Editor: Jim Elliott
Contributor:Stephanie Kenitzer
Copy Editors: Anne Siefken and Marcie Bernstein
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The AMS and The Weather Channel will hold a press briefing on 13 September 2000 in Washington, D.C., to release the report, complete with recommendations and findings, from the June forum on Hurricane Preparedness and Policy Issues. The complete report will be available on the AMS Web site on 13 September.
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The Atmospheric Policy Program is working with stakeholders and other interested parties to develop, in broad outline, concept papers for colloquia and workshops that would build the policy reach of the meteorological community.
Colloquium:
Plans are still very much in the formative stage but are focused on a 1–2-week summer session, tentatively scheduled for the first week in June 2001, that would expose participants (primarily graduate students and selected university faculty) to a comprehensive overview of the policy process. In addition to overview material, the colloquium would include case studies and a series of dialogs with Washington policy makers from the executive and legislative branch as well as nongovernment organizations.
Workshop series:
The Policy Program is also exploring the development of a series of 1–2-day workshops, primarily for federal managers and others practicing in the field. The workshops would target specific policy issues, such as international data exchange, emerging sector-specific needs for improved weather services, the pricing and valuation of weather and climate services and research.
Look for additional information on these programs in upcoming Newsletters. The August status report is available at http://www.ametsoc.org/AMS/atmospolicy.
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As the Senate returns from its summer recess this September, one of the major items on its agenda will be consideration of the FY01 VA, HUD, Independent Agencies appropriations bill, which funds the National Science Foundation (NSF) and NASA.
The bill was passed by the House before the summer recess, but the Senate VA, HUD appropriations subcommittee, chaired by Senator Christopher “Kit” Bond (R-Missouri), did not even attempt to draft a bill because it had so little money.
Bond and Ranking Minority Member Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland), along with Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Mississippi) and some colleagues, are hoping to double the NSF budget.
Lott and Republican Senators Spencer Abraham (Michigan), James Imhofe (Oklahoma), and Robert Bennett (Utah) sent a letter to Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (Arkansas) and Ranking Minority Member Robert Byrd (D-West Virginia). Stevens and Byrd would be instrumental in determining how much money the VA, HUD subcommittee will have in writing the bill.
In the letter, Lott and his colleagues cite the decline in funding for physics, among other disciplines. The letter also describes the importance of nanotechnology research. It concludes: “Senators Bond and Mikulski have just announced their intention to double NSF in five years. His is a laudable goal, and we urge your support for NSF funding at levels sufficient to achieve this goal.”
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While some members of Congress have expressed concern that the federal government may be paying too much to reimburse universities for overhead costs, a recent RAND study has found that the rates for university overhead for over a decade have remained constant and are lower than those at federal or private laboratories.
“The partnership in research between the federal government and U.S. research universities has been widely praised for advancing scientific knowledge, improving the quality of life of Americans, contributing to the nation’s prosperity, strengthening its national security, promoting technological innovation, and training the future scientific workforce,” RAND noted in the report, titled “Paying for University Research Facilities and Administration.”
In the federal–university research partnership, the government, through its research agencies, generally reimburses institutions for direct costs (such as materials and labor) and for some percentage of indirect costs (such as facilities maintenance and renewal, heating and cooling, and central staff), which the report refers to as F&A (facilities and administrative costs) explained a recent review of the study by the American Institute of Physics’ Bulletin of Science Policy News.
To help determine whether the taxpayer is receiving value for these federal expenditures, Congress in the 1998 National Science Foundation Authorization Act asked the Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP) for an analysis of facilities and administrative costs. The analysis, produced for OSTP by RAND, was released on 24 July. The report runs over 50 pages and is available at http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1135.1.
“Some observers believe that F&A spending consumes an increasing share of federal research dollars, with a corresponding decrease in funds going directly to researchers. The data in this report do not support this view,” the study noted. “Overall, the system appears stable. According to the available data, F&A spending as a percentage of project cost has remained about level for at least a decade. In addition, F&A spending at colleges and universities is generally slightly lower than at other types of research institutions, such as federal laboratories and industrial research laboratories.”
Based on available data, which the report acknowledged as incomplete, RAND found that more than $15 billion spent annually by the federal government on university research, about three-fourths go direct costs and one-fourth to indirect costs. In general, this federal contribution covers much, but not all, of the F&A costs to the universities. This is due in part to the fact that the universities voluntarily share some of these costs and in part to statutory limitations on federal reimbursement for administrative expenses.
The report estimates that the federal government pays approximately $3.8 billion a year to cover what amounts to about 75% of total F&A costs for federally sponsored research, while universities provide about $1.3 billion, or 25% of the F&A costs, the Bulletin article explained.
While it makes no recommendations, the report points out some actions that might benefit both sides in the research partnership. It suggests that universities, in particular, could benefit from the stability and predictability of a standard set of rules for F&A reimbursement. It also notes that a significant fraction of universities’ F&A costs can be attributed to health, safety, and other requirements dictated by federal, state, and local laws.
One possible method of reducing administrative costs, the report noted, “is to examine the laws and regulations that give rise to costly requirements on university facilities and administration. If some of these requirements could be streamlined, universities could reduce costs and the federal government could lower payments for F&A costs without forcing universities to shift resources from other programs.”
The report cautions that “if the federal government were to significantly reduce” F&A payments without such changes, to make up the difference universities might be forced to shift funds from other valuable missions “such as education, public service or patient care. It seems worthwhile to further investigate the options for universities to shift funding and the consequences of those shifts before contemplating major changes in reimbursement of F&A costs.”
Sections of the report address how reimbursement rates are determined; comparison of university F&A reimbursement rates with federal reimbursement to other entities; distribution of reimbursement across facility and administrative uses; impacts of changes in federal reimbursement policy; impacts of federal, state, and local regulations; options for controlling growth of reimbursement rates; and considerations for creating a database of relevant information.
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The National Council of Industrial Meteorologists (NCIM) met in Denver, Colorado, in June for its annual meeting. During the meeting the group installed and elected new officers including Dr. Wayne R. Sand, president; Jill F. Hasling, president-elect; William H. Haggard, secretary/treasurer; James R. Block, director; and Phillip D. Falconer, director. Other continuing directors are Christopher D. Bedford and Lee E. Branscome.
In addition, NCIM members were briefed on National Weather Service; toured the NOAA Forecast System Laboratory and the National Weather Service Forecast Office—both at the David Skaggs Research Center in Boulder, Colorado; held a business meeting; and attended a reception and banquet. The group exchanged information and views on many topics of common interest such as continuing education, AMS Private Sector Board activities, public–private partnership, student opportunities, outreach, membership categories, workshops, scholarships and internships, Web site expansion, position papers, and an NCIM vision paper presently under development.
