 |
ASPB and CIMSS Weekly Report
[ Archive ] |
 |
ASPB AND CIMSS WEEKLY HIGHLIGHTS FOR THE WEEK ENDING DECEMBER 13, 2013
IN THE PRESS:
ITEMS FOR THE ADMINISTRATOR:
ITEMS FOR THE ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR:
ITEMS FOR THE OFFICE DIRECTOR, STAR:
Schmit Awarded DOC Silver Medal for GOES-13: Tim Schmit (NESDIS/STAR) and five other NESDIS employees are being awarded the Department of Commerce Silver Medal "For critical support in restoring GOES-13 to operational service following a major anomaly, and maintaining operational continuity." (J. Key, E/RA2, 608-263-2605, jkey@ssec.wisc.edu)
ITEMS FOR THE DIVISION CHIEF, CoRP:
Arctic Report Card 2013 is Now Available: The 2013 edition of the Arctic Report Card is now available (http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/reportcard/). The Report Card has been issued annually since 2006. This year there are 18 peer-reviewed essays prepared by an international team of 147 scientists from 14 different countries, assisted by section coordinators and the editorial team. Jeff Key (STAR) and Yinghui Liu (Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies; CIMSS) co-authored the section on clouds and surface radiation. (J. Key, E/RA2, 608-263-2605, jkey@ssec.wisc.edu)
AGU Presentation on Ozone Exceptional Event Analysis: Brad Pierce gave a presentation titled “Forecasting Stratospheric Intrusion Events over the Western US for Exceptional Event Demonstration” at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sponsored “Nexus of Geophysical Processes and Exposure Science Session” at the Fall 2013 American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting in San Francisco, CA. This talk presented results from nested global-to-regional scale air quality modeling studies showing the potential for forecasting when stratospheric intrusion (SI) events are likely to impact surface ozone concentrations and discussing how these modeling studies can be used to provide weight of evidence to state air quality management agencies for exceptional event analysis. The Clean Air Act requires that states and tribes attain the National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for ozone. If the NAAQS is violated, EPA may designate areas nonattainment for the ozone standard, necessitating the development of plans for improvement in air quality. Ozone caused by exceptional events can be excluded from determinations of nonattainment with appropriate documentation. The modeling studies utilize global ozone analyses from the Real-time Air Quality Modeling System (RAQMS) which were used to initialize high resolution (12km) Weather Research and Forecasting - Chemistry (WRF-CHEM) regional predictions of an SI exceptional event that occurred during June 2012. Nested RAQMS and 13km Rapid Refresh with chemistry (RR-CHEM) forecasts are now routinely provided to the air quality community through collaboration with the NOAA Earth Science Research Laboratory (ESRL, http://ruc.noaa.gov/wrf/WG11_RT/Welcome.cgi). (R.B. Pierce, E/RA2, 608-890-1892, brad.pierce@noaa.gov, T. Schaack, A. Lenzen, SSEC)
(Click image to enlarge)
Figure caption: Nested RAQMS/WRFCHEM simulations are shown to significantly improve the agreement with NASA Ames Alpha Jet Atmospheric eXperiment (AJAX) ozone measurements during the off-shore spiral (B) but still underestimate ozone within the narrow filament sampled during the spiral over the San Joaquin Valley, CA (A)
VISITORS:
NEXT WEEK:
LOOKING AHEAD: