Category: Highlights

Figure: Blue crabs spend their early larval stages in off-shore water, making them vulnerable to ocean circulation and other highly variable environmental phenomena. (Graphic from Maryland Sea Grant Chesapeake Quarterly, 2012.)

ESSIC at Blue Crab Data Workshop

December 20, 2023

The Chesapeake Bay Stock Assessment Committee held a Blue Crab Data Workshop from Dec 5-7 to review sources of environmental and biological data that may help model the blue crab population for improving the management of this important marine resource and iconic Chesapeake Bay delicacy. Ron Vogel, ESSIC/CISESS senior faculty specialist, participated in the workshop as a subject matter expert on environmental data sources from satellites to be used in the modeling research.

Figure 1. The local perturbations in observed microwave brightness temperatures from an ascending orbit of (a) MetOp-B AMSU-A channel 14, (b) MetOp-C AMSU-A channel 14, a descending orbit of (c) NOAA-20 ATMS channel 15, and (d) SNPP ATMS channel 15 on January 15, 2022. The black triangle at the center for each panel is the Tonga volcano location. The outermost black-curved lines from the Tonga volcano location correspond to a phase speed of 330 m/s assuming that the perturbation has been generated at the time and location of initial volcanic eruption. From the 2nd outermost black-curved lines to the innermost lines, the phase speeds are 300, 270, and 230 m/s, respectively. The time information in each panel indicates the approximate observation time for the Lamb wave (between 300 m/s and 330 m/s indicated by black right-pointing triangles) and for the lead gravity wave (between 230 m/s and 270 m/s indicated by red right-pointing triangles). Red dots indicate the pixels where the brightness temperature perturbation is larger than 1.2 K.

Satellite Microwave Observations of the Hunga Tonga Eruption’s Atmospheric Waves

December 20, 2023

ESSIC/CISESS scientists Yong-Keun Lee and Christopher Grassotti are authors on a new paper in Geophysical Research Letters describing the first attempt to perform a detailed analysis of the stratospheric impact of the eruption from satellite microwave observations. The other authors on the paper are Neil Hindley from University of Bath and Quanhua (Mark) Liu from NOAA’s Center for Satellite Applications and Research.

ESSIC Celebrates 2023 Peer Awards

December 20, 2023

As a now traditional part of the ESSIC end-of-year Holiday Party, two annual peer awards were presented to honor the year’s Best Paper and the Employee of the Year. This year, Director Ellen Williams presented these awards to Chelsea Parker, Assistant Research Scientist, and Brenda Torney, Payroll Coordinator.

Zhang Presents Her New Book at the CTR Wilson Meeting

December 13, 2023

ESSIC/CISESS scientist Daile Zhang and her coauthor Ron Holle virtually presented their new
book–Flashes of Brilliance: The Science and Wonder of Arizona Lightning –at the CTR Wilson
meeting on November 16, 2023. They discussed the motivation of writing the book and
introduced the content of each chapter. The audiences were interested in creating
undergraduate level courses and materials based on the book.

Caption:: A 6th grade class from New Hope Academy visited ESSIC/CISESS on 11/7/2023. (Top from left to right) Malar Arulraj explains how to “make a cloud in a bottle”; Veljko Petković uses a Lego model to teach about satellites; Hu Yang leads student a wearing “bat eyes”. (Center) Intern Ashmita Pyne instructs students wearing VR headsets. (Bottom from left to right) Guangyang Fang explains VR visualization; Hu Yang demonstrates an ultrasonic breadboard; Joseph Patton & Daile Zhang teach a lightning safety game. (Center photo by G. Fang; Top right and bottom center photos by K. Cooney; all other photos by A. Hughes.)

CISESS Hosts Outreach Event for Local Students

December 13, 2023

Last month, CISESS hosted a field trip for a 6th grade class from New Hope Academy. Twenty
students and five adults visited the ESSIC offices and participated in educational activities led
by CISESS scientists. CISESS Coordinator Kate Cooney organized and coordinated the event.

Reporting and Sharing Data for Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement Research

November 27, 2023

ESSIC/NOAA Ocean Carbon and Acidification Data System (OCADS) Scientist Liqing Jiang led a chapter of the Guide to Best Practices in Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement Research, a

ESSIC Featured in Fifth National Climate Assessment

November 27, 2023

ESSIC Assistant Research Scientist Justin Pflug is an author attributed on the Fifth National Climate Assessment, the U.S. Government’s preeminent report on climate change impacts, risks, and responses. The congressionally-mandated effort provides the scientific foundation to support informed decision-making across the United States. Pflug is attributed on two chapters, “Water” and “Compound Events”.

Global surface ocean pH on total scale in 2020. Modified from Jiang et al. (2023).

Acidification of the Global Surface Ocean: What We Have Learned from Observations

November 20, 2023

Global surface ocean pH on total scale in 2020. Modified from Jiang et al. (2023). ESSIC Scientist Liqing Jiang is a co-author on a new

Updated High-Resolution Northern North Pacific Regional Climatology Released

November 17, 2023

On November 7th, ESSIC/CISESS Scientist Alexey Mishonov and the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) released the Northern North Pacific regional climatology, version 2. This is a collection of high-resolution quality-controlled temperature and salinity fields retrieved from the latest World Ocean Database (WOD23) on standard depth levels from the sea surface to 5,200 m depth covering the period from 1955 to 2022.

Figure: Precipitation system observed at 0725 UTC 11 Aug 2020, over the U.S. Midwest. MRMS surface precipitation product (observations) on the left and U-Net output on the right.

Optimal Summertime Precipitation Data from GEO and LEO Observations

November 17, 2023

ESSIC/CISESS Scientists Veljko Petković, Malarvizhi Arulraj, and CISESS Summer Intern Vesta Gorooh (UCI PhD student) have a new article in the November issue of the Journal of Hydrometeorology. The article describes the use of machine learning techniques to improve the retrieval of surface precipitation from passive meteorological sensors aboard geosynchronous Earth-orbiting (GEO) and low Earth-orbiting (LEO) satellites.

Category: Highlights

ESSIC at Blue Crab Data Workshop

Satellite Microwave Observations of the Hunga Tonga Eruption’s Atmospheric Waves

ESSIC Celebrates 2023 Peer Awards

Zhang Presents Her New Book at the CTR Wilson Meeting

CISESS Hosts Outreach Event for Local Students

Reporting and Sharing Data for Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement Research

ESSIC Featured in Fifth National Climate Assessment

Acidification of the Global Surface Ocean: What We Have Learned from Observations

Updated High-Resolution Northern North Pacific Regional Climatology Released

Optimal Summertime Precipitation Data from GEO and LEO Observations

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