Editor: Stephanie Kenitzer
Copy Editor: Andrea Schein
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AMS’s 2002 Summer Policy Colloquium wrapped up 10 days of intense activity on 11 June, providing participants with a wide range of perspectives on science and public policy from speakers representing some of the top scientific and governmental talent in the nation’s capital.
The event attracted 39 participants from academia, industry, and the private sector. Besides hearing policy lectures from leading policy makers in science and government, the participants took part in a group interaction exercise dealing with the H.R. 4 Energy Bill.
At its conclusion, AMS officials were satisfied that the colloquium had met its objectives of having provided participants with an overview of basic policy issues, expanding their knowledge of how government operates in Washington, and widening their knowledge about the Global Climate Observing System and the National Acid Rain Precipitation Assessment Program (NAPAP).
“More importantly,” said Bill Hooke, director of the AMS Atmospheric Program, “the colloquium allowed the participants to meet each other as well as government officials, Hill staffers, and others who likely will play a part in their future lives as they move up the management ladder into policy-making positions.”
The program is a continuing one with next year’s colloquium already set for 1–10 June 2003. Hooke said, “The colloquiums themselves are just the tip of the iceberg. Over time, the AMS will provide a continually growing number of colloquium alumni with a range of opportunities to collaborate on policy issues, both at AMS annual meetings and throughout the year. As meteorologists, hydrologists, and oceanographers become more effective in policy processes, they will better serve society.”
Following are some of the highlights:
Capitol Hill. The group had the unique opportunity to meet with staffers from the House of Representatives’ Science Committee. Presentations were made by David Goldston, chief, majority staff; Robert Palmer, minority staff director; Sharon Hays, majority staff director, Subcommittee on Research; Eric Webster, majority staff member, Subcommittee on Environment, Technology, and Standards; Ana Unruh, at the time an AMS–UCAR Congressional Fellow and now a permanent member of Rep. Edward J. Markey’s staff; Clark Cohen, Institute of Navigation Congressional Fellow; and Peter Dees, American Society for Microbiology Congressional Fellow.
Science and the media. A discussion about policy aspects as they relate to public relations and the media was also on the agenda with speakers Tony Socci, senior climate science advisor, EPA; Richard Harris, science correspondent, National Public Radio; Robert Crease, department of philosophy, SUNY at Stony Brook; and Larry Grossman, former president of NBC news and PBS.
Case studies. The group exercise focused on the H.R. 4 Energy Bill, which has been passed by the Senate and was awaiting conference action with the House. The two groups were asked to developed arguments in favor of and against the bill, and the third group argued for more emphasis on paleoclimate research.
The group also reviewed a case study of the National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program (NAPAP) led by Chuck Herrick, vice president, Stratus Consulting, Boulder, Colorado; and panelists James Mahoney, assistant secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and former NAPAP director; Robert Slater, senior assistant deputy minister, Environment, Canada; Chris Bernabo, director, National Commission on Science for Sustainable Forestry; and Ellis Cowling, University Distinguished Professor At-Large, College of Forest Resources, North Carolina State University.
A case study on the evolution of integrated global climate observing and atmospheric science and policy at the state level with a broad group of distinguished presenters was also on the agenda.
Private sector insight. The final day of the colloquium was devoted to the private sector, and the emerging role it plays in atmospheric policy. Presentations were made by Paul McCready, chairman of the board, AeroVironment, Inc.; Cecilia Size, president and chief executive officer, AER, Inc.; Chuck Kolb, president, Aerodyne Research, Inc.; and Bob Baron, founder and president, Baron Services.
These are just some of the highlights of the 10-day event. If you would like a complete agenda, contact Bill Hooke in the AMS Washington, D.C., office or via e-mail at hooke@dc.ametsoc.org
The AMS 2002 Summer Policy Colloquium attracted some of the top experts in government, academia, and industry as speakers, including the two former and the current science advisor to the President, an assistant secretary of commerce, associate administrators of both the Department of Energy (DOE) and NASA, the chief scientist of the World Bank, director of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, the senior assistant deputy minister for Environment Canada, and a host of other highly respected and widely known scientists.
Rosina Bierbaum and Jack Gibbons were the two former science advisors to the President, and John Marburger, the current advisor. James Mahoney is the assistant secretary of commerce. The associate administrators were Aristides Patrinos of DOE and Ghassem Asrar of NASA. Robert Watson is the chief scientist with the World Bank; John Zillman, who also is president of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), was the Australian representative; and Robert Slater represented Canada.
Also among the speakers was Daniel Greenberg, author of the book Science, Money, and Politics. Greenberg said the United States is spending $300 billion a year on research and development—more than all the rest of the world. However, he explained that the people providing that R&D have never been less influential. As examples of the loss of that influence, he cited the fact that no new directors have yet been appointed to the National Institute of Health or the Food and Drug Administration in this administration and that while John Marburger acts as the President’s science advisor, he does not hold that title officially.
A journalist by profession, Greenberg described the news media as being “highly gullible” and sometimes serving as a cheerleader for science. He pointed out that the media comes up with a cure for cancer, for example, at least three or four times a year. He was critical of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), saying its articles often are erroneous and misleading and can have an effect on the stock market. He described that as a possible “infiltration of dishonesty.”
Other speaker comments included Jack Gibbons who provided an historical perspective of science and technology in the United States dating back to the days before the American Revolution. He cited Thomas Jefferson’s work in agricultural research, the exploration of Lewis and Clark, and went on to outline the progress in aviation, space, and microelectronics that has taken place in our lifetime.
“In the ‘90s,” he said, “innovations took place primarily in the private sector, which had become dominant over the military after a cool down in the Cold War and public support against the ‘Evil Empire’ changed. During that period,” he continued, “few members of Congress had much experience in research and, as a result, Congress reduced the federal research budget by more than a third.”
“With President Clinton,” he explained, “there was a redefinition of science and technology with greater support for public investment in research. That public investment complimented by private sector investment is a ‘win–win situation.’ Now,” he said, “there is even greater support, as evidenced by congressional efforts to double the NSF budget in five years.”
John Zillman gave an informal review of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change's (IPCC's) history and activity. The intergovernmental body was established, he believes, primarily to meet the threat of “greenhouse gases.” “Many national science advisors,” he said, “were begging for information on that threat to take back to their governments. In the beginning,” he said, “I don’t think any of us believed it [the IPCC] would become what it became.”
He reviewed some of the struggles the organizations faced and the tensions delegates sometimes had to fight. Although the organization was accused of “political conspiracy” with its Second Assessment, he said, he is on record as denying that charge. The third IPCC assessment, he thought, was able to provide greater confidence in the idea that human activity was, indeed, part of the problem with global warming. “The media handling of the report struck me as pretty extreme,” he said, “and despite efforts of the IPCC staff to clarify what the report said, the international press still exaggerated what was in the report. In Australia,” he continued, “[he] found the public perception of the report to be one that considered it as another effort by scientists to get more research funds.”
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How do you measure success? Well, if evaluation sheet comments are any criteria, the AMS 2002 Policy Colloquium hit the mark with a lot of the attendees.
