layers of the atmosphere, according to the scientists. Heavier smoke particles stayed close to the region of the fires while smog moved more quickly and spread over a large area. “Typically, smog is seen coming from Africa because much more burning occurs there, but in 1997 the Indonesian plume was thicker due to the fires there,” Thompson explained.
Before the fires began in 1997, the El Niño and changing atmospheric patterns over the Indian Ocean, a pattern called the Indian Ocean Dipole, caused the ozone column to thicken, indicating that climatic factors play a major role. When scientists went back and looked at the 1980s El Niño events, they noticed the same behavior.
“However, we can detect no trend in smog ozone during the 1980s in the tropics, even though burning may have increased,” said Thompson. “In some regions of the tropics, rising ozone precedes the burning period and in other regions, ozone levels don’t rise as much as we would expect during the local burning season. Clearly, factors other than biomass burning exert a strong influence on tropical tropospheric ozone.”
A paper, titled “Tropospheric Ozone and Biomass Burning,” by Thompson and colleagues at the University of Maryland, Science Systems and Applications, Inc., and Hokkaido University of Japan, explaining the divergence of pollutants, appeared in the March issue of Science.
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The weather outlook for April–June suggests two major concerns—drought and floods— according to the National Weather Service (NWS).
“Heavy snows in the northeast and Midwest now make some of those states vulnerable to floods if the snowpack melts too quickly,” explained NWS Director Jack Kelly. “The water shortage in the southeast is expected to remain. The Northwest will see above-normal precipitation, but the spring rainfall will be too little, too late to replenish water resources there.”
The forecast came during NOAA’s annual spring weather outlook press briefing, held at the Department of Commerce in Washington, D.C., on 15 March.
In addition to Kelly, other participants included Scott Gudes, NOAA’s acting administrator, and Kathryn Clement, deputy director, U.S. Geological Survey.
“A major concern is the impact of continued dry conditions on salmon stocks and hydroelectric energy production in the Northwest,” said Gudes. “Current conditions are so extreme that portions of the Columbia River basin may register river flow volume at its lowest since l977.”
He said Florida is experiencing the “worst drought in 100 years” and predicted that the spring rains will not make up for the deficit.
Clement pointed out that stream gauges and other monitoring systems show record-breaking dryness in many parts of the United States, particularly the Pacific Northwest, western North Carolina, and parts of Florida. In Florida, she said, 80% of the streams are below their normal flow, and the aquifers in south Florida are all low.
During this spring, the nation can expect the following:
For the complete Spring 2001 Outlook visit http://www.cpc.noaa.gov.
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National Weather Service (NWS) forecasters, who already have raised a warning over potential flooding in New England this spring, are getting some help from a special National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) aircraft that has been traversing the skies over the region and feeding vital snowpack data to the Northeast River Forecast Center in Taunton, Massachusetts.
The twin-engine Aero Commander, equipped with a sophisticated spectrometer, is the world’s first airborne survey platform, according to the pilot, Lt. Comdr. Barry Choy of the NOAA Corps from the National Operational Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center in Chanhassen, Minnesota. For the New England survey, the plane is operating out of Hanscom Field, Massachusetts.
The sensing equipment measures natural gamma radiation from the earth and compares it to readings taken when the land was free of snow. “By gauging the amount of radiation blocked by the snowpack, we can precisely calculate the water equivalent of the snow,” Choy explained.
“With up to a foot of water locked in the snowpack, we are keeping a watchful eye on much of New England where a rapid snowmelt could cause flooding,” said Ronald Martin, hydrologist-in-charge of the River Forecast Center, in mid-March. “The remote sensing data is of great value to the flood forecast process because it pinpoints the snowpack’s water equivalent.”
Data from each flight are transmitted directly to the river forecast center where the information is entered into the computer models used to produce flood potential maps and forecasts.
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For the past l5 years, droughts in Texas were more frequent and extreme than those in other states, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists.
Using data from NOAA’s polar-orbiting satellites, the scientists, led by Felix Kogan in Camp Springs, Maryland, reviewed major droughts in the United States from 1985 to 2000, an analysis that determined there were five large-area droughts in that time.
“One of the largest droughts, which occurred in 1988, covered the most productive agricultural lands of the Great Plains and the Midwest,” said Kogan. “The drought had a major impact on agriculture because it took place in the middle of the growing season.”
