Category: Archive

115 – The Global Reservoir and Lake Monitoring System: Enhancing the USDA/FAS DSS with NASA, NRL and ESA Satellite Radar Altimeter Data
Principal Investigator(s): C. Birkett (ESSIC/UMD)

This program aims to enhance and expand a satellite-based, near-real time, reservoir and lake water-level monitoring system. This system is on-line, operational, existing within the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) decision support system (DSS) through the cooperative USDA/NASA Global Agricultural Monitoring (GLAM) program. Current lake level products stem from the NASA/CNES TOPEX/Poseidon (archival 1992-2002), Jason-1 (post 2002 and near real time), Jason-2/OSTM (post 2008) missions, the US Naval Research Lab’s GFO (post 2000) mission, and the current ESA ENVISAT (post 2002) mission. The primary user is the Office of Global Analysis (OGA) within the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS). The FAS utilize the products for irrigation potential considerations and as general indicators of drought and high-water conditions. The monitoring system thus has relevance to water resources management and agriculture efficiency applications at both the national and international level.

109 – NASA Decision Support: Monitoring Air Quality Effects of Anthropogenic Emissions Reductions and Estimating Emissions from Natural Sources
Principal Investigator(s): D. Allen

An accurate specification of anthropogenic and natural emissions is crucial for determining the impact of emission perturbations on air quality. However, when this project began, lightning-NO emissions, a substantial contributor to tropospheric NO2 columns over the United States during the summertime, were not included in the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model used by the Environmental Protection Agency. The first goal of this project was to add lightning-NO emissions to CMAQ. Simulations with lightning-NO emissions provide more accurate estimates of nitrogen deposition and are useful for top down estimates of anthropogenic emissions. The second goal of this project was to use tropospheric nitrogen dioxide (NO2) columns retrieved from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) aboard NASA’s Aura satellite to refine emissions of nitric oxide (NO) by microbial activity in soils calculated by the Biogenic Emission Inventory System (BEIS) that is used within the EPA’s Community Multiscale Air Quality Model (CMAQ).

Lightning-NO emissions in the CMAQ model were parameterized using a previously developed method that utilizes the relationship between flash rate and convective precipitation rate. The resulting flash rate distributions were scaled so that monthly average model flash rates match observed monthly average flash rates where the “observed” flash rates were determined using National Lightning Detection Network (NLDN) cloud-to-ground (CG) flash rates for the months of interest and climatological IC (intracloud)/CG ratios. CMAQ simulations were run with the improved source distributions for lightning-NO. Results were evaluated and the resulting algorithm is included as an option in the most recent release of CMAQ.

In order to evaluate how well CMAQ captures changes in NO2 columns associated with soil-NO emissions from BEIS, we compared changes in modeled and OMI-retrieved columns following precipitation events. Our goal was to determine if changes in NO2 columns associated with soil-NO emissions were visible in the OMI data set and if the observed changes were consistent with what was modeled via simulations with CMAQ. In order to put bounds on the emissions, we also performed CMAQ simulations with no soil-NO emissions and with doubled soil-NO emissions.

As a means of exploring additional avenues for Center Outreach, Live-Streaming and recording tests of ESSIC seminars will be conducted this week.  ESSIC will beta-test an evaluation unit provided by “NCast,” that is capable of both recording and streaming presentation and meeting content.   Monday’s seminar (5/14) will feature Dr. Edward Kim from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Thursday’s seminar (5/17) will feature two speakers, with talks scheduled to begin at 10:30am and 12:00pm …

This year’s AOGS-AGU (WPGM) Joint Assembly will be held at the Resorts World Sentosa (RWS) in Singapore from August 13-17.

Not only is it one of the biggest science conferences in Asia, but ESSIC’s own Professor Raghu Murtugudde was recently chosen as a distinguished lecturer for this year’s event.

Murtugudde is specifically scheduled to speak at the Ocean Sciences section of the conference on Thursday, August 16.

Murtugudde said he has been to the conference previously and said he even gave …

301 – Joint Center for Satellite Data Assimilation
Principal Investigator(s): Lars Peter Riishojgaard

The Joint Center for Satellite Data Assimilation is a US interagency distributed center charged with coordinating satellite data assimilation activities for environmental prediction applications between NASA, NOAA and the Department of Defense. The Director reports to a Management Oversight Board that consists of representatives from the three partner agencies, and he is responsible for the strategic direction and the daily execution of the research and development work undertaken by the Center as well as for representing the Center in national and international scientific contexts. The Fiscal Year 2011 budget of the Center amounted to ~$20M.

253 – Summary of Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Accomplishments to Date
Principal Investigator(s): Jian-Jian Wang

The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) is a joint project between NASA and the Japanese space agency, JAXA. It was launched on November 27, 1997 and continues to provide the research and operational communities unique precipitation information from space well into 2011. The first-time use of both active and passive microwave instruments and the precessing, low inclination orbit (35°) make TRMM the world’s foremost satellite for the study of precipitation and associated storms and climate processes in the tropics. To prepare for the TRMM Senior Review Proposal 2011, a thorough review of scientific accomplishment by TRMM is required.

252 – Improving AOD retrieval over ocean from MODIS
Principal Investigator(s): Jaehwa Lee

Aerosols exert a significant impact on climate change and air quality. These small airborne particles regulate the radiation budget through their direct and indirect effects (IPCC, 2007), or more specifically, by scattering and absorbing radiation and by modifying the microphysics of clouds. In the sense that aerosol shows highly variable spatial and temporal properties, the observations made from satellite, such as Moderate Resolution Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard the Terra and Aqua satellites, provide an unprecedented opportunity to investigate aerosol properties (AOP). However, a recent validation by Remer et al. (2008) showed underestimation of aerosol optical depth (AOD) over the ocean from Aqua-MODIS for high AOD case in particular. To resolve this issue, this study aims to improve AOD accuracy using new aerosol models archived by integrating Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) inversion data (Dubovik and King, 2000; Dubovik et al., 2006) and a tri-axial ellipsoidal dust database data (Meng et al., 2010).

251 – NASA GEOS-5 Chemistry Climate Model (CCM)
Principal Investigator(s): Elena Yegorova

Methane’s concentration has more than doubled since pre-industrial times, but its observed growth rate has declined since 1980 and has remained near zero during much of the 2000s. The causes of the observed growth rate are not well understood. It is important to improve understanding of methane’s behavior because a) methane is the third most important greenhouse gas after water vapor and CO2, with 25 times more global warming potential than CO2 on a 100 year time scale, b) methane contributes to the formation of tropospheric ozone, which is harmful to human health, and c) methane is part of the nonlinear methane (CH4)-carbon monoxide (CO)-hydroxyl radial (OH) system which largely controls the oxidizing capacity of the atmosphere. I am working on improving understanding of the observed variability of methane since 1980, using a computationally-efficient version of the NASA GEOS chemistry-climate model (GEOS CCM). The model accounts for the non-linear response to perturbations of the CH4-CO-OH system. The objective of this project is to understand the 1) sensitivity of methane to variations in OH and emissions and 2) causes of variability in observed methane, so as to lend confidence to projections of future methane growth.