“I got more out of this colloquium than I ever imagined would be possible.” Anne Hickey, University of Colorado
“Excellent job. Wonderful experience.” Michelle L’Heureux, Colorado State University
“This was the best experience I have had in my schooling career.” Aisha Tribble, University of Oklahoma
“One of the best training classes I’ve had the privilege to participate in my 20 years in government.” Joe Silva, NOAA
“Very high quality speakers.” Scott Shipley, Raytheon
“Outstanding. Maybe even a little too good.” Ian Kraucunas, University of Washington
“Excellent course. Will influence me the rest of my career.” Terri Hogue, University of Arizona
“Overall, a wonderful experience, well thought out, excellent speakers, great organization. Terrific.” Kristine Harper, Oregon State University
“This was one of the most thought-provoking meetings that I have ever attended.” Anonymous
“Best experience of any AMS function,” John Cortinas Jr., University of Oklahoma
“Mostly right on…Lots of wisdom.” Brad Colman, NOAA/NWS, Seattle, Washington
“It will take me a while to process all the information, but the benefits will be lifelong. Thanks for providing this opportunity. It has been one of the most rewarding 10 days of my professional life." Julie Arblaster, NCAR
“This was a fantastic learning experience that has set the stage for what I think I really want to do.” Philip Sheehy, MIT
“Sign a lifetime consulting agreement with Jack Fellows. His talk alone made the whole course worthwhile. Ed Frazier, TRW
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The 2001–02 AMS–Industry Graduate Fellowship recipients will be visiting the Washington, D.C., area during the week of 15 July. The visit, coordinated by NOAA National Centers for Environmental Prediction, where the students will spend their first day, will also include visits to the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, the National Research Laboratory, and the National Ice Center. Students will learn about career opportunities and current research that is being conducted by scientists from each of these organizations. The students will also visit Capitol Hill where they will have discussions with Hill staff members on current science-related issues. On Wednesday, 17 July, AMS will host a reception for the students, representatives from their sponsoring organizations, and invited guests from the congressional and executive branches of the government. For more information contact Stephanie Armstrong at armstrong@ametsoc.org.
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The House of Representatives has passed H.R. 4664, the Investing In America Act, by an overwhelming vote. The authorizing bill would put the National Science Foundation (NSF) budget on the path to doubling over a period of five years beginning with the FY04 budget. While this is important in expressing the desire of the entire House of Representatives to see a doubling in the budget for NSF, perhaps more important is whether the Appropriations Committee in both Houses will actually commit funds to this effort.
There were 397 yes votes in favor of passage of the bill. Twenty-five members—3 Democrats and 22 Republicans—voted no, and 12 members did not vote.
In the interest of space, only those members voting against the measure are listed below:
The three Democrats were Alan Mollohan, West Virginia; Collin Peterson, Minnesota; and Gene Taylor, Mississippi. The Republicans were Michael Collins, Georgia; Nathan Deal, Georgia; Jeff Flake, Arizona; Wally Herger, California; John Hostetler, Indiana; Henry Hyde, Illinois; Walter Jones, North Carolina; Brian Kerns, Indiana; Jack Kingston, Georgia; Gary Miller, California; Charles Norwood, Georgia; Ron Paul, Texas; Thomas Petri, Wisconsin; Dana Rohrabacher, California; Edward Royce, California; James Sensenbrenner, Wisconsin; John Shadegg, Arizona; Cliff Stearns, Florida; Thomas Tancredo, Colorado; Lee Terry, Nebraska; and Dave Weldon, Florida.
The bill is now in the Senate and the hope is that the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee will act on it and send it to the full Senate for consideration. The whole process will have to begin anew if both Houses do not act on it during this second, and final, session of the 107th Congress, and then send it to the President to sign or veto. See related story on House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert’s floor statement on the bill (below).
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Following is a copy of House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert's statement regarding the National Science Foundation Authorization. The statement was made on 5 June 2002.
“Mr. Chairman, I am proud to bring to the floor today, H.R. 4664, ‘the Investing in America’s Future Act,’ which was approved unanimously by the Science Committee. This landmark bill would put the National Science Foundation (NSF) on a track to double its budget over the next five years, while at the same time imposing strict, new management requirements to ensure that NSF continues to spend our money wisely.
“This Congress has already demonstrated its faith in, and reliance on the National Science Foundation several times in recent months, and I hope and expect that we will continue to do so today. Earlier this year, by the overwhelming margin of 400–12, we passed a cybersecurity bill that relied on NSF to fund the research needed to protect our nation’s computer systems and networks. At this time last year, we passed by voice vote a bill to initiate the President’s math and science education partnerships—a program that NSF is now beginning to carry out. And we’ve passed appropriations bills that have included generous—if still insufficient—increases for NSF.
“So the 107th Congress is already on record as acknowledging the vital role played by NSF in both research and education, and we’ve already recognized the Foundation’s need for additional funds. Today, we take the logical next step.
“The scale of NSF’s budget today is simply not commensurate with the breadth and importance of its mission. Congress reached that same conclusion about the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and we have followed through by doubling that research agency’s budget. But health research is not the only kind of research on which our nation depends, and indeed even health research itself depends on advances outside of biomedicine—the kinds of advances that produce new research tools and new understandings of chemistry and physics.
“So, it’s time to give NSF—a much smaller agency than NIH—a budget commensurate with its mission. When we look at the new fields of science and engineering that will boost our economy in this new century, fields like nanotechnology, where do we turn to ensure that our nation’s researchers stay at the cutting edge? NSF. When we look at the field of information technology, which facilitates every activity in today’s economy, where do we turn to ensure that the U.S. remains at the cutting edge? NSF. When we consider our ever more urgent need for a highly skilled, technologically literate workforce, where do we turn to ensure that our education system from kindergarten through post-graduate work is preparing the people we need? NSF.
“We turn to NSF to solve some of our most pressing problems; we can’t turn from NSF when we decide where to invest federal funds.
“It’s time to give NSF the money it needs.
“But don’t take my word for it. Don’t even take the word of all the university and research groups that have endorsed this bill; they’re the obvious beneficiaries.
“Instead, listen to the major industrial entities that are backing this bill, groups like the National Association of Manufacturers, the Semiconductor Industry Association, and Technet. They understand that federally funded basic research—research which industry has little incentive to fund—is needed to keep the American economy humming.
“But some may still wonder, despite this support for raising NSF’s budget, whether the agency can handle such a significant increase. I would argue that there is no agency better placed to handle it. NSF is a lean agency that spends little of its budget on administration. It is the only agency in the entire federal government that received a ‘green light’ rating from the Office of Management and Budget for the quality of its operations. It is repeatedly cited as a model of how federal agencies should be run.
“But despite NSF’s stellar record, this bill will not allow the agency to rest on its laurels. The bill imposes several new management requirements to ensure that federal taxpayer dollars are spent wisely. There is a new report NSF must submit to Congress explaining how it decided to allocate its funding. There is a new requirement to ensure that the public has greater access to National Science Board meetings. There is a new joint NSF–NASA advisory committee on astronomy research.
“Most importantly, there is a new process to prioritize major research equipment projects and to manage them more consistently. Right now, there is no way for anyone outside the Foundation to understand how these large projects, like new telescopes and research stations, are selected or ranked.
“Under our bill, the Director and the Board will have to agree on a list of projects in priority order that will be submitted to the Congress. Actual budget proposals may still have to depart from that order, but at least we will all be starting with the same information in evaluating such budget proposals.
“Mr. Chairman, this is a responsible bill, it is a needed bill, it is a bill that has garnered widespread support in the Committee and outside this chamber—and it deserves support from all of us today. In passing this bill, we do nothing more—and nothing less—than reaffirm some basic principles: that being the world leader in research is important to our nation’s health, defense, and economic well-being; that improving science and math education is critically important; that a great nation should not skimp on its investments to improve human understanding of natural phenomena.
“It is through NSF that we turn those principles into actions. To paraphrase Daniel Webster, it is a small agency, but there are those of us who love it. I urge support for this bill.”
