ESSIC/CISESS lightning team scientists Joseph Patton and Daile Zhang attended the 2021 Mid-Atlantic ChaserCon, held at the Science Museum of Virginia in Richmond, VA on November 6th.
A ~15 acre wooded area at the southern edge of the University of Maryland campus has inspired a campus-wide discussion on affordable graduate housing and the public health benefits of urban forests.
ESSIC/CISESS Scientist Qingyuan Zhang has a new article to be published in International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation that characterizes the seasonally snow-covered Howland boreal forest ecosystem in Maine, USA with satellite images.
Traditional earth-observing microwave instruments utilize heterodyne receivers for measuring the radiance emitted by the earth and its atmosphere. These instruments which indirectly measure atmospheric temperature, water vapor, clouds, as well as surface information, have played an important role in improving the NWP weather forecasts and reanalyses, such as MERRA generated by GMAO. However, because of limitations in current microwave technologies in simultaneously processing an ultra-wide band (20-200 GHz) at high spectral resolutions, the number of channels for the current microwave instruments is very limited (e.g., 22 channels for ATMS and less for most other MW instruments).
ESSC/CISESS Scientist Jianping Mao is first author on a new paper in Geophysical Research Letters titled “Measuring Atmospheric CO2 Enhancements From the 2017 British Columbia Wildfires Using a Lidar”.
On October 24, a powerful Category 5 (the maximum possible) atmospheric river (AR) occurred over the northern and central parts of California. The storm system featured record breaking precipitation, leading to flooding and mudslides in some locations, along with dangerous winds exceeding 70 miles per hour at higher elevations. San Francisco recorded its fourth highest single-day rainfall amount of over 4 inches. Satellite passive microwave measurements are one of the observational tools that allow depiction of these extreme events, since microwaves are less affected by clouds and precipitation.
ESSIC/CISESS Scientist Jacqueline De La Cour was a contributor and reviewer of The Sixth Status of Coral Reefs of the World: 2020 Report, released by the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network (GCRMN) on October 5th. This sixth edition is the first since 2008 and the first based on the quantitative analysis of a global dataset, compiled from more than 300 contributors and comprising almost 2 million observations from more than 12,000 sites in 73 countries.
ESSIC scientist Zhuosen Wang is a co-author of a chapter in Urban Remote Sensing titled, “US Cities in the Dark: Mapping Man-Made Carbon Dioxide Emissions Over the Contiguous US Using NASA’s Black Marble Nighttime Lights Product”.
ESSIC Research Scientist Isaac Moradi presented a talk on October 19, 2021 as part of the Howard County High Schools G/T Intern/Mentor program on the Earth and Space Science fundamentals.
ESSIC Visiting Associate Research Professor Ariana Sutton-Grier has a new paper out in OneEarth about the importance of nature in climate resilient infrastructure. On this paper, Sutton-Grier worked with researchers from Texas A&M University, US Army Corps of Engineers, University of Georgia, Duke University, and more.