The NCIM plans a town meeting session at the AMS Annual Meeting in Albuquerque in January, and is considering Boston for the site of its Annual Meeting in 2001.
The NCIM, founded in 1968 to further the development and expansion of the professional practice of industrial meteorology, is a nonprofit association of meteorologists in private practice, providing industrial, forensic, aviation, agricultural, weather modification, systems design, climatic, instrumental, media, air/water quality, marine, Internet, waste management, weather graphical display, severe weather, sailing weather, educational, and related services to the wide range of users. NCIM membership is limited to those professional consulting meteorologists who meet the qualifications for CCM certification and whose principal activity is consulting and industrial meteorology. The NCIM is dedicated to the highest standards of education, integrity, proficiency and professionalism in its members' services.
All NCIM members are certified by the American Meteorological Society as Certified Consulting Meteorologists.
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Global Aerospace Corporation was recently awarded a $600,000 NASA contract to begin the second phase of its balloon flight path control system. The contract is for building and testing a prototype of the StratoSailÒ Trajectory Control System that may be used to control the direction of travel on one of NASA’s Ultra Long Duration Balloon missions. Currently the NASA stratospheric balloons simply drift with the wind. The system will help the balloon maintain a preplanned flight path.
The StratoSailÒ flight path control technology can be used to divert balloon flights around uncooperative countries and dangerous weather systems, or even for interplanetary missions such as steering balloons on Venus or Titan. The system will reduce launch and landing complexities by allowing more control over the balloon’s direction of flight, and will increase the success of payload recovery. Additionally, this system will allow more control over scientific missions.
The control technology uses a rudder-type system to react against the different wind streams in the atmosphere. A wing is suspended on a long tether 15 km (9.3 mi) below the balloon. The wing generates a lift force that can be controlled to nudge the balloon system in the desired direction. The balloons of the NASA project are designed to fly at an altitude of 35 km (21.7 mi). The trajectory control device would be located 15 km below the balloon at an altitude of 20 km (12.4 mi), which is above most aircraft.
The StratoSailÒ system applies only a slight amount of sideways control force, yet this is enough to significantly influence the balloon’s trajectory. By controlling the latitude of the balloon as it drifts around the world, it is possible to return the balloon to its launch site. This will increase the chance of recovering the balloon’s scientific instrumentation package and allow the possibility of reusing it. Payload recovery can represent a savings of several million dollars per mission to NASA. A single recovered payload (that might otherwise have been lost) could offset much of the development cost of the system.
For more specifics see http://www.gaerospace.com/publicPages/projectPages/StratoSail/index.html.
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Thanks to the unique capabilities of Canada’s RADARSAT satellite, researchers believe they are making “one of most significant breakthroughs in the last two decades of ice research.”
RADARSAT’s special sensors take images at night to peer through clouds, allowing scientists to see the complete ice cover of the Arctic. This allows tracking of any shifts and changes, in unprecedented detail, over the course of an entire winter. The radar images are up to 100 times better than those taken by previous satellites, according to the researchers.
Using this new information, scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, can generate comprehensive maps of Arctic sea ice thickness for the first time.
“Before we knew only the extent of the ice cover,” said Dr. Ronald Kwok, JPL principal investigator of a project called Sea Ice Thickness Derived From High Resolution Radar Imagery. “We also knew that the sea ice extent had decreased over the last 20 years, but we knew very little about ice thickness. Since sea ice is very thin, about 10 feet (3 meters) it is very sensitive of climate change.”
Until now, observations of polar sea ice thickness have been available for specific areas, but not for the entire polar region. The new radar mapping technique also has given scientists a close look at how the sea ice cover grows and contorts over time.
“Using this new dataset, we have the first estimates of how much ice has been produced and where it formed during the winter,” Kwok said. “We have never been able to do this before. Through our radar maps of the Arctic Ocean, we can actually see ice breaking apart and thin ice growth in the openings.”
RADARSAT gives researchers a piece of the overall puzzle every 3 days by creating a complete image of the Arctic. Scientists then put those puzzle pieces together to create a time-lapsed view of this remote and inhospitable region. So far, they have processed one season’s worth of growth.
“We can see large cracks in the ice cover, where most ice grows,” Kwok explained. “These cracks are much longer than previously thought, some as long as 1200 miles (2000 km). If the ice is thinning due to warming, we’ll expect to see more of these long cracks over the Arctic Ocean.”
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India has joined the international network of ground stations receiving signals from the Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE), a NASA satellite that collects solar wind data and contributes to space weather monitoring and forecasting services of NOAA.
By joining this global network, India has started contributing to rapid worldwide delivery of space weather data, according a spokesman with the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO).
NOAA requires ISRO’s tracking support in the critical winter months of October–February and to fill up the coverage gap between Japan and the United Kingdom, according to a report in the 28 August issue of Space News.
The stations in Japan and the United Kingdom provide 3 hours less coverage each day during the winter months because of the shorter days, the story noted.
The ground station in India, located south of those countries and thus has longer winter days, helps to close the gap. “We also fill in whenever there is a problem at any of the other stations,” according to R. Ramani, deputy director of satellite communications with ISRO, the story reported.
For instance, when the Communications Research Laboratory in Tokyo, the Japanese station in the network, was shut down last July because of a typhoon, India filled in with its ground station.
Data from the U.S. satellite’s solar wind instrument received at ISRO’s Telemetry and Tracking Network are transmitted via the Internet to the Space Environment Center in Boulder, Colorado, for processing. The processed data are then made available to scientists.
Indian space weather researchers use the data, and NOAA also produces and distributes space weather bulletins based on data collected by ACE.
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Even though the first half of the 2000 Atlantic hurricane season was quiet, NOAA experts are still predicting slightly above average numbers and intensity of storms during the remainder of the season, according to an updated season outlook released recently.
“The fact there were no storms during the months of June and July is not unusual and has little bearing on the remainder of the season, said National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield. “In fact, September is the peak of Atlantic hurricane activity. What matters is getting the public prepared for the storms that make landfall.”
Mayfield said that 14 of the last 60 hurricane seasons have had no activity in June and July. The hurricane season runs from 1 June to 30 November.
Analysis by NOAA scientists show that overall activity should be slightly higher than average due to remaining weak La Niña conditions and the global weather patterns that control conditions over the tropical Atlantic. However, the season will likely not be quite as active as either the 1998 or 1999 season, they explained.