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Ana Unruh, the 2001–02 AMS–UCAR Congressional Science Fellow, has taken a permanent job as a legislative assistant with Rep. Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts). Unruh will begin her work for the congressman on 1 September this year.
Ana is the second AMS–UCAR Congressional Science Fellow. She is a Rhodes scholar and received her Ph.D. at Trinity University, Texas, before her year at Oxford. In the United Kingdom, she finished her dissertation on “Isotopic Studies of Eruasian Loess.” Among other positions, Unruh was a student scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, and a summer student fellow at Woods Hole Research Institute. In addition to the Rhodes scholarship, she had a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and a position as visiting scholar in the Geography Department at Beijing University.
Unruh will continue the work she is currently performing for Rep. Markey, with her primary responsibility being issues related to energy and the environment and the congressman’s work for the House Resources Committee. She will also have responsibility as Rep. Markey’s “Floor monitor,” the individual in his office who keeps abreast of the myriad critical and often complex activities on the Floor of the House of Representatives.
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Budget forecasting often can find clues in the pronouncements of key members of Congress and the Administration and sometimes a document appears that makes the outlook even clearer.
That’s the case with a 10 May White House memorandum from the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) Director John Marburger and Office of Management and Budget Director Mitchell Daniels, according to the 14 June issue of the American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Science Policy.
Titled “FY2004 Interagency Research and Development Priorities,” the 14-pg memo to the heads of executive departments and agencies “provides guidance on the types of R&D programs the Administration will favor when making fiscal year 2004 investment decisions, identifies priority activities requiring significant interagency coordination, and sets forth R&D investment criteria that departments and agencies should observe and implement,” according to the article.
It lists the Administration’s six science and technology priorities, including Climate Change Science and Technology, and later spells out three “tests” that research and development (R&D) managers should apply to their programs.
While the list might change and is not necessarily all-inclusive, according to the article, the six interagency R&D priorities listed in the memo are the following:
Not included in the list are “priorities that fall within the purview of a single agency. Agencies with responsibilities for specific fields of science and engineering should consider the impact of their research investments on the sustained viability of these disciplines for national priorities.” Also, “OSTP…will evaluate how best to ensure the availability of instrumentation and facilities for priority science and technology needs.”
A major portion of the memo is devoted to R&D investment criteria, according to the article. “One way the Administration intends to improve R&D program management and effectiveness is through the application of explicit R&D investment criteria, as directed by the President’s Management Agenda,” is how the memo introduces this concept. The focus is not to be on how much money an agency is spending, “but rather on what we are getting for our investment.” The memo provides considerable detail about three “tests,” initially described as follows:
“Relevance. R&D programs must be able to articulate why this investment is important, relevant, and appropriate. Programs must have well-conceived plans that identify program goals and priorities and identify linkages to national and ‘customer’ needs.”
“Quality. R&D programs must justify how funds will be allocated to ensure quality R&D. Programs allocating funds through means other than a competitive, merit-based process must justify these exceptions and document how quality is maintained.”
“Performance. R&D programs must have the plans and management processes in place to monitor and document how well this investment is performing. Program managers must define appropriate outcome measures and milestones that can be used to track progress toward goals and assess whether the funding should be enhanced or redirected.”
“There has been considerable discussion how the investment criteria would be applied to basic research programs,” the article read. The memo addresses these concerns, it noted, and says, “The Administration expects agencies to focus on improving the management of their research program and adopting effective practices, and not on predicting the unpredictable.”
The entire text of the memo may be viewed at http://www.ostp.gov/html/ombguidmemo.pdf.
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As part of the AMS’s ongoing Government Relations program and series of newsletter articles on the appropriations process, the following is a list of the Energy and Water Development members in the House and Senate. For information on the AMS Government Relations program, contact Doug Stone via e-mail at stone@dc.ametsoc.org
Majority members
Harry Reid (D-Nevada), chairman
Robert C. Byrd (D-West Virginia)
Ernest F. Hollings (D-South Carolina)
Patty Murray (D-Washington)
Byron L. Dorgan (D-North Dakota)
Dianne Feinstein (D-California)
Tom Harkin (D-Iowa)
Minority members
Pete V. Domenici (R-New Mexico), ranking member
Thad Cochran (R-Mississippi)
Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky)
Robert F. Bennett (R-Utah)
Conrad Burns (R-Montana)
Larry E. Craig (R-Idaho)
Majority members
Sonny Callahan (R-Alabama), chairman
Harold Rogers (R-Kentucky)
Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-New Jersey)
Tom Latham (R-Iowa
Roger F. Wicker (R-Mississippi)
Zach Wamp (R-Tennessee)
Jo Ann Emerson (R-Missouri)
John T. Doolittle (R-California)
Minority members
Peter J. Visclosky (D-Indiana), ranking member
Chet Edwards (D-Texas)
Ed Pastor (D-Arizona)
James E. Clyburn (D-South Carolina)
Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-California)
Majority members
Robert C. Byrd (D-West Virginia), chairman
Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vermont)
Ernest F. Hollings (D-South Carolina)
Harry Reid (D-Nevada)
Byron L. Dorgan (D-North Dakota)
Dianne Feinstein (D-California)
Patty Murray (D-Washington)
Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii)
Minority members
Conrad Burns (R-Montana), ranking member
Ted Stevens (R-Arkansas)
Thad Cochran (R-Mississippi)
Pete V. Domenici (R-New Mexico)
Robert F. Bennett (R-Utah)
Judd Gregg (R-New Hampshire)
Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-Colorado)
Majority members
Joe Skeen (R-New Mexico), chairman
Ralph Regula (R-Ohio)
Jim Kolbe (R-Arizona)
Charles C. Taylor (R-North Carolina)
George R. Nethercutt, Jr. (R-Washington)
Zach Wamp (R-Tennessee)
Jack Kingston (R-Georgia)
John E. Peterson (R-Pennsylvania)
Minority members
Norman D. Dicks (D-Washington), ranking member
John P. Murtha (D-Pennsylvania)
James P. Moran (D-Virgina)
Maurice D. Hinchey (D-New York)
Martin Olav Sabo (D-Minnesota)
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Baron Services, Inc., a supplier of Doppler radar and weather analysis equipment to the broadcast, public safety, and aviation communities, recently announced that it would be making the NEXRAD Level II data feed available to its customers.
Baron is currently the only commercial provider of the Level II feed through an agreement with the University of Oklahoma. Level II data is obtained with every sweep of the WSR-88D radar, and is the core feed from which conventional NEXRAD information, the NEXRAD Information Data Services's (NIDS's) products, are obtained.
Baron Services operates out of Huntsville, Alabama, with auxiliary offices in Oklahoma and Florida. They are a manufacturer of Doppler weather radar for the broadcast industry and hold numerous patents for the detection and dissemination of severe weather information.
For more details on the Level II data feed, see http://www.baronservices.com/.
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Minneapolis-based Meteorlogix recently provided weather coverage for the Indianapolis 500, one of the most prominent races in the United States. Meteorlogix was hired to provide weather services that keep spectators and drivers safe from weather-related injuries and accidents on race day. This is the third year the Indianapolis 500 has used Meteorlogix systems for weather planning, forecasting, and decision making.
Meteorlogix also provided weather forecasting systems to the Salt Lake City Winter Olympic Games and the New York City Office of Emergency Management for Ground Zero.
Meteorlogix (www.meteorlogix.com) is a company of VS&A Communications Partners III, LP, the equity affiliate of Veronis Suhler Stevenson. Based in Minneapolis, the company delivers industry-specific weather management capabilities for its customers to manage weather-related business risks, maximize personal safety, and minimize financial loss.
