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A presentation by President Bush’s science advisor John Marburger is just one of the many special events, symposia, and functions taking place at the Society’s 83rd Annual Meeting, 9–13 February 2003.
Marburger, along with James Mahoney, NOAA deputy administrator and AMS past president, and David Garman, assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy at the Department of Energy, will talk about the administration’s priorities in climate change research and technology. The Presidential Forum will take place on Wednesday, 12 February beginning at 10 A.M.
A special two-day symposium honoring Drs. Robert and Joanne Simpson will be held on Wednesday, 12 February and Thursday, 13 February 2003. The symposium will honor the careers of Robert and Joanne Simpson, which combine into over a century of service to the meteorology community.
The 2nd Annual AMS Student Conference and Career Fair will be held 8–9 February 2003. The conference and career fair will focus on active areas and emerging opportunities in atmospheric and related sciences. Sessions will include invited speakers from the private, academic, and government sectors. A career fair is scheduled to provide a forum for students to personally interact with employers and representatives of graduate institutions, and includes the opportunity to establish contacts and set up interviews.
The Presidential Symposium on the History of the Atmospheric Sciences: People, Discoveries, and Technologies will include historians of science and the first three recipients of the AMS Graduate Fellowship in the History of Science.
The AMS Economic Development Committee is organizing a conference to be held on 11 and 12 February 2003 for users of commercial weather and climate services in fields related to water resources. Conference sponsors include the AMS, UCAR, NCIM, Vaisala Inc., Meteorlogix LLC, AccuWeather Inc., WSI Corporation, Atmospherics Inc., Firnspiegel LLC, Western Water Assessment Project, and NASA. There will be a separate registration fee for those attending this conference.
A workshop for practitioners, decision makers, and others interested in applications of satellite remote sensing to resource management is also planned. All registered attendees of the AMS Annual Meeting are eligible and welcome to attend. No separate registration fee will be required. Presentations will focus on topics such as disaster management, disease monitoring, hydrology, protection of natural resources, urban planning, agriculture, coastal zone management, fisheries, and forestry.
The following short courses will be held at the annual meeting:
More than 200 organizations have already signed up to exhibit at the 83rd Annual Meeting making it a unique showcase of products and services geared toward the atmospheric and related sciences.
The annual meeting also includes town hall meetings, an extensive AMS resource center, and much more.
The complete program for the AMS 83rd Annual Meeting, including all abstracts, hotel reservations, and meeting registration is available on the AMS Web site. The site also includes sponsorship and advertising opportunities.
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The AMS has posted two new draft statements for public comment on the AMS Web site at http://www.ametsoc.org/ams/POLICY/draftstatements/. The statements are as follows:
The statements will be posted for 30 days and then reviewed and considered by the AMS council.
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Nearly 200 scientists met the week of 28 October in Kansas City. Nearly 70 international guests from 35 countries participated in discussions of global change and the effect on human and animal health, the effect of heat and cold on health, responses of animal populations to changes in environmental factors, and the impact of climate on the spread of infectious disease. There were also sessions that dealt with bioterrorism, impacts of climate on vegetative resources, and the use of satellite data to monitor effects of climate on global and regional vegetation systems and the connection to human and animal populations. Social and economic impacts were also explored in many of the sessions. The proceedings of this conference are available through AMS membership.
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The latest version of the proposal for restructuring the Broadcast Seal Program, as well as the latest version of the proposal for recertification will be posted to the AMS Web site under the “certification programs” section on 1 November 2002. The proposals reflect comments received on the previous versions and comments from the AMS council meeting that was held on 3 October 2002. Questions regarding these proposals should be directed to AMS Executive Director Ronald McPhersonby 15 December 2002.
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Applications for the prestigious NOAA David Johnson Award are being sought from professionals who have developed an innovative use of earth observation satellite data that can be used to assess or predict atmospheric, oceanic, or terrestrial conditions. The application deadline is 1 December 2002.
The NOAA David Johnson Award is presented by the National Space Club in honor of the first administrator of what was to become NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service. David Johnson, now retired, was a pioneer in operational meteorological satellites. The award will be presented at the annual Goddard Memorial Dinner in March 2003.
Requirements for the award state, the use of satellite data should have a practical, on-going purpose that could be used to assess or predict environmental conditions, on a regular, operational basis. Examples include the use of earth observation data for fire monitoring, weather forecasting, climate monitoring or prediction, global change detection, volcanic ash tracking, vegetation/drought monitoring, oil spill tracking, rainfall measurements or forecasts, hurricane landfall predictions and fisheries management. The data used may be from any earth observation satellite including NOAA or other U.S. government, commercial, or foreign satellites.
A committee composed of eminent professionals in the field will select the recipient for the award. The nominee must be a United States citizen, national, or permanent resident, and not more than 40 years of age as of 31 December 2002.
Individuals or groups may be nominated. For group nominations, all members of the group should have been actively involved in the design or implementation of the demonstrated use, and each must be a United States citizen, national, or permanent resident. The leader of the group must be clearly identified.
The National Space Club must receive nominations with the complete application by 1 December 2002. Applications should be sent to: Mark Morrison, c/o National Space Club, Lockheed Martin Corporation, 1725 Jefferson Davis Highway, Suite 300, Arlington, VA 22202; telephone (703) 413-5607. Applications may also be e-mailed to mark.e.morrison@lmco.com.
For eligibility criteria and application information, see the Web site at http://www.publicaffairs.noaa.gov/announcements.html#johnson.
For more information, contact Jane D’Aguanno in NOAA’s Office of the Assistant Administrator for Satellite and Information Services at (301) 713-3385, fax (301) 713-1249, e-mail Jane.Daguanno@noaa.gov.