An above average Atlantic hurricane season is characterized by at least two of the following three factors: a) at least 11 tropical storms; b) 7 or more of which typically become hurricanes, and c) 3 or more of which become major hurricanes (maximum sustained winds over 110 mph, category 3 on the Saffir–Simpson hurricane scale).
In its hurricane forecast issued in May, NOAA experts forecast at least 11 named tropical storms—2 more than the twentieth-century average—and 7 hurricanes, of which 3 will have winds above 110 mph. In that kind of year, they explained, 2 or 3 hurricanes typically strike the U.S. mainland.
In 1999, there were 12 named tropical cyclones, including 8 hurricanes and 4 tropical storms. That was above the 1950–99 averages of 9.9 named tropical cyclones, 5.9 hurricanes, and 4.0 tropical storms. Five of the 1999 hurricanes were major hurricanes with wind speeds of 110 mph or higher, and all 5 became category 4 hurricanes (131 mph or more on the Saffir–Simpson scale)—the most category 4 hurricanes in a single season since records began in 1886.
Dr. Chris Landsea, of NOAA’s Hurricane Research Division, reporting for the group of scientists, noted additional factors, suggesting an active season: “the structure and location of the African jet stream is poised to provide energy to developing tropical systems as they move westward from the African coast. Also favorable are low surface air pressure across the Atlantic and Caribbean and a moist unstable atmosphere over the tropical Atlantic.”
Agency scientists said the 2000 season is expected to produce several Cape Verde storms, which move westward from the coast of Africa and pose a significant threat to the Caribbean islands and he coastal United States. The United States experiences an average of 1–2 hurricane strikes each year.
To date, 4 systems have formed in the Atlantic during this hurricane season. Additional information is available on the Internet at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov.
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The average July 2000 surface temperature in the United States was above normal but far from a record, according to statistics calculated by NOAA's scientists at the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina.
The average July temperature based on preliminary reports was 74.78°F, which is 0.47°F warmer than the 106-year average, making it the 38th-warmest July since records began in 1895. Conditions were generally cooler and wetter than normal in the Northeast and Midwest regions, while warmer and drier than normal conditions continued to prevail across many states in the Deep South and western United States. Pennsylvania and West Virginia experienced their coolest July on record, and 7 other eastern states were much cooler than normal.
It was the seventh-warmest July on record for Utah and warmer than normal in 15 other states. Although heavy precipitation fell in portions of the Northeast and Great Plains in July, below-normal rains and hot conditions exacerbated drought conditions in portions of the West, South, and Southeast. Thirty-one percent of the United States experienced severe to extreme drought conditions including portions of Texas, where July 2000 was the driest July in the 106-year period of record. The above-normal temperatures in combination with below-normal precipitation in southern and western states have intensified drought conditions and led to the worst wildfire season in 50 years for many western states. Nevada and Arizona experienced their second-driest July and 6 other states (Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, and Utah) received much below average precipitation.
Although the average July temperature was far from record-breaking in the United States, the abnormally warm conditions observed earlier this year made the January–July 2000 average temperature (54.85°F) the warmest such 7-month period on record. Every state in the contiguous United States, except South Carolina, Maine, and Vermont, was warmer than normal. Above-average temperatures have been most persistent in the western half of the United States. This was the warmest January–July on record for New Mexico, Texas, and Utah. It was the second-warmest for Colorado, Nevada, and Wyoming.
Fifteen states throughout the South and West were much drier than normal including Florida, which experienced its second-driest year-to-date period. Conversely, wetter than normal conditions prevailed in 17 states, primarily in the Northeast and Midwest. For the nation, January–July 2000 was the 32d driest such period since 1895.
Average global surface temperatures were also warmer than normal in July 2000. The global land and ocean temperature was +0.59°F (+0.33°C) above the 1880–1999 long-term mean, the seventh-warmest July on record and 0.65°F (0.36°C) cooler than the record set in 1998. Land surface temperatures were +0.88°F (+0.49°C) above average while the global sea surface temperature was +0.47°F (+0.26°C) warmer than the long-term mean. The average land and ocean temperature anomaly for the year-to-date period was +0.74°F (+0.41°C), the fourth-warmest January–July period on record.
Temperatures in the lower half of the atmosphere (lowest 8 km or 26 200 feet of the atmosphere) were colder than the 20-year (1979–98) average. Satellite data provided by scientists at NASA and the Global Hydrology and Climate Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville indicate that the average temperature in the lower half of the atmosphere was -0.16°F (-0.09°C) below average in July. The average January through July temperature was also -0.16°F below average, the ninth-coolest such period since 1979.
The statistics for July and the year-to-date are online at http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/ol/climate/research/2000/jul/jul00.html.
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Summer thunderstorms can raise mayhem with airline schedules, creating delays and cancellations. In the midst of this season’s flight disruptions, the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), with funding from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), has developed a National Corrective Weather Forecast which, since 1 June, has been whipping out storm updates on the Internet every 5 minutes.
“We check the updated forecast throughout the day,” said Steve Caisse, flight superintendent for Delta Air Lines and past president of the Airline Dispatchers Federation. “It’s invaluable as we determine routings and select altitudes for our aircraft.
“It gives dispatchers a better picture of where the thunderstorms will be over the next several hours, which is a critical element in the safe and efficient execution of our flight schedule.”
In addition to Delta, among other major airlines using the product are American, Northwest, Southwest, and TWA.
An official National Weather Service guidance product, the online “nowcast” operates out of the National Weather Service’s Aviation Weather Center (AWC) in Kansas City, Missouri. Its 1-hour national thunderstorm forecast automatically updates every 5 minutes to help commercial airlines, the FAA, and general aviation keep planes safe and on time.
“We’re working to provide the most accurate, current, and useful thunderstorm information available within today’s technology,” explained NCAR Project Scientist Cynthia Mueller. Mueller, along with colleagues, developed the system for the FAA over the past year from her NCAR office in Boulder, Colorado. It is the most recent outcome of 15 years of NCAR research and development aimed at providing thunderstorm forecasts for the aviation community.
The nowcast is used together with another recently developed guidance tool, the Collaborative Collective Forecast Product, now in its second year of operation at the AWC. The collaborative forecast provides airline meteorologists with the best first guess at thunderstorm activity over the next 2–6 hours. Every few hours the AWC meteorologists, FAA flow control managers, and airline meteorologists adjust this initial forecast during a conference call and then plan accordingly.
However, thunderstorms are not very predictable 6 hours ahead. For strategic decisions over the next hour, dispatchers need an accurate look at the current situation. That’s where the NCAR nowcast comes in, providing a frequently updated national map of where the thunderstorms are now and where they’re forecast to be in 1 hour.
