Author: Travis Swaim

ESSIC professor Ross Salawitch served on a committee for the newly released Decadal Survey for Earth Science and Applications from Space. The report is spearheaded by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and provides recommendations to government agencies that work in the Earth system sciences such as NASA and NOAA. Five panels of experts produced the survey. Salawitch served on the "Climate Variability and Change: Seasonal to Centennial" panel. …

ESSIC faculty specialist Michael Folmer coauthored a new article in Results in Physics called “Utility of CrIS/ATMS profiles to diagnose extratropical transition.”  It looks at the potential for using technology aboard the JPSS-1/NOAA-20 satellite to “anticipate changes in hurricane intensity.” The researchers looked at data from as early as Hurricane Sandy in 2012.  …

ESSIC research professor Xiaolei Zou has a new article in Frontiers of Earth Science titled “Effects of diurnal adjustment on biases and trends derived from inter-sensor calibrated AMSU-A data.” The study uses more than 15 years’ worth of data from four different satellites over the Amazon rainforest. It asserts uncertainty in the data, which, when corrected, reduces the derived warming trends by 50 percent. …

ESSIC visiting assistant research scientist Scott Rudlosky won the prestigious and highly competitive NOAA David Johnson Award. Rudlosky was recognized for his lightning measurements with the GOES-16 Geostationary Lightning Mapper. The award will be presented during the National Space Club’s annual Robert H. Goddard Memorial Dinner in March….

ESSIC post-doctoral associate Praveen Noojipady co-authored a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The article provides novel insight into how voluntary corporate sustainability policies can conserve tropical forests. The study’s authors estimate that sustainability certification by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) significantly reduced deforestation in Indonesian plantations — but that the actual area conserved was …

ESSIC senior faculty specialist Chris Grassotti and a team of scientists used the first results from the ATMS microwave instrument aboard JPSS-1/NOAA-20, a satellite launched in November, to generate images of total precipitable water. The data appears very consistent with that of Suomi-NPP, the satellite’s predecessor which is still in operation. …

ESSIC research professor Xiaolei Zou is a co-author of a recently published article in IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing. The article is titled “A Fast Cloud Detection Algorithm Applicable to Monitoring and Nowcasting of Daytime Cloud Systems” and describes a new algorithm for satellite data….