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The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) is convening a “Conference on Women in Meteorology and Hydrology” in Geneva, Switzerland, from 24–27 March 2003. The purpose of the conference is to increase the participation of women in WMO activities and in meteorology and hydrology overall.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is coordinating the U.S. delegation to the conference, which will be led by Brigadier General John J. Kelly, Jr. (USAF, ret.), the permanent representative of the U.S. with WMO and NOAA assistant administrator for weather services. Invited delegates include Vickie Nadolski (NOAA National Weather Service), Eugenia Kalnay (University of Maryland), Maria Pirone (WSI Corporation), Dian Seidel (NOAA Air Resources Laboratory), and Fiona Horsfall (NOAA National Weather Service). Mary Glackin (NOAA Satellite and Information Service) will also participate in the conference.
The U.S. delegation and the AMS Board on Women and Minorities invite AMS members to share their views on issues relating to the conference at a luncheon with delegation members at the AMS Annual Meeting in Long Beach, California. The meeting will be held on Wednesday, 12 February at 12 P.M. in Convention Center Seaside Room 301. To attend, please send your name and contact information to wmo.women@noaa.gov by 15 January 2003, to reserve a space and a box lunch. To provide comments on the issues or the delegation position paper, write to wmo.women@noaa.gov.
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The Royal Meteorological Society has established the Rupert Ford Travel Awards for Young Scientists. The Society has been asked to administer the Rupert Ford Fund which was set up in honor of the late Dr. Rupert Ford, who’s scientific career was cut short by illness. The Fund will be used to sponsor travel by outstanding young scientists from any part of the world to enable them to work and study in centers of excellence in their field outside their own countries.
Applications are now invited for the Rupert Ford Awards for 2003 from scientists who will be 30 years of age or less on 31 December 2003. Applications are available from the Royal Meteorological Society (the form can be downloaded from www.royalmetsoc.org) and must reach the RMS’s offices by 31 December 2002. Applicants do not need to be members or fellows of the Royal Meteorological Society.
Full details of eligibility for the award are available from the Royal Meteorological Society and can be found on www.royalmetsoc.org. The awards are competitive and dependent upon the quality of the applications. Applications will be assessed and award decisions made by a panel of distinguished scientists set up for the purpose. Up to three awards may be made in 2003 but there is no mandate to offer any awards in any given year. The value of each award for 2003 will be approximately $4500.
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The Royal Meteorological Society has teamed up with Ingenta.com to make the Quarterly Journal (published eight times a year) and its monthly Weather publications available online. The society is offering free access to the journals until 31 December 2002, at which time Weather Online will continue to be available to subscribers for free to members of the Royal Meteorological Society, and Quarterly Journal Online will be available by subscription (reduced rates for members). See details at: http://www.royal-met-soc.org.uk/
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According to Journal Citation Reports—a unique multidisciplinary database of quantifiable statistical data that provides a systematic, objective way to determine the relative importance of journals within their subject categories—the AMS journals typically rank high in impact for scientific journals, with a few being consistently within the top 10.
The following table compares the citation impact of journals in a given field as measured over three different time spans. The left-hand column ranks journals based on their 2001 “impact factor,” as enumerated in the current edition of the ISI Journal Citation Reports. The 2001 impact factor is calculated by taking the number of all current citations to source items published in a journal over the previous two years and dividing by the number of articles published in the journal during the same period—in other words, a ratio between citations and recent citable items published. The rankings in the next two columns show impact over longer time spans, based on figures from the ISI Journal Performance Indicators. In these columns, total citations to a journal’s published papers are divided by the total number of papers that the journal published, producing a citations-per-paper impact score over a 5-year period (middle column) and a 21-year period (right-hand column). AMS journals are identified in bold.
| Rank |
2001 Impact Factor |
Impact 1997-2001 |
Impact 1981-2001 |
| 1 |
Climate Dynamics (4.38) |
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (8.86) |
Journal of Geophysical Research—Oceans/Atmospheres (35.98) |
| 2 |
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (3.88) |
Journal of Climate (7.53) |
Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences (20.71) |
| 3 |
Journal of Climate (3.30) |
Climate Dynamics (7.52) |
Journal of Climate/Journal of Applied Meteorology (20.67) |
| 4 |
Global Biogeochemical Cycles (3.29) |
Global Biogeochemical Cycles (7.15) |
Global Biogeochemical Cycles (18.21) |
| 5 |
Journal of Atmospheric Chemistry (2.97) |
Journal of Geophysical Research—Atmospheres (6.71) |
Journal of Geophysical Research—Atmospheres (18.19) |
| 6 |
Tellus B—Chemical and Physical Meteorology (2.48) |
Tellus B—Chemical and Physical Meteorology (5.99) |
Journal of Atmospheric Chemistry (18.15) |
| 7 |
Atmospheric Environment (2.32) |
Journal of Geophysical Research—Solid Earth (5.93) |
Monthly Weather Review (17.88) |
| 8 |
Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society (2.30) |
Journal of Geophysical Research—Planets (5.70) |
Journal of Geophysical Research—Planets (17.88) |
| 9 |
Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences (2.12) |
Journal of Atmospheric Chemistry (5.35) |
Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society (17.43) |
| 10 |
Tellus A—Dynamic Meteorology and Oceanography (1.98) |
Journal of Geophysical Research—Oceans (5.01) |
Journal of Climate (17.17) |
For more information see http://in-cites.com/research/2002/october_28_2002-1.html.
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The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has awarded several grants of importance to the atmospheric and related sciences community including a $5 million grant to the Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies (CIMMS) at The University of Oklahoma (OU) in Norman, Oklahoma; a $3.15 million grant to the North Carolina Flood Plain Mapping Program (NCFPMP) in Raleigh, North Carolina, to improve the state’s flood observation and warning system; and a $1.5 million grant to the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA) at Colorado State University in Ft. Collins, Colorado. These are among more than 400 grants totaling $906 million in 2002 that NOAA will award to members of the academic, scientific and business communities to assist the agency in fulfilling its mission.
