Category: Archive

At the December 2012 NOAA CPC ocean briefing, it was reported that the ESSIC researcher Rong-Hua Zhang’s Intermediate Coupled Model (ICM) has continued to outperform others of its kind, in predicting the “Nino 3.4 Region” Sea Surface Temperature (SST) anomalies, which classify El Niño (La Niña) episodes. As defined by the NOAA National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) web-page on Sea Surface Temperatures (SST),  “El Niño (La Niña) is a phenomenon in the equatorial Pacific Ocean characterized …

In what is likely to become an annual tradition for years to come, ESSIC held its first independently-hosted holiday party at the Center’s M-Square Research Park facility, Friday, December 14th, 2012. According to Assistant Director Andy Negri, who along with Linda Carter and Rashida Bandy comprised the ESSIC M-Square party planning committee, a locally-hosted holiday or end-of-year party was somewhat born out of necessity. ESSIC had maintained a long-standing tradition of jointly hosting …

I am attending the Joint Mathematics Meetings in San Diego, where I was convinced to help organize a special session on environmental mathematics focused on evaluating past climate changes and modeling of future variations.  I am a meteorologist by training and a climate scientist by virtue of spending the past 35 years doing research in observing and understanding of climate variability.  (This may surprise people from CICS and ESSIC, who know me almost solely as a manager, but I

Raghu Murtugudde’s article entitled “Climate Change Needs an Elephant Whisperer” has been published in Funadamatics second volume. Murtugudde’s piece in the publication focuses on the human specie’s need to become more aware of the current changes and altercations of climate change and global warming, where he believes there will be “winners and losers”. According to Murtugudde, humans need to cooperatively unite against the polarizing and often frightening issue of global warming and combat …

ESSIC Director Antonio Busalacchi, along with a contingent of ESSIC/AOSC faculty members, helped to provide a UMD presence at the annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) held in Austin, TX. The 93rd annual meeting, which convened from January 06-10, 2013, was based on a central theme of “Taking Predictions to the Next Level: Expanding Beyond Today’s Weather, Water, and Climate Forecasting and Projections” according to the AMS website. Each day of the event featured new …

In January I am normally in a southern US city attending the American Meteorological Society annual meeting.  This week, I am in San Diego attending a different AMS – the American Mathematical Society Joint Mathematics Meetings.  I am helping to organize a special session on environmental mathematics during which mathematicians and environmental scientists describe methods for modeling and observing climate.  Our session is a part of Mathematics of Planet Earth 2013

In the eighth installment of the UMD-produced video news program, “TerpVision,” the series featured a segment on the newly opened NOAA Center for Weather and Climate Prediction (NCWCP) at the M-Square Research Park, with commentary by ESSIC Director and Professor Antonio Busalacchi. The report provided an overview of the technology and resources available at the new NCWCP facility, the types of research it will support, and how its proximity to the UMD campus and M-Square organizations like …