Editor: Jim Elliott
Contributors: Alan Weinstein and Ginny Owen
Copy Editor: Anne Siefken
STAFF MEMBERS OF THE AMERICAN METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY IN BOSTON AND WASHINGTON, DC WOULD LIKE TO WISH EVERYONE A VERY HAPPY HOLIDAY SEASON AND THE BEST OF WISHES FOR THE COMING YEAR!
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NOAA budget information for FY99 is now available online at http://www.constituentaffairs.noaa.gov. Included at this site is the complete budget presentation given by Dr. D. James Baker at the Constituent Briefing conducted on 9 November. A more detailed breakdown of the budget is also available at the same site under the listing NOAA Budget for FY99. The documents may be viewed and downloaded in an Adobe Acrobat format at this site.
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As the Administration completes its FY2000 budget request, Martha Krebs, director of DOE's newly renamed Office of Science, predicts that "things will get better." That's what she told the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel recently, according to the AIP Bulletin of Science Policy.
She didn't explain how she thought things would improve, but explained that DOE received its pass back from OMB far ahead of usual schedule. A pass back is the reaction of the director of OMB to an initial budget request submitted by a department or agency. "This has been a pretty good year as a bottom line...Overall, from my perspective, the administration recognizes and the congress affirms the value of what you do," she said.
Looking ahead, she praised DOE Under Secretary Ernie Moniz for organizing a science portfolio under five themes: "Fueling the Future, Protecting our Living Planet, Exploring Matter and Energy, Extraordinary Tools for Extraordinary Science and Enabling World Class Science." She also praised new Energy Secretary Bill Richardson.
Describing the federal budget as a political and policy document of priorities, Krebs told panel members about the conflicting forces that are affecting the preparation of the FY2000 budget. On the positive side, she explained, is the growing federal budget surplus, adding that there is still not a clear understanding of what to do with the money. Yet, she explained, spending caps still govern, social security reform is an unknown, budget barriers separating domestic and defense spending will be gone and the congress and the administration do not agree on domestic versus defense spending. congressional failure to adopt a budget resolution this year means that there are not any Congressional spending projections for the next few years. These are, she said, "serious, uncomfortable times...(but) sort of normal."
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Noting that "core values represent the essence of an organization," NWS Director John J. Kelly Jr. has issued a statement on what those core values should be. "They define expectations, outline shared views of what is important, and provide the context to guide growth," he wrote. "Within the National Weather Service, we have a tradition of service, using science and technology to serve the American people.
"To succeed, we must build on these strengths and determine the shared (core) values to guide our transformation and establish our path into the next century. Our Strategic Planning Team has been working over the past months to understand and articulate our core values. Based on your input, they have developed the following set of values:
"We in the National Weather Service value:
" I, along with the senior leadership of the NWS, am impressed with the power these simple concepts represent. They provide the beacon for us to achieve our vision of being America's no surprise weather service."
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Final preparations are underway for the 79th AMS Annual Meeting at the Wyndham Anatole Hotel in Dallas, Texas, 10–15 January, 1999.
The theme for this year's gathering is "Climate and Global Change: Focus on the Americas." Presentations on that topic and other scientific subjects will be made by representatives from more than 30 nations. Approximately 1900 poster and oral presentations will be made.
Thirteen conferences and symposia, six short courses, and a large commercial exhibit of hardware, software, and services for the atmospheric, oceanic, and related environmental sciences will be held as part of the meeting.
Sessions will include presentations and discussions on climate and health; climate and societal issues; hurricanes and tropical meteorology; hydrology and water resources; global change studies; aviation, boundary layers and turbulence; polar meteorology and oceanography; interactive information and processing systems; education; the 1997–98 ENSO Cycle; observing systems, and on issues involving atmospheric chemistry and applied climatology. Preliminary program information was published in the October AMS Bulletin and also is available on the World Wide Web at http:// www.ametsoc.org.
Cosponsors of the meeting include Air and Waste Management Association, American Geophysical Union, American Society of Agronomy, American Society of Civil Engineers, American Water Resources Association, American Geological Institute, Association of American Geographers, Atmospheric Science Librarians International, Geological Society of America, Inc., and the World Meteorological Organization.
The conference luncheon speaker on Tuesday 12 January, will be Professor James Fleming of Colby College, Waterville, Maine. The Remote Sensing Lecture, also on Tuesday, will be given by S. Harvey Melfi, University of Maryland Baltimore County; the Robert E. Horton Lecture, on Wednesday by Raphael Bras, MIT, and the Walter Orr Roberts Lecture, on Thursday, by Richard C.J. Somerville, University of California, San Diego.
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In an address before the DC AMS chapter on 19 November, AMS President-elect George Frederick Jr. outlined a picture of a forward-moving, technologically up-to-date organization for AMS in the years ahead.
Frederick, project manager and senior staff scientist at Radian International Meteorological Systems in Austin, Texas, will assume office as president of AMS at its 79th annual meeting in Dallas, 10–15 January 1999. He succeeds Gene Rasmusson, senior research scientist in the Department of Meteorology at the University of Maryland, College Park.
A former member of the DC chapter, Frederick reviewed and discussed recommendations incorporated in the AMS 10-Year Vision during the meeting at the MITRETEK facility in McLean, Virginia, and cited demographic and other figures from a survey conducted by former AMS President Paul Try. He said that membership in the Society had nearly doubled since 1960, increasing from 6000 to nearly 12 000 today. He also pointed out that 62% of the membership have been members for more than 10 years. The 10-Year Vision was presented at the Society's annual meeting in Phoenix, Arizona, last year and was approved by the AMS Council in October. The program is now in the implementation phase, he explained.
The recommendations in the 10-Year Vision followed five broad subjects: 1. multidisciplinary; 2. inclusiveness; 3. outreach; 4. finances and development, and 5. communications and computer technology. He said the organization planned to broaden its publications to more disciplines, pointing out that a new Journal of Hydrometeorology is expected to be launched by the Society in the near future. He explained that the Society plans to work more closely with local chapters and to interact more with other professional organizations, continuing its efforts in education and "distance learning," which he described as correspondence courses using computer and Internet capabilities.
With the outreach efforts, he said, the organization is looking toward possible new popular publications and toward greater interaction between students and exhibitors to increase job opportunities. Frederick explained that plans are underway to organize a dedicated development office at AMS Headquarters to help expand membership and pursue other developmental ideas. He said the future will see widened use of computers in communications at meetings, papers available electronically, journals in electronic form and broader use of the Internet. He said he foresees electronic meetings to supplement face-to-face gatherings and a Web site to which people could refer for authoritative scientific information.
Several questions were raised by the audience, including why there are so many symposia and conferences at the annual meeting, and why the meeting is held in January every year. Because of the financial costs of holding the meeting, he said, reducing the size of the meeting probably "is not in the cards." Whether the January time frame could be changed, he said he didn't know. However, he emphasized "We're open to experiment, and we are willing to listen to suggestions for improvement."
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The NWS Cheyenne, Wyoming, office will test a new storm warning procedure this winter that could result in a public rating scale to better describe the potential impact of winter storms. The new rating system should let forecasters provide a winter watch and warning service more useful to those affected, according to J. Michael Looney, chief of meteorological services at the agency's Central Region Headquarters in Kansas City. The winter storm index was created by forecasters in Cheyenne.
"This index blends criteria we've used for years into the actual impact a winter storm is likely to have on a given area," Looney explained. "It's our view that local forecasters know their warning areas better than anyone else does, and this gives them some flexibility in issuing winter storm watches and warnings." "For example, sometimes in Wyoming and the Nebraska Panhandle, an 8-inch storm won't have significant impact; at other times, it will. Much depends on many variables, such as wind and/or temperature, other than simply the amount of snow that's expected to fall."
