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Author: Cazzy Medley

Can meteorologists save the Chesapeake Bay?

When the nation’s leading experts in weather, water, and climate gather in Baltimore later this month for the annual conference of the American Meteorological Society (AMS), they will get a close-up view of the region’s fragile environment. The Chesapeake Bay area is under siege from a myriad of threats that are becoming more urgent with climate change, and its future economic and ecological vitality may depend in part on the ability of scientists to map out solutions to the bay’s complex and multiple stressors.

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Isaac Moradi smiles for the camera, wearing a red gridded button-up and a red tie

Moradi Appointed to AMS Radio Frequency Allocation Committee

Isaac Moradi, a research scientist and lead of the ESSIC numerical modeling and data assimilation affinity group, has been appointed as a member of the AMS Radio Frequency Allocation Committee, bringing invaluable expertise in microwave and radar observations and their role in weather predictions. The committee focuses on coordinating radio frequency spectrum management crucial to weather, water, and climate services. It serves a pivotal role in evaluating how spectrum policy changes might impact meteorological data collection and distribution. Moradi’s career, marked by advancements in data assimilation and numerical modeling through enhancing radiative transfer models, observations error analysis, improving the data assimilation systems for assimilating these observations, and developing advanced calibration techniques for satellite data, aligns seamlessly with the committee’s mission.

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University of Maryland Distinguished University Professor Ellen Williams Retires

Ellen D. Williams, a Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Physics and the Institute for Physical Science and Technology at the University of Maryland and director of the university’s Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center (ESSIC), retired on December 30, 2023, after 42 years at the university. Following her official retirement, Williams is now a research professor of physics and executive director of ESSIC’s Cooperative Institute for Satellite Earth System Studies (CISESS).

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AGU23 logo

ESSIC at the 2023 AGU Fall Meeting

Last month, the American Geophysical Union (AGU) held its annual Fall meeting from December 11 to 15. ESSIC scientists presented and attended both virtually and in-person in San Francisco, CA. The following is a sample (not all-encompassing) of the ESSIC/CISESS talks, presentations, and posters given at the event.

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English: A top view scene of someone doing some research and going through the pages of a book and using a magnifying glass on it. The scene happens on a wooden background. There are also some other research related items in the scene, such as: sticky notes, pencil, ruler or notebook

ESSIC Launches Seed Grant Program

This week, Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center (ESSIC) announced the selection of two recipients of the Seed Grant Program (ESGP), a new initiative to provide ESSIC scientists with internal funding mechanisms to carry out innovative research in pilot studies that have the strong potential to lead to future proposals for external funding.

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Figure: Blue crabs spend their early larval stages in off-shore water, making them vulnerable to ocean circulation and other highly variable environmental phenomena. (Graphic from Maryland Sea Grant Chesapeake Quarterly, 2012.)

ESSIC at Blue Crab Data Workshop

The Chesapeake Bay Stock Assessment Committee held a Blue Crab Data Workshop from Dec 5-7 to review sources of environmental and biological data that may help model the blue crab population for improving the management of this important marine resource and iconic Chesapeake Bay delicacy. Ron Vogel, ESSIC/CISESS senior faculty specialist, participated in the workshop as a subject matter expert on environmental data sources from satellites to be used in the modeling research.

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Figure 1. The local perturbations in observed microwave brightness temperatures from an ascending orbit of (a) MetOp-B AMSU-A channel 14, (b) MetOp-C AMSU-A channel 14, a descending orbit of (c) NOAA-20 ATMS channel 15, and (d) SNPP ATMS channel 15 on January 15, 2022. The black triangle at the center for each panel is the Tonga volcano location. The outermost black-curved lines from the Tonga volcano location correspond to a phase speed of 330 m/s assuming that the perturbation has been generated at the time and location of initial volcanic eruption. From the 2nd outermost black-curved lines to the innermost lines, the phase speeds are 300, 270, and 230 m/s, respectively. The time information in each panel indicates the approximate observation time for the Lamb wave (between 300 m/s and 330 m/s indicated by black right-pointing triangles) and for the lead gravity wave (between 230 m/s and 270 m/s indicated by red right-pointing triangles). Red dots indicate the pixels where the brightness temperature perturbation is larger than 1.2 K.

Satellite Microwave Observations of the Hunga Tonga Eruption’s Atmospheric Waves

ESSIC/CISESS scientists Yong-Keun Lee and Christopher Grassotti are authors on a new paper in Geophysical Research Letters describing the first attempt to perform a detailed analysis of the stratospheric impact of the eruption from satellite microwave observations. The other authors on the paper are Neil Hindley from University of Bath and Quanhua (Mark) Liu from NOAA’s Center for Satellite Applications and Research.

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ESSIC Celebrates 2023 Peer Awards

As a now traditional part of the ESSIC end-of-year Holiday Party, two annual peer awards were presented to honor the year’s Best Paper and the Employee of the Year. This year, Director Ellen Williams presented these awards to Chelsea Parker, Assistant Research Scientist, and Brenda Torney, Payroll Coordinator.

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