Droughts in Texas and adjacent areas had a higher frequency than in other states, according to the analysis. During the 15-year period, severe droughts affected up to 80% of Texas and Oklahoma. Nearly 40% of Oklahoma suffered from extreme droughts, the survey showed.
Other scientists at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina, performed a similar analysis, using surface observations collected during the same 15-year period. Their analysis revealed similar results in the Southern Plains. Texas endured more frequent long-term droughts than surrounding states during the period. Droughts occurred across parts of Texas from 8% to 18% of the time during this period, compared to 4% to 10% of the time for surrounding states.
Information on NOAA’s vegetation index can be found at http://orbit-net.nesdis.noaa.gov/crad/sat/surf/vci/index.html. Information on the year 2000 droughts can be found at http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/ol/climate/research/2000/dec/us_drought.html.
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Scientists have for the first time obtained measurements of upper-atmosphere temperatures, iron densities, and mesospheric clouds over the North and South Poles.
As reported in the 1 April issue of Geophysical Research Letters, published by the American Geophysical Union, the scientists used a sensitive lidar (radarlike laser) system, which was first deployed over Okinawa, Japan, to observe meteor trails during the 1998 Leonid meteor shower. University of Illinois (UI) researchers have now used it to probe temperatures in the upper atmosphere over both geographic Poles.
“Measuring temperature profiles over the Poles is essential for validating global circulation models and for providing a baseline for assessing the impact of global warming over the coming decades,” said team leader Chester Gardner, a professor of electrical and computer engineering. “Until now, we were limited to measurements taken with balloon-borne sensors to altitudes of less than 20 miles (32 kilometers).”
In collaboration with scientists at The Aerospace Corporation and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Gardner and his UI colleagues—Professor George Papen, research scientist Xinzhao Chu, and graduate student Weilin Pan—developed a more robust lidar system for measuring temperature profiles from the middle of the stratosphere (about 32 kilometers or 20 miles up) to the lower thermosphere at the edge of space (about 110 kilometers or 70 miles above earth). The system uses two powerful lasers operating in the near-ultraviolet region of the spectrum and two telescopes to detect the laser pulses reflected from the atmosphere.
The researchers use two techniques for determining temperature. For altitudes up to 80 kilometers (50 miles), they measure the amount of laser light reflected from air molecules to derive the temperature profile. For higher altitudes, they measure the scattering of the laser beams from iron atoms deposited in the upper atmosphere by vaporized meteors.
In June 1999, the scientists flew the lidar system over the North Pole aboard an NCAR research plane to obtain temperature and iron density measurements during the Arctic Mesopause Temperature Study. Six months later, they took the instrument to the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station, where it is now measuring the atmospheric temperature structure throughout the year. The National Science Foundation provided funding for the two measurement campaigns.
“Temperature profiles obtained in the thermosphere over the North Pole on June 21, 1999, and in the mesopause region over the South Pole on January 27, 2000, agreed closely with model predictions,” Gardner said. “Significant departures from the model were observed during the austral fall, however. On May 8, 2000, for example, the lower mesosphere was about 36°F (20°C) warmer and the upper mesosphere was about 36°F (20°C) cooler than predicted.”
The mesosphere extends from the upper limit of the stratosphere, around 80 kilometers (50 miles) above sea level to the mesopause, its upper boundary. The thermosphere begins beyond the mesopause.
Gardner and his colleagues also measured the heights of polar mesospheric clouds that formed over each of the Poles during midsummer. Unlike the lower atmosphere, the upper atmosphere is colder during summer than in winter. Polar mesospheric clouds form over the summertime polar caps when temperatures fall below minus 193°F (-125°C).
These clouds are the highest on earth, forming at an altitude of about 84 kilometers (52 miles). Their brightness and geographic extent have been increasing during the past four decades. Scientists believe that these changes may be related to increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane, which in the upper atmosphere lead to cooler temperatures and increasing levels of water vapor.
Surprisingly, the altitudes of the polar mesospheric clouds over the South Pole were consistently 2–3 kilometers (1–2 miles) higher than those over the North Pole. “Higher polar mesospheric clouds may be an indication of stronger upwelling in the summer mesosphere over Antarctica compared with the North Polar cap,” Gardner said. “Stronger upwelling would result in a cooler mesopause region.”