Looney said Cheyenne forecasters devised the new index after an October 1997 storm dumped heavy snow on parts of the two states for 15 hours in gale-force winds. As the storm grew in strength, he said, forecasters progressed from a winter storm watch to a snow advisory, a snow and blowing snow advisory and, finally, to a blizzard warning. More flexible locally adopted warning criteria could have saved time and made the frequent changes unnecessary.
The new index rates winter storms in five categories: 1. a minor inconvenience; 2. inconvenience; 3. significant inconvenience; 4. potentially life-threatening, and 5. life-threatening.
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The 1998 hurricane season brought an above-average number of hurricanes and tropical storms, including the devastating Hurricane Mitch, making it the deadliest Atlantic region season in more than 200 years in terms of storm-related fatalities, reported scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. A contributing factor to the increased activity—50% more hurricanes and 30% more tropical storms than normal—was a climate phenomenon called La Niña, cooler-than-average sea surface temperatures in the central tropical Pacific.
In a joint 4 August outlook, forecasters at NOAA's Climate Prediction Center, National Hurricane Center, and Hurricane Research Division correctly predicted above normal tropical storms and hurricanes in the Atlantic between August and October. The Atlantic season, which runs 1 June–30 November, spawned 14 tropical cyclones (average is 10) with 10 becoming hurricanes (average is six). Almost all of these storms and hurricanes occurred subsequent to the forecasts. There were $3.2 billion in insured damages and 21 deaths in the United States.
"The art of forecasting is better than ever, thanks to our talented people and our investment in science and technology," said Secretary of Commerce William M. Daley. "Nevertheless, events of this Atlantic hurricane season are sobering. Our thoughts and prayers are with the hundreds of thousands of people affected by the hurricane season. I am deeply saddened by the tragic loss of life and property and the enormous economic losses. They are a reminder that we need to continue the momentum of modern forecasting, hurricane awareness for everyone from policymakers to families, communications designed to reach even the remotest of villages, and building disaster resistant communities."
"Our investment in technology has enhanced our ability to make better hurricane predictions," said D. James Baker, NOAA administrator. "We, as a nation, need to continue striving toward better hurricane track forecasts. The payoff is less disruption caused by needlessly evacuating areas that aren't affected, and longer lead times in which to evacuate people and safeguard property in areas that are."
"The season started a little late with Tropical Storm Alex on 27 July, but made up for lost time," said Jerry Jarrell, director of the National Weather Service's National Hurricane Center. "In a remarkable span of 35 days between 19 August and 2 September, 10 named tropical storms formed. That's nearly a whole year's worth of activity crammed into little more than a month." The year tallied seven landfalling storms in the continental United States, including Hurricanes Bonnie, Earl, Georges, Frances, and Mitch (the last two were downgraded to a tropical storm on landfall) and Tropical Storms Charley and Hermine.
The 1998 Atlantic season was the deadliest in more than 200 years. Not since the hurricane of 1780 that struck Martinique, St. Eustatius, and Barbados (10–16 October 1780), killing between 20 000 and 22 000, has the Atlantic hurricane basin seen storm-related fatalities like those of Hurricane Mitch (21 October–5 November). Wire services attribute some 11 000 deaths to Mitch, with thousands more missing. In this "mean" season, Mitch, a Category 5 monster, registered average sustained winds near 180 mph (25 October) with gusts well over 200 mph. Mitch was the fourth most intense hurricane ever observed in the Atlantic basin this century, based on barometric pressure, and the strongest ever observed in the month of October.
During the 1998 season, NOAA scientists, working with NASA and university collaborators, conducted the most complete and sophisticated campaign of observations in hurricanes ever, noted Hugh Willoughby, director of NOAA's Hurricane Research Division. "In Bonnie, Danielle, and Georges, we had six or seven aircraft observing the same hurricane simultaneously," Willoughby said. "Advanced observational instrumentation and remote sensing technology aboard NOAA's Gulfstream-IV high altitude jet and WP-3D airplanes make each of these platforms an airborne laboratory, vastly more capable than those flying just a couple of decades ago. We can study and understand hurricanes on all scales, from a single raindrop to hemisphere-wide winds that control the storm's motion."
NOAA's hurricane forecasting technology includes sophisticated super computers and their numerical models, observational systems such as the GOES satellites, and "hurricane hunter" aircraft that include a new Gulfstream-IV jet and two WP-3D Orion turboprops.
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The catastrophic death toll caused by Hurricane Mitch in Central America has caused U.S. forecasters to consider additional factors in issuing hurricane warnings, according to Jerry Jarrell, director of the National Hurricane Center.
Since the early 1970s, the storms have been classified according to a Safir/Simpson Scale. That scale rates storms by categories that estimate potential property damage from high winds and coastal flooding from storm surges. Mitch, which caused an estimated 11 000 deaths and is considered the deadliest Atlantic storm in more than two centuries, has raised the question of whether another scale should be considered. "We need a disaster scale for something that talks about casualties rather than damage (to property)," he said. "Safir/Simpson is all about damage."
Under the Safir/Simpson Scale, Category 1 is a minimal hurricane, capable to creating minor damage to structures and some flooding. Category 5, the strongest, with winds of more than 155 miles an hour, can destroy buildings and bring huge walls of water ashore. During Mitch, thousands of people were killed because of flash floods and mudslides. Large parts of the region were cut off from the outside world, and disease, since the storm, has taken even more lives.
"This could have been a tropical depression and still caused that amount of rain," Jarrell said. For decades, he explained, storm surges were feared as hurricanes' worst killer. However, he said that many more deaths have been caused by mudslides and flash flooding since forecasters began organized evacuation plans about 30 years ago. "We've virtually eliminated storm-surge deaths. There's just none," he continued. "Flooding deaths have increased because we have more population, and people live closer to the flood plains."
The deadliest Atlantic hurricane, according to the National Hurricane Center, was the Great Hurricane of 1780 which took 22 000 lives in the eastern Caribbean.
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The earth's mean surface temperature is expected to rise 0.2° K (0.36°F) per decade over the next four decades, according to a new modeling study using the climate system model (CSM-1) developed at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). NCAR scientists have just completed 170 years (1870–2040) of their two-century simulation of the earth's climate through 2100. NCAR's Byron Boville presented these results 9 December at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. Other results expected by the end of the year will include climate changes related to precipitation, cloudiness, and basin-scale runoff. NCAR's primary sponsor, the National Science Foundation (NSF), funded the research, with additional computing time provided by the Electric Power Research Institute.
The CSM-1 is a physical climate model employing coupled atmosphere and ocean general circulation models, a sea-ice model, and a land–biophysics and simple hydrology model. It is one of the few current climate models that maintain a stable surface climate over hundreds of years without the need for artificial corrections.
The climate simulations were driven by observed changes in atmospheric trace-gas concentrations for the period 1870–1990 and two projected trace-gas scenarios for the period 1990-2100. The greenhouse gases included in the model are carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and chlorofluorocarbons 11 and 12. Emissions of sulfur dioxide (SO2) resulting from human activity are also included, with projected increases over time. Natural SO2 emissions were assumed to be constant. SO2 is important because it is converted in the atmosphere into sulfate aerosol, which reflects some sunlight back into space and may slow or reverse global warming trends in certain regions.
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In a major agenda-setting conference that will guide much of the world's climate research for the next decade, representatives from over 60 countries gathered in Paris 2–4 December to examine questions relating to natural climate variability, the human role in global climate change, and the predictability of global and regional climate.