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Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. has been selected to build the National Polar-Orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) Preparatory Project (NPP) spacecraft, according to officials at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland.
Under terms of the delivery order, valued at $94 million, Ball will be responsible for the design and fabrication of the NPP spacecraft bus, integration of the government-furnished instruments, satellite-level testing, and on-orbit satellite checkout.
The NPP satellite is scheduled to be launched into a 515-mile (824 km) orbit in 2006. With a five-year design lifetime, the satellite will continue measuring data on the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans initiated by instruments aboard NASA’s Earth Observing System (EOS) Terra and Aqua satellites and bridge the time frame until the flight of the first NPOESS spacecraft late in the decade.
The NPP also will provide operational agencies—NOAA and the Department of Defense (DOD)—early access to data from the next generation of operational sensors, thereby greatly reducing the risks incurred during the NPOESS transition, officials said. This will permit testing of the advanced ground operations facilities and validation of sensors and algorithms while the current systems are still in place. This new system will provide nearly an order of magnitude more data than the current operational system, according to officials.
Ball Aerospace and Technology is located in Boulder, Colorado. For more information see their Web site at http://www.ball.com/aerospace/batchp.html.
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WeatherData, Inc., a provider of weather risk management solutions, has been awarded a patent for its StormVision® with Lightning (U.S. Patent #6,405,134 B1) system, which predicts where lightning strikes are likely to occur with a high degree of accuracy. Earlier this year, the company was awarded a patent for “SelectWarn,” an intelligent warning system that monitors multiple threats simultaneously and lets public safety managers warn only those areas actually threatened.
StormVision with Lightning predicts where lightning strikes are likely to occur by evaluating radar and temperature data over wide geographic locations, says WeatherData. It is based on an algorithm, which analyzes radar data to locate areas where cloud tops extend above a predetermined temperature threshold and have sufficient radar reflectivity (i.e., density) to create cloud particles with high electrical charge. These are designated as “electrified” areas with great lightning potential.
The radar data is tracked across at least two time periods, and the algorithm predicts the location of the potential lightning areas at 10, 20, and 30 minutes into the future. According to WeatherData, as the science of computer modeling of thunderstorms advances, it will eventually be possible for the system to predict lightning hours in advance.
WeatherData’s SelectWarn system allows emergency personnel to select when to activate sirens and other safety devices based on the location and predicted path of severe storms, tornadoes, lightning, flash floods, and chemical/biological hazards, says the company. Once emergency personnel identify the threat, a threat-specific tonal or voice alarm can be triggered on any one or more warning devices at their disposal.
Using WeatherData’s forecasting and monitoring technology, SelectWarn starts with a detailed, GIS base map of the area, then overlays local siren and warning devices. Customized displays add terrain, roadways, and landmarks like softball fields, schools, and public venues. Next, SelectWarn overlays high-resolution National Weather Service radar and storm warnings in text and latitude–longitude format. With the full NEXRAD suite of products, emergency managers can plot the storm and selectively activate warning signals ahead of its arrival, according to WeatherData.
SelectWarn was first introduced in November 2000. WeatherData, located in Wichita, Kansas, has six additional patents pending. For more information see their Web site at http://www.weatherdata.com/.
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The hot, dry conditions, which have fueled raging wildfires in several western states, are expected to hang on through September, according to the latest seasonal outlook from NOAA's National Weather Service. Along the East Coast, forecasters also predicted drought conditions to slowly improve as summer unfolds in the outlook issued in mid-June.
Since January, wildfires have burned nearly 1.4 million acres of the nation's landscape—from New Jersey to California. That is twice the yearly average for this time of year, and 200,000 acres more than in 2000, the worst year on record. Currently, 19 large fires are burning, including 6 in Colorado, where residents in Denver this week had to contend with smoky haze from the state's worst fire on record.
“While forecasters project above-normal rainfall over much of Colorado and eastern Utah,” John Jones, deputy director of the National Weather Service, said “the extra rain would do little to improve drought conditions in those areas, because the rainfall amounts will still not be enough to erase the water deficit.” NOAA's Climate Prediction Center is the section of the National Weather Service that issues long-range climate and weather outlooks.
Outlook for the West
States in the West, including the Southwest and southern Texas, are likely to experience above-normal temperatures through September, while the rest of the country has an even chance of feeling above, below, or average heat.
Recent record-high temperatures helped stoke the flames of wildfires in California, New Mexico, Colorado, Nebraska, and Kansas.
Although late-season snowfall in parts of Montana has improved the drought status somewhat, serious drought problems persist. NOAA forecasters are expecting below-normal rainfall throughout Washington, Oregon, Idaho, western Montana, northern Nevada, and northern California.
Rains Ease Drought In East
Along the East Coast, near- to above-average rainfall helped bring drought relief to major metropolitan areas from Washington, D.C., to Boston, Massachusetts, during spring, according to NOAA's National Climatic Data Center. Reservoir levels climbed as seasonal precipitation was above average following five consecutive months (October–February) of below-average precipitation in the Northeast.
For more details go to NOAA's Climate Prediction Center Web site at http://www.cpc.noaa.gov or the NOAA Drought Information Center Web site at http://www.drought.noaa.gov.
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The 12-month period from June 2001 to May 2002 was warmer than normal for the contiguous United States, according to officials at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center. Preliminary data, they said, showed the average surface temperature was 54.4°F (12.4°C), 1.6°F greater than the 1895–2001 long-term mean. Scientists at the Asheville, North Carolina, facility said those temperatures make this past 12-month period the fourth warmest such period on record.
The warmer-than-average temperatures coincided with drier-than-average conditions in much of the West and along the eastern seaboard during the same period. A continuation of the drier-than-normal conditions in other areas of the nation led to worsening drought conditions, most notably in the Southwest, officials said.
Precipitation in Colorado and Arizona were the lowest on record since statewide records started in 1895 for the June–May period, while New Mexico and Utah had below-average precipitation totals, according to the scientists.
Although the duration of the current drought in the Southwest is less than other major droughts of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, by the first week of June conditions for at least 80% of the range and pastures in Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado were rated poor to very poor by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In New Mexico, water is flowing at less than 10% of average on the Upper Rio Grande and Upper Pecos, the lowest levels in 75 years.
The dry conditions have made the area subject to wildfires. The current drought covers much of the same region as it did in 2000 when wildfires burned approximately 8.4 million acres in the United States. By early June 2002, more than 1.3 million U.S. acres had burned, approximately 100,000 more acres than for the same period in 2000, one of the worst wildfire seasons in 50 years.
Unlike 2000, when only 22% of the United States was in severe to extreme drought in early June, the same level of drought conditions now affects 29% of the United States with the potential of conditions worsening.
Severe to extreme drought also extends from the Southwest to the Canadian border, officials explained. In Montana, farmers have abandoned more than 20% of the wheat crop for the second consecutive year, the first such occurrence since 1935–36 and 1936–37.
Drought conditions in the Northeast, brought on by five consecutive months of below-average precipitation improved during the spring season March–May. Three months of above-normal precipitation totals led to rising reservoir levels in many of the region’s metropolitan areas. (See the previous article).
Preliminary data for the same June 2001–May 2002 period showed global temperature for combined land and ocean surfaces was 1.1°F (0.6°C) above the 1880–2001 long-term mean, the second warmest such period since 1880 (the period of reliable instrumental records). The warmest June–May occurred four years ago during the last El Niño episode. Warmer-than-normal sea surface temperatures were observed throughout most of the equatorial Pacific during the past three months as a slow evolution toward mature El Niño conditions continued.
