Editor: Stephanie Kenitzer
Copy Editor: Laurence Constable
A draft of the AMS public statement on lightning safety is under consideration by the AMS Council. It has been posted on the AMS Web site for public comment (http://www.ametsoc.org/ams/POLICY/draftstatements/). The statement will be considered by the AMS Council via email discussion.
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With the 2002 Atlantic hurricane season set to begin on 1 June, NOAA’s National Hurricane Center, is gearing up for the second year of an experimental forecast project that may enable it to issue five-day tropical cyclone forecasts in 2003.
The project began during the 2001 hurricane season, when the National Hurricane Center developed experimental in-house, five-day forecasts of Atlantic and eastern North Pacific tropical cyclones. At the conclusion of the 2002 hurricane season, the National Weather Service (NWS) will evaluate the experimental forecast results in terms of forecast accuracy and customer needs. Statistics from the first year of the experiment indicate, if implemented, the five-day forecast will be more accurate than the three-day forecast, when it was introduced in the 1960s.
The NWS, in consultation with its customers, will determine if the forecasts will be used operationally in 2003. The NWS provides tropical cyclone forecasts, watches and warnings to emergency managers and government officials, the military, international community, media, the general public, and others. The U.S. Navy, which needs up to 96 hours to move docked ships and other equipment out of harm’s way, is one of the customers requesting an extended forecast product.
The 2001 hurricane season was more active than in other years, even though none of the hurricanes made U.S. landfall for the second consecutive year. The NWS will release the outlook for the 2002 hurricane season in May. The National Hurricane Center will continue to provide three-day forecasts for the 2002 hurricane season. For more information, see the National Hurricane Center's Web site at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov.
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Ocean surface temperatures continue to warm in the equatorial Pacific, according to a 7 March advisory from scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Ocean surface temperatures warmed 2°C (4°F) in the eastern equatorial Pacific, near the South American coast, in February. This warming has been accompanied by an increase in rainfall over that region, according to the agency’s monthly El Niño forecasts and discussion.
Other indicators have corroborated the current forecast. Peruvian officials indicate the ocean warming has had significant impacts on the fishing industry in the region; for example, their cold-water anchovies have been replaced by tropical species. Similar changes have been observed in early stages of previous El Niño episodes.
El Niño conditions occur when water temperatures have warmed sufficiently enough to alter the normal patterns of cloudiness and rainfall in the tropical Pacific basin. A typical El Niño features persistent increased precipitation along the equator near the international date line, and warmer than normal sea surface temperatures (0.5°C or more above normal) extending eastward to the South American coast.
El Niño episodes occur roughly every four to five years and can last as long as 12 to 18 months. It has been nearly four years since the end of the 1997–98 El Niño, which was followed by three years of La Niña.
Typical El Niño impacts on the United States include
For more informaiton on El Niño, see the following:
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A group of scientists left Nome, Alaska, during the week of 18 March on a 35-day snowmobile traverse to scour the Alaskan tundra for clues to the role that snow cover plays in climate change. The team will also analyze the chemistry and composition of snow along the route, to determine the source of the snow and how much it has been affected by Arctic haze.
Supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the six-member Snow Science Traverse–Alaska Region (SnowSTAR 2002) expedition plans to cover 1100 kilometers (700 miles)—from Nome, northeast through the Brooks mountain range, to Barrow. The team plans to sample snow at more than 75 locations.
The traverse is part of an ongoing larger project to understand climate change in the Arctic, called ATLAS (Arctic Transitions in Land Atmosphere System) and sponsored by the Arctic System Science program within NSF’s Office of Polar Programs. Matthew Sturm, of the U.S. Army’s Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory at Fort Wainwright, Alaska, will lead the team.
The team will measure snow depth, density, and layering during the traverse, and will make detailed measurements of snow layering or stratigraphy. These measurements will be used to determine regional trends in the snow properties.
Several lines of evidence indicate that climate change is likely to be amplified in the Arctic and is therefore easier to detect there than at lower latitudes. Air temperatures in the Alaskan Arctic have increased 2° to 4°C in the past 30 years, and evidence suggests that changes are already occurring in terrestrial ecosystems. Snow covers the Arctic for seven to 10 months of the year and is thought to play a key role in this process of change.
The researchers will be looking at two processes: the role of key weather events in the development of the snowpack, and the interaction of the snow and vegetation. Previous studies have shown that Arctic snowpack consists of between five and eight layers of snow, deposited by a like number of storms.