The Climate Variability and Predictability Study (CLIVAR) of the World Climate Research Programme is "the largest, most comprehensive international climate research program ever undertaken," according to Kevin Trenberth, cochair of the CLIVAR scientific steering group. Trenberth delivered a keynote address on CLIVAR's recently published implementation plan and on the evolution of CLIVAR science. He is also head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder. NCAR's primary sponsor is the National Science Foundation (NSF).
At the meeting, a large U.S. delegation, including representatives from NSF, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), outlined the U.S. support and plans. The U.S. group was headed by Michael Hall (NOAA's Office of Global Programs), who was to give the closing keynote address.
Attendees defined climate issues relevant to their own regions and mapped out collaborative efforts to answer the most pressing questions. Among the new research presented at the meeting was:
Created in 1993, the 15-year CLIVAR program focuses on the interaction of the oceans and the atmosphere and their role in the earth's overall climate. CLIVAR's goal is to enhance scientists' ability to predict climate on both global and regional scales from a season to a century. Such predictions might warn Kenyan farmers of heavy El Niño-related rains that could drown crops, alert towns along the western Atlantic coast of the projected intensity of the brewing hurricane season as La Niña builds in the Pacific, or caution Indonesian brush burners of an expected fire-prolonging drought.
The meeting was held at the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Center in Paris.
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In one of the first studies to trace lightning's chemical impact across thousands of miles, a team of atmospheric chemists has connected a region of elevated ozone levels in the eastern Indian Ocean with lightning produced in Africa. The results were presented 6 December at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco by Louisa Emmons, a visiting scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).
Emmons and colleagues examined a set of ozone data collected over four years between Japan and Antarctica for their paper, "Evidence of Transport Across the Indian Ocean of Ozone Produced from Biomass Burning and Lightning" (AGU paper A12D-11). Her coauthors are Didier Hauglustaine (France's Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), Michael Newchurch (University of Alabama at Huntsville), Toshi Takao and Kouji Matsubara (Japan Meteorological Agency), and Guy Brasseur (NCAR). The research was funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Lightning is known to produce nitrogen oxides (NOx) within thunderstorms. These chemicals may react with others in the presence of sunlight to produce ozone. Until now, most related studies have focused on measuring the production of NOx in the immediate vicinity of storms. However, the ozone produced has a long lifetime in the upper troposphere and thus could be carried over long distances. According to Emmons and colleagues, ozone from storms across southern Africa is being transported by the subtropical jet stream to Australia.
Ozone measurements between 2 and 6 miles in altitude (3–10 km) over a large part of the eastern Indian Ocean were as high as 80 parts per billion, similar to a polluted day in a U.S. city and several times more than normal levels, says Emmons. To analyze the source of this ozone, she and colleagues used a new computer model of atmospheric chemistry called MOZART, developed at NCAR by Brasseur and Hauglustaine.
Results from MOZART indicate that the ozone did not descend from the stratosphere, the most obvious source. Another possible source was the burning of forests and grasses upwind in Africa. When biomass burning was removed from the model calculations, ozone levels remained high, but when African lightning was removed, the ozone levels dropped significantly. The MOZART results are consistent with the observations above.
"Although there are uncertainties in the model results," says Emmons, "they indicate that lightning has a far-reaching and significant impact on tropospheric chemistry."
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Paleoclimatologists, using a compilation of available data from around the Northern Hemisphere, have confirmed that twentieth-century global warming is unprecedented relative to the last 1200 years. Jonathan Overpeck, head of NOAA's Paleoclimatology Program in Boulder, Colorado, says that research has failed to identify any known natural climate-forcing mechanism that could have generated all of the unprecedented warming that has led to 1998 being, most likely, the warmest year in at least 1200 years.
Overpeck also said that the so-called Medieval Warm Period, a period from the 9th to 14th centuries that is commonly thought to be as warm or warmer than today, may not have been what it seemed after all. He reported his findings at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. He presented a talk on "How Unprecedented is Recent Arctic Warming: A Look Back to the Medieval Warm Period."
Overpeck's work, building on that of others, suggests that there was no global Medieval Warm Period, and that the patterns of climate change during that time indicate that changes in North Atlantic circulation might have been the cause of observed regional warming. "Over the past decade, methods were developed and refined to extract paleotemperature estimates from a wide variety of natural 'proxy' sources, such as ocean and lake sediments, glacier ice cores, tree rings, and historical documents," he said. "The use of these multiple sources is enabling paleoclimatologists to construct a network of records that cover much of the Northern Hemisphere, and also to avoid biases inherent in using any one source."
"Over the past year, a number of studies have shown that twentieth-century Arctic and hemispheric warming are unprecedented relative to the last six centuries," said Overpeck. "Now, high-resolution paleoclimate records stretching back 1200 years confirm that the so-called Medieval Warm Period did not exist in the form of a globally synchronous period as warm, or warmer, than today. Thus, recent record high hemispheric temperatures are probably unprecedented in at least 1200 years. In addition, our study of the Medieval Warm Period supports the likelihood that no known natural phenomenon can explain the record twentieth-century warmth. Twentieth Century global warming is a reality and should be taken seriously."
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The United States and Europe have signed an agreement that ensures the long-term continuity and improvement of polar-orbiting weather satellites, officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced. The agreement was signed in Washington, DC by D. James Baker, commerce under secretary for oceans and atmosphere, and Tillmann Mohr, director of the European Organization for the Exploration of Meteorological Satellites, or EUMETSAT.
Under the terms of the Initial Joint Polar System agreement, NOAA and EUMETSAT will cooperate to provide a joint system of polar-orbiting weather satellites after the launch of EUMETSAT's METOP-1 satellite in 2003. Each agency will fly a common set of instruments on its satellites to ensure data continuity and compatibility for a wide range of users. This will be in addition to instruments that will be carried on either the NOAA or EUMETSAT satellites.
For the past 30 years, NOAA has operated two polar-orbiting satellites—one crossing the equator in the morning, the other crossing in the afternoon. Early in the next century, NOAA will provide coverage for the afternoon only. EUMETSAT will provide observations from the morning orbit. Coverage from both orbits is essential for use in numerical weather prediction models. The data are also used for global climate monitoring.
"I am pleased that EUMETSAT and NOAA will expand their long-standing cooperation in the field of Earth observation," Baker said. "We now have agreements for geostationary and polar-orbiting satellite coverage."
"I am delighted to have formalized our cooperation with the United States on provision of future polar-orbiting observing systems," Mohr said. "Europe is fully prepared to play its role in joining with the United States to ensure continuity of a highly valuable system that it has supported since the mid-1960s."
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NASA and the Central American Commission on the Environment and Development (CCAD) will use existing satellite data to develop land-use maps of Central America.
NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin and the President of the Central American Commission on the Environment and Development, and Minister of Environment and Natural Resources of El Salvador, Miguel Eduardo Araujo Padilla, on 10 December signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) at NASA Headquarters, establishing cooperation between the CCAD and NASA in support of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor. Under the terms of the agreement, NASA centers as well as NASA-funded investigators and Central American researchers will use satellite data to develop maps classifying the land cover of the Central American isthmus according to life zones, land-use types, geological structure, hydrology, and other Earth science factors. NASA also will support the development of the CCAD's environmental data and information system by making available optical, radar, and topographic remote-sensing data to the CCAD. The agreement will initiate a new partnership between NASA and the countries of Central America and will demonstrate the utility of NASA Earth science data and information for both biodiversity conservation and sustainable-development planning.
The membership of the CCAD consists of the governments of Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama, which have all agreed to work together within the CCAD framework to promote the sustainable development of the entire Central American region. In 1997 the presidents of the seven Central American countries endorsed the concept of a Mesoamerican Biological Corridor, running throughout the Central American isthmus with the goal of integrating conservation and the sustainable use of the region's biodiversity into a framework for long-term economic development.