The 12-month land surface temperature average was the warmest on record, 1.7°F (0.9°C) above the long term, 0.2°F (0.1°C) warmer than the previous record warm June–May 1998–99. The global ocean surface temperature was 0.8°F (0.4°C) above average, the second warmest on record and slightly less than in 1997–98.
Land surface temperatures were more than 2°F (1.1°C) above average on the continents of Europe and Asia, while the average temperatures from reporting stations in South America and Africa were both greater than 1°F (0.6°C) above the 1880-2001 mean during the June–May period. The average temperature in Australia was only slightly above average.
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Scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) say that new information points toward development of mature El Niño conditions during the remainder of 2002.
In the June 2002 El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) Diagnostic Discussion, NOAA scientists report that a climate phenomenon called the Madden–Julian oscillation (MJO) contributed to an increase in ocean surface temperatures late last month. Ocean surface temperatures of 2°F (1°C) above average were observed throughout most of the equatorial Pacific at the end of May. This increase in ocean temperature, combined with observations of abnormally heavy rainfall in parts of South America, and the lack of it over Indonesia suggests that El Niño continues to develop as was originally forecast.
“The MJO is an important factor contributing to the evolution of El Niño, because it can influence the winds near the Earth's surface. In late May, the MJO contributed to a weakening of the normal east-to-west flow throughout the equatorial Pacific, which has led to an increase in ocean surface temperatures,” said Vernon Kousky, meteorologist at NOAA's Climate Prediction Center.
“With last month's MJO activity, we saw signs of the further developing El Niño, but it is not unusual to see a cycle during which conditions intensify, wane, then intensify again,” he said. “The overall trend, though, together with changes in weather and pressure patterns in key regions of the Tropics that are characteristic of El Niño, suggest that further development toward a weak-to-moderate El Niño will continue during the remainder of 2002.”
El Niño does not significantly impact the United States during summer, although it does historically tend to suppress Atlantic hurricane activity. NOAA forecasters indicate that El Niño likely will not be strong enough to affect hurricane activity this year, especially early in the season. If El Niño continues to develop as expected, there is a possibility that fewer hurricanes than normal may form in the Atlantic during August–October, the peak of Atlantic hurricane season. NOAA will update the 2002 Atlantic hurricane season outlook in early August.
NOAA will continue to monitor the evolution of El Niño and provide monthly updates. NOAA scientists assert the actual global impacts of the forecasted weak or moderate El Niño should be considerably weaker than those experienced during the very strong 1997/98 El Niño.
The El Niño–Southern Oscillation Diagnostic Discussion is a team effort consisting of NOAA's Climate Prediction Center (lead), Climate Diagnostics Center, Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, National Climatic Data Center, Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, and the International Research Institute for Climate Prediction.
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The National Weather Service has unveiled a new heat index to warn citizens across the nation of advancing heat waves up to seven days before their onset.
The Mean Heat Index, which became fully operational in May, is a measure of how hot the temperatures actually feel to a person over the course of the day. It differs from the traditional Heat Index in that it is an average of the Heat Index from the hottest and coldest times of each day. It combines factors such as surface and ambient heat with humidity and other environmental factors.
“Heat waves often turn fatal when the nighttime temperature doesn't drop very much from a high daytime temperature,” said Jim Hoke, director of NOAA's Hydrometeorological Prediction Center in Camp Springs, Maryland, where the Mean Heat Index originates. “The Mean Heat Index captures this potentially serious condition by including data from what should be a cooler portion of the day, and factoring that in to give a ‘big picture' of the day's temperatures, not just the day's high.”
According to NOAA scientists, a Mean Heat Index above 85° is considered dangerous. NOAA Weather Service statistics show heat-related deaths outpace fatalities in other severe-weather categories. For example, based on a 10-yr average from 1992 to 2001, excessive heat claimed 219 lives each year. By contrast, floods killed 88; tornadoes, 57; lightning, 52; and hurricanes, 15.
Alerts and Mean Heat Indices are issued to the public in two ways. One is a daily, graphical representation of the contiguous United States with color-coded overlays indicating the temperatures that the Mean Heat Index is expected to reach or exceed in each area or region of the country. Second, the agency issues a more localized text forecast of the Mean Heat Index, available for 90 cities across the country. These products are sent out in NOAA's National Weather Service suite of extended range forecasts.
Heat waves in the United States have a deadly legacy. In 1980, a stifling heat wave killed 1,700 people in the East and Midwest; another East–Midwest heat wave killed 454 in 1988; in 1995, a heat wave claimed a total of 716 lives in Chicago, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and St. Louis; and in 1998, a heat wave killed more than 120 in Texas alone.
For more on NOAA's Mean Heat Index Forecasts go to http://www.hpc.ncep.noaa.gov/heat_index.shtml.
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NOAA weather forecasters and the agency’s geostationary and polar-orbiting satellites are providing a helping hand to the firefighters battling the huge fire burning out of control in Colorado at the time this went to press.
Three specially trained fire-weather forecasters are providing fire-specific forecasts for wildfires, which play a major role in ensuring the safety of the firefighters. The Incident Meteorologists (IMETs) are using special, portable meteorological units and NOAA remote satellite images that track fire progression, officials said.
Accurate forecasts of wind direction and speed protect firefighters, strongly influence fire strategy, and help incident commanders make the best possible decisions. IMETs are specially trained in microscale (less than 1 km) meteorology and employ a variety of special tools to prepare the forecasts.
The latest development in NOAA’s fire detecting from space is Wildfire Automated Biomass Burning Algorithm (WFABBA) now being used aboard the agency’s two geostationary satellites (GOES-8 and -10). The system generates fire data for Colorado and the entire Western Hemisphere every 30 minutes. Images in map form are typically available for operational use in 90 minutes, according to officials.
The new satellite fire detector separates the information into a spectrum from past fire to existing fire, to high and low potential, and many ranges in between. These images are particularly useful in visualizing the progress of fast-growing fires and finding fires in remote areas. To complete the assessment of conditions in the area, NWS provides up-to-the-minute forecasting of precipitation, surface temperatures as well as wind direction and speed from certified IMETs located onsite in the incident command center or in the wildfire area. Nine of the weather service’s 51 certified IMETs are currently involved in wildfire mitigation, officials said.
The WFABBA system was developed by NOAA researchers in cooperation with the University of Wisconsin Space Science and Engineering Center in Madison, Wisconsin. Although its products currently are being used in Colorado, the methodology is still in its final phases of development and likely will be fully operational in September, officials said.
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A new Administration report, “U.S. Climate Action Report—2002,” echoing last year’s National Academy of Sciences report, says that greenhouse gases are “accumulating in Earth’s atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing global mean surface air temperature and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise. While the changes observed over the last several decades are likely due mostly to human activities, we cannot rule out that some significant part is also a reflection of natural variability.”
The AMS Committee on Public Policy endorses the science in the U.S. Climate Action Report—2002, based on the sound science in the National Academy report.
If the effects of President Bush’s February 2002 climate change initiative are not taken into account, the report continues, “total greenhouse gas emissions are projected to increase by 43% between 2000 and 2020,” although emissions per unit GDP are expected to decline, according to an article in the 19 July issue of AIP’s Bulletin of Science Policy News.
Prepared by EPA and submitted to the United Nations, the report reviews the policies already in place and the Bush Administration’s proposals for dealing with climate change, including those in the National Energy Policy. The report also looks at the nation’s climate, geography and population, trends in greenhouse gas emissions and projections of future emissions, potential consequences and possible adaptations, ongoing research and technologies, and financial resources to address climate changer, the article read.
