Author: Cazzy Medley

Figure: The VIIRS Flood map, Sentinel-1 SAR Flood map, and the comprehensively blended Flood map on 10/2/2022 reporting flood extent due to Hurricane Ian.

Florida Flood Maps for Hurricane Ian

October 21, 2022

Hurricane Ian made landfall in Florida on the afternoon of 9/28/2022 as a massive Category 4 storm and brought record-setting winds. As of 10/4/2022, at least 105 people have been reported as casualties of Hurricane Ian, 55 of which in Lee County, Florida. Even more people are without power or their home. The NOAA STAR Flood team has produced VIIRS Flood maps, Sentinel-1 SAR Flood maps, and blended Flood maps to report the flood extent due to Hurricane Ian.

Fig. 12. The VZA-COLD detection results of a selected pixel, and high resolution images for Puerto Rico. (a) The accumulated annual NTL change maps from 2013 to 2021 with the latest detected change year presented. (b) The day-of day NTL change map in 2017 over the region enlarged from the white rectangle from Fig. 12a. (c) The time series plot of a selected pixel (red cross in Fig 12b) and the corresponding VZA COLD detection results, in which the red, green, blue, and grey colors indicate the different VZA intervals, the line represent the estimated models, the small dots are the DNB observations, and the large magenta dots are the detected changes. (d) The high-resolution Google Earth image in July 2017 and October 2017. The red squares represet the location and the size of the selected pixel in Fig 12c. The grey background in Figs.12a-b is the Esri ArcMap Dark Grey Canvas base map. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

Monitoring Nighttime Light Changes with NASA’s Black Marble

October 21, 2022

ESSIC Scientist Zhuosen Wang has a new paper in Remote Sensing of Environment that proposes the use of NASA’s Black Marble products to monitor nighttime light.

Lightning Team Gives Weekly Weather Bulletin

October 3, 2022

ESSIC/CISESS lightning team scientist Joseph Patton posted a weather briefing video summarizing the overall national weather patterns with a focus on Hurricane Ian. The lightning team, which also includes Daile Zhang and Scott Rudlosky, plan to post the videos weekly.

Figure: (Top panel) Rain-Rate predicted by eTRaP and observed by MRMS. (Bottom panel) Scatter plot and estimation metrics for Tropical Storm Fiona between September 18, 2022 12 UTC to September 19, 2022 12 UTC.

NPreciSe Evaluation of eTRaP during Tropical Storm Fiona

October 3, 2022

Tropical Storm Fiona struck Puerto Rico on September 17-18, 2022 causing catastrophic floods and leaving most of the island with a major power outage. Fiona is the first Atlantic storm this season to cause a major disaster. NPreciSe (NOAA Satellite Precipitation Validation System) led by the CISESS science team (Malar Arulraj, Veljko Petkovic, Ralph Ferraro, and Huan Meng), evaluated the performance of the Ensemble Tropical Rainfall Potential (eTRaP) forecasts during this event, using a recently added Multi-Radar/Multi-Sensor (MRMS) observation product over Caribbean Islands.

PC: Christoph Trautwein; A scene in the arctic; The halo around the sun is caused by diamond dust in the atmosphere, which overlies clouds.

Comparisons Between the Distributions of Aerosols and Implications for Freezing Over Siberia

October 3, 2022

ESSIC/CISESS Scientist Lauren Zamora is first author on a new paper in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics titled “Comparisons between the distributions of dust and combustion aerosols in MERRA-2, FLEXPART, and CALIPSO and implications for deposition freezing over wintertime Siberia”.

Extreme Wave Heights in the Bering Sea from Remnants of Typhoon Merbok

October 3, 2022

Coastal Alaska was devastated by flooding due to the remnants of Typhoon Merbok (Figure 1a) on September 17, 2022. Storm surge flooded communities along 1,000 miles (1,609 km) of Alaska’s west coast, damaging homes, submerging roads and triggering evacuations. Satellite measurements recorded 17 observations of significant wave height exceeding 14 m (46 feet) on September 16-17 2022 (Figure 1b, dark red dots). Such a sea state is defined as “phenomenal” by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). During the 48-hour period, 5% of all satellite radar altimeter observations in the Bering Sea exceeded 9m (30 ft), defined as “very high” seas by the WMO (Figure 1c) and 19% of observations exceeded 6m (20 ft), WMO “high” seas.

Kimberly Slinski. Image credit: Kimberly Slinski/Adam Wood/Faye Levine/University of Maryland. Effects by Nuwan Paditha (Click image to download hi-res version)

Predicting Droughts from Space

October 3, 2022

Kimberly Slinski can’t stop droughts from happening, but she can see them coming. Her warnings help entire regions of the world prepare for water shortages, crop failures and food insecurities that follow severe droughts. As an assistant research scientist in the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center, Slinski uses satellite data to monitor water availability in drought-prone regions around the world.

Zhanqing Li. Image credit: John T. Consoli/Faye Levine/University of Maryland. Effects by Nuwan Paditha (Click image to download hi-res version)

Balancing the Climate Budget

October 3, 2022

Trying to predict, combat and prepare for climate change is a bit like managing the budget of a major multinational corporation. But instead of knowing where all the money goes, you have to know where all the energy goes. How much sunlight hits the planet?

A screenshot of the cover photo of State of the Climate

ESSIC Scientists Contribute to State of the Climate Report

September 26, 2022

Several ESSIC/CISESS scientists have contributed to State of the Climate, the annual peer-reviewed summary of the global climate published by the American Meteorological Society. The recently-released State of the Climate in 2021 is the 32nd issue and features six chapters authored by dozens of international scientists. ESSIC/CISESS scientists Bob Adler, Jeannette Wild, Alexey Mishonov, Chelsea Parker, and Sinead Farrell contributed to the chapters “Global Climate”, “Global Ocean”, and “The Arctic”.

UMD’s Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center Awarded NASA Funding Renewal

September 26, 2022

The five-year, $95 million cooperative agreement will support the center’s research efforts.

Author: Cazzy Medley

Florida Flood Maps for Hurricane Ian

Monitoring Nighttime Light Changes with NASA’s Black Marble

Lightning Team Gives Weekly Weather Bulletin

NPreciSe Evaluation of eTRaP during Tropical Storm Fiona

Comparisons Between the Distributions of Aerosols and Implications for Freezing Over Siberia

Extreme Wave Heights in the Bering Sea from Remnants of Typhoon Merbok

Predicting Droughts from Space

Balancing the Climate Budget

ESSIC Scientists Contribute to State of the Climate Report

UMD’s Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center Awarded NASA Funding Renewal

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