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama, and Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, will participate in the implementation of the agreement in support of NASA's Earth Science enterprise, Washington, DC. NASA's Office of Earth Science seeks to understand the total Earth system and the effects of natural and human-induced changes on the global environment.
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The world's first space mission dedicated to observing and understanding tropical rainfall has successfully completed its first year of continuous data gathering. Launched last fall, the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) spacecraft continues to provide exciting new insight into cloud and precipitation systems over the Tropics.
TRMM is a joint United States–Japanese mission that was launched on 27 November 1997, from the National Space Development Agency at Japan's Tanegashima Space Center. The TRMM satellite has produced continuous data since 8 December 1997. Tropical rainfall—that which falls within 35°N and 35°S of the equator—comprises more than two-thirds of the rainfall on Earth. Changes in wind patterns generated by these tropical systems spread across the globe to impact weather patterns everywhere.
Launched to provide a validation for poorly known rainfall datasets generated by global climate models, TRMM has demonstrated its utility by reducing uncertainties in global rainfall measurements by a factor of 2—from approximately 50% to 25%. While pleased with the results to date, "there is clearly an aspect of tropical rainfall which does not fit our conceptual models," said Dr. Christian Kummerow, TRMM project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland.
"At the moment, all fingers are pointing at the possibility that raindrops are significantly smaller than we used to believe. Looking 'under the hood,' of clouds with radars and radiometers has given us a unique perspective on the rain and ice processes. As soon as we make sense of all these new and sometimes contradictory observations, a whole new improved way of viewing and modeling rainfall processes should emerge. These particle sizes have the potential effect of regulating the amount of water vapor and ice being pumped into the upper atmosphere, which plays a key role in global climate change studies," added Kummerow.
"The cloud types and area coverage generated by the rainfall process can directly alter the heat balance of the atmosphere," said Arthur Hou, deputy TRMM project scientist at Goddard. "The combined view of this process from all the TRMM sensors is offering an unprecedented insight here." Observations of cloud droplets near the cloud tops of thunderstorms have also yielded surprises. "The darker appearance of raining clouds and the unexpected suppression of rain in polluted atmospheres might be explained by the presence or absence of large raindrops near the cloud top," said Danny Rosenfeld, an Israeli scientist who is a member of the TRMM science team.
Scientists long have theorized that convection, or heat transfer, is different over land than over the ocean. TRMM's sensors provided direct observational evidence that faster and stronger convective updrafts over land are contributing to the formation of "taller" continental storms with more lightning. This is in contrast to the almost complete absence of lightning over the world's tropical oceans.
One unexpected phenomenon observed by TRMM was the massive tall chimney clouds in Hurricane Bonnie. While monitoring the progress of one of this year's most dramatic hurricanes, NASA researchers obtained compelling images of Hurricane Bonnie showing a (cumulonimbus) storm cloud, towering like a sky scraper, 59 000 feet into the sky from the storm's eyewall. This new view of "hot towers" in hurricanes could help forecasters predict hurricane intensity earlier, and identify those storms that will proceed to a stronger category.
Last July, TRMM shed new light on the phenomenon known as La Niña. TRMM research team members successfully retrieved sea surface temperature data from the TRMM Microwave Imager (TMI) instrument aboard the spacecraft. This temperature data, obtained by the TMI, gives scientists the ability to obtain observations even in cloudy conditions. The coincidence of having both an El Niño and a La Niña event is giving scientists a rare opportunity to study the evolution of these events and the transition from one to another.
La Niña is essentially the opposite of the El Niño phenomenon and is characterized by unusually cold ocean temperatures in the eastern equatorial Pacific. An El Niño occurs when ocean temperatures are warmer than normal. La Niña and El Niño often are spoken of together and termed the El Niño/Southern Oscillations, or "ENSO." La Niña sometimes is referred to as the cold phase of the ENSO. An unexpected benefit from TRMM has been the almost immediate impact the data have had in improving the understanding of atmospheric water and energy cycle in assimilated global datasets. While still early, scientists are very encouraged that this improvement will lead directly to enhanced research efforts as well as better weather forecasts.
TRMM is part of NASA's Earth Science Enterprise, a long-term research program designed to study the earth's land, oceans, air, ice, and life as a total system. Images from the TRMM mission are available on the Internet at URL http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/.
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The 1997–98 El Niño event may have been a major contributor in the average global sea level rising about eight-tenths of an inch before it returned to normal levels, according to scientists studying TOPEX/Poseidon satellite measurements of sea surface height. "This is the first time we have been able to identify that El Niño may cause a change in average global sea level," said Dr. R. Steven Nerem, a TOPEX/Poseidon science team member at the Center for Space Research at the University of Texas at Austin. "Understanding these short-term variations is important for understanding and detecting long-term variations caused by climate change."
"TOPEX/Poseidon measures average global sea level at 10-day intervals with a precision of 0.16 inches, so detecting the 0.8-inch change associated with the El Niño was relatively easy," Nerem said. "However, these results tell us that detecting sea level variations caused by climate change will be more difficult because such changes are significantly smaller than the variations we have observed during the El Nino."
Key to understanding the changes in the ocean are the global maps made by TOPEX/Poseidon. The sea level rise was not confined to the tropical Pacific, but also was observed in the Indian Ocean and the southern Pacific. Nerem's team then calculated the average global sea level. "These 6 years of satellite data are a good start, but we really need a decade or more of continuous measurements before we can accurately detect any climate-induced change," said Dr. Lee-Lueng Fu, the TOPEX/Poseidon project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, California. "We need sustained observation records to understand the variations in the ocean."
Global mean sea level change on seasonal and interannual timescales is a measure of the changing heat content of the ocean. The 0.8-inch rise during the El Niño implies that on average the global ocean may be gaining heat. "Average global sea level began rising in late March 1997, peaked at 0.8 inches above normal in early November 1997, and then began falling back to normal by the end of July 1998. Sea surface temperature began rising in late October 1996, peaked at 0.7°F in late December 1997, and fell back to 0.2°F at present," according to Nerem.
Developed by NASA and the French Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES), the TOPEX/Poseidon satellite, launched in August 1992, uses an altimeter to bounce radar signals off the ocean's surface to get precise measurements of the distance between the satellite and the sea surface. These data are combined with measurements from other instruments that pinpoint the satellite's exact location in space. Every 10 days, scientists produce a complete map of global ocean topography, the barely perceptible hills and valleys found on the sea surface. A follow-on mission to TOPEX/Poseidon, Jason-1, is scheduled for launch in 2000.
An archive of TOPEX/Poseidon El Niño/La Niña images is available at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/elnino.
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NASA has selected 15 April as the new launch date for the Landsat-7 Earth Science satellite. The launch, originally set for December 1998, will take place from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. "The launch delay...was caused by a need for changes in the design of the electrical power-supply hardware for the spacecraft's instrument," according to Phil Sabelhaus, the Landsat-7 project manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland.
During instrument-level thermal vacuum tests beginning in December 1997, a power supply on the Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM Plus) instrument failed twice. Technical changes have resolved the problem, said Sabelhaus. "We're ready for a springtime launch of the spacecraft."
The ETM Plus will continue the database of high-resolution Earth imagery begun in 1982 by the Landsat-4 thematic mapper. As changes occur on the earth's surface due to natural or human-induced events, scientists will be able to use the archive of imagery from the Landsat missions to better understand the behavior of the global environment, scientists explained. The spacecraft contains several technological improvements over previous Landsat satellites and their instruments, officials said. These improvements include better instrument calibration and a solid-state data recorder capable of storing 100 individual ETM Plus Earth images. This capability will enable Landsat-7 to update a complete global view of the earth's surface seasonally, or approximately four times a year.