According to the FAA, about 69% of air traffic control delays during 1999 were due to weather.
The FAA’s Aviation Weather Research Program sponsored NCAR’s development of the National Convective Weather Forecast. The MIT Lincoln Laboratories, NWS Aviation Weather Center, and NOAA’s National Severe Storms Laboratory provided some research assistance.
Access to NCWF on the Web is at http://adds.awc-kc.noaa.gov, and then click on Convective Page.
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After 2 years with unusually high numbers of tornadoes in the United States, the tornado season for this year has proven relatively quiet, with only 741 tornadoes reported through 21 August, the lowest total since 1989, according to National Weather Service (NWS) officials.
The 741 tornado reports during the first 7 months of 2000 is almost half of those for the same periods in 1999 and 1998, 1170 and 1141 tornadoes, respectively. Historically, March–July are the busiest months for tornado activity. The number of deaths resulting from tornadoes is significantly lower this year as well, with only 25 deaths compared with 7-month totals of 91 in 1999 and 126 in 1998.
In addition, preliminary reports indicate only one of the tornadoes this year has produced damage stronger than F3, which is considered strong but not violent on the Fujita damage scale. A tornado preliminarily rated an F4 struck Granite Falls, Minnesota, on July 25, killing one and causing more than $20 million in damage to buildings and other property. Violent tornadoes, F4 or F5, occur about 10 times a year, with most of them in March–July.
"This year is rare, but not unheard of. It's just one of the natural fluctuations that occur," said Dr. Joseph Schaefer, director of the NWS Storm Prediction Center. "This year, the upper-level flow or jet stream has been moving from west to east across the country further north than usual, from the Rockies through the upper Midwest and the Great Lakes region to the northern mid-Atlantic states."
In contrast, by this time last year, 62 F3 and greater tornadoes had occurred, a record number of 216 tornadoes were reported in January and 325 tornadoes touched down in May. The deadliest outbreak of 1999 happened on 3 May in Oklahoma and Kansas, with 72 tornadoes and 46 deaths. One F5 tornado that struck Oklahoma City and surrounding suburbs that day became the most expensive single tornado in history, causing about $1 billion in damage.
Forecasters say this kind of change from year to year is normal. Normally, during the spring, the predominant upper-level flow of weather across the United States is southwest to northeast across the central plains, Schaefer said. Without that high-level flow through this region, known as tornado alley because of the historically high number of occurrences there, a necessary ingredient for tornado and severe thunderstorm formation is missing, he said.
More information is available online about tornado statistics at http://www.spc.noaa.gov.
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The last of 139 units in the National Weather Service’s Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS), located at the Alaska River Forecast Center in Anchorage, Alaska, was declared operational on 23 August, giving the Weather Service a fully operational interactive computer and communications system nationwide.
AWIPS is the centerpiece of a $4.5 billion modernization of NWS. Each NWS office develops its forecasts using weather information streaming in from Doppler radar, satellites, automated observing systems, and NWS supercomputers. The forecasters use AWIPS to convert these huge amounts of data into useful forecasts and warnings and rapidly communicate accurate, up-to-date weather information to the public.
AWIPS also benefits the Weather Service’s many customers who enjoy access to more forecast information, data, and graphical products through a larger, faster data pipeline. Users of NWS forecasts, warnings, and data include the general public, business interests, TV weather forecasters, private forecasting companies, private research organizations, universities, and government agencies.
The AWIPS satellite broadcast network, known as NOAAPORT, makes satellite imagery, model guidance, forecasts, and warnings available to anyone having the correct receiving equipment.
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Two years after a tsunami killed 2000 persons in a Papua New Guinea village, NOAA scientists are offering a suggestion that some of the largest tsunamis may be enhanced by underwater landslides and slumps, in addition to the movement of the ocean floor because of an underwater earthquake.
“We’ve spent a lot of time looking at the possible cause of the Papua New Guinea tsunami,” said Eddie Bernard, director of NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, Washington, which among other things studies tsunamis. “There was just something wrong with the timing and size which made us take a look at other causes.”
Earthquake-generated tsunamis travel at known speeds. Sensors registered a magnitude-7 earthquake at 6:49 p.m. on 17 July 1998. However, by the accepted formula, the wave that hit the north shore of the country was not only about 10 minutes too late but it also was too big, according to Bernard.
With that conflict in mind, an international team went to Papua New Guinea (PNG), north of Australia, to search for clues as to the tsunami’s origin. Because communications in PNG are basically nonexistent, eyewitness accounts were critical, as was collecting evidence before survivors relocated or storms or scavengers removed material.
Despite the conflicting information about the wave’s arrival time, the team was able to determine that the first wave hit shore a few minutes after 7 p.m. It is often the second tsunami wave that does the most damage, as curious spectators, believing that the worst is over, wade into the receding water or climb down from a safe spot on high ground only to get hit by an even stronger wall of water.
Noting many landslides on shore, the survey team suggested that the tsunami may have been triggered by an offshore slide, which would account for the timing delay and the larger-than-expected wall of water.
A marine survey consisting of multibeam bathymetric surveys and visual examinations with manned submersibles was conducted that found evidence of a slump, which starts and stops, and reacts to shifts in the ocean floor. Landslides, on the other hand, accelerate and just keep going.
Earlier this year, researchers from the USGS found evidence of a similar land formation off the southern California coast. A team from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution also discovered faults in the ocean floor on the east coast, an area not usually associated with tsunamis, most likely caused by eruptions of gas trapped under layers of sediment.
“These discoveries are drawing our attention to other causes of tsunamis. Besides the traditional tectonic earthquake,” Bernard explained. “The more we learn about possible causes, the better we can know when to issue warnings.”
There are two United States–operated tsunami warning centers, one in Alaska and one in Hawaii, both run by the National Weather Service. The two centers use seismometers to detect the occurrence of earthquakes within minutes of the start of an earthquake. They cannot, however, detect underwater landslides or slumps with these instruments.
A series of buoys anchored along the Pacific coasts from Alaska to Monterey, Calif., can detect the presence of a tsunami. So even if a slump or landslide generates a tsunami, tsunami detectors exist to warn people of its dangers.
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With the first two months of the 2000 Atlantic hurricane season having passed without a hurricane, USGS nevertheless continues to keep a watchful eye out for hurricanes and severe tropical storms and has updated its coastal storm-response plan.