Chemical sampling of the snow will help determine if there is a difference between the winter precipitation source for the Arctic slope versus south of the Brooks Range and if the precipitation source changes through the winter as the Chukchi, Beaufort, and Bering Seas freeze. By tracing the snow’s chemicals, such as calcium, magnesium, and various isotopes, such as boron and deuterium, the team hopes to pinpoint where the snow originated and its atmospheric history. The data gathered during the traverse will help show how key meteorological events determine the characteristics of the snow.
The studies related to snow and vegetation are motivated by previous findings that the presence of shrubs may promote further shrub growth by increasing the amount of snow on the ground. Climate warming also promotes increased plant production, so the two processes may feed back in complex ways.
Snow measurements will be taken along the tundra–forest boundary between Council, Alaska, and Ambler, a small village on the Kobuk River. North of the Brooks Range, measurements will be taken on the tundra. The tundra north of the Brooks Range is much less shrubby than that south of the range.
For more information about the TEA program, see http://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/news/media/01/fstea.htm.
For more information about NSF’s Arctic sciences section, see http://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/news/media/01/fsarctic.htm.
For more information about how NSF meets the challenges of conducting science in the polar regions, see http://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/news/media/01/fslogistics.htm.
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Starting 27 March, airlines will have a new tool for avoiding in-flight icing, which can threaten smaller commuter planes and delay larger commercial aircraft as they land or take off. Called CIP, for the Current Icing Potential, the online display offers high-precision maps and plots, updated hourly, to identify areas of potential aircraft icing produced by cloud droplets, freezing rain, and drizzle.
Researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), with funding from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), developed new methods and software for detecting and forecasting icing potential in the atmosphere. They then applied these methods to produce CIP, a Web-based display describing current icing conditions.
CIP goes into service this week for use by meteorologists and airline dispatchers. Its use by pilots and air traffic controllers is pending FAA approval. A companion tool, called Forecast Icing Potential (FIP), which forecasts potential icing up to 12 hours ahead of time, is still in development at NCAR and is classified as experimental by the FAA.
Pilots can encounter winter icing anywhere in the country, at altitudes up to 18,000 feet, and sometimes higher, according to NCAR’s Marcia Politovich, head of the FAA’s In-Flight Icing Product Development Team. Most vulnerable are Alaska, the Pacific Northwest, the Great Lakes, the Northeast, the Appalachians, and the Rocky Mountains.
The FAA approved CIP as a tool for dispatchers to make fly/no-fly decisions and for flight planning, route changes, and altitude selection. The online display is derived from surface observations, numerical models, satellite and radar data, and pilot reports.
The National Weather Service operates the new system from the Aviation Weather Center in Kansas City, Missouri. CIP will supplement but not replace the forecast and intensity information of the NWS AIRMET, the traditional weather alert issued at six-hour intervals.
CIP will most benefit commuter planes and other propeller-driven aircraft, says Politovich. Smaller aircraft are more vulnerable to icing hazards because they cruise at lower, ice-prone altitudes. They also lack mechanisms common on jets that prevent ice buildup by heating the front edges of wings. Once approved for use by air traffic controllers, CIP will also benefit jet aircraft by enabling controllers to guide incoming flights to avoid circling at altitudes where ice could accumulate.
Cancellations and delays due to icy weather can cost airlines millions of dollars in a single day. On 20 March 2000, icing conditions at Denver International Airport forced Air Wisconsin to cancel 152 flights. United Airlines cancelled 159 outbound and 140 inbound flights the same day, most because of the weather.
Commuter pilots at Air Wisconsin, Atlantic Coast, ComAir, and SkyWest airlines tested the technology and gave researchers feedback throughout the development process.
NCAR’s primary sponsor is the National Science Foundation.
Users can access CIP information on the Internet via the Aviation Weather Center Web site at http://cdm.aviationweather.noaa.gov/cip.
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Bursts of energy from the sun on microwave radio frequencies can disrupt wireless cell communications several times a year, according to scientists who have studied records covering 40 years of such bursts. Solar bursts are most likely to occur around solar maximum, the most active portion of the sun’s 11-year cycle.