The ETM Plus was designed and built by Raytheon (formerly Hughes) Santa Barbara Remote Sensing, California. Lockheed Martin Missiles and Space built the Landsat-7 spacecraft. NASA is developing in parallel to the Landsat-7 mission the next generation Landsat instrument and spacecraft technologies through the New Millennium technology demonstration program. This follow-on technology development effort will enable future measurements to be made by a sensor that is one-fourth the mass of the ETM Plus. A new sensor enabled by this development will use only 20% of the electrical power currently needed, while reducing the overall mission cost by 60%, NASA officials noted.
NASA intends to operate Landsat-7 and the flight demonstration spacecraft in the same orbit, but separated from each other by approximately 1 minute in distance. This formation will allow observing the same area of Earth by both satellites, providing validation of the new imaging technologies being demonstrated. The advanced technology mission is intended to mitigate technological risk, improve future Landsat performance by a factor of four and reduce overall mission development time by half, according to NASA.
The next generation Landsat flight demonstration is expected to launch in late 1999.
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After a rigorous peer-review evaluation of nine competing proposals, NASA has selected a proposal from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, to implement the Triana mission with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland. Named for the sailor on Columbus' voyage who first saw the New World, Triana is a satellite mission to L1 (the Lagrange libration, or neutral gravity point between the earth and the sun). From L1, Triana will have a continuous, full disk, sunlit view of the earth. The mission will provide this view of the earth for distribution over the Internet at the beginning of the new millennium.
Dr. Francisco P.J. Valero of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, a part of the University of California, San Diego, has been selected the principal investigator to lead development of the Triana mission. Dr. Valero's mission concept includes two scientific instruments: the Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC), to be built by Lockheed-Martin Advanced Technology Center of Palo Alto, California, and an advanced radiometer, from a source to be selected later this fall. Triana also will include a small, next-generation space weather monitoring instrument to contribute to our understanding of how solar events affect Earth-orbiting spacecraft, such as communications satellites.
"An advanced radiometer at L1 will provide, by looking at the whole sunlit side of the earth at once, the first direct measurements of the radiant power reflected by the planet, and thereby contribute to our knowledge of how much of the sun's energy is absorbed in the earth's atmosphere," said Dr. Valero. "The EPIC instrument will observe the earth's vegetation canopy structure and evolution by taking advantage of the retro-reflectance, or 'hot spot,' view that will be available by being in-line between the earth and the sun. The EPIC also will observe clouds and aerosols."
"The L1 vantage point, with its full-disk view of the earth, offers unique scientific advantages," said Dr. Ghassem Asrar, NASA's Associate Administrator for Earth Science. "The full-disk view of the earth enables retrieval of global quantities at once, whereas measurements from low earth orbit or geostationary Earth orbit must be 'stitched' together, requiring concerted efforts to 'process out' differences due to viewing times and revisit intervals.
"L1 will be a prime vantage point for the next generation of Earth remote-sensing instruments. Triana will serve as a pathfinder for those future missions, providing scientific and operating experience in the L1 environment," said Asrar. The Triana mission also will invite participation from the educational community. "We hope and expect to have widespread participation by students in every phase of this inspirational project. Students will benefit from 'hands-on' participation in Triana via the Internet and NASA's educational outreach efforts," Asrar said. NASA plans to solicit proposals for educational applications of Triana data next year. Commercial participation also is possible for the Triana mission. Commercial enterprises have expressed an interest in contributing financially to Triana development in exchange for commercial rights to data. NASA will consider commercial partnerships for the Triana mission over the coming months.
NASA plans to proceed expeditiously on mission development. Goddard will provide a Small Explorer-lite spacecraft and ground system for Triana, as well as program integration and management support. Triana is a $75 million mission to be launched by December 2000 from the space shuttle cargo bay. Triana will be the latest in the Earth Probe series of missions in NASA's Earth Science enterprise, which seeks to understand the total Earth system and the effects of natural and human-induced changes on the global environment.
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NASA has selected Raytheon STX Corporation of Lanham, Maryland, to provide routine data operations and research and development support for the Space Science Data Operations Office and the National Space Science Data Center at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. This two-year contract, with three one-year options, is valued at $33 212 570. The contract started 1 December 1998.
The contractor's primary responsibilities include processing of space science data and acquisition, modeling, analysis, archiving, and dissemination of NASA archival data and related information. The customers for these data are the scientific community, educators, and the general public. The contractor's duties also include the development and maintenance of sophisticated computer, data storage, and information systems needed to perform the primary functions.
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The United States signed the global warming treaty at a United Nations conference, known as the Fourth Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework on Climate Change, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on 12 November, a move that brought criticism from members of the congressional delegation to the meeting.
Diplomats at the conference worked on a plan for achieving the goals approved last December in Kyoto, Japan. The accord requires industrialized countries to reduce emissions over the next 12 years to levels at least 5.2% below what they were in 1990. The United States agreed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 7% below 1990 emission levels by 2010. To take effect, the treaty must be signed by heads of state and ratified by legislatures in countries representing at least 55% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.
In a prepared statement, the Republican members of the congressional delegation, F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (WI); Joe Knollenberg (MI); Jo Ann Emerson (MO); Joe Barton (TX), and Ken Calvert (CA), wrote they were "deeply disappointed" by the action. "Signing this treaty without intending to submit it to the United States Senate for ratification . . . sends conflicting messages," they noted. "In effect, the Clinton Administration is trying to have it both ways. The interpretation by other nations will be that the U.S. intends to implement the Kyoto Protocol. But by not submitting the treaty immediately to the Senate for ratification, the Administration is attempting to tell the American people who are concerned about soaring energy prices and the loss of jobs; "Don't worry, signing this document doesn't mean anything." The delegation members called for President Clinton to submit the treaty to the senate immediately when congress convenes on 6 January 1999.
While the Republicans objected, Vice President Gore said the signing does not mean Americans will soon pay higher gas and electricity prices or that the administration will start major new efforts to carry out provisions of the treaty without the Senate's approval. "Signing the protocol, while an important step forward, imposes no obligations on the United States," he said. "The protocol becomes binding only with the advice and consent of the senate. As we have said before, we will not submit the protocol for ratification without the meaningful participation of key developing countries. "Our signing today . . reaffirms America's commitment to meeting our most profound environmental challenge—global climate change."
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Water shortages in some parts of the world in the next quarter century will be the greatest threat to food production and human health, according to a joint study by the United States and Japan. World Bank Vice President and agriculture expert Ismail Serageldin, author of the report, said that when 1.3 billion people worldwide have no access to clean water, the shortage could become a key issue in conflicts. "New ways must be developed to take advantage of this diminishing resource if humanity is to feed itself in the twenty-first century," he warned.
Serageldin heads the Consultative Group of International Agricultural Research. The group has compiled a massive atlas on world water and climate, a high-tech effort designed to help farmers, their bankers, government planners and international financial groups. The atlas was financed by the Japanese government and the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID).
While few Third World farmers have the knowledge or equipment to download the atlas from the Internet, Serageldin said, the data will be available to government agriculture experts who can assist the farmers. The atlas provides maps of every country on Earth. A user can call up a wide variety of information, including rainfall figures, temperature averages, soil types, and hours of sunshine. Worldwide, the report noted, approximately 80% of water use goes for agriculture. Most new food output comes from land that needs irrigation. The atlas, Serageldin explained, can help identify areas that today do not produce food but could without destroying forest. It can tell planners where new or different crops might be grown without irrigation or with supplemental irrigation. The group estimates that a quarter of the world's population is expected to face severe water shortages in the next 25 years, even during years of average rainfall. The atlas data will be available in December on the group's Water Management Institute Internet page at http://www.iwmi.org.
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From 50% to 60% of sulfate–aerosol pollution over the Pacific Northwest is coming from industrialized Asia, according to a model developed by a team of researchers at NCAR.