The CIMMS grant will be used to continue its research collaborations with NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research and the National Weather Service.
Sixteen specific research projects have been identified for funding, including use of phased array radar technology for hazardous weather detection and research, quantitative precipitation estimation using multiple sensors, use of warning decision support systems for storm research and improving hazardous weather detection, application of dual-polarization radar to improve quantitative precipitation estimates used to detect flash flooding, investigation of synoptic and mesoscale meteorological processes associated with hazardous weather, and warning decision making research.
Additional research themes funded with the NOAA grant include contributions to the weather research and forecasting model development and the climate research network; program support through the assimilation, analysis, and dissemination of global rain gauge data; the role of the tropical Atlantic Ocean in West African and North Atlantic climate variability; a core demonstration project in climate prediction in Africa; and a workshop on regional climate prediction and applications in the tropical Pacific islands and rim.
CIMMS is a cooperative institute developed by NOAA and the University of Oklahoma. The joint institute conducts research in hazardous weather, mesoscale meteorology, regional climate, and related subject areas. In Norman, Oklahoma, CIMMS has collocated programs and personnel with NOAA’s National Severe Storms Laboratory, National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center, Radar Operations Center, and Warning Decision Training Branch. About 190 researchers, postdocs, graduate students, and staff are supported in CIMMS.
In cooperation with NOAA’s National Weather Service, the program’s Real-time Flood Inundation and Forecast Mapping System will produce maps that depict flooded areas, and areas expected to become flooded in the near future. These maps will be made available to federal agencies and the general public on the Internet.
The grant will allow the NCFPMP to work with three federal and state agencies on the project.
The CIRA grant will be used to continue its research collaborations with NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research and its National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service.
A dozen specific projects have been identified for funding, including the examination of linkages between the northwestern Mexican monsoon and Great Plains precipitation, the role of stratocumulus clouds in modifying pollution plumes transported in the North American continent, advanced environmental satellite research support, research to improve tropical cyclone intensity analyses and predictions using satellite data, and monitoring and modeling isotopic exchange between the atmosphere and the terrestrial biosphere.
CIRA is a cooperative institute between NOAA and Colorado State University. The Institute conducts research in applied cloud physics, local weather forecasting, global climate dynamics, satellite observations, numerical modeling, and air quality. NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) Regional and Mesoscale Meteorology Laboratory has collocated programs and personnel with CIRA. Forty university researchers, postdocs, graduate students, and staff are supported in CIRA.
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Precidia Technologies, Inc. has completed an extensive pilot project with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to help the agency collect real-time temperature data in a more timely and cost-effective way.
The project, involving various sites in the northeastern United States, is part of a U.S. Senate directive to improve the timeliness and accuracy of temperature forecasts.
Precidia’s IP232 modem devices connect NOAA’s existing weather sensor equipment to the Internet using dial-up connections. Data is then collected in a central location for use by weather forecasters. Using Precidia’s modems, NOAA has decreased data collection intervals as well as the overall communications costs in collecting real-time data. Long distance charges have been eliminated and the infrastructure simplified, since NOAA no longer has to maintain banks of modems.
This project involves five different NOAA laboratories including the Forecast Systems, Aeronomy, and Environmental Technology Laboratories in Boulder, Colorado; the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Oklahoma; and the Air Resources Laboratory in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.
More accurate temperature forecasts are an important planning element of the U.S. Weather Research Program (USWRP) as well as the North American Observing System (NAOS) programs. In the future, there are plans to use the IP232 in several other sites in the United States.
Precidia Technologies designs and manufactures IP access devices for a wide range of industries including retail payments and building automation. For more information see http://www.precidia.com.
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The Earth Technologies Forum announced it is accepting abstracts for papers to be delivered at its 22–24 April 2003 conference in Washington, DC. Abstracts are due on 14 November. The “Call for Papers” and forum details are available now at http://www.earthforum.com and http://www.earthforum.com/callforpapers.cfm.
The 14th annual Earth Technologies Forum is a conference addressing global climate change and ozone protection. The three-day conference and exhibition is cosponsored by the International Climate Change Partnership (ICCP), and the Alliance for Responsible Atmospheric Policy, in cooperation with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the United Nations Environment Programme, the United Nations Development Programme, the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Agency for International Development, Environment Canada, Industry Canada, the Australian Greenhouse Office, the Netherlands’ Reduction Plan for the Non-CO2 Greenhouse Gases, the World Council for Sustainable Development, and over 90 endorsing associations and organizations. In 2002, over 950 individuals from 50 countries attended the forum.
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A new environmental study released in late September identifies major gaps in what is known about the nation’s land, water, and living resources, and proposes periodic reporting of key indicators that will inform and influence policy discussions for generations to come.
The report by The H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment is an examination of the current state of the nation’s land, water, and living resources. An unprecedented collaboration among nearly 150 experts from government, business, environmental organizations, and academia, the study identifies indicators and reports the best available data on conditions and trends.
The report provides indicators for the nation as a whole and for its coasts and oceans, forests, farmland, fresh water, grass and shrub land, and urban and suburban areas. For each of these systems, the study reports on 10 key characteristics of ecosystems that should be tracked over time, and—where the data are available—it describes current conditions and trends.
Participants in the study included representatives of industry and environmental organizations; elected and appointed leaders from local, state, and federal government; and scholars. Nine federal agencies and 13 corporations and foundations funded the project, which was commissioned by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. It calls for annual updates and a revised edition every five years.
The State of the Nation’s Ecosystems is published by Cambridge University Press and is also available in full at www.heinzctr.org/ecosystems.