Following the release of last year’s Academy of Sciences report, President Bush acknowledged that “the surface temperature of the Earth is warming” and that the Academy’s findings “indicate that the increase is due in large part to human activity.” Yet he cautioned that the effects of natural climate fluctuations are unknown and “no one can say with any certainty what constitutes a dangerous level of warming, and therefore what level must be avoided.”
The Climate Action report takes a comprehensive look at how continued warming might impact various regions of the country, according to the article. It finds “A few ecosystems, such as Alpine meadows in the Rocky Mountains and some barrier islands, are likely to disappear in some areas. Other ecosystems, such as southeastern forests, are likely to experience major species shifts or break up into a mosaic of grasslands, woodlands, and forests. Some of the goods and services lost through the disappearance or fragmentation of natural ecosystems are likely to be costly or impossible to replace.”
Among other findings, the report notes “climate change and the resulting rise in sea level are likely to exacerbate threats to buildings, roads, power lines, and other infrastructure in climate-sensitive areas. For example, infrastructure damage is expected to result from permafrost melting in Alaska and from sea level rise and storm surges in low-lying coastal areas.”
The President’s plans to address climate change, the report notes, include “a commitment to reduce greenhouse gas intensity in the United States by 18% over the next decade through a combination of voluntary, incentive-based, and existing mandatory measures. This represents a 4.5% reduction from forecast emissions in 2012, a serious, sensible, and science-based response to this global problem.”
Proposed new measures include enhancing the emission reduction registry, creating transferable emission reduction credits, providing tax incentives for investing in low-emission equipment, establishing emission reduction agreements with particular industry sectors, supporting R&D on energy efficiency and sequestration technologies, and working with other countries.
The report continues the President’s opposition to the Kyoto Protocol, noting that the Administration climate change strategies “are expected to achieve emission reductions comparable to the average reductions prescribed by the Kyoto agreement, but without the threats to economic growth that rigid national emission limits would bring. We seek an environmentally sound approach that will not harm the U.S. economy…In the real world, no one will forego meeting basic family needs to protect the global commons.”
The report, which runs 250 pages, is available online at http://www.epa.gov/globalwarming/publicationscar/index.html.
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NOAA has announced new U.S. funding for the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS), an international effort to investigate global climate change processes and observations located within the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
Vice Admiral Conrad C. Lautenbacher Jr., NOAA administrator, announced $600,000 in additional funding to help support the GCOS Second Report on the Adequacy of the GCOS during a meeting of the WMO Executive Council in Geneva, Switzerland, on 11 June. The funds will come to GCOS from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The GCOS funds are part of a $2.7 million State Department funding to the IPCC in FY02.
“This new funding for the GCOS global observing effort further demonstrates the Administrations commitment to working with our international partners to build a sound base of scientific knowledge for future global climate change policy decisions,” said Lautenbacher. “Expanding the global climate observation system will require cooperation and coordination from the international community in realizing our collective end goal of having the tools we need to take the pulse of Mother Earth.”
President Bush’s Clear Skies and Global Climate Change Initiatives announced in February call for the United States to provide funding for high-priority areas of climate change science over the next five years. The United States also will provide resources to build climate change observation systems in developing countries and encourage developed countries to match the American commitment.
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A team of international scientists is measuring pollutants and chemicals as they blow across the Pacific to the West Coast of North America to gauge and monitor impacts on American populations. Taking measurements from the ground and air, the scientists hope to get a better idea of the effects on climate and air quality by measuring the air chemistry of pollution.
Citing pollution as an international problem, Fred Felsenfeld, of NOAA’s Aeronomy Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, said “We’ve designed a major international research program to investigate how the atmosphere changes and is moved from continent to continent around the globe. These processes have many ways of influencing Earth’s climate.”
“What comes ashore is affected not only by pollution from Asia, but also by recirculation from California and Mexico,” explained David Parish, also of the Aeronomy Laboratory.
Scientists have increasing evidence that even short-lived substances such as ozone and fine particles, as well as their precursors, can be detected at great distances from their sources.
Researchers also will measure the fossil-fuel emissions from ocean-going vessels.
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The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) recently unveiled a functional prototype of the Maintenance Decision Support System (MDSS).
The MDSS is a tool made specifically to assist State Department of Transportation personnel with guidance and recommendations associated with winter road maintenance activities. The goal of the project is to integrate state-of-the-art weather forecasting components with customized best maintenance practice logic to provide precise forecasts of road conditions and roadway treatment recommendations.
It is envisioned that the output of the MDSS will provide savings to the state by reducing the amount of materials applied to the road, minimizing labor and equipment costs by matching plow runs with expected weather conditions, and promoting safety by providing detailed recommendations optimized to maintain the highest level of service on roads.
The FHWA assembled a stakeholder group of representatives from two-dozen states, numerous private transportation weather forecasting companies, and members of academia to solicit requirements for a next generation decision support system for winter maintenance. These inputs were provided to a consortium of national laboratories, which leveraged existing cutting edge technologies with new components to create the prototype. Participating labs included the National Center for Atmospheric Research, NOAA’s Forecast Systems Laboratory, NOAA’s National Severe Storms Laboratory, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Cold Regions Research and Experimental Laboratory, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Laboratory.
The MDSS contains several sophisticated components. In addition to using weather models from the National Weather Service’s National Centers for Environmental Prediction, the MDSS ensemble module provides one of the first applications of high-resolution mesoscale ensemble forecasting. The Road Weather Forecast System is a mature data fusion engine that uses model input, mesonet/Road Weather Information Systems (RWIS) observations and dynamic Model Output Statistics (MOS) to provide accurate forecasts. The Road Condition and Treatment Module (RCTM) ingests all of the weather data, executes algorithms to determine roadway temperatures and surface chemical concentrations, and integrates customized, best management practice information to produce route-specific treatment recommendations. A Java-based display application presents the results to the operators using combinations of colorful maps, animations, and time series graphics. One of the most powerful aspects of the MDSS is its ability to allow the user to modify treatment recommendations in any number of “what if” scenarios.
Most of the MDSS will be available in the public domain for download on 20 September 2002. Information about the MDSS project and links to the software and documentation can be found online at http://www.rap.ucar.edu/projects/rdwx_mdss/index.html.
FHWA and the lab consortium plan to demonstrate the MDSS in one state over the winter of 2002/03 to solicit feedback from state maintenance managers and to validate and verify the accuracy of both the weather forecasts and the treatment recommendations. For more information on the MDSS and the Federal Highway Administration’s Road Weather Management Program, contact Paul Pisano at Paul.Pisano@fhwa.dot.gov or visit http://www.ops.fhwa.dot.gov/weather/.
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NASA has granted 72 grants totaling approximately $23 million to study the Earth’s oceans and ice.
Designed to increase our understanding of Earth’s climate system and the science community’s ability to model climate change, the grants will support research over three years by numerous government agencies and academic institutions. Proposals were evaluated on their ability to enhance NASA’s ongoing research in biological and physical oceanography, ice sheets, sea ice, and computer modeling, officials said.
“These awards are a vital element in our efforts to accomplish this goal (of protecting the planet) and will contribute to our knowledge of Earth’s water cycle, an area of increasing importance in the new millennium,” said Dr. Ghassem Asrar, associate administrator for Earth Sciences, at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “In particular, improvements to climate modeling capabilities will lead to production of better climate forecast products for the nation and our policy and decision makers.”
NASA received 276 proposals in response to its research announcement last October, and the awards were made after a peer-review process involving scientific and technical experts from academia, government, and industry, officials said.
A list of the selected principal investigators, institutions, and research titles by state can be found online at http://research.hq.nasa.gov/code_y/code_y.cfm.