One such maximum was recently passed, but significant bursts may occur for several more years, according to researcher, Louis J. Lanzerotti of Lucent Technologies’ Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey. The study not only examined the effect on current systems, but also looked at higher frequencies where future systems will operate, says Dale E. Gary, principal investigator of the project and an associate professor of physics at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), in Newark, New Jersey.
A good understanding of how solar bursts affect cellular communications will help in the design of future generations of wireless systems, the researchers say. Their report appears in the March–April issue of the journal Radio Science, published by the American Geophysical Union.
The study was possible only because of an archive of data on solar radio bursts that has been assembled by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) from observations made around the world by the U.S. Air Force and other entities, and that is now maintained by the National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC) of NOAA in Boulder, Colorado. The first detections of solar radio bursts (at much lower frequencies) were made inadvertently in 1942 by some of the earliest radars deployed during World War II. After the war, solar radio studies became a recognized field of astronomical research, and the Air Force was active in collecting data, because the bursts continued to affect radar.
Because cellular communication has greatly expanded in recent years, the researchers looked back at the last four decades (1960–99) of NGDC data in the context of noise levels found in wireless communication systems. This data interval covered slightly more than four solar cycles, including the solar maximum of 1989–91, which occurred before cellular communications became ubiquitous around the world. The researchers note that the number and location of collection points varied over time, and the instruments used to measure solar radio bursts have improved significantly since the early years. They do not believe that these variations affect the main results of their study.
Radio wave energy received from the sun is measured in solar flux units (SFU), with one SFU equaling 10-22 watts per square meter of receptor area per hertz. During a burst, the energy received may be as high as 100,000 SFU, with the energy also depending upon the frequency measured. In the study, the scientists at Bell Laboratories, together with Gary, sought to determine how often bursts of at least 1,000 SFU have occurred over the years, this being the level that can potentially disrupt cell communications by covering conversation with noise or causing calls to be dropped.
Counting the number of solar bursts was difficult, since several monitoring stations, often on different frequencies, may have recorded the same event, and separate events may also have occurred close in time to one another. The researchers’ analysis suggested that 12 minutes was the minimum interval between what they would regard as separate solar bursts, and they limited their study to the frequency range of 1–20 gigahertz (GHz). Most present-day cell phone transmitters currently operate in the band from 900 megahertz (MHz) to around 3 GHz.
The analysis of the data by the research team, which also included Dr. Bala Balachandran and Dr. David Thomson, then of Bell Labs, revealed that solar radio bursts of 1,000 SFU can occur on 10–20 days per year, on average, with higher rates and stronger bursts during solar maximum periods and lower, weaker ones during solar minimum periods. The effect of bursts on wireless communications is dependent upon the orientation of cell antennas, with those pointing east–west more susceptible during mornings and evenings than at noon. Therefore, any given cell site might be affected by solar radio bursts only every 40–80 days, or several times per year on average. But any single burst could affect a large service area, since number of cell sites are likely to be pointed in the direction of the sun when an event occurs. Furthermore, the impacts on service, in terms of increased noise levels and call disruptions, would be expected to be more frequent during the years of maximum solar activity.
The study was supported in part by Lucent Technologies and in part by the Space Weather Program of the National Science Foundation at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.
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Only 11 tornadoes touched down so far in 2002—approximately 6% of the average 178 tornadoes the nation typically experiences by this time of year, according to the National Weather Service.
The position of the jet stream and resulting storm track prohibited tornado development for much of the winter, said Joseph Schaefer, director of the NWS Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma. “Typically winter season tornadoes are the result of large weather systems, which cross the country bringing cold air down from Canada and drawing warm moist air up from the Gulf of Mexico. The collision of air masses helps to spawn tornadic thunderstorms. This year, however, the storm tracks either stayed to the north or went right along the gulf coast, so we didn’t have the moist air and the cold air colliding in the right place at the right time for tornadoes,” he said.
Every year, about 70 Americans are killed by tornadoes with 1,500 injured. An average of 1,200 tornadoes cause more than $400 million in damages annually. Peak tornado activity occurs during the months of March through early July.
The average number of tornadoes over the past three years from 1 January to 15 March is 178. Only three years, since 1950, have seen fewer tornadoes during the same period: four in 1969, six in 1988, and eight in 1951.
Deadly March tornado outbreaks in previous years include a tornado that struck Ft. Worth, Texas, killing five people on 28 March 2000, and the tornado in Hesston, Kansas, 13 March 1990, that killed two people.
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Many areas of the Midwest and Northeast experienced record warmth during the December 2001 through February 2002 winter season, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina.