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The big news on Capitol Hill, of course, is the problem with the federal budget. Both Houses of Congress are on recess for the election, having passed only two of the 13 appropriations bills onto the president: defense and military construction. Otherwise, the remaining 11 appropriations bills are in various states of limbo—such as, having been passed by one House’s subcommittee or full committee but not the other; both full committees but not the conference committee; or some combination of all the possibilities. Under the current “Continuing Resolution” (CR) that ensures the federal government will not run out of money while Congress continues work on the FY03 budget, federal agencies are for the most part funded at FY02 levels.
This may not be completely unprecedented, but it is highly unusual. The choices Congress now has to deal with for FY03 appropriations are not good. Congress will reconvene in mid-November, most likely to pass another CR in anticipation of the lame duck session in early December, when they will actually work on, and hopefully clear, the 11 remaining bills (or, alternatively, pass an omnibus budget bill, throwing all of the appropriations into one large bill)); or pass a final CR that lasts until the new Congress convenes next year.
No one in Washington knows for sure how this will come out; the multitude of factors that enter into how the budget for FY03 will be put together are just too great, involving time, politics of all kind, individual personalities, how the election comes out, etc. And this is only a partial list of elements to be factored in to the process—the whens and the hows are, once again, entirely unknown even to the major participants.
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Despite at least a temporary setback for an authorization bill providing for “doubling” of the National Science Foundation’s budget over the next approximately five years, both Senate and House Appropriators are recommending large increases for FY03 for the agency.
In its recently completed work, the House Appropriations Committee recommended a 12.8% increase for NSF, which outdoes even the Senate’s 11.8% proposed increase. With a caveat related to how the federal budget for FY03 is finally handled, this can only be viewed as excellent news. There is every reason to believe, as both Houses of Congress are supportive of substantial increases, that something in the vicinity of a 12% increase will be provided for the agency for the fiscal year that began in October after the two Houses reconcile differences in the VA-HUD and Independent Agencies bill (if, in fact, there is a traditional “conference” procedure), which covers NSF.
While these are substantial increases, these funding levels are not sufficient to double NSF funding over five years. That would require increases more on the order of 15% per year.
This increase includes an approximate15% increase in the geosciences account. The Senate was similarly generous in this account, though precise amounts can change throughout the rest of the budget process or—to a smaller extent—within the agency itself as it makes final, fine-tuning adjustments to program funding.
Finally, the full Appropriations Committees in both Houses of Congress rejected program transfers from NOAA (the Sea Grant Program), EPA, and USGS to NSF, as proposed by the administration.
The NSF “doubling” bill, which was assumed to be on a fast track to passage before Congress went on recess, was suddenly derailed, apparently because of concerns by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). The only way it could have passed (it had been reconciled with the distinctly different House bill by staff conference) was by unanimous consent, meaning that if any individual senator objected, the bill could not be voted on. Senator Kyl (R-Arizona) objected.
Apparently, senators have been asked by OMB to continue to object unless changes are made. The question becomes whether negotiations can resolve these differences so that the bill might pass under unanimous consent—assuming there is time. As it is a duplicate of a House bill, there would be no need for a conference; it would be passed straight on to the president for his signature.
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As of this writing—and with Congress in recess until mid-November—only the Senate has acted on the Commerce, Justice, State (CJS) Appropriations bill, which covers NOAA. The Senate provided approximately a 3% increase for NOAA over FY02 levels. What the House will do is another question, and there are some concerns that the increases, if any, will not be that generous.
A large part of the problem is that, overall, there are fewer funds available on the House side than the Senate side across the spectrum of appropriations (for certain, somewhat complicated, procedural reasons)—and CJS may be one of the more beleaguered bills as a result. Not only does it contain the State Department’s funding, which, because of the international situation, may be expected to increase substantially, but it also contains funding for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which can also expect a large increase in funding.
The Senate bill left a shortfall in a number of programs, including adjustments to base that make up for inflation, some of the administration’s climate change initiatives, a backup supercomputer for the National Centers for Environmental Prediction, the Joint Data Assimilation Center (with NASA) and the Advanced Hydrologic Prediction System program. With pressures for funding on the State Department and the SEC, there is some reason to believe that the House will not be any more generous with these programs, and, initially, appropriators on the House CJS subcommittee even refused to move forward on working on their bill, pending a larger slice of the pie from the full Appropriations Committee.
The CJS bill in the House remains problematic. The administration seems determined to strictly hold the line on domestic spending and is finding substantial support among House conservatives in doing so—all with a smaller overall budget pie than the Senate has been working with.
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NASA is another agency that is included in the VA-HUD and Independent Agencies spending bill. Both the Senate and House full Appropriations Committees, as noted above, have produced their bills (though neither has been voted on by the full House or Senate). The House bill would increase NASA’s budget by 2.7% over FY02; the Senate bill proposes a 2% increase.
The House bill provides for a substantial decrease in Human Space Flight funding, which would fall by 11.3%, while the Science, Aeronautics, and Technology budget would grow by 15.9%. Within that category, it appears as if the space science, earth science, and biological and physical research would all see substantial increases. By comparison, the Senate bill would provide for an increase 12.4% percent for Science, Aeronautics, and Technology.
Within the Earth Sciences Enterprise (ESE) portion of this account, the full House committee recommended spending $1.675 billion. This is a net increase of $46.6 million over the administration’s request, and a 6.5% increase over FY02 funding levels. The Senate’s recommended appropriation for ESE is also positive.
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As a consequence of the devastating drought that has hit large areas of the United States, members of the Senate have proposed $6 billion in drought aid for beleaguered farmers and ranchers. Leading the fight is Senate Majority Leader, Tom Daschle (D-South Dakota). Despite that heavyweight support, legislation has not passed so far this Congress. There were attempts to attach the aid to the Interior Appropriations bill, but after weeks of infighting, the attempts were unsuccessful.
