Year: 2017

University of Maryland (UMD) Professor Ross Salawitch is an atmospheric and climate scientist, whose main research interest includes the quantification of the effect of human activity on atmospheric composition. Salawitch, who has joint appointments in the Departments of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science (AOSC), Chemistry and Biochemistry (CHEM), and the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center (ESSIC), was conducting research based on a class he had taught when something startling …

ESSIC Assistant Research Scientist Ariana Sutton-Grier spoke at Eastern Carolina University (ECU) recently. The talk was entitled "Blue Carbon, Green Infrastructure, Biodiversity, and Human Health: Science to Support Coastal Resilience." Her lecture was part of a ECU Department of Biology Seminar Series….

A recent NASA news feature explored sea ice related research that featured work associated with ESSIC Associate Research Scientist Sinead Farrell, who was also quoted in the piece.  Farrell is part of team that will use NASA’s Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) to measure sea ice in the third dimension. The satellite, expected to launch in 2018, will utilize laser instrumentation which will enable scientists to precisely measure how far sea ice floats above the …

ESSIC Research Assistant Professor and Leshner Fellow Melissa Kenney recently participated in a live chat event hosted by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The event included science communication experts affiliated with AAAS and the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and explored how scientists could better engage and communicate with both policymakers and the general public.  Please see the following link for further details: …

ESSIC Visiting Assistant Research Scientist Zhankun Wang is a co-author of a recently published paper in the journal Dynamics of Atmospheres and Oceans.  The article is titled “Circulation analysis in the northwest Indian Ocean using ARGO floats and surface drifter observations, and SODA reanalysis output.” In the work, researchers use observations from broad-scale global array of temperature/salinity profiling floats (ARGO) and surface drifter data, as well as Simple Ocean …

The Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center (ESSIC) has been awarded a five-year, $64.8 million cooperative agreement with NASA. Established in 1999, ESSIC is a joint center of the University of Maryland and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center that supports research, teaching and career training in Earth system science. The award will enable UMD to continue and expand its close collaboration with NASA Goddard, building on a legacy of nearly two decades of world-class …