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The National Weather Service (NWS) has released its service assessment for the northern Idaho–western Montana wildfires, which scorched significant portions of the two states from mid-July to mid-September 2000.
The service assessments are routine reviews of NWS operations during major weather events.
The 2000 wildfire season was extreme in intensity and duration across the entire United States. More than 93 000 wildfires scorched more than 7.4 million acres of public and private land. The fire season started in Florida, Louisiana, and Texas, and flames soon erupted in virtually every state with forest areas, with western states faring the worst.
The fire suppression effort required the mobilization of resources from land management agencies, the NWS, U.S. military, and fire crews from as far away as Australia and New Zealand.
The service assessment report provides details on the NWS’s support to the Incident Management Teams, land managements agencies, and local communities. The report is available at http://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/firewxreport2.pdf.
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National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) researchers at the National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL) are working to improve the Doppler technology that could lead to improved tornado and flash flood warnings in the future.
The researchers are developing polarimetric technology that can be added to the current WSR-88D Doppler weather radars used by the NWS throughout the nation. The dual-polarization radar provides improved estimates of rain and snow rates and amounts, better detection of the location of large hail in summer storms, and improved identification of rain and snow transition regions in winter storms, according to NSSL Director and former AMS President James Kimpel.
A test of polarimetric technology in a forecast setting will take place this spring at the National Weather Service Forecast Office in Norman, Oklahoma, Kimpel said.
In addition, NSSL researchers soon will begin adapting SPY-1 radar technology, developed by Lockheed Martin to support tactical operations aboard navy ships in spotting severe weather. Early tests of this phased array radar system have proved promising, according to Kimpel.
Norman is known as the center for weather radar research and development in the nation. Nearly 30 years ago, researchers there began developing what became the WSR-88D, known as NEXRAD, a system of 158 Doppler radars developed across the United States and around the world.
Most weather radars transmit radio wave pulses that have a horizontal orientation. Polarimetric radars gather more information by transmitting radio wave pulses that have both horizontal and vertical orientations. The horizontal pulses essentially give a measure of the horizontal dimension of cloud particles (cloud water and cloud ice) and precipitation particles (snow, ice pellets, hail, and rain), while the vertical pulses essentially give a measure of the vertical dimension.
Because the power returned to the radar is a complicated function of each particle’s size, shape, and ice density, the information will permit a detailed mapping of cloud composition, and this information can be incorporated into short-term computer models, leading to better forecasts.
In the next two years, NSSL will establish a National Weather Radar test bed that will provide the first phased array radar facility available on a full-time basis to the radar meteorological research community, officials said. Using electronically controlled beams, phased array radar reduces the scan time of severe weather from 6 minutes for current WSR-88D technology to only 1 minute, producing quicker updates of data and thereby potentially increasing the average lead time for tornado warnings, they explained.
The new system will be able to scan the atmosphere with more detail at lower elevations than current radar allows. It also will be able to rescan areas of severe weather very quickly, improving forecasters’ warning capability. In addition, the new technology will gather storm information not currently available, such as rapid changes in wind fields, to provide forecasters with better conceptual storm models and to initialize storm-scale forecast models.
The phased array technology is being developed by a federal, private, state, and academic partnership. Participants included the NSSL, Lockheed Martin, the U.S. Navy, the NWS, the University of Oklahoma’s Department of Meteorology and College of Engineering, and the FAA.
More information is available online about dual polarization radar at http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/dualpol and about phased array radar at http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/par.
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EPA and the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) have agreed to reduce emissions of perfluorocompounds, the most potent and persistent of all global warming gases, by 10% from 1995 levels by the end of 2010.
The SIA signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with EPA on a “PFC Reduction Climate Partnership” on behalf of 21 semiconductor manufacturers on 13 March.
The partnership will promote global reductions of perfluorocompound gases , including perfluorocarbons, hydrofluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride, according to the MOU.
Perfluorocompounds have, on average, 10 000 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide over 100 years, according to scientists, plus, they can persist in the atmosphere from 2000 to 50 000 years.
The partnership complements efforts by the World Semiconductor Council and other semiconductor trade associations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.
Semiconductors manage electronic information in a wide variety of products, such as computers and cell phones. Perfluorocompounds are used to clean semiconductor manufacturing equipment and to etch silicon wafers to create circuitry patterns.