Congress will quite possibly return to this when they come back in November or December, though there were political considerations to the proposal before the elections, as it was viewed by Democrats as a key issue in a few states with competitive Senate races. A much smaller amount (under $1 billion) has been provided out of an Agriculture Department account by the administration, with what may be viewed as similar political considerations by the Republicans.
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The huge energy policy bill, which includes a number of climate provisions along with legislative language affecting programs in a several federal agencies, remains in conference committee between the two Houses. There is a serious question as to whether an energy bill will pass this Congress, as the Democratic Senate and the Republican House have passed distinctly different legislation and have not been able to agree on major provisions. It is unclear if they can reach agreement on large issues or simply produce a bill that may have only relatively minor items but that the two Houses can agree on and is worth passing.
House and Senate staffs continue to negotiate even as Congress is in recess, and work by members will likely continue when they return in mid-November. Whether this legislative deadlock will be broken is unknown, but the legislation seems stalled over electricity deregulation provisions.
As of this writing, all climate issues (strategy, registry, and science) have been joined in a single tier of issues that have been linked to Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in the final disposition of the bill. Unless Senate Democrats want to talk about ANWR, House Republicans do not want to talk about climate. There is a good chance that the conference, therefore, will conclude without either item in the final bill—if there is a bill.
For many reasons, House conferees rejected the Senate language on ANWR and related issues by a vote of 2–15, and there has been no indication that there will be any further discussions on climate change. A congressional staff source indicates that this is because most Republican members would like to let the president’s climate agenda take hold—in terms of DOE’s review of voluntary greenhouse gases reporting, and NOAA’s comprehensive review of climate science programs set to take place in December.
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Both air pollution and global warming could be reduced by controlling emissions of methane gas, according to a new study by scientists at Harvard University, the Argonne National Laboratory, and the Environmental Protection Agency. The reason, they say, is that methane is directly linked to the production of ozone in the troposphere, the lowest part of the earth’s atmosphere, extending from the surface to around 7 miles (12 kilometers) altitude. Ozone is the primary constituent of smog, and both methane and ozone are significant greenhouse gases.
A simulation based on emissions projections by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts a longer and more intense ozone season in the United States by 2030, despite domestic emission reductions, the researchers note. Mitigation should therefore be considered on a global scale, the researchers say, and must take into account a rising global background level of ozone. Currently, the U.S. standard is based on 84 parts per billion by volume of ozone, not to be exceeded more than three times per year, a standard that is not currently met nationwide. In Europe, the standard is much stricter, 55–65 parts of ozone per billion by volume, but these targets are also exceeded in many European countries.
Writing the October journal Geophysical Research Letters, Arlene M. Fiore and her colleagues say that one way to simultaneously decrease ozone pollution and greenhouse warming is to reduce methane emissions. Ozone is formed in the troposphere by chemical reactions involving methane, other organic compounds, and carbon monoxide, in the presence of nitrogen oxides and sunlight. Methane is known to be a major source of ozone throughout the troposphere, but is not usually considered to play a key role in the production of ozone smog in surface air, because of its long lifetime.
Sources of manmade methane include, notably, herds of cattle and other ungulates, rice production, and leaks of natural gas from pipelines, according to the IPCC. In addition, natural sources of methane include wetlands, termites, oceans, and gas hydrate nodules on the sea floor.
In a baseline study in 1995, 60% of methane emissions to the atmosphere were the result of human activity. The IPCC’s A1 scenario, which Fiore characterizes as “less optimistic in terms of anticipated emissions than a companion B1 scenario,” posits economic development as the primary policy influencing future trends of manmade emissions in most countries. Under A1, emissions would increase globally from 1995 to 2030, but their distribution would shift. Manmade nitrogen oxides would decline by 10% in the developed world, but increase by 130% in developing countries. During the same period, methane emissions would increase by 43% globally, according to the A1 scenario.
The researchers find that a reduction of manmade methane by 50% would have a greater impact on global tropospheric ozone than a comparable reduction in manmade nitrogen oxide emissions. Reducing surface nitrogen oxide emissions does effectively improve air quality by decreasing surface ozone levels, but this impact tends to be localized, and does not yield much benefit in terms of greenhouse warming. Reductions in methane emissions would, however, help to decrease greenhouse warming by decreasing both methane and ozone in the atmosphere worldwide, and this would also help to reduce surface air pollution.
Both in the United States and Europe, aggressive programs of emission controls aimed at lowering ozone-based pollution may be offset by rising emissions of methane and nitrogen oxides from developing countries, the researchers write. Pollution could therefore increase, despite these controls, and the summertime pollution season would actually lengthen, according to the simulation under the A1 scenario.
The study was funded by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the National Science Foundation (NSF).
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President Bush has consolidated climate research projects carried out by 13 different federal agencies under one umbrella called the Climate Change Science Program (CCSP). The new program, which will include work now done at the U.S. Global Change Research Program, will be headed by NOAA Deputy Administrator and AMS Past President James Mahoney.
The U.S. Climate Change Science Program Office (CCSPO) was organized in response to President Bush’s Climate Change Research Initiative (CCRI) to create an integrated, credible climate science program that utilizes the best resources of the federal government and its domestic and international partners for increased scientific inquiry, observation and monitoring for the development of decision-support information for policymakers.
The CCSPO recently launched its Web site, www.climatescience.gov. The new site will be the main clearinghouse for information on the Bush administration’s interagency climate science initiative, including its strategic plan, which will provide the principal guidance for the U.S. global change and climate change research programs during the next several years.