The plan, an internal document drafted by the bureau during the 1998 hurricane season, has been revised for the 2000 season and provides the infrastructure and process for forming unique USGS storm-response teams each time a severe coastal storm threatens the lives and property of U.S. citizens in the eastern and southeastern parts of the country.
The storm-response team is composed of USGS managers and specialists in the fields of biology, hydrology, mapping, geology, and communications. The team of experts coordinates operations and logistics with the USGS Center for Integration of Natural Disaster Information to ensure the timely and efficient collection and distribution of USGS data that is critical for use by emergency management officials at the local, state, and federal level.
When a hurricane or severe storm threatens the lives and property of U.S. citizens, USGS geographers respond to mass requests from local, state, and other federal agencies for maps of areas possibly affected by the potential hazard. Emergency relief workers use these maps to plot the boundaries of a potential disaster area to determine the number of households involved. This information is needed to estimate the amount of food, clothing, and shelter that might be needed by people in areas affected by a severe storm.
During the storm itself, real-time stream data (stage and volume of water) are automatically relayed by satellite telemetry from many locations around the country as part of a nationwide network of USGS streamgaging stations. These data are received by the National Weather Service and other government agencies responsible for issuing flood warnings to safeguard the lives and property of people during a severe storm and are provided over the Internet at http://water.usgs.gov/realtime.html.
In addition, USGS field scientists in coastal states are looking at what natural resources, from beaches to wetlands to endangered species, might be adversely affected by the fury of a hurricane or severe tropical storm.
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Slide sets detailing numerous natural disasters throughout history are now available from NOAA's National Geophysical Data Center. The slide sets are presented as 35-mm slides, digital images on CD-ROM, or online.
Sets are available for earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides, life-threatening waves, and other geologic hazards. Each slide set consists of 20 slides in color and/or black and white along with a separate booklet of captions to explain in greater detail the disaster presented. These slide sets provide an affordable and useful educational tool for students in elementary through high school.
NGDC's Solid Earth Geophysics Division in Boulder, Colorado, maintains this collection of natural disaster images. The new slide sets can be ordered at http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/seg/fliers/se-0801.shtml.
For additional information about these and other slide sets from NGDC, please contact Karen Horan at (303) 497-6277 or Karen.E.Horan@noaa.gov.
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NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina, has placed a new Web system online to provide quick access to the center's archive of digital satellite imagery and movies of hurricanes and other significant weather and environmental events, including icebergs, fires, and other events.
The site contains imagery for the past 30 years and provides a quick search method to access and view images for a selected event. The site also provides users with the option of placing online orders for hard copy prints of any image via the online store for a fee. The address is http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/.
A second new Web site on drought history also is available from NOAA's National Geophysical Data Center in Boulder, Colorado. The Web site, entitled "North American Drought: A Paleo Perspective," explains how data from sources such as tree rings, lake sediments, and archeological remains can provide insight about past droughts.
Just how unusual was the Dust Bowl drought? Was this a rare event or should we expect drought of similar magnitude to occur in the future? Rainfall records used to evaluate drought extend back just over 100 years and are too short to answer these questions. Data from the natural archive are used to answer these questions and to evaluate twentieth-century North American droughts in the context of hundreds to thousands of years in the field of paleoclimatology.
Paleoclimatology is the study of past climate. The word is derived from the Greek root "paleo," which means ancient, and the term "climate" meaning the weather conditions over an interval of time, usually several decades. Paleoclimate is climate that existed before humans began collecting instrumental measurements of weather such as temperature from a thermometer, precipitation from a rain gauge, sea level pressure from a barometer, and wind speed and direction from an anemometer. Instead of instrumental measurements of weather and climate, paleoclimatologists use natural environmental records to infer past climate conditions. Paleoclimatology includes the collection of evidence of past climate conditions and the investigation of the climate processes underlying these conditions.
The new Web site is the second in NGDC's Paleo Perspectives series and follows the highly successful "A Paleo Perspective on Global Warming." The new Web site can be visited at http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/drought.
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Tropical waters in the Northern Hemisphere have been warming at an accelerated rate since 1984, according to NOAA scientists, contributing to unprecedented coral bleaching.
The rate, they said, is nearly +0.5°C (+1°F) per decade, 10 times the global rate. The warming has contributed to the coral bleaching, damage that can indicate the coral is being stressed by a number of factors. These factors include high water temperatures, pollution, sedimentation, high light levels, reduced water levels, or changes in salinity.
The information was gathered by a team of scientists, led by Alan E. Strong of NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service (NESDIS), which analyzed surface temperature data from NOAA’s polar-orbiting satellites from1984 through 1996.
“When viewed globally, from the perspective of the continuous and complete measurements that only satellites can provide, our oceans reveal some notable temperature trends over the 13 years of the data,” Strong explained.
“A most intriguing aspect was the finding that, other than a few regions representing areas that include the Gulf Stream and the Kuroshio Current in the North Pacific, the Northern Hemisphere waters have been heating at an enhanced rate,” he continued.
Analyses of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans, when taken as a whole, indicate that from 1984 to 1996, a rather robust warming has been taking place over the Northern Hemisphere Tropics, close to what has been referred to as the thermal equator, Strong said. Many coral reefs are found within the region of marked temperature increase, and most of the reefs within these latitudes have experienced bleaching over the past 10 years.
Strong and his colleagues compared the satellite-only sea surface temperature data to two separate datasets that are primarily based on in situ data. All three datasets consistently show warming in the equatorial Pacific, cooling in the central North Pacific, and general cooling in the Southern Hemisphere.
“The most troubling finding,” Strong said, “is the marked increase in the tropical water of the Northern Hemisphere around the globe at a latitude of roughly 5°N. If this trend were to continue, implications for our coral reefs throughout these waters would be bleak.”
Strong cautioned that other factors such as changes in atmospheric water vapor, aerosols, clouds, and instrument variation must be taken into account. “If this trend is real, and not an artifact of these factors, or other natural climate oscillators such as the Pacific Decadal oscillation and/or North Atlantic oscillation, the extensive bleaching that our reefs have experienced in the past two years would likely become commonplace,” Strong said.
In addition to Strong, the researchers are Ed J. Kearns, University of Miami, and Kenji K. Gjovig, U.S. Naval Academy. The results of the research are published in the 1 June edition of the American Geophysical Union’s Geophysical Research Letters.
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The nation's newest geostationary weather satellite, GOES-11, has successfully completed testing and is ready to replace one of the country's older weather satellites when needed, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
GOES-11, which was launched 3 May 2000, is currently stored in orbit, ready to replace GOES-8 or -10 when one of them fails. GOES-8 overlooks the east coast of North and South America, and well out into the Atlantic Ocean. GOES-10 overlooks the west coast and out into the Pacific Ocean, including Hawaii.
