Author: Cazzy Medley

Santiago Gasso smiles brightly in a dusty landscape

Gassó Teaches in Virtual Summer School

June 17, 2022

ESSIC Scientist Santiago Gassó participated as speaker in and chaired several sessions during the Surface-Ocean Lower Atmosphere Study (SOLAS) Summer virtual school, which was held June 13-17,2022. He taught a remote sensing module on June 13, chaired the Atmospheric deposition and ocean biogeochemistry session, and co hosted the Science Writing and Social media Workshop on June 14. He was also a judge for all poster sessions and a photography competition held throughout the week.

From left to right: Veljko Petkovic, Huan Meng (NOAA visiting scientist), Yongzheng Fan, Lisa Milani, Yalei You, Malar Arulraj, Chris Kidd, Ralph Ferraro, Sarah Ringerud, Bob Adler

ESSIC Scientists Attend International Precipitation Workshop

June 17, 2022

Ten ESSIC scientists participated at the 10th Workshop of the International Precipitation Working Group (IPWG), held in Ft. Collins, Colorado, June 13-17, 2022.

Ellen Williams on Nuclear Threat Initiative Panel Discussion

June 6, 2022

ESSIC Director Ellen Williams participated in a panel discussion at the Nuclear Threat Initiative 20th Anniversary Dinner. At the discussion, she spoke about taking a multifaceted perspective towards technological advances in the nuclear industry. See the video below to watch the full discussion.

Raspberry Pi Cameras Captures 7-Stroke Close-to-Ground Lightning Flash

May 26, 2022

In May, Daile Zhang, Guangyang Fang, Joseph Patton, and an AOSC undergrad student Domenic Brooks set up Raspberry Pi cameras at two locations. Now, they capture a lightning storm!

The red dots are the U.S., Chinese, and Taiwanese locations that have experienced the most-extreme climate variability and fastest rates of climate change.

How Exposed Is Your Supply Chain to Climate Risks?

May 25, 2022

A collaboration between ESSIC, supply-chain-mapping company Resilinc, and the University of Maryland’s Supply Chain Management Center was recently published in Harvard Business Review. ESSIC scientist Michael Gerst is second author on this paper.

Figure: Three-year JJA-averaged quantities are shown for the WRFS simulation and (b), (d) the differences (WRFG - WRFS) in those quantities, where S and G stand for the different soil datasets. (top) Precipitable water (kg m-2) and (bottom) vertically integrated moisture flux vectors every 20 grid spaces (kg m s-1). Stippled areas in (b) and red vectors in (d) show 90% confidence intervals (p = 0.1).

Soil Properties and the Atmospheric Moisture Budget

May 23, 2022

ESSIC/CISESS Scientists Eli Dennis (a former CISESS grad student), and Hugo Berbery have a new article published in the May 2022 issue of the Journal of Hydrometeology critiquing how models represent soil attributes.

Figure: Vertical profiles of co-located LEO AMVs and RAY (red) and MIE (blue) winds. The top row shows the Arctic (north of 60° N), (a) mean AMV HLOSV (solid lines), Aeolus HLOSV (long dashed lines; m s−1), and mean AMV wind speed (short dashed lines; m s−1), (b) MCDs (solid), SDCDs (short dashed), and AMV HLOSV error, as represented by SDCD–Aeolus L2B uncertainty (long dashed; m s−1), and (c) co-location counts. Panels (d–f) are as in panels (a–c) but for the Antarctic (south of 60° S). Colored open circles indicate levels where MCDs are statistically significant at the 95 % level (p value < 0.05), using the paired Student’s t test. Vertical zero lines are displayed in the center panels in black. Levels with observation counts > 25 are plotted.

Atmospheric Motion Vector Bias and Uncertainty

May 23, 2022

ESSIC/CISESS Scientists Katherine Lukens (a former CISESS grad student), Kayo Ide, Hui Liu, and Ross Hoffman have a new article in the journal Atmospheric Measurement Techniques about their work with the NOAA/NESDIS Office of Projects, Planning, and Acquisition (OPPA) Technology Maturation Program (TMP). The need for highly accurate atmospheric wind observations is a high priority in the science community, particularly for numerical weather prediction (NWP). To address this need, this study leverages Aeolus wind lidar level-2B data provided by the European Space Agency (ESA) as a potential comparison standard to better characterize atmospheric motion vector (AMV) bias and uncertainty.

Caption: The Water Point Viewer’s current water points stretch from Mali to Somalia.

ESSIC Scientist Expands Water Availability Prediction in East and West Africa

May 18, 2022

ESSIC Researcher Kimberly Slinski is the Principal Investigator on “Earth Observation-Based Monitoring and Forecasting of Rangeland Water Resources”, a newly funded project that aims to develop new capabilities for monitoring and forecasting water availability in African rangeland ponds. The project team includes Shrad Shukla and Chris Funk of the University of California Santa Barbara, Mike Jasinski of NASA GSFC, and Gabriel Senay of USGS.

ESSIC Researchers Ranked Among 2022 Top Environmental Scientists by Research.com

May 16, 2022

In the newly released 2022 Top Scientist rankings by Research.com, 18 University of Maryland researchers ranked among the Top 1,000 Environmental Sciences researchers in the United States, and seven ranked among the Top 1,000 worldwide. Of those 18 UMD scientists, 6 are ESSIC scientists.

Tractor on a paddy field in Mekong Delta, Vietnam

Can the Mekong Delta be saved from drowning?

May 9, 2022

May 6, 2022 – The Mekong Delta in Viet Nam could be nearly fully submerged by the end of the century if urgent actions are not taken across the river basin. Continuing with business as usual could drown 90% of this agro-economic powerhouse that’s home to nearly 20 million people – with immense local and global impacts.