The program will also hold a workshop in December to solicit scientist and stakeholder comments on the CCSP. In March 2003, Mahoney plans to release the nation’s first overall research plan on global change since 1990. Many of the ongoing USGCRP activities are expected to continue with minor changes.
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Laws that favor the use of diesel, rather than gasoline, engines in cars may actually encourage global warming, according to a new study. Although diesel cars obtain 25 to 35 percent better mileage and emit less carbon dioxide than similar gasoline cars, they can emit 25 to 400 times more mass of particulate black carbon and associated organic matter (“soot”) per kilometer (mile). The warming due to soot may more than offset the cooling due to reduced carbon dioxide emissions over several decades, according to Mark Z. Jacobson, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University.
Writing in the Journal of Geophysical Research—Atmospheres, Jacobson describes computer simulations leading to the conclusion that control of fossil fuel black carbon and organic matter may be the most effective method of slowing global warming, in terms of the speed and magnitude of its effect on climate. Not only does soot warm the air to a much greater extent than does carbon dioxide per unit mass, but the lifetime of soot in the air (weeks to months) is much less than is that of carbon dioxide (50 to 200 years). As such, removing soot emissions may have a faster effect on slowing global warming than removing carbon dioxide emissions.
The model Jacobson used tested 12 identifiable effects of airborne particles, known as aerosols, on climate, eight of which had not previously been described in scientific literature. Jacobson notes that it is not currently possible to quantify each of these effects individually, only the net effect of all of them operating simultaneously.
“Since 1896, when Svante Arrhenius first postulated the theory of global warming due to carbon dioxide, control of carbon dioxide has been considered the most effective method of slowing warming,” Jacobson says in an interview. “Whereas carbon dioxide clearly causes most global warming, control of shorter-lived warming constituents, such as black carbon, should have a faster effect on slowing warming, which is the conclusion I have drawn from this study. The Kyoto Protocol of 1997 does not even consider black carbon as a pollutant to control with respect to global warming.”
The reason the issue of diesel versus gasoline is important, says Jacobson, is that, in Europe, one of the major strategies for satisfying the Kyoto Protocol is to promote further the use of diesel vehicles and specifically to provide a greater tax advantage for diesel. Tax laws in all European Union countries, except the United Kingdom, currently favor diesel, thereby inadvertently promoting global warming, Jacobson says. Further, some countries—including Sweden, Finland, Norway, and the Netherlands—also tax fuels based on their carbon content. These taxes also favor diesel, he notes, since diesel releases less carbon per mile (kilometer) than does gasoline. Nevertheless, the small amount of black carbon and organic matter emitted by diesel may warm the atmosphere more over 100 years than the additional carbon dioxide emitted by gasoline.
In Europe and the United States, particulate emissions from vehicles are expected to decline over the next decade. For example, by 2005, the European Union will introduce more stringent standards for particulate emissions from light duty vehicles of 0.025 grams per kilometer (0.04 grams per mile). Even under these standards, diesel-powered cars may still warm the climate more over the next 100 years than may gasoline powered cars, according to the study.
The state of California is implementing an even more restrictive standard in 2004, allowing only 0.01 grams per mile (0.006 grams per kilometer) of particulate emissions. Even if the California standard were introduced worldwide, says Jacobson, diesel cars may still warm the climate more than gasoline cars over 13 to 54 years.
In an interview, Jacobson said that new particle traps being introduced by some European automobile manufacturers in their diesel cars appear to reduce black carbon emissions to 0.005 grams per mile (0.003 grams per kilometer), even below the California standard. “I think this is great, and it is an indication that tough environmental laws encourage industry to change. But,” he said, “diesel vehicles emitting at this level may still warm the climate more than gasoline over a 10 to 50 year period, not only because of black carbon emissions, but also because the traps themselves require addition fuel use. Gasoline/battery hybrid vehicles now available not only get better mileage than the newest diesels but also emit less black carbon.”
In practice, less than 0.1% of light vehicles in the United States run on diesel fuel, whereas more than 25% do in Europe. (Almost a third of new European cars in 2000 were diesel powered.) In both the United States and Europe, virtually all heavy trucks and buses are diesel powered, and American diesel consumption rates for all modes of ground transportation combined are about 75% to 80% of those in Europe.
The research was supported by NASA, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and the Hewlett-Packard Company.
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A new NASA climate study has found large amounts of black carbon (soot) particles and other pollutants are causing changes in precipitation and temperatures over China and may be at least partially responsible for the tendency toward increased floods and droughts in those regions over the last several decades.
In a paper appearing in the 27 September issue of Science, Surabi Menon of NASA and Columbia University, New York, and her colleague James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, indicate black carbon can affect regional climate by absorbing sunlight, heating the air and thereby altering large-scale atmospheric circulation and the hydrologic cycle.
Using the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies computer climate model and aerosol data from 46 ground stations in China, Menon and Hansen conducted four sets of computer simulations to monitor the effects of black carbon on the hydrologic cycle over China and India. The aerosol data from the Chinese ground stations were provided by Yunfeng Luo, a coauthor on the study from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
In the four numerical simulations, Menon and Hansen isolated specific factors such as sea surface temperature, other greenhouse gases, and aerosols, and analyzed whether changes in those factors would be responsible for hydrologic cycle changes.
Out of the four scenarios, the effect of increased amounts of soot (over southern China) created a clear tendency toward the flooding scenario that has been occurring in southern China and the increasing drought over northern China that has persisted over the last several years.
“If our interpretation is correct, then reducing the amount of black carbon or soot may help diminish the intensity of floods in the south and droughts in the northern areas of China, in addition to having human health benefits,” Hansen said. Currently research is being conducted to verify a similar pattern over India.