While the total column of air contains "imported" sulfate–aerosols, most of the aerosols near the surface come from North American sources, the group reported in a paper presented during the annual AGU conference in San Francisco earlier this month. In contrast, the group reported, sulfates in Europe are coming primarily from European sources. "It's widely recognized that sulfate aerosols are playing a major role in the climate system," said Jeffrey Kiehl, head of NCAR's Climate Modeling Section. The ability of these aerosols to reflect the sun's radiation may be one reason that increasing greenhouse gases have not warmed the earth as much as some climate models have predicted, he explained. Sulfates also contribute to local pollution and acid rain.
"One important way that sulfur moves in the atmosphere is through transport by the earth's wind," Kiehl explained. However, winds are not the whole story. For the past three years, Kiehl and colleagues Mary Barth, Philip Rasch, and Timothy Schneider have been developing an integrated model of climate and sulfur chemistry. The model includes the emission of natural and industrial sulfur into the earth's atmosphere.
To model how the sulfur gas changes into sulfate aerosol particles, they included chemical processes and the chemical and physical effects of clouds, including clouds' ability to remove sulfates from the atmosphere. They also included the effect of the sulfate aerosols on the reflection of sunlight to address the key question of sulfates' role in the climate system. The researchers compared their model simulations of sulfur and sulfate aerosols with real-world observations near the surface. More comparisons yet to be made far above these surfaces are needed to confirm the model findings.
Fully integrating sulfur chemistry into the climate model allowed the team to account for the effects of interacting winds, precipitation and clouds on that chemistry. This integrated modeling allowed them to calculate the amount of sulfate aerosols formed or removed in any given region. By tagging the sulfates in the climate simulations by source region, the team could calculate the percent of sulfates transported from one region to another. The source regions considered are North America, Asia, and Europe, with the rest of the world grouped as the fourth region.
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A long-term study of blue grama grass, an important source for grazing animals in the prairies of Colorado, shows how global warming can destabilize an ecosystem by giving invading plants an advantage over native plant life. The results of the study, produced by ecologists working through the National Science Foundation (NSF)'s Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program, are published in the 11 December issue of the journal Science.
The Shortgrass Steppe LTER in north central Colorado provides Colorado State University researchers Rich Alward, Jim Detling, and Dan Milchunas a place to observe how climate change can affect an ecosystem. "This research clearly demonstrates the subtle and pervasive consequences of global warming," said Scott Collins, program manager in NSF's division of environmental biology, which funds the LTER network. "As the average low temperature increases, the growing season expands. These researchers demonstrate the harmful consequences of this subtle change on biodiversity in grasslands."
Recent analyses of climate changes suggest that global minimum temperatures, the average annual nighttime low temperatures, are increasing at about twice the rate as global maximum temperatures, average annual daytime high temperatures. In these grassy ranges of Colorado, a long growing season primarily benefits plants that do well in cooler weather. Here, the plants most likely to benefit from a longer growing season are often the weeds and non-native grasses that can sprout quickly after the winter thaw begins. These cool-season plants can then take advantage of space and water resources before the warm-season grasses begin growing in earnest. The warm-season grass in question is blue grama, a plant that provides an important food source for both cattle and wildlife in the area. By correlating decades worth of local plant growth and climate data, the researchers drew a link between an increase in temperature and a decline in blue grama growth. "For each 1°C increase in average low temperatures, blue grama growth decreases by one third," said Detling. "A number of cool-season plants, however, can exploit this change and may eventually out-compete blue grama in the steppe ecosystem."
Since blue grama covers nearly 90% of the shortgrass steppe, its loss can have serious consequences on the strength of the ecosystem. Blue grama has flourished in the grasslands due, in part, to its ability to survive both long periods of drought and constant grazing. If cool-season plants outgrow blue grama, it is questionable that they can survive these same conditions. According to Detling, increases in the growing season may ultimately destabilize the shortgrass ecosystem, possibly resulting in the loss of important grazing land. Along with an increase in foreign plant growth, the climate change may also lead to an increase in populations of pest insects, further upsetting the current balance of the ecosystem.
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The New Jersey Shore Cleanup Project has won the Renewable Natural Resources Foundation's (RNRF) 1998 Outstanding Achievement Award for its "successful and innovative initiative to protect fragile coastal systems." The award given by the foundation, a consortium of 16 of the nation's leading natural resource organizations, is the only national conservation award presented to honor interdisciplinary achievements in the renewable natural resources field.
In 1997 and 1988, the New Jersey shore pollution reached crisis levels. New Jersey's shore water quality improved drastically from 1988 to 1997 through the leadership of Phillip Scalan, AT&T's Corporate vice-president and Quality New Jersey (QNJ) Environment Focus Group chairperson, and David B. Rosenblatt, manager of the Local Shores Program. New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and QNJ Environment Focus Group co-chair. The number of beach closures improved from 803 in 1988 to 14 in 1997.
The QNJ Environment Focus Group demonstrated how the application of quality methods could improve the quality of life in New Jersey. Tourism of the shore has increased by about $1 billion over the past two years.
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A global program marked a major milestone 30 November when an energy efficiency center in Ukraine graduated to self sufficiency in the fight against high energy consumption and environmental degradation. The move represents the successful launch of six independent nongovernmental organizations in Eastern Europe and China that promote energy efficiency in transition economies. The centers were created through the Advanced International Studies Unit, or AISU, which is a part of the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
Poor energy use pervades transition economies. In the Bohemia region of the Czech Republic, industrial plants emit cancer-causing agents at levels up to 800 times that country's acceptable limits. A Ukrainian company will use two to three times more energy than an average American company to make one ton of steel. And Russian families spend an average 25% of their take-home pay on heat for their apartments.
Since 1990, AISU has led the creation and business development of energy efficiency centers in China, Russia, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Poland and the Czech Republic. The centers provide expertise to business and government leaders regarding environmental policy development, energy management training, technology transfer, public education, and research. Pacific Northwest's AISU staff served as planning and logistics advisers for each center.
The last center to become independent is the Ukrainian Agency for Rational Energy Use and Ecology, or ARENA-ECO. This center has developed a large enough client base to operate on its own and launched into self sufficiency on 30 November. One of ARENA-ECO's largest projects to date has been helping the World Bank evaluate a $40 million loan to install energy efficiency technologies in public buildings in Kiev. Like the other centers, ARENA-ECO will continue promoting energy efficiency in a country facing high energy consumption and growing fossil fuel emission troubles.
"The high energy consumption stunts the economic growth in these countries, " said Meredydd Evans, AISU senior scientist and member of ARENA-ECO's board of directors. "The energy efficiency centers play a key role in changing that dynamic to one of financial savings and environmental responsibility. ARENA-ECO was supported with about $460 000 in core funding over four years by the Agency for International Development in collaboration with DOE. During that time, the Ukrainian center created business plans, started new projects, set up an office, and developed potential business contacts. "Now Ukraine will have a consistent, powerful voice promoting responsible energy use and environmental stewardship in business and government," said AISU Director William Chandler.
The other five centers are the Beijing Energy Efficiency Center or BECon; the Center for Energy Efficiency in Russia or CENEf; the Energy Efficiency Center in the Czech Republic or SEVEN; the Polish Foundation for Energy Efficiency or FEWE; and the Energy Efficiency Center in Bulgaria, or EnEffect. Each center was founded by local experts and is nongovernmental and nonprofit.
AID, DOE, and the World Wildlife Fund provided core funding to each of the six centers. Other organizations contributing financial support to individual centers include the MacArthur Foundation, C.S. Mott Foundation, and W. Alton Jones Foundation. The six centers fill a role in transition economies previously ignored by industry and government. For example, the Czech center helped an American company called Energy Performance Services win $30 million in contracts while visiting that country. And the Russian Center has been implementing energy efficiency technologies in public housing in that country through a $400 million loan from the World Bank.