For the past several months NASA, NOAA, and contract engineers have tested GOES-11. NASA turned GOES-11 over to NOAA on 18 August.
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“The more we do in space, the more serious and potentially costly the problems of space weather will become.” Those are the words of Dr. Paul Brekke, a Norwegian solar physicist serving as the European Space Agency’s (ESA) project scientist for the ESA-NASA Solar and Heliospheric Laboratory (SOHO), now the world’s chief watch dog for outbursts of the Sun.
Speaking at the International Astronomical Union in Manchester, England, in August, Brekke said, “For thousands of years, my ancestors in Norway marveled at the space weather seen in the Northern Lights. But auroras never hurt a sailor or a farmer. It’s only with our modern electrical, electronic, and space technologies that the Sun’s effects become more damaging and personally hazardous to astronauts.”
A recent solar explosion demonstrated the role SOHO plays in the early warning system for space weather, he said. On 14 July, SOHO’s ultraviolet telescope saw the bright flash of a solar flare near the center of the Sun’s disk at 10:12 Universal Time (GMT). The flare’s intensity peaked at 10:24 and half an hour later SOHO’s instruments detected a mass of gas racing out from the Sun in a coronal mass ejection (CME). The gas appeared as an expanding halo around the Sun because the CME was heading toward Earth.
Next, he continued, a burst of energetic particles from the solar explosion hit SOHO. It was the most intense storm of energetic particles in the present solar cycle. By then, he said, the world’s space weather reporting centers already were aware of the eruption.
Traveling more slowly than the energetic particles, the interplanetary shock wave arrived at SOHO a day later at 14:19 UT on 15 July. The solar wind instrument on SOHO registered a jump in the wind speed from 500 to 800 km per second, increasing to more than 900 km per second an hour later.
As the spacecraft is stationed 1.5 million km out on the sunward side of the Earth, the CME slammed into the Earth’s magnetic field half an hour later than at SOHO, provoking auroral displays that peaked in the early hours of 16 July.
Satellite operators and electric power engineers experienced many disturbances in their systems but they reported no major failures, he said, perhaps because they had been forewarned.
“SOHO has proved to be especially valuable for spotting the coronal mass ejections,” Brekke explained. “But dangerous energetic particles capable of killing an unprotected astronaut travel much faster and arrive a half an hour after the sighting of a solar flare.
“To give more useful warnings, we’ll have to find out how to predict the eruptions, which means getting deeper into solar physics that SOHO was designed to study."
SOHO was built in Europe under a cooperative program between ESA and NASA. It was launched in 1995 and carries 12 sets of instruments provided European and American scientific teams for fundamental studies of the solar interior and atmosphere, energetic particle emissions, and the solar wind.
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NOAA-L, the latest in a series of polar-orbiting operational environmental observation satellites, is scheduled for launch on a Titan II launch vehicle from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, no earlier than 20 September, according to NOAA and NASA officials.
The spacecraft will be renamed NOAA-16 after achieving orbit. NOAA currently has two operational polar orbiters: NOAA-14, launched in December 1994, and NOAA-15, launched in May 1998. NOAA-L will replace NOAA-14 in a 2 p.m. local solar time orbit.
The NOAA satellite series is designed for a 2-year mission life, but historically, they have averaged a lifetime more than twice that long. The satellite has a three-axis body stabilized design, which enable the spacecraft to point accurately toward the Earth and provide continuous global images of cloud cover, surface parameters such as snow, ice, and vegetation, as well as atmospheric temperatures, moisture, and aerosol distributions.
The NOAA satellites include a Space Environment Monitor (SEM2), which provides measurements to determine the intensity of the Earth’s radiation belts and the flux of charged particles at the satellite altitude and warns of solar wind occurrences that may affect long-range communications or high-altitude operations.
Also flying on NOAA-L is the Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet Radiometer (SBUV/2), which is both an imager and a sounder that produces total ozone maps and measures the ozone distribution in the atmosphere as a function of altitude.
NOAA-L also will be equipped with a search and rescue system, SARSAT, which receives emergency signals from beacons on ships and aircraft in distress. SARSAT is part of an international network of earth stations that provides global distress alert and location information to appropriate rescue authorities for maritime, aviation, and land users in distress. SARSAT has been attributed to having saved more than 10 000 lives since it became operational in November 1982.
NOAA-L will operate in a circular, near-polar orbit of 470 nautical miles (870 km) with an inclination of approximately 98° to the equator. Its orbit period, the time it takes to complete one orbit, will be approximately 102 minutes. Of that time, the satellite will average 72 minutes in sunlight and approximately 30 minutes in the Earth’s shadow. Because the Earth rotates approximately 26° during each orbit, the satellite observes a different portion of the Earth’s surface during each orbit.
The NOAA polar-orbiters are complementary to NOAA’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) in providing weather data to NWS forecasters. Where the GOES satellites provide near-term data from the continental United States and Hawaii, the polar-orbiting spacecraft provide full global data for short- and long-range forecast models, climate modeling, and various other secondary missions.
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If you think there was less snow on the ground this spring than usual in parts of the Midwest and western United States, data from NASA’s Terra satellite agrees with you.
Early results from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the spacecraft clearly observed a lot less snow cover than normal, according to officials at Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland.
In a presentation at the International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium in Hawaii in July, Dr. Dorothy K Hall said, “The winter of 1999–2000 brought relatively little snow cover to parts of the North American continent, and the snow melted early as compared to normal years. Low snow cover can result in drier soil conditions, affect crop production, and lead to wildfires.”
The MODIS composite snow cover map, derived from data taken over an 8-day period between 5 and 12 March, depicts the snow line into Canada, in the provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Only scattered snowcover existed over parts of the northern United States, though the mountains were still snow covered, the map showed.
According to NOAA/NESDIS, the average March snow line normally would extend from New England through the Midwest including southern Wisconsin to southern portions of North Dakota. The snow line then normally continues farther south in the western states, including the Rocky Mountains and west into the Cascades and the Sierras.
NOAA/NESDIS has been producing weekly snow maps of the Northern Hemisphere land surfaces since 1966, using visible-band satellite imagery. Because snow has such a high reflectivity compared to other surfaces on Earth, snow-covered areas appear much brighter in satellite imagery than most other surface features. Dr. Hall, however, noted that the key difference between the MODIS-produced snow maps and the images produced by NOAA/NESDIS is that “MODIS has a higher resolution and an improved ability to discriminate between snow and clouds.”