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Until now, it has been difficult at best to find out the status of ocean water quality at area beaches. However, as of 2 July 2002, comprehensively collected data on the quality of water at beaches across the country is available online at http://www.oceana.org/, which is an international ocean conservation organization, in partnership with Earth 911. The online service will break new ground in posting the most recent notices on beach openings and closings, as well as information on environmental conditions in the area that might threaten beach water quality. Partnerships have been formed with state and local authorities to compile data on beach water across the country that has never been collected in one place before. Oceana and Earth 911 are using the most current technology to provide the information in colorful and easy to read maps that link to detailed descriptions of beach water status. Oceana believes the new online information will be crucial to both beach goers and professionals who inform beach goers on the current status of their beach water. Through the Web site, beach goers can learn about the risks and take steps to ensure beach water will be clean and healthy.
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The Department of Energy's Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC) has updated the section of “Trend Online” on global, hemispheric, and zonal temperature deviations derived from radiosonde records (http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/trends/temp/angell/angell.html) and updated the corresponding numeric package, “Annual and Seasonal Global Temperature Deviations in the Troposphere and Low Stratosphere, 1958–1999” http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/ftp/ndp008/ndp008.txt).
The data were contributed by James Angell (NOAA Air Resources Laboratory) and prepared by CDIAC’s Sonja Jones and Dale Kaiser.
Data from a global network of 63 radiosonde stations were used to estimate temperature deviations and are categorized vertically (from the near surface, troposphere, tropopause, and the low stratosphere up to 100 mb and horizontally) for the globe, the Northern and Southern Hemisphere and the North and South Polar, North and South temperate, North and South subtropical, tropical, and equatorial latitudinal zones.
Angell reported that during 1958–2001 the global mean near-surface air temperature warmed by 0.15°C/decade and the 850–300-mb troposphere layer warmed by 0.08°C/decade. The global mean 300–100-mb tropopause layer cooled by approximately-0.2°C/decade, driven mainly by large changes in the polar zones, and the 100–50-mb low-stratosphere layer experienced a global mean cooling of about –0.6°C/decade.
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While most planes try to avoid turbulence, a NASA research plane from Langley Research Center is deliberately seeking out those atmospheric disturbances in an effort to find a better way of predicting them.
For eight weeks this spring, the plane went searching for thunderstorms while researchers with the NASA Aviation Safety Program (AvSP) tested an experimental radar system, the 757 Airborne Research Integrated Experiments System (ARIES), to detect atmospheric turbulence by measuring the movement of the moisture in the air, officials explained.
“NASA is working on an enhanced turbulence detection radar system, which is a software signal processing upgrade to existing predictive Doppler wind shear systems already on airplanes,” said Jim Watson, Deputy Turbulence Prediction and Warning Systems Project Manager.
To see how well the enhanced radar performed, the 757 and its crew of two dozen researchers and technicians had to find the kind of bumpy weather most airline passengers find uncomfortable.
ARIES flew 13 research missions. The jet would leave Langley in Virginia and fly to areas where thunderstorms were predicted east of the Mississippi. NASA research pilots circled the thunderstorms repeatedly to subject the plane to rough air.
Inside the 757, researchers at test stations recorded conditions and also alerted the pilots when and where they were likely to encounter turbulence and how much. “They saw the turbulence coming, where the standard aircraft radar would not have seen it,” said O’Connor.
Airliners currently are not equipped with turbulence detection systems. “Pilots predict turbulence ahead by experience and intuition, getting information from other airplanes that have encountered turbulence close by and extrapolating the existing weather radar system,” Watson said. “I think we’re looking at having some significant improvements on aircraft within the next one to two years.”
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The NOAA-M weather satellite will to be placed in a slightly different orbit than its predecessors to maximize its ability to map land vegetation and atmospheric ozone levels, according to agency officials. The satellite launched on 24 June 2002.
The satellite’s polar orbit will be timed so that it crosses the equator moving north to south at 10 a.m. local time, according to Michael Mignogno, polar program manager at NOAA. This was to ensure that the satellite takes its reading under the most favorable lighting conditions, according to an article in the 10 June issue of Space News.
The polar-orbiting satellites are timed so that one crosses the equator while moving north to south in the morning, while the other makes that crossing in the afternoon. Traditionally, the morning satellite has made its equatorial crossing at 7:30 a.m. local time
Mignogno said changing the crossing to 10 a.m. offers benefits at no cost in terms of data. “The satellite that crosses the equator at 10 a.m. will be able to map vegetation under better lighting conditions than a satellite in an earlier orbit, although the difference is less substantial in the summer months than at other times of the year,” Mignogno said.
“The enhanced vegetation mapping ability is important given NOAA’s increasing role in environmental monitoring,” he explained.
“The later orbit also will provide NOAA-M—to be designated NOAA-17 in orbit—with a favorable angle for measuring atmospheric ozone,” Mignogno said. “A satellite must be at a certain angle relative to the sun to measure ultraviolet light as it bounces off the ozone layer,” he explained. “High levels of reflected ultraviolet light indicate ozone concentrations.”
Built by Lockheed Martin Space Systems, NOAA-M was to be launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, at 11:22 a.m. 24 June on a Titan 2 rocket.
Plans call for three more of the current generation of polar-orbiting weather satellites, including NOAA-M. The last two are scheduled for launch in March 2004 and June 2004, officials said.
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After correcting a problem with the spacecraft’s main camera, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) officials hope to get up to three more years of service out of the satellite, according to agency officials. Launched in March 1984, it was designed to operate for three years.
The most recent problem, according to an article in the 10 June issue of Space News, was with the spacecraft’s Thematic Mapper, its main camera. Jim Storey, a USGS engineer, explained that “the camera collects imagery with a scan mirror that moves back and forth along a line runs perpendicular to the satellite’s orbit. The movement of the mirror is synchronized with a calibration device that passes in front of the mirror between imaging sweeps.”
The mirror’s scanning motion is framed by a pair of springs, which also control the timing of the oscillation, according to the article. On Landsat 5, the springs had worn down, throwing off the synchronization with the calibration shutter.
“The problem first appeared near the end of 2000,” Storey said. By February 2002, officials declared the thematic mapper as not operational.
To correct the problem, USGS switched the thematic mapper to a backup mode, allowing controllers to control the movement of the scan mirror well enough to eliminate the shutter problem, according to Storey.
Initial test scenes in the backup mode were acquired in late March, and USGS began routinely collecting data in the backup mode in mid-April. “If the switch to the backup mode had not been made,” Storey said, “it probably would have meant the end of Landsat 5.”
“The same problem will affect Landsat 7, which was launched in April 1999,” Storey said. “The solution devised for Landsat 5 might be applied to Landsat 7 and future Landsat missions,” he added.
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One of the world's most renowned scientists, Joanne Simpson, has won the 47th International Meteorological Organization Prize, known as the IMO Prize, of the World Meteorological Organization.
Simpson has had a long and distinguished career in meteorology. Simpson learned to love the sky as a teen. Her father was aviation editor of the Boston Herald, and she earned her pilot's license at 16. Learning to fly requires learning about the weather, and that led to an interest in meteorology. She earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Chicago in 1943 and became an academic “Rosie the Riveter,” teaching meteorology to aviation cadets and military forecasters. She earned her master's in 1945, as women were being encouraged to leave their wartime jobs, and was the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in meteorology.
From 1951 to 1960, Simpson studied at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts to learn about the weather over oceans. Woods Hole had a surplus World War II PBY Catalina flying boat, which Simpson flew in to study clouds.