Black carbon or soot is generated from industrial pollution, traffic, outdoor fires, and household burning of coal and biomass fuels. Soot is a product of incomplete combustion especially of coal, diesel fuels, biofuels, and outdoor biomass burning. Emissions are large in China and India because cooking and heating are done with wood, field residue, cow dung, and coal, at a low temperature that does not allow for complete combustion. These resulting soot particles absorb sunlight, just as dark pavement becomes hotter than light pavement in the summertime.
When soot absorbs sunlight it heats the air and reduces the amount of sunlight reaching the ground. The heated air makes the atmosphere more unstable, creating rising air (convection), which forms clouds and brings rainfall to regions that are heavily polluted.
The increase of rising air in southern China is balanced by an increase of sinking air (subsidence) and drying in northern China. When air sinks, clouds and thus, rain cannot form, creating dry conditions. For example, deserts are places where subsidence occurs.
In recent years, northern China has suffered from an increased severity of dust storms, while southern China has had increased rainfall that is thought to be the largest change in precipitation trends since the year 950. Menon and Hansen believe that human-made, sunlight-absorbing aerosols may be responsible.
For more information and images, see: http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/20020822blackcarbon.html.
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The National Weather Service has released its service assessment report on the performance of its forecast operations during the severe weather outbreak in southeast Maryland, punctuated by the F-4 tornado that struck parts of La Plata, Maryland, on 28 April 2002. The assessments are a routine internal review of National Weather Service operations during major weather events.
The La Plata tornado was part of a large, severe weather system that began in the mid-Mississippi Valley, and rolled across states in the Ohio Valley and mid-Atlantic. The La Plata tornado carved a 64-mile path across southeast Maryland. The whole storm system caused three deaths, 122 injuries and more than $100 million in damages in the state.
The service assessment report includes key findings and recommendations, ranging from improvements to future weather operations and warnings, to strengthening cooperation with other agencies on damage surveys.
The service assessment report is available online at http://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/assessments/index.shtml.
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Hikers and outdoor adventurers will soon have access to the technology used in the lifesaving satellite-tracked distress alerts carried by aviators and mariners. The Federal Communications Commission approved a request by NOAA for frequency access by personal emergency beacons to be used in the continental United States. This decision comes on the 20th anniversary of the global lifesaving satellite program Cospas-Sarsat, which has led to the rescue of more than 14,000 people worldwide since its inception in 1982.
The decision authorizes the use of personal locator beacons beginning 1 July 2003. The action follows a highly successful experimental program that permitted the use of the 406 MHz Personal Locator Beacons carried by hikers in Alaska. This decision gives a green light to a significant public safety benefit for the millions of people in the United States who explore the nation’s wilderness every year, and opens the potential for saving many more lives.
Cospas-Sarsat is a search and rescue (SAR) system that uses United States and Russian satellites to detect and locate emergency beacons indicating distress from transmitters carried by individuals or aboard aircraft and ships. In the United States, the program is operated and funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Air Force, and NASA.
NOAA operates a series of environmental satellites that detect and locate users in distress. The U.S. Mission Control Center at the NOAA facility in Suitland, Maryland, relays distress signals to the appropriate team in the international SAR community.
When an aircraft, ship, or person is in distress, an emergency beacon is activated either automatically or manually. The beacon transmits a distress signal to the receiving satellites. The signal is then forwarded to a Mission Control Center (MCC) where it is combined with position and registration information and passed to SAR authorities at a Rescue Coordination Center. In the United States, rescue centers are operated by the U.S. Coast Guard for incidents at sea, and by the U.S. Air Force for incidents on land. If the location of the beacon is in another country’s service area, the alert is transmitted to that country’s MCC.
There are approximately 285,000 406-MHz beacons currently in use worldwide. Of those, more than 87,000 have been registered in NOAA’s beacon database. There are approximately 590,000 121.5-MHz beacons in use worldwide. Of those, 260,000 are in use in the U.S., primarily on small aircraft.
For more about the Cospas-Sarsat program, visit http://www.sarsat.noaa.gov.
Visit the international Cospas-Sarsat program online at http://www.cospas-sarsat.org/.
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NOAA recently named four new appointments to its Science Advisory Board. Three of the new appointees are AMS members, including the current president.
The new members are:
Blaskovich’s career includes serving as director of marketing, weather and environmental markets for Cray Research, Inc., and marketing manager for Silicon Graphics, Inc. He was an assistant professor of oceanography, calculus, and chemistry at the California Maritime Academy early in his career.
Blaskovich also cofounded the AMS Graduate Fellowship Program for corporations and has served on AMS boards and committees. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Iowa State University and a master’s degree from San Jose State University. In 1992, he took the Executive Series in Strategic Marketing at Harvard University. He served in the United States Army and Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA). Blaskovich has also been elected to serve as AMS councilor beginning in 2003.
Gagosian’s major area of research concerns the marine geochemistry of biologically produced organic compounds and the movement and change of organic material as it travels from land to sea via the atmosphere and the water column to the sea floor.
Gagosian began his career at Woods Hole as an assistant scientist in 1972. He held a variety of progressively responsible positions including associate director of research and acting director until being named the director and president of the institution in 1994.
He has served on many advisory boards and professional committees, and currently sits on the Visiting Committee of the Department of Ocean Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He was the chairman of the board of directors of the Consortium for Oceanographic Research and Education (CORE) from 1998 to 2001 and was appointed to serve on the Science Advisory Panel of the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy.
Gagosian is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the World Economic Forum. His professional membership includes the American Association for the Advancement of Science and American Chemical Society.
He holds a bachelor’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a doctorate from Columbia University. He is a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellow from the University of California at Berkeley and has been awarded honorary doctor of science degrees from Long Island University and Northeastern University.