For more information, go to the AISU Web site at http://www.pnl.gov/aisu and link to Web sites for the individual centers.
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An international team of coral reef experts has reported that high sea surface temperatures in 1998 have affected almost all species of corals, leading to unprecedented global coral bleaching and mortality, the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced.
Corals live on the upper edge of their temperature tolerance, with high temperatures directly damaging them. This means that the increase by about 2°C predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the next 50 years would pose a serious threat. The 1998 bleaching event may have far-reaching negative consequences for human health and economies that depend on biodiversity, fisheries, tourism, and shore protection provided by coral reefs.
The group of experts, attending the International Tropical Marine Ecosystems Management Symposium conference in Townsville, Queensville, at Australia's Great Barrier Reef, also reported that associated reef invertebrates have been affected by warmer sea temperatures. Loss of some corals more than 1000 years old indicates the severity of this event. "Managers and scientists from around the globe are particularly concerned about this past year's unprecedented, global bleaching episode," said D. James Baker, NOAA administrator. "The bleaching and mortality rate may even worsen in the years ahead. This serves as a wake-up call for more research and monitoring to help protect these valuable coral reef ecosystems."
Global coral bleaching and die off was unprecedented in 1998 in geographic extent, depth, and severity. Although the effects were uneven and patchy, the only major reef region spared from coral bleaching appears to be the Central Pacific. In some parts of the Indian Ocean, mortality is as high as 90%. Reefs in the Maldives, Sri Lanka, Kenya, and Tanzania were devastated, with shallow reefs looking like graveyards. Many reefs in Southeast Asia have been similarly affected. Countries worst hit were Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, and the islands of Palau. This will impact severely on the livelihoods of millions of people.Current projections of global warming suggest there could be increased frequency of coral bleaching and coral mortality. The meeting concluded that this is a matter of particular concern for dozens of developing nations, especially tropical small islands, because healthy coral reefs are crucial to their inhabitants' economic and social survival.
Alan Strong, a NOAA oceanographer, has tracked sea surface temperatures and coral reef events worldwide and was part of the team reporting the unprecedented results for 1998. He is working with Australian scientists to develop future research collaboration with NOAA using satellites and buoys more effectively in coral reef studies. Strong said that an international conference is being planned for Hawaii in June 1999 to help assess and stimulate further satellite research of reefs.
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A new and more powerful Doppler radar, similar to those used by the NWS to forecast severe weather, has been installed on the NOAA ship Ronald H. Brown.
The radar, designed to further understand global climate change, was put aboard the research vessel as it prepares to embark on an around-the-world cruise that will encompass a number of projects that will study different facets of climate relating to prediction and change.
The Ronald H. Brown, which has its home port in Charleston, South Carolina, is among the most technologically advanced seagoing research platforms in the world and is the only ship in the U.S. civilian fleet that has a Doppler radar. It also will sail with other measurement systems to observe profiles of wind, temperature, humidity, aerosols, clouds and precipitation and related profiles in the ocean, such as temperature, salinity, and currents.
The Brown is commanded by Captain David Peterson of the NOAA Corps. It has a complement of five commissioned officers, 20 civilian crew members and up to 34 scientists.
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In celebration of 1998, the year of the ocean, more than 1000 participants attended this year's Marine Technology Society's annual conference, held 16–19 November.
NOAA Administrator Dr. D. James Baker was the conference chair; Dr. W. Stanley Wilson, NOAA's deputy chief scientists, was the conference vice chair. Topics included:
Technical topics included applied ocean sciences; ocean measurement systems, marine resources; ocean and coastal engineering, data processing and management,; communications; maritime commerce and charting; vehicles, platforms and advanced technology; marine policy, and education. There were 311 individual papers and two 60-minute panel sessions.
NOAA hosted an open house (open to the public) on two of its coastal vessels, the 90-ft. Rude and the 65-ft. Bay Hydrographer. Both ships employ the latest hydrographic technologies for nautical charting and surveying. The Coast Guard held an open house on one of its newest buoy tenders, the James Rankin, featuring the latest in-station keeping and positioning techniques. The Environmental Protection Agency provided the Peter Anderson, an environmental research platform.
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Elvis and Beale Street are not the only things around Memphis that have been known to rock and roll. The strongest and most widely felt earthquakes in the contiguous United States occurred in 1811–12 in the Mississippi River Valley, according to the USGS. Those earthquakes, three of which were estimated to have been greater than magnitude 8, caused the Mississippi River to flow backward temporarily and were felt more than 1000 miles away.
Because the most intense effects were in a sparsely populated region, loss of human life and property was slight. If just one of those earthquakes occurred in the same area today, millions of people, buildings, and other structures worth billions of dollars would be affected, according to USGS officials. Even today, this region, called the New Madrid seismic zone, has more earthquakes than any other part of the United States east of the Rocky Mountains. As a result, the USGS has selected Memphis, along with Seattle and the San Francisco Bay regions, for detailed study and mapping of earthquake hazards caused by strong ground shaking.
For the Memphis site, the USGS and Mid-America Earthquake Center (MAECenter), in collaboration with other federal, state, and local agencies and research institutions nationwide, will be producing a series of earthquake hazard maps of the city of Memphis and Shelby County. The maps will show the geologic structure of the area and the influence of soil and geology on ground shaking. They will be used by emergency response managers and city planners for determining building design and zoning, setting of insurance rates, siting of critical facilities, and prioritization of retrofitting existing buildings and structures.
The first product produced will be geologic maps of the area. Subsequent maps will show earthquake-related landslide and liquefaction susceptibility based on regional soil conditions. The most challenging task for the scientists will be to produce a final series of maps that show probabilities that certain levels of shaking will be experienced in given time frames.
Representatives from Memphis and Shelby County governments, the Tennessee Division of Geology, the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Memphis Light, Gas & Water, local business leaders, structural engineers, and researchers in academia and industry will serve on an advisory board to provide input to the project and to project scientists.
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A number of NOAA employees have been named recipients of Department of Commerce Gold and Silver Medals.
Gold Medal winners include:
James Doherty and Phillip N. Weigant, "For the design, development and deployment of the Emergency Managers Weather Information Network."
Ants Leetmaa, Gerald D. Bell, Ming Ji, Vernon E. Kousky, Arun Kumar, Robert Livezey, Edward A. O'Lenic and Richard Tinker "For issuing the first highly skillful, physically based, climate forecasts for U.S. temperature and rainfall based on El Niño for winter 1997–98."
Walter Telesetsky, Douglas Hess, David Caldwell, Andris Karlsons, Gary Rice, and Peter Lyden, "For leadership resulting in the successful deployment of 164 NEXRAD Doppler Weather Surveillance Systems."
NWS Melbourne, "For providing early and precise severe weather warnings that saved many lives during the most devastating tornado outbreak in the history of Florida."
Thomas Karl, Sydney Levitus, and Jonathan T. Overpeck, "For professional excellence and world-class scientific contributions which have advanced the understanding of the climate system and variability."
Thomas M. Wrublewski, Gustave J. Comeyne, Ronald J. Hooker, Gregory P. Johnson, Kathleen A. Kelly, Steven P. Pirkner, Cyril A. Settles, Howard J. Singer, Michael A. Suranno, Timothy J. Walsh, "For management excellence resulting in the uncontested award of a potentially $900 million contract for the new GOES-NO/P/Q Spacecraft in only 156 days."
Nickalaus Thomas Pinkine, Andrew Dress, Michael Weinreb, Diane V. Robinson, Cheryl A. King, Richard G. Reynolds "For engineering performance in the recovery of the GOES-10 spacecraft to full capacity following its solar array failure."