The December–February temperature for the contiguous United States was the fifth warmest, and the global temperature was the second warmest since records began in the late 1800s. Precipitation since September 2001 was the lowest on record in the eastern seaboard region from Florida to Maine, leading to severe drought in many areas.
Unusual warmth, which intensified in November, persisted across a large part of the nation during the winter months. “Much-above normal temperatures stretched from the northern and central Plains to the mid-Atlantic coast and Northeast, with 10 states in the region recording their warmest winter since national records began in 1895,” said Jay Lawrimore, chief of NOAA’s Climate Monitoring Branch at the Asheville center.
The preliminary average temperature in the contiguous United States was 36.3°F (2.4°C), which was 3.3°F (1.8°C) above the 1895–2001 long-term mean; it was the fifth warmest winter on record. Four of the five warmest winters in the 107-year record have occurred since the winter of 1997–98, and temperatures have warmed at a rate approximately 1.5°F (0.8°C) per century since 1895. The average 2001–02 winter-season temperature was also warmer than normal in Alaska, which was 4.7°F (2.6°C) above the 1961–90 mean.
The record winter warmth experienced in Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, New York, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Jersey also coincided with below-normal precipitation in much of the same region. The winter of 2001–02 was the driest winter on record in New Jersey, Maryland, and South Dakota. Precipitation was significantly below average in 27 other states, including all but one state (Vermont) along or near the east coast from Maine to Florida.
Precipitation totals, averaged along the eastern seaboard, were the lowest on record for the September 2001 through February 2002 six-month period, and the lack of precipitation combined with warmer than normal temperatures led to widespread drought from northern Florida to Maine. Areas of the southeastern United States have endured drought since 1998 with four-year rainfall deficits greater than 55 inches in parts of South Carolina. Much of Maine continued to deal with drought conditions following the driest year on record in 2001.
A statewide water emergency was declared by the governor of New Jersey in early March, authorizing the creation of mandatory water restrictions and conservation measures. Local drought warnings were also declared this winter in the five boroughs of New York City, numerous counties in southeastern New York State, central Maryland, and the Eastern Shore region of Maryland. A drought emergency was declared in a large part of eastern Pennsylvania.
Above-normal precipitation in the Pacific Northwest during the winter season led to improving drought conditions, but severe drought continued in much of Montana and Wyoming. Abnormally dry conditions developed in the northern Plains due to below normal seasonal snowfall and unusually warm temperatures. At the end of February, severe to extreme drought covered approximately 20% of the contiguous United States.
Below-average seasonal snowfall totals across much of the central and eastern United States was evidence of the unusual warmth and dry conditions. Less than four inches of snow fell in New York’s Central Park from December to February (15 inches less than normal), and snowfall in Boston, Massachusetts, was less than half of the normal 32 inches. A notable exception was the lake-effect snow areas, where winter air masses moving over the warmer than normal Great Lakes produced abundant snowfall. Marquette, Michigan, received 164 inches during the winter season and had their snowiest month on record in February. In the western United States, mountain snowpack was below average outside the Pacific Northwest.
Global:
Anomalous warmth covered most land areas of the globe during the December 2001 through February 2002 period. Seasonal temperatures from 3°F to more than 7°F (2° to 4°C) above average covered large parts of North America, eastern Europe, and Asia. The only widespread regions of below normal temperatures occurred in Australia and the Russian far east. The average global land surface temperature was 1.73°F (0.96°C) above the 1880–2001 long-term mean (based on preliminary data) during the December–February season. This was the third warmest December–February season, slightly less than the average land surface temperature during the same three-month period in 1997–98 and 1998–99.
Warming in the equatorial waters of the central and eastern Pacific occurred during the December–February season with an increase in sea surface temperatures of 4°F (2°C) in the eastern equatorial Pacific near the South American coast in February. This warming is an additional sign of a continuing transition from neutral to El Niño conditions.
The combined global land and sea surface temperature was the second warmest on record, 1.06°F (0.59°C) above average, 0.20°F (0.11°C) cooler than the warmest such season, which occurred in 1997–98 during the most recent El Niño episode.
National and global data for the December–February period and for February are available online at http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2002/feb/feb02.html.