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The National Weather Service’s (NWS’s) Storm Prediction Center has improved its severe weather outlooks about the type of severe weather threat expected, an effort designed to help emergency managers and the general public better prepare for impending severe weather.
The new, more detailed forecasts began on 31 January and include probability forecasts for three separate types of threats associated with thunderstorms—tornadoes, damaging winds, and large hail. They are included in the daily convective outlooks, which identify where severe storms are likely to occur today and tomorrow. The probabilistic outlooks complement the center’s categorical outlooks where there is a “slight,” “moderate,” or “high” risk of severe thunderstorms.
“The new probability outlooks will help emergency managers, the media, and the general public make better decisions regarding severe weather safety,” said Joseph Schaefer, director of the Norman, Oklahoma, center, a component of the NWS’s National Centers for Environmental Prediction. “We’ve added clarity to our severe thunderstorm forecasts. The outlooks are very useful in judging one’s chances of experiencing a severe thunderstorm and what the specific threat is—tornadoes, hail, or damaging winds. People can know that today is a day to pay close attention to weather forecasts when there is a risk of severe weather in their local area and exercise an appropriate personal safety plan.”
The outlooks indicate geographic areas where severe weather hazards are expected, as well as the perceived levels of threat for each hazard, he explained. The probability values represent the chance of a severe weather event within 25 miles of any point. The higher the probabilities are, the increased threat of the hazard occurring. When a significant or extreme event is predicted, it also will be indicated in the outlook. A significant event is defined as a tornado causing F2–F5 damage, hail two inches in diameter, or larger or winds of 73 mph or greater.
A narrative accompanies the outlook to describe specifically and provide rationale for what kind of severe weather is expected as well as where and when it is most likely within a risk area.
The probability outlook graphics and narrative are available on the center’s Web site at http://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/outlook.
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Ball Aerospace and Spectrum Astro edged out the competition to build a spacecraft that will serve as a test bed for a new generation of weather forecasting sensors to be used on the next generation of the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS).
The satellite companies won separate NASA contracts worth $3 million to design the satellite, which also will play a role in NASA’s Earth science program.
Competition for the NPOESS Preparatory Project was held via the Rapid Spacecraft Acquisition Office at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland. The office maintains a catalog of NASA-qualified spacecraft that can be delivered on relatively short notice, according to a story in the 12 March issue of Space News.
The NPOESS series of polar-orbiting weather satellites will serve both military and civilian users. Its first launch is scheduled for the end of the decade; The Preparatory Project mission is planned for around 2005.
Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. is located in Boulder, Colorado. Spectrum Astro, Inc., is in Gilbert, Arizona. Both are expected to submit preliminary designs for the preparatory mission satellite by the end of this calendar year, officials said, and NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are expected to settle on a design in 2002.
NOAA and the U.S. Air Force are developing the NPOESS system. NASA has a technology role in the program and primary responsibility for the preparatory mission.
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A joint NASA and Canadian Space Agency mission is providing a more comprehensive view of how the Antarctic ice sheet moves and changes, possibly providing answers to some fundamental questions as to whether the ice is advancing or retreating.
Two mapping campaigns were conducted, the first in 1997 resulting in the first high-resolution radar satellite map of the continent, and the second last November, which gave scientists a chance to see how the continent had changed over the past three years and provided a wealth of new information on the movement of the most active region, the outer half of the ice sheet.
“The 1997 map became a benchmark for studying changes on the continent and also revealed fascinating features, including enormous ice streams in East Antarctica, that we had never seen before,” said Dr. Ghassem Asrar, associate administrator for NASA’s Office of Earth Sciences. “We expect to find even more surprises from this second, even more detailed map that will help us unravel some of the mysteries behind how our global environment behaves.”
For the new mission, the Canadian Space Agency’s RADARSAT-1 satellite trained its imaging radar on the outer half of the continent twice during each of three consecutive 24-hour periods, ending on 14 November. “The mission was a challenge for us because we had to accurately navigate the satellite to within a few hundred meters of its nominal track on each orbit,” explained Rolf Mamen, director general of space operations for the Canadian space agency.