AMS President Rosen has been the principal investigator on grants and contracts from the National Science Foundation, NOAA, and NASA, studying different aspects of large-scale atmospheric behavior. He is also a senior lecturer in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he teaches a graduate course on the general circulation of the earth’s atmosphere.
In addition to the numerous advisory bodies, committees, and boards on which he has served, Rosen is a member of the National Research Council’s Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate.
He served as an editor of the AMS journal Monthly Weather Review in 1986-87 and was a founding editor of the Journal of Climate in 1988-89; he then served as an associate editor in 1990-91. Rosen was elected a fellow of the AMS in 1991 and is a recipient of a 1995 AMS Editor’s Award. Rosen earned his bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate degrees from MIT.
Snow’s current professional interest is the integration of the best available knowledge of earth and life sciences to provide a picture of how the world works. His primary research is in the dynamics of columnar vortices, ranging from dust devils to tornadoes. Meteorological measurements is his secondary field of research.
He is the incoming chairman of the NEXRAD Technical Advisory Committee. Snow has served on many boards and committees, including the board of trustees of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, the Board for Oceans and Atmosphere of the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges, and past commissioner for education and human resources of the American Meteorological Society.
He is a fellow of the American Meteorological Society and the Royal Meteorological Society. Snow is a member of the board of Weather Decision Technologies, Inc., which commercializes intellectual property developed in the Oklahoma Weather Center. Among the many meetings he has organized is the first International Conference on European Severe Weather in Toulouse, France, in February 2000.
Snow, who holds bachelors and master’s degrees from Rose Polytechnic Institute and a doctorate from Purdue University, is a retired officer of the United States Army Reserve.
The board next meets 5–7 November in Norman, Oklahoma. NOAA’s Science Advisory Board advises the NOAA administrator and agency leader on long- and short-range strategies for research, education and the application of science to resource management and environmental assessment and prediction.
The 15-member advisory board—composed of eminent scientists, engineers, resource managers, and educators—assists NOAA in maintaining a complete and accurate understanding of scientific issues critical to the agency’s missions. Members are appointed by retired U.S. Navy Vice Admiral Conrad C. Lautenbacher to serve a three-year term.
For more information about the Science Advisory Board, visit www.sab.noaa.gov.
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Officials from the National Weather Service will present the prestigious Thomas Jefferson and John Campanius Holm awards to some of the 11,000 volunteer cooperative weather observers in honor of their dedicated efforts to collect critical weather data.
Ceremonies will be held in local communities across the nation. These observers include teachers, farmers, construction workers, retirees, and others in their professional lives, but their shared commitment to weather data collection has led them to volunteer as cooperative observers. The weather data they collect is critical to the National Weather Service’s forecasts of weather, water and climate conditions, severe weather and flood warnings, and long-term climate analysis.
The Jefferson and Holm Awards were created in 1959 to recognize weather observers for outstanding achievements in the field of meteorological observation. The Jefferson Award requires an extended record of quality observations, with many winners having served for over 50 years. Thomas Jefferson maintained an almost unbroken record of weather observations between 1776 and 1816. The Holm Award is presented for quality observation records. John Campanius Holm’s weather records, taken without benefit of instruments in 1644 and 1645, were the earliest known recorded observations in the United States.
Observers record precipitation, temperature, soil temperature, agricultural data, water equivalent of snow on the ground, river stages, and lake levels. These data are invaluable in learning more about droughts, floods, and heat and cold waves. The information is also used in agricultural planning and assessment, engineering, utilities planning and more.
Satellites, radars and other technological breakthroughs have brought great benefits to the nation in terms of better forecasts and warnings. But without the century-long accumulation of accurate weather observations taken by volunteer observers, scientists could not begin to adequately describe the climate of the United States. Long and continuous records provide an accurate “picture” of a locale’s normal weather, and give climatologists and others a basis for predicting future trends. These data are invaluable for scientists studying floods, droughts, and heat and cold waves.
NOAA recently began reviewing ways to modernize the century old program. A modernized COOP network will benefit the nation by providing an integrated surface monitoring network delivering unprecedented real-time monitoring of weather and climate conditions.
Weather and climate sensitive industries account for about 25% of the nations’ gross domestic product, or $2.7 trillion, ranging from finance, insurance, and real estate, to services, retail, and wholesale trade and manufacturing. Improved forecasts correlate with tremendous savings. For example, the annual cost of electricity could decrease by at least $1 billion if the accuracy of weather forecasts improved by 1ºF.
For more information on the COOP program visit http://weather.gov/om/coop/coopmod.htm.
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NASA’s oldest research laboratory is working to ensure America’s future dominance in aerospace innovation and education.
The Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, will team with the National Institute of Aerospace Associates (NIAA), Reston, Virginia, a newly formed non-profit corporation, to create a world-class institute called the National Institute of Aerospace (NIA) to do cutting edge aerospace and atmospheric research, develop new technologies for the nation and help inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers.
Locating the NIAA at the Langley Research Center will facilitate the institute’s involvement in agency-sponsored research programs and foster collaboration with NASA.
This partnership is comprised of a cost reimbursable, indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contract and a cooperative agreement. The maximum value of the contract for a five-year base period is $49 million. The value of the basic five-year cooperative agreement is $69 million. If the three five-year options are exercised under the cooperative agreement, the combined potential total value would be $379 million.
The NIAA is made up of seven nonprofit organizations or universities including: the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Foundation, Reston, Virginia; Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia; the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia; the University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland; North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina; North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, Greensboro, North Carolina; and the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia.
The institute, through its partner universities, will offer master’s and doctoral degrees in science and engineering using both a local campus and the latest innovations in distance learning. The institute will also be a catalyst for economic development by stimulating the commercialization of new intellectual property and facilitating the growth of new business opportunities. Finally, the institute will be a prominent new voice promoting the benefits of aerospace research.
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