Category: Highlights

Building & Deploying Tools to Better Observe Lightning in the Washington D.C. Region & Beyond

July 6, 2023

In January 2022, ESSIC/CISESS Scientist Daile Zhang won a CISESS Seed Grant to evaluate NOAA’s Geostationary Lightning Mappers (GLMs) on the GOES-16 and -17 Satellites and the upgraded Mid-Atlantic Lightning Mapping Array (MALMA) using a network of low-cost and innovative atmospheric electricity and lightning measurement tools to take lightning videos. Recently, the initial Seeds Grant period ended and Zhang reported her results.

Dorothy Hall Awarded Life Member of Eastern Snow Conference

June 15, 2023

Dorothy Hall was awarded Life Member of the Eastern Snow Conference at the 79th meeting in Easton, PA, on June 7th. She also gave the banquet speech entitled “A Brief History of Advances in Satellite Snow-Cover Mapping”.

Figure: GPROF AMSR2 Rainfall estimates during hurricane Mawar landfall in Guam on May 24th 2023. (Top) rainfall rate; (bottom) probability of precipitation.

Providing Observations When Radars Aren’t Available

June 9, 2023

AMSR2 Precipitation Product During Mawar’s Landfall in Guam

NOAA's GOES-13 satellite has been seeing a lot of active winter weather on Feb. 21 from its fixed position over the eastern U.S. Credit: NOAA/NASA GOES Project

Oceanic Responses to the Winter Storm Outbreak of February 2021 in the Gulf of Mexico from In Situ and Satellite Observations

June 9, 2023

Korak Saha and Yongsheng Zhang are co-authors of a new paper in Remote Sensing titled “Oceanic Responses to the Winter Storm Outbreak of February 2021 in the Gulf of Mexico from In Situ and Satellite Observations”.

Figure 3. Collaborative development, testing, review, and release workflow, highlighting the role of the community, the JCSDA CRTM team, and operational partners in the development and evaluation of contributions to the CRTM.

The Community Radiative Transfer Model (CRTM): Community-Focused Collaborative Model Development Accelerating Research to Operations

June 8, 2023

Isaac Moradi is the co-author of a paper entitled “The Community Radiative Transfer Model (CRTM): Community-Focused Collaborative Model Development Accelerating Research to Operations” published in Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

ESSIC Hosts Python Workshop

May 23, 2023

Earlier this month, Earth Systems Science Interdisciplinary Center (ESSIC) held a virtual workshop on Python hosted by Rebekah Esmaili from Science and Technology Corp (STC).

Caption: Season-averaged soil moisture (m3/m3) for GLDAS, CCI and SMOPS over the 2015- 2018 period with left and right columns for cold (January-April) and warm season (May- September), respectively.

Assimilation of Blended Satellite Soil Moisture Data Products to Further Improve Noah-MP Model Skills

May 8, 2023

Jifu Yin, Ralph Ferraro, and Jicheng Liu are authors on a new paper in Journal of Hydrology
titled “Assimilation of Blended Satellite Soil Moisture Data Products to Further Improve Noah-
MP Model Skills”.

Correlation between coincident snowfall rate observations from CPR and from each sensor over ocean from March 2014 to July 2019. (b) As in (a), but over land.

For Ocean Snow Detection and Intensity, Conical Scanning Beat Cross-Track Radiometers

May 3, 2023

Satellite observations provide the only means for snowfall detection and snowfall intensity estimation on a global scale.

Zhang Publishes Book on Arizona Lightning

April 6, 2023

ESSIC/CISESS Scientist Daile Zhang has published a new book titled Flashes of Brilliance: The Science and Wonder of Arizona Lightning with Springer.

The Arctic “ozone hole” in March 2020. (NASA)

Five Ozone-Depleting CFCs Increased Globally From 2010-2020

April 3, 2023

A new paper in Nature Geoscience written by an international team of scientists led by Dr. Luke Western of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) shows that atmospheric abundances and emissions of five chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) increased between 2010 and 2020, despite the 2010 Montreal Protocol that banned CFC production for dispersive use.