Typically, more than 40% of the Earth’s land surface in the Northern Hemisphere can be covered with snow during the winter months. The highly reflective nature of snow combined with its large surface cover make it an important factor in the Earth’s radiation balance, which includes incoming solar energy and energy reflected back into space.
Because the Earth is in a steady-state balance of incoming and outgoing energy, its temperature undergoes small change, but the mean temperature stays nearly the same. According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, snow may reflect up to 80% and 90% of incoming solar energy, whereas a surface without snow would reflect only 10%–20%.
Because so many areas of the world rely on the snowmelt for irrigation and drinking water, monitoring the snowpacks closely is necessary for assessment of water supply and flooding potential, Hall said. She explained that the lesser snowpack in March hinted at possible drought conditions from the Midwest to the Rockies this summer. Recent rains, however, have alleviated dry conditions in the Midwest.
MODIS continuously observes the Earth’s surface in a sweeping motion every 1–2 days with a scanning imaging radiometer. Its wide field of view (over 2300 km or 1429 miles) provides images of daylight-reflected solar radiation and daytime and nighttime thermal emissions over the entire globe. Sample MODIS imagery is available at http://www.nsidc.org/NASA/MODIS/.
Terra was launched on 18 December 1999 and began collecting data on 24 February, part of a 15-year dataset on which to base scientific investigations about the Earth.
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The level of foreign investment in U.S. commercial satellite imaging ventures will not be limited under U.S. government regulations effective 31 August. Previously, proposed rules capped the total foreign investment at 25%.
In issuing the regulation, however, NOAA insisted that U.S. companies licensed to operate imaging satellites retain control over those spacecraft from U.S. territory, according to a report in the 14 August issue of Space News.
The new regulations, published in the 31 July issue of the Federal Register, are aimed at setting clear distinctions between foreign investment in a United States–licensed system and operational control of that system, according to Space News.
Previously, foreign ownership in U.S. systems was measured by what NOAA called a bright line test, according to NOAA officials. Under that system, U.S. government scrutiny was triggered automatically when the total foreign investment in a United States–licensed venture reached a certain percentage threshold.
Under the new regulations, the need for review of a foreign investment will be determined on a case-by-case basis. The total percentage of foreign ownership will be just one factor in making that determination, the article noted.
While relaxing the rules, NOAA clarified its requirement that U.S. commercial remote-sensing licensees maintain absolute control of their satellites. Space News quoted Rick Shimon, a space enforcement officer with NOAA, as saying that this was done to eliminate any ambiguity on the matter. Specifically, the U.S. licensee must be able from U.S. territory to override imaging commands sent to the satellite by operators of foreign ground stations.
The new regulations note that they apply to any private remote-sensing system operator having “substantial connections with the United States or deriving substantial benefits from the United States.”
These connections, the article noted, include using a U.S. launch vehicle or satellite platform, operating a command or data acquisition station in the United States and processing or marketing data using U.S. facilities.
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The launch of the two remaining Cluster satellites was carried out successfully aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, on 9 August.
The second Cluster duo, named Rumba and Tango, rendezvoused with their two sister ships, creating a fleet that will explore the vast but invisible magnetic ocean that surrounds the Earth.
“This international mission will help us better understand a mysterious region of our space environment that can affect spacecraft and electrical power grids on Earth,” said Larry Christensen, Cluster project manager at Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland.
The Earth’s magnetic field, called the magnetosphere, is blasted and energized by the solar wind relentlessly by a stream of electrically charged particles that flows constantly from the Sun. During the next two years, the Cluster II fleet will penetrate the solar wind’s depths to see how the Earth’s magnetosphere responds and interacts with solar wind particles.
By flying in a tetrahedral, or triangular pyramid formation, the Cluster quartet will study the physical processes that take place between about 11 800 miles (19 000 km) and nearly 74 000 miles (119 000 km) above Earth, providing scientists with the first thorough three-dimensional maps of this shadowy realm.
The first Cluster pair, called Samba and Salsa, were launched on 16 July and reached their parking elliptical orbit on 21 July. The space quartet will orbit at an apogee of more than 75 200 miles (121 098 km) and a perigee of nearly 10 500 miles (16 869 km) above Earth.
For a listing of instruments aboard Cluster, see http://www.sci.esa.int/cluster/.
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NASA has announced plans to launch two large scientific rovers to Mars in 2003, rather than the original plan for just one.
Dr. Ed Weiler, associate administrator for Space Science, said both rovers will be launched on Delta II rockets from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. The first mission is targeted for 22 May, with the second slated for 4 June. After a seven-and-a-half month cruise, the first rover should enter Mars’s atmosphere on 2 January 2004, with the second rover bouncing to a stop on the Martian surface on 20 January.
The rovers will be exact duplicates, but that’s where the similarities end. Relatives of the highly successful 1997 Soujourner rover, these 300-lb mobile laboratories may look and act alike, but are going to decidedly different locations.
“For the first time, science and technology have given us the capability to explore alien planets in ways that used to exist only in science fiction movies,” Weiler explained. “To have two rovers driving over dramatically different regions of Mars at the same time, to be able to drive over and see what’s on the other side of the hill—it’s an exciting idea.
“I think everyone on earth who has ever dreamed of being an explorer on an alien planet will want to go along for the ride as we explore the surface of Mars.”
Scott Hubbard, Mars Program Director at NASA headquarters, said, “For the past few weeks, NASA has been undertaking an extensive study of a two-lander option. The scientific appeal of using the excellent launch opportunity in 2003 for two missions was weighed carefully against the resource requirements and schedule constraints.
As for landing sites, Dr. Jim Garvin, Mars Program Scientist at NASA headquarters, said, “We are thinking about localities where there is evidence of surface processes involving what we might call ‘past’ water on Mars. This includes sites where we have today mineralogical evidence that water may have produced unique chemical fingerprints, as well as places where it seems likely water ‘pounded’ in closed depressions for enough time to modify the regional geology.”
Given the high priority NASA and the administration assign to the Space Science program overall, and to the timely exploration of Mars, the agency proposes that Space Science cover additional costs of the first rover mission and that the bulk of the cost for the second lander be reallocated from programs outside Space Science.
NASA spokesman Don Savage said the estimated cost for the first lander was between $350 and $400 million. The copied second version would cost approximately $200 million.
The Mars 2003 Rover project will be managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, California.
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While NASA’s Vegetation Canopy Lidar (VCL) mission appeared on shaky ground a month ago, senior space agency officials agreed in early August to continue funding the project until December while they continue to seek corporate sponsors to save the overbudget forest mapping mission from cancellation.
