Year: 2013

NASA’s Curiosity, the latest rover to explore the Red Planet, discovered sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon near an ancient stream bed in Gale Crater on the Red Planet last month.  Scientists say these chemicals are some of the key ingredients to support life on a planet and provide evidence that Mars could have once supported living microbes.

Curiosity has been roaming through the Gale Crater, a section of Mars NASA has recently been studying with other rovers to

ESSIC/AOSC Professor Raghu Murtugudde was enlisted in support of climate bill HB1134, that reached the State of Maryland House of Delegates Environmental Matters Committee on March 6, 2013. Sponsored by Delegate Jeffrey D. Waldstreicher (D), HB1134 proposes the creation of a task force to both analyze and create solutions for reducing the impact of the heat island effect on the State. The EPA's web-site provides the following basic definition of heat island effect:  "As …

When the competition for the Green Fund Fellowship was announced, it was advertised as a competition for a single prize: the $10k grant. Well, that was before the projects were submitted and before the Council was pleasantly surprised by the high quality of the research proposals. The quality was so high that the Council decided to dig into their personal pockets and provide a second $10k award. Meet Scott Tjaden and David Daily; your Council on the Environment grant winners. Tjaden, an …

I agree with the WaPo … Shagga’s vegetarian combo is yummy. So get out there and check it out! http://collegepark.patch.com/articles/shagga-coffee-among-wapos-top-40-picks-for-dc-diners-541cf8dc?ncid=newsltuspatc00000001 http://www.shaggarestaurant.com/  …

ESSIC/AOSC Professor Zhanqing Li has been appointed to a 4-year term as an editor of the American Geophysical Union’s Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres (AGU JGR-Atmospheres). It’s a prestigious honor for Li, given JGR-Atmospheres standing as one of the most-highly cited research publications on climate change over the past decade.  Li is certainly no stranger to JGR-Atmospheres itself, given his ranking as its currently most published author. According to the AGU web-site, AGU …

ESSIC/AOSC Professor Zhanqing Li will serve as local host for a forum on climate change and environmental alterations in China at the University of Maryland Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center. The forum will be held at ESSIC’s University of Maryland Research Park location Friday, March 1, 2013 (09:00am – 1:00pm) Four presenters will hold talks at the forum, including Dr. Tong Zhu, Dr. Chungu Lu, Dr. Renyi Zhang, and Professor Li himself.  A discussion will follow. (Please see the …

ESSIC/AOSC Professor Raghu Murtugudde was quoted in The Hindu online news source this week, in regard to the Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO) launch of a satellite designed to collect and relay data on the Earth’s oceans. Jointly developed by France (CNES) and India (ISRO), the 900-pound SARAL satellite will record sea levels, wave heights, and winds over the oceans, then send this information to mission tracking centers in France and India. The SARAL mission is complementary to …

The University of Maryland Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center (ESSIC), will serve as the host institute for the Third International Workshop of the Global Flood Working Group. The three-day event organized jointly by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, the Dartmouth Flood Observatory, and the University of Maryland will be held at the University of Maryland Research Park from 4-6 March, 2013. The workshop itself is as an effort to bridge the gap between …

ESSIC Visiting Assistant Research Scientist Dr. Scott Rudlosky, a Physical Scientist for NOAA’s Satellite Climate Studies Branch (co-located at the UMD Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites – CICS-MD), held a seminar on on Lightning Observations and Applications at Various Scales at the Cooperative Remote Sensing Science and Technology Center (CREST), a multidisciplinary center led by the City College of the City University of New York. In his discussion, Rudlosky reassured students …