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The University of North Dakota (UND) Department of Atmospheric Sciences has received a $315,000 grant from NASA to participate in an experiment called the Cirrus Regional Study of Tropical Anvils and Cirrus Layers–Florida Area Cirrus Experiment (CRYSTAL–FACE). This measurement program will focus on the cirrus anvils produced by tropical thunderstorms and will be conducted over southern Florida in July.
Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases produced by human activity warm our climate. Two effects of this warming are the increase of clouds and water vapor in the atmosphere. Both of these in turn influence the impact of the man-made have gases on global warming. Clouds can reflect the sun’s rays away from the surface, cooling the climate, but they also act as “blankets,” trapping sun’s radiative heat. These various interactions are complex and not fully understood. However, the processes are crucial in determining the eventual overall effect of manmade greenhouse gases on the earth’s climate.
The detailed measurements from the CRYSTAL–FACE mission will assist in improving cloud interactions with atmospheric energy exchanges in our climate models. Six aircraft will be equipped with state-of-the-art instruments to measure characteristics of clouds and how clouds alter the atmosphere’s temperature. These measurements will be compared with ground-based radars, satellites, and the results of advanced atmospheric models, in order to improve our ability to forecast future climate change. This large multiagency experiment will involve seven NASA centers, NOAA, the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, Office of Naval Research, the U.S. Weather Research Program, universities, and other government weather researchers.
Professor Mike Poellot, chair of the Atmospheric Sciences Department, will lead a team of scientists with instruments mounted on the UND Citation aircraft to collect data directly within the cirrus anvils. Atmospheric Sciences Professor Paul Kucera, will oversee the operation of a NASA polarimetric Doppler weather radar to help support the aircraft operations and to gather remotely sensed information on the structure and life cycle of the storms producing the anvil clouds. More than 200 scientists and support personnel from across the country will participate in CRYSTAL–FACE.
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Effective 24 March 2002, Kevin C. Cooley was named director of Central Operations for the National Weather Service’s National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP). Cooley has more than 15 years of computing and managerial experience.
In his new position, on the top of his list of priorities is the reliable provision of the computational services and power needed to support the climate and weather prediction objectives of the National Weather Service. Cooley expects the acquisition of a new super computer to be a key supporting activity in support of these objectives. Additionally, he expects to focus on workplace safety and the career development of the members of Central Operations. Finally, Cooley anticipates supporting the core objective of National Weather Service and NOAA executive leadership regarding the focus and management of measurable economic value derived from the investment of public funds.
Previously, Cooley was a director at Meta Group Consulting, a former senior project manager and business unit manager with IBM, and a former systems engineering manager with EDS.
NCEP Central Operations manages the National Weather Service supercomputer, and is a large part of the foundation and infrastructure where billions of ocean, atmospheric, and satellite observations are ingested and used in environmental numerical modeling and forecasts.
Cooley is a bachelor’s of arts summa cum laude graduate of The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina (1990), and is a certified by the Project Management Institute as a project management professional. He holds several other advanced credentials in project management and systems engineering. A former Marine infantryman, he is a native of Arnold, Maryland. An avid reader and sailor, Cooley enjoys spending time exploring the waters of the Chesapeake Bay.
Central Operations is one of nine organizations operating under the National Weather Service National Centers for Environmental Prediction.
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Richard Monastersky, senior writer for science issues at the Chronicle of Higher Education, and Diane Tennant, staff writer for the Virginian-Pilot, have won the American Geophysical Union’s 2002 journalism awards.
Monastersky won the David Perlman Award for Excellence in Science Journalism–News for “A Plucky Spacecraft Explores a Distant Asteroid,” published 2 March 2001. It recounts the story of the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) Shoemaker mission to 433 Eros, an asteroid orbiting some 315 million kilometers (196 million miles) from the earth. After circling Eros for a year, the “plucky” probe made a soft landing, sending back 67 images during its descent and beating odds described as 99 to one.
Monastersky vividly describes the scientific importance of the mission, along with the fiscal constraints and human interactions that shaped it.
Tennant won the Walter Sullivan Award for Excellence in Science Journalism–Features for “A Cosmic Tale,” a seven part series that was published 24–30 June 2001, in the Norfolk-based Virginian-Pilot. (In keeping with competition rules, only three parts were submitted for judging.) Tennant recounts a local story, albeit one that began 35 million years ago, when a meteor impact devastated what is now southeastern Virginia and affected life worldwide. She tells how U.S. Geological Survey scientists discovered the long buried impact crater, and she provides her readers a wealth of highly readable information on planetary science, seismology, ocean science, and related fields.