In the early 1950s, Simpson began the first mathematical models of clouds on the simple computers of the time. In 1954, she won a Guggenheim Fellowship to work in England, and in 1955 was an honorary lecturer at Imperial College in London.
By the mid-1950s, she had earned an international reputation. After five major hurricanes smashed into the eastern United States in 1954 and 1955, Congress established the Hurricane Research Program and named Simpson an adviser. The first director was Robert Simpson, a Weather Bureau meteorologist who had been riding in Air Force and Navy planes, flying into hurricanes to see what he could learn about them. They were married in 1965. He was director of the National Hurricane Center from 1967 to 1974, and they still collaborate on scientific papers.
From 1965 to 1979, Simpson was director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Experimental Meteorology Laboratory in Coral Gables, Florida, where she seeded clouds to create rain and tried to use those techniques to weaken hurricanes.
In 1994, Simpson was awarded the first William Nordberg Memorial Award for Earth Science. The Nordberg Award is given annually to an employee of the Goddard Space Flight Center who best exhibits broad scientific perspective, enthusiastic programmatic and technical leadership on the national and international levels, wide recognition by peers, and substantial research accomplishments in understanding Earth system processes, all which exemplified Dr. Nordberg's own career.
A fellow and honorary member of the AMS, Simpson has received numerous awards and prizes from scientific organizations around the world. She was also awarded the AMS Rossby Research Medal in 1983. Simpson was the first and only woman ever to be elected president of the AMS, in 1989.
The IMO Prize, which consists of a certificate, a gold medal, and a cash award, is conferred every year for outstanding work in the field of meteorology and related geophysical sciences and for contribution to international cooperation in the field of meteorology. The IMO, the predecessor organization of the WMO, was established in Vienna in 1873. When the WMO was established in 1950, it took over the assets of IMO, which are used to support the annual award of this prize.
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John Raymond Hope, whose lifelong career in weather forecasting brought international recognition of his achievements, died on 13 June 2002 from complications following heart surgery.
Hope was cited as the “voice of reason” when broadcasting during extreme severe weather for The Weather Channel. Other weather experts often acknowledged that when a hurricane threatened, Hope was “the man America watches.” In 1999, USA TODAY founder, Al Neuharth, ranked John Hope fifth among the nation’s top ten broadcasters. He was the only weather forecaster on the list.
Hope was born on 14 May 1919, in Stowell, Pennsylvania. Joining the Army Air Corps, he served from 1941 to 1945. His career in weather began in the service as a flight navigator; the last 30 months of his duty were spent in the Southwest Pacific Theatre. After the war, Hope attended the University of Illinois, where he was elected Phi Beta Kappa and received his Masters of Science in Meteorology from the University of Chicago.
Hope began his career in the United States Weather Bureau in 1949 as a district forecaster in Memphis, Tennessee, where he worked for nearly 13 years. He was deemed to have “the right stuff” by the Spaceflight Meteorology Group in 1962, joining the organization in Miami at the time of John Glenn’s launch. In 1968, Hope made a move to the National Hurricane Center in Miami.
Over three decades, Hope went from releasing and tracking weather balloons outside of the old Memphis Airport Terminal to working on manned space shots to the moon, and programming some of the then-largest computers in the world. Along with his National Hurricane Center colleague, Charlie Neumann, Hope wrote a program that allowed Third World countries lacking mass media infrastructure to alert coastal populations in advance of the possibility of a typhoon or hurricane making landfall. For this little-known technical work, Hope learned from visiting Chinese scientists in 1978 that he and Neumann were very well-known and appreciated in China’s scientific circles.
Hope came to The Weather Channel in 1982 from the National Hurricane Center in Miami, where he had held the position of Senior Hurricane Specialist. Hope’s many honors included the U.S. Department of Commerce Silver Medal, the National Hurricane Conference Media Award, and the Neil Frank Award from the National Hurricane Conference. He was a fellow of the American Meteorological Society. Hope wrote about weather for a variety of publications and journals, and he lectured around the world.
Hope semi-retired from The Weather Channel in 1997 when heart problems sidelined him, but after successful surgeries, his health greatly improved to the extent that he was able to continue on-air forecasting from 1998 to 2001. In 1999, The Weather Channel established a perpetual scholarship through the American Meteorological Society in Hope’s name. In 2000, he traveled to Conway, South Carolina, where he received an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Public Service from Coastal Carolina University.
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NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe continues to build his staff, naming three new appointees to key positions on the agency staff. They are the following:
Retired Air Force Major General Michael C. Kostelnik as deputy associate administrator for the International Space Station and Space Shuttle, a newly created position within the Office of Human Space Flight. His last position in the Air Force was commander of the Air Force Test and Development Center.
Dr. Jeremiah F. Creedon as associate administrator for the Office of Aerospace Technology. Creedon comes to the position from NASA’s Langley Research Center, where he was director.
Thomas M. Bradley Jr. as chief engineer. He is a former nuclear engineer for the U.S. Navy, serving in the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program.
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One of the most popular Web sites of the federal government is now offering links to a variety of aerospace news and information in Spanish.
The primary portal for NASA, www.nasa.gov, regularly receives more than 650,000 hits a week to a variety of agency news and information produced by field centers across the country.
To view the project-specific sites and general information about NASA programs, go to http://www.nasa.gov/hqpao/espanol.html.
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NOAA’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (GLERL) is expanding its research capabilities with the addition of a new ship, Laurentian, according to NOAA officials.
The ship is being transferred to the Laboratory’s control through a partnership between NOAA and the University of Michigan. A ceremony commemorating the transfer is scheduled for 2 July in Muskegon, Michigan.
The GLERL will base and operate the ship out of the Lab’s Lake Michigan Field Station in Muskegon, where it will serve as the primary vessel supporting the Lab’s research missions. A ship that had been serving those functions, the Shenahon, already has been moved to Alpena, Michigan, on Lake Huron to support 2002 NOAA field season activities at the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary and Underwater Preserve.
The 80-foot, 120-ton Laurentian was built in 1974 in Pascagoula, Mississippi. And has supported university research and educational needs throughout the Great Lakes region. With a crew of four and accommodations for up to 10 scientists, the ship has a cruising range of 2,500 nautical miles at a speed of 10 knots. It also has wet and dry labs with instruments and sampling gear to collect and process a wide array of data on the Great Lakes’ physical, chemical, and biological processes.
The ship has operated on all five of the Great Lakes and proved seaworthy on a 1983 round-trip cruise across the Atlantic for a study of Africa’s Gambia River.
Under the agreement, GLERL will lease the vessel for the next 15 years. University of Michigan scientists will still have opportunities to use the vessel, with additional time set aside for educational activities, officials said.
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The Climate Protection Division of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) invites nominations for the 2003 Climate Protection Awards. This award program was established in 1998 to recognize exceptional leadership, personal dedication, and technical achievements in protecting the climate.
The Climate Protection Awards have been presented to 68 corporate, military, association, and individual winners from 12 countries (Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, France, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, the Peoples Republic of China, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States). These winners contribute to climate protection in a wide variety of fields.
The EPA seeks nominations for outstanding leadership, personal dedication and technical achievements in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and protecting Earth’s climate. Accomplishments can include stewardship, product introduction, pollution prevention, policy innovation, and engineering innovation.
Dr. Stephen O. Andersen, EPA, will assemble and chair an international panel of judges including representatives of previous Climate Protection Award winners. With the advice of this panel, the EPA will make the final selection. The judges represent government, industry, and nongovernmental organizations.
Applications must be mailed, faxed, or e-mailed no later than 11 October 2002.
Further information may be viewed online at www.epa.gov/cppd/awards.html
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