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Author: Cazzy Medley

April Showers Bring May Flowers … But With Drizzles Or Downpours?

As spring finally arrives in typical Maryland style – downpours – people take comfort in these wet days by dreaming of the blooms that the rain nurtures. However, a new study by an Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center researcher published in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment shows that whether rainfall comes as drizzle events or downpours matters for plant growth.

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Figure: ESSIC/CISESS Scientist Christopher Smith presenting his research as the Enterprise Proving Ground Satellite Liaison for the NWS Weather Prediction Center (WPC) and Ocean Prediction Center (OPC) to maximize satellite capabilities for weather forecasts.

ESSIC Hosts Annual UMD-NOAA Mini-Conference

The National Weather and Climate Prediction Center (NCWCP) and UMD’s Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center (ESSIC) held a three-day mini-conference from February 27 to 29, a hybrid event held both at the ESSIC and online. The conference brought together ESSIC, CISESS, and NOAA scientists to share their presentations and posters from the recent AGU and AMS conferences. Peter Beierle was the conference organizer for UMD.

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New Research Finds Climate-Critical Ocean Current System is Slowing

The global ocean has been heating up for decades, with records from the 1960s reporting a substantial rise in upper ocean heat content. Rising ocean temperatures also affect ocean currents, though there has yet to be a consensus on the strength or extent of those changes, or whether these changes will continue in the future. However, a new paper led by Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center (ESSIC) scientist Alexey Mishonov documents, for the first time, a significant slowing of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a crucial ocean current system that plays a vital role in regulating Earth’s climate.

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WOA23 annual mean sea water temperature for the 2015-2022 time period on 0.25 grid.

World Ocean Atlas 2023 Released

ESSIC/CISESS scientist Alexey Mishonov is one of the authors of the newly released World Ocean Atlas 2023. The World Ocean Atlas 2023 (WOA23) is a set of temperature, salinity, oxygen, phosphate, silicate, and nitrate means based on profile data from the World Ocean Database (WOD). WOA23 includes approximately 1.8 million new oceanographic casts added to the WOD since WOA18’s release, as well as renewed and updated quality controls. The database can be used to create boundaries and/or initial conditions for a variety of ocean models, verify numerical simulations of the ocean, and corroborate satellite data.

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