Tennant’s “A Cosmic Tale” may be read on the Virginian-Pilot Web site at http://www.pilotonline.com/special/meteor/index.html.
Monastersky’s “A Plucky Spacecraft Explores a Distant Asteroid” may be read on the Chronicle of Higher Education’s site at http://chronicle.com/free/v47/i25/25a01701.htm.
The AGU science journalism awards honor David Perlman, science editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, and the late Walter Sullivan, science writer for the New York Times. They consist of a plaque and a $2,000 stipend, “for work that enhances public awareness and understanding of the sciences encompassed by AGU: the study of the Earth, Sun, solar system, and their environments and components.” A record number of entries in various media was received for this year’s awards.
The 2002 Sullivan and Perlman Awards will be presented on 29 May 2002, during Honors Evening at the AGU’s spring meeting in Washington, D.C.
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The National Space Club recently honored nation’s polar-orbiting operational environmental satellite program for its outstanding contributions to the field of space. The team of scientists responsible for the program was recognized during a 22 March event.
The team from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was represented by Michael Mignogno,of NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service, and Karen Halterman, of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center at the 45th Annual Goddard Memorial Dinner at the Washington Hilton Hotel.
On behalf of the NOAA–NASA team, Mignogno and Halterman accepted the prestigious Nelson P. Jackson Aerospace Award, named for one of the founders and past presidents of the National Space Club. The National Space Club selects award recipients annually for their contributions to the astronautics, aircraft, and missile industries. The NOAA–NASA team is being recognized for extraordinary success, over four decades, with the polar-orbiting spacecraft known as TIROS.
Since 1960, polar-orbiting satellites have collected environmental data from space in support of weather forecasts. NOAA’s polar-orbiting environmental satellites provide daily global observations of weather patterns and environmental measurements of the earth’s atmosphere, its surface and cloud cover, and the space environment. These satellites also monitor the global sea surface temperature indicating the location, onset and severity of such events as El Niño, as early as possible. Longer lead times of these impending events allow emergency and agricultural managers to activate plans to reduce the impact of floods, landslides, evacuations, and droughts for potential crop loss. The satellites also carry search and rescue instruments that detect signals worldwide from aircraft or boats in distress.
Mignogno has been with NOAA for 22 years. Before serving as manager of the polar program, he was the Landsat program manager and commercial remote sensing licensing coordinator. In 1995 and 1999, he received the Department of Commerce’s Bronze Medal for his contributions to the land remote-sensing program and the development of NOAA’s remote sensing licensing program.
Halterman has been with NASA for 13 years, working on the POES program since 1994. She was the POES observatory manager and the deputy POES program manager before receiving overall program responsibility. Previously she was employed by OAO Corporation, where she worked as a NASA support contractor for 12 years.
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The Senate confirmed AMS Past President Jim Mahoney’s appointment as deputy administrator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in late March. The appointment is awaiting final White House signature. It is the first time in many years that a scientist with experience in the atmospheric sciences will serve in a leadership role at NOAA.
Mahoney’s career has involved over 40 years of continuous focus on the environmental and earth sciences, with a strong emphasis in the atmospheric, climate, hydrological and oceanographic areas. Mahoney received his Ph.D. in meteorology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and then immediately joined the Faculty of Public Health at Harvard University, in its Department of Environmental Health Sciences. This early-career focus on public health and the environment set him on a course of responsible environmental management that has influenced all of his professional work.
Drawing upon Harvard experience, he cofounded an environmental management company, then known as Environmental Research and Technology, Inc. (ERT). ERT grew to become the nation’s largest environmental firm by the end of the 1970’s, operating throughout the United States and several other nations. By 1975 ERT had become the largest employer of meteorologists and related technical specialists in the United States, except for the federal government itself.
He went into public service as Director of the National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program (NAPAP), working in the Executive Office of the President from 1988 through early 1991. NAPAP was a 10-year program created by the Energy Security Act of 1979, and charged with recommending sound approaches to controlling acid rain effects, while providing for continued energy and economic security for the nation.
Mahoney is an AMS Fellow and has been honored to serve on several committees of the National Academy of Sciences dealing with weather and climate, environmental protection, and science education, beginning in the early 1970’s. In 1999 he completed a term as co-chairman of the academy’s Board on Atmospheric Science and Climate.
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