Precise navigation and data from the six passes make it possible to create detailed topographic maps and to measure the speed of the moving glaciers. “Most of the Antarctic ice sheet moves imperceptibly slowly but nevertheless surely,” said Dr. Frank Carsey of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
“The mission gives us an overall snapshot of how the ice moves and how it is changing. By measuring the extent and velocity of the moving ice and estimating its thickness, we can estimate how much ice may be lost into the ocean from earth’s largest storehouse of freshwater. These calculations are important for understanding Antarctica’s contribution to the present rate of sea level rise of about two millimeters, or the thickness of a dime, a year.”
Mission scientists are now developing velocity maps showing the direction of the ice, officials said. Already, they have created the first-ever complete velocity maps of the spectacular Lambert Glacier, a sinuous ice stream more than 500 kilometers (311 miles) long, which reaches speeds of more than one kilometer (about two-thirds of a mile) a year once the ice spreads onto the Amery Ice Shelf, they said.
They also are beginning to create a new map of Antarctica to compare with the one made in 1997, a process expected to take about a year to complete.
More information on the mission is available on the Internet at http://www-bprc.mps.ohio-state.edu/radarsat.
Images are available at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/pictures/antarctica.
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NOAA-16, featuring improved imagine and sounding capabilities, replaced the NOAA-14 environmental satellite on 20 March, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) officials.
The second in a series of five Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellites (POESs), NOAA-16 was launched 21 September 2000 and will operate over the next 10 years. NOAA-14 was launched in December 1994. NOAA-16 became operational after a period of on-orbit testing and calibration.
The POESs provide images of cloud cover, vertical temperature and humidity profiles, surface parameters, snow, ice, vegetation, and space environment parameters, as well as search and rescue instruments that are used internationally in locating ships and aircraft in distress. The use of satellites in search and rescue has been instrumental in saving more than 11 000 lives since the inception of the program in 1982.
The satellites are operated by NOAA’s NESDIS, which controls two polar-orbiting and two geostationary environmental satellites. Currently, NOAA-15 and NOAA-16 are the polar orbiters and GOES-8 and GOES-10 are the geostationary satellites.
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The UCAR Members’ Representatives have approved three new member universities and a new academic affiliate to membership.
Howard University, Washington, D.C.; Arizona State University, Tempe; and Rutgers University, New Jersey, were named member universities. Dalhousie University, of Halifax, Nova Scotia, was named an academic affiliate, according to Mary Jo Richardson (Texas A&M University), chair of the UCAR Membership Committee.
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Annick Pouquet, who came to National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) last fall from the Observatory of the Cote d’Azur in Nice, France, has been named the first full-time director of NCAR’s Geophysical Turbulence Program (GTP). Pouquet specializes in turbulence, coupled with a magnetic field, and in problems of intermittency.
Virtually since NCAR was founded scientists have worked on turbulence problems. Because the phenomenon occurs throughout the atmosphere, oceans, and sun and is both observed and modeled, every NCAR division has been involved over the years.
Pouquet is planning a workshop on turbulence this summer. It will concentrate on scientific progress being made in the field and will be held at the Mesa Laboratory at NCAR in Boulder, Colorado, from 27 to 30 June.
“Turbulent transport of fields, scalar or vector, is ubiquitous in various branches of atmospheric, geophysical, and astrophysical sciences,” Pouquet explained. “Well-known examples are provided by the temperature or the pollutant density, reactive and nonreactive chemicals, scalar gradients or magnetic fields. The aim of the workshop is to present the recent developments and the open issues that have emerged on these topics and to foster the application and elaboration of techniques and methods to cases of geophysical interest.”
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Terry Tarbell recently joined RS Information Systems [RSIS] in McLean, Virginia, as Director, Business Development. Tarbell will be working with the Science and Engineering Division on NASA, NOAA, and weather programs. RSIS specializes in a wide range of information technology and engineering services.
Prior to joining RS Information Services, Tarbell worked for nearly 10 years at Litton PRC, on the National Weather Service’s Advanced Weather Information Processing System program as Applications Software Manager and Chief Meteorologist, then as a Program Manager within the Physical Sciences Division, and finally as Account Executive representing PRC at the U.S. Departments of Commerce, State, the Interior, and Agriculture, and for weather programs.
Tarbell chairs the AMS IIPS Committee and was elected a Fellow of the AMS at the January 2001 Annual Meeting.
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