On Saturday, April 27, ESSIC faculty and staff gathered to celebrate Maryland Day, the University of Maryland’s largest community outreach event! This was the 26th year that the university held the event, and the 24th time that ESSIC has participated.
At the event, ESSIC gave away booklets, stickers, pamphlets, bookmarks, and keychains that celebrate the science that goes on at the Center. The bulk of these materials were generously donated by the Center’s federal partners at NASA and NOAA.
Photos by: Cazzy Medley, Erick Geiger, Kate Cooney, Daile Zhang, and Guangyang Fang.
In addition to the giveaways, several scientists came out to present some of their work. Ron Vogel presented his poster titled, “Satellite Chlorophyll For Chesapeake Bay Fisheries Management”. Agnes Liu, a high school intern mentored by Jifu Yin, presented a poster focused on small satellites. Will Miller presented his work on thunderstorms. Erick Geiger, representing NOAA Coral Reef Watch, presented on coral reef bleaching and gave out booklets about the status of different coral reefs around the world.
This year, ESSIC also hosted a booth for the Climate Resilience Network. Jennifer Collins spoke on the educational opportunities within the projects, while Mike Maddox brought out a new sea level sensor that will be a part of a network of sensors monitoring Maryland’s shorelines. They gave out stickers and seed packs decorated with Climate Resilience Network messaging.
Hu (Tiger) Yang also returned with his intern, Matias Calderon, to demonstrate and speak about microwave radiometers for weather prediction.
The ESSIC/CISESS Lightning Group, which includes Guangyang Fang, Joseph Patton, Daile Zhang, Ashmita Pyne, and Damian Figueroa also came out to talk about their science. The group exhibited and demonstrated the NOAA satellite data virtual reality (VR) program, which was developed by the research team led by NOAA scientist Scott Rudlosky. This VR program is an interactive and immersive “fly-through” of real weather data that allows users to visualize events like Hurricane Dorian and an atmospheric river in a 3-D environment. The group also promoted lightning safety to the community. They distributed stickers and temporary tattoos with lightning safety slogans as well as answered questions about lightning safety that the community had.
Thank you to all of the volunteers who came out to make the 26th Maryland Day special!