The mission has been heading toward cancellation since a series of NASA reviews last spring concluded that finishing the earth science satellite would require an extra $47 million above the cost estimate of just less than $60 million. Also, NASA officials estimate the mission would not be ready for launch before May 2002, 20 months behind schedule, according to the 7 August edition of Space News.
NASA headquarters ordered a review of the program last December following the back-to-back Mars mission failures, and that review recommended additional instrument testing and other risk-reduction activities that VCL officials said account for a large part of the project cost overruns and schedule delays.
Senior NASA earth science officials urged the space agency’s Program Management Council in late June to recommend canceling the mission because it would exceed the $67.3 million budget cap, according to sources at the June meeting at NASA headquarters, Space News reported. Cost growth of 15% typically triggers termination reviews for NASA programs.
However, the Program Management Council chose instead to grant the VCL team’s request for additional time to come up with a plan to commercialize the mission. NASA selected VCL in 1997 to inaugurate its new Earth System Science Pathfinder series of low-cost missions. Designed to make three-dimensional maps of the earth’s forests using a light detection and ranging, or lidar sensor, the mission was slated to launch in September 2000 from Kodiak Island, Alaska.
The VCL team had discovered problems with the development of the spacecraft and lidar instrument by late 1999, prompting mission managers to slip the launch date 10 months to July 2001. The instrument, a multibeam-laser altimeter, is being developed by the Laboratory for Terrestrial Physics at Goddard. Orbital Sciences Corp., in Dulles, Virginia, is building the spacecraft.
About $29 million of the $47 million needed to complete the project is attributable to the additional risk-reduction activities called for by the peer reviews, Sabelhaus said.
Dubayah said he does not fault the NASA-ordered peer reviews for the troubled state of his project, but he is concerned about finding the extra money needed to complete the project, according to Space News.
Dubayah told the publication that he is looking to industry for money the save the mission. Although he would not say specifically which companies have expressed interest, he said VCL data would be useful to the timber industry, government forestry agencies, and land-use managers.
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NOAA officials have named Dr. Elizabeth Day as leader of the education program at NOAA’s National Sea Grant College Program in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Day will be responsible for managing Sea Grant’s education program, coordinating Sea Grant educational activities with NOAA and other federal agencies and organizations and providing leadership for the Dean John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship Program.
Prior to joining Sea Grant, Day was an assistant director for ocean science education at the National Science Foundation (NSF). During her varied career, she also has been coordinator of an environmental education center in Bluffton, South Carolina, and an environmental consultant at a Savannah, Georgia-based engineering firm.
She received her B.S. in marine science from the University of South Carolina and her M.S. in marine environmental science from State University of New York at Stony Brook. Her Ph.D. in marine science from the University of South Carolina had a research emphasis on marine science education.
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Margaret Davidson, director of Coastal Services Center in Charleston, South Carolina, has been named acting assistant administrator for NOAA’s National Ocean Service (NOS). Known as an innovative leader in key coastal resource issues, she will oversee operations for an organization of more than 1200 people working toward ensuring that the nation’s coasts remain safe, healthy, and productive.
Davidson joined NOAA in 1995 after having served as executive director of the South Carolina Sea Grant Consortium. Prior to that, she served as special counsel and assistant attorney general for the Louisiana Department of Justice.
Davidson earned her juris doctorate in natural resources law from Louisiana State University. She later earned a master’s degree in marine policy and resource economics from the University of Rhode Island. She holds a faculty appointment at the University of Charleston and serves on the adjunct faculties of Clemson University and the University of South Carolina.
She succeeds Dr. Nancy Foster, who died of complications of cancer in June.
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Captain Thomas Donaldson, deputy oceanographer of the navy, has been selected to be the next admiral to lead the Naval Meteorological and Oceanography Command at Stennis Space Center, Mississippi.
Donaldson replaces Rear Adm. Kenneth Barbor, who is retiring after 30 years of naval service. He has headed the command since October 1997.
Donaldson graduated from the Naval Academy in 1975 with a bachelor of science degree in oceanography. He also holds master’s degrees from the Naval Postgraduate School in meteorology and physical oceanography and from the National War College in international strategic studies.
During his career, he has served in a wide variety of positions including that as commanding officer of the Naval Atlantic Meteorology and Oceanography Center in Norfolk, Virginia, from September 1997 to May 1999. He joined the staff of the oceanographer in May 1999.
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Dr. Joel Myers, founder and president of AccuWeather, Inc., was honored in Jerusalem, Israel, on 24 August 2000 with the Theodor Herzl Award of the Jerusalem Fund of Aish HaTorah. The award was presented for Myers “impressive vision and tremendous accomplishments.”
Dr. Myers has received numerous awards and recognitions for his work. He was featured by Entrepreneur Magazine’s Encyclopedia of Entrepreneurs as one of the 520 greatest entrepreneurs in American history, and one of only 40 so named who have been born since the start of World War II.
AccuWeather provides customized weather services to clients in media, business, government, and education. Additional information is available on the company’s Internet site at http://www.accuweather.com.
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Edward N. Rappaport has been selected to serve as deputy director of the NOAA National Weather Service's Tropical Prediction Center/National Hurricane Center, located in Miami, Florida. Rappaport assumes the deputy's duties from Max Mayfield, who was appointed as the center's director in May.
Rappaport began his career with the National Hurricane Center in 1987 training as a postdoctoral fellow. He became a research meteorologist in 1988 and worked on a wide range of assignments. In 1990 he became an assistant hurricane specialist and Tropical Satellite and Analysis Center meteorologist. He became one of the center's six hurricane specialists in 1993.
From 1998 to the present, Rappaport was the chief of the center's Technical Support Branch. This unit maintains computer and communications systems, conducts applied research, and develops tools for hurricane and tropical weather analysis and prediction. Its storm surge group provides information for developing evacuation procedures for coastal areas.
Rappaport has published numerous papers in scientific journals in the United States and abroad. His recent study on the United States loss of life associated with hurricanes is scheduled to appear in the September issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. Rappaport earned his bachelor (1979) and master of science degrees (1983) from the University of Washington and his doctorate in atmospheric science from Texas Tech University (1988). He is an adjunct faculty member at Florida International University.
Rappaport received a Department of Commerce Bronze Medal for applied research. He has shared a Commerce Gold Medal for his work forecasting Hurricane Andrew and NOAA Administrator's Award for technical developments.
The Tropical Prediction Center/National Hurricane Center issues watches, warnings, forecasts, and analyses of hazardous tropical weather to save lives, mitigate property loss, and improve the nation's economic efficiency.
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