Silver Medal winners are:
Robert W. Collins, "For an innovative approach to significantly increasing public severe weather awareness."
Kevin Schrab, "For a sustained record of accomplishments in improving forecasts through the use of satellite imagery."
NWSFO Jackson, Kentucky, "For exceptional leadership through team excellence in furthering DOC and NOAA diversity goals."
NWSFO Portland, Maine, and NWSO Burlington, Vermont, "For exceptional public service and dedication to duty during the Winter Ice Storm 1998."
Linda V. Moodie, "For creativity and leadership in achieving a negotiation breakthrough in securing U.S. Government real-time access to Indian satellite data."
Environmental Research Laboratories Environmental Technology Laboratory, "For extraordinary response to NOAA's call to study and forecast the unusual weather associated with this past winter's severe El Niño episode."
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President Clinton has named nine of the nation's most renowned scientific researchers to receive the National Medal of Science, citing them for "their creativity, resolve, and a restless spirit of innovation to ensure continued U.S. leadership across the frontiers of scientific knowledge." The individuals awarded the nation's highest scientific honor have had wide-ranging impact on social policy, cancer research, materials science, and greatly extended knowledge of our Earth and the solar systems. Their theoretical achievements also led to many practical applications.
"These are superstars in their respective fields," Rita Colwell, director of the National Science Foundation (NSF), said. "They've contributed a lifetime of stunning discoveries. We can only recognize them once with a science medal, but we applaud them daily for their continual contributions to humankind, to the reservoir of scientific knowledge and for the impact they have on the students they mentor and educate along the way."
William Julius Wilson, a professor of social policy at Harvard University's JFK School of Government, is one of this year's awardees. He is noted for influencing a generation of social scientists through his studies and published works in urban poverty and its causes.
Bruce N. Ames, University of California, Berkeley, and Janet D. Rowley, University of Chicago, have had a major impact on cancer-related studies—Ames for work on cancer and aging, Rowley for her research in chromosome abnormalities that opened new areas of study in different types of leukemia.
John W. Cahn, a fellow at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland., is considered the nation's intellectual leader in materials science.
Eli Ruckenstein, a Romanian-born professor of engineering and applied science at the State University of New York at Buffalo, has many pioneering achievements in most areas of chemical engineering and is a world leader in catalysis and surface phenomena.
George M. Whitesides, chemistry professor at Harvard University, made revolutionary discoveries in several fields of chemistry and more recently, notable advances in the fabrication of ultra small structures.
Cathleen Synge Morawetz, a mathematics professor at New York University, advanced the science of new aircraft wing design because of her work in partial differential equations started in the 1950s.
Don L. Anderson, a geophysics professor at Caltech, has led the way to better understanding of Earth and Earth-like planets.
John N. Bahcall, a Princeton University professor, was a key figure in helping plan the development of the Hubble Space Telescope while also pioneering the development of neutrino astrophysics.
Including this year's recipients, the National Medal of Science now has been awarded to 362 leading U.S. scientists and engineers. The medal was established by congress in 1959 and is administered by NSF. It honors individuals who have significantly advanced knowledge in the fields of behavioral and social sciences, biology, chemistry, engineering, mathematics, and physics. A 12-member presidential committee reviews nominations for the annual awards.
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Dr. Edward J. Weiler has been named associate administrator for NASA's Office of Space Science, a position in which he has served as acting associate administrator since 28 September.
In his new capacity, Weiler will be responsible for providing overall executive leadership of NASA's Space Science Enterprise. This enterprise aims to achieve a comprehensive understanding of the origins and evolution of the solar system and the universe, including connections between the Sun and the Earth, the beginnings of life, and the question of whether life exists elsewhere beyond Earth.
He will continue to serve as program scientist for the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), a position he has held since 1979, until a replacement for that position is selected.
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The National Science Foundation (NSF) has named physicist Karl A. Erb to head its Office of Polar Programs. Erb assumed his new position on 2 November 1998.
Erb has served as Senior Science Advisor at NSF since 1993. As part of the senior NSF management team, he has considerable familiarity with the management of polar programs. His experience has included representing NSF in the National Science and Technology Council review of the U.S. Antarctic Program, that resulted in the 1996 White House affirmation of the importance of the program to the nation. He also coordinated preparations for the subsequent review by the U.S. Antarctic Program External Panel (known as the Augustine Panel after its chair, Norman Augustine). In addition, he has assisted in developing an agency- wide approach to supporting research in the Arctic. He is also the senior federal science official in the Federal Demonstration Partnership, as designated by the assistant to the president for science and technology.
In 1986, Erb joined NSF as a program manager in the physics division after a 16-year career in research and education at Yale University, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the University of Pittsburgh. From 1989 to 1993, under two presidential science advisors, he oversaw the area of basic research in science and engineering at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
Erb is recognized for his research in experimental nuclear physics, particularly in the areas of heavy-ion science and nuclear molecular phenomena. He received his masters and doctoral degrees from the University of Michigan, and his Bachelor of Arts degree from New York University. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was recently recognized for his work in the public sector with the Presidential Meritorious Rank award.
As head of NSF's polar programs, Erb will oversee an annual budget of approximately $250 million. Acting OPP head John B. Hunt, in that post since August 1997, will devote full time to his responsibilities as Deputy Assistant Director for Integrative Activities in NSF's Education and Human Resources Directorate.
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Charles G. Groat was sworn in as the thirteenth director of the U.S. Geological Survey by Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt on Friday, 13 November 1998 in the auditorium of USGS headquarters in Reston, Viriginia.
"I have been proud to refer to USGS scientists as colleagues for many years," said Groat. "It's a great thing to now lead the organization that is filled with so much scientific creativity, relevance, and dedication. These are exciting times in science, especially in the earth and life sciences. USGS is in the forefront, and I am honored to be a part of the team, bringing scientific information to our customers around the world.
"A prime example of this is happening right now, with the concerted efforts of USGS leading an interagency charge to get critically needed information on the many impacts of Hurricane Mitch to those who need it within our government and in the affected areas of Central America.
"USGS responsiveness to society's needs for a better understanding of the earth, its life, processes, environments, and resources depends on first class science. A major challenge for the USGS is maintaining its strong tradition for scientific excellence while expanding the capacity to make it relevant to decision makers at all levels and effectively communicating the needed information. I will work hard at supporting and advancing both the science and its applications."
Dr. Groat is a distinguished professional in the earth science community with over 25 years of direct involvement in geological studies, energy and minerals resource assessment, ground-water occurrence and protection, geomorphic processes and landform evolution in desert areas, and coastal studies. He currently serves as associate vice president for Research and Sponsored Projects at the University of Texas at El Paso, following three years as director of the Center for Environmental Resource Management. He was also Director of the University's Environmental Science and Engineering Ph.D. program and a professor of Geological Sciences.
A native of Westfield, New York, Groat received an A.B. degree in Geology from the University of Rochester in 1962, M.S. degree from the University of Massachusetts in 1967, and Ph.D. in 1970 from the University of Texas at Austin.
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Jane Lubchenco has been named winner of the RNRF's 1998 Sustained Achievement Award. She was honored "as an accomplished scientist whose life has been committed to furthering, understanding and improving marine conservation, biological diversity, ecological causes, and the consequences of global changes and sustainable ecological systems through ecological research, stewardship practices, and environmental education."
A marine ecologist by training, Dr. Lubchenco is the Wayne and Gladys Valley Professor of Marine Biology and Distinguished Professor of Zoology at Oregon State University, a Pew Scholar in conservation and the environment, and a MacArthur Fellow. She is past president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and past president of the Ecological Society of America.
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