CIMSS-NOAA Weekly Report [ Archive ]

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Manuscript on Relationships Between Stratospheric Intrusions and Wildland Fires in Southern California Published: A manuscript entitled “Stratospheric intrusions, the Santa Ana winds, and wildland fires in Southern California” by A. O. Langford, R. B. Pierce, and P. J. Schultz was published in Geophysical Research Letters (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2015GL064964/full). The manuscript shows that fire danger associated with Santa Ana winds of Southern California can be further increased by the formation of deep tropopause folds that transport extremely dry ozone-rich air from the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere to the surface. The results suggest that modern forecast models with the capacity to predict stratospheric intrusions such as RAQMS or the NOAA Rapid Refresh Air Quality Model may provide valuable lead time for agencies to issue air quality alerts and Fire Weather Warnings before these extreme events occur (R.B. Pierce, E/RA2, 608-890-1892, brad.pierce@noaa.gov) 

STAR Awards for ASPB and CIMSS Scientists: At the Second Annual STAR Award Ceremony on July 30, 2015, Brad Pierce, Andy Heidinger, Jason Otkin (Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies, CIMSS), and Todd Schaack (Space Science and Engineering Center, SSEC) received the "Best Paper" award for their work on the impact of aerosols on severe weather (Saide, P. E., Spak, S. N., Pierce, R. B., Otkin, J. A., Schaack, T. K., Heidinger, A. K., daSilva, A. M., Kacenelenbogen, M., Redemann, J. and Carmichael, G. R. (2015), Central American biomass burning smoke can increase tornado severity in the U.S.. Geophys. Res. Lett., 42: 956–965. doi: 10.1002/2014GL062826). Bob Aune and Brad Pierce were recognized for 25 years of government service.  (J. Key, E/RA2, 608-263-2605, jkey@ssec.wisc.edu) 

GOES Data Rescue Efforts Featured in ECMWF Newsletter: An article in the Summer 2015 European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) newsletter highlights the GOES data rescue efforts at the Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC) Data Center. The article, "Rescuing satellite data for climate reanalysis", notes that a timely rescue is important "before the tapes and the expert knowing how to operate the tape reader are both ‘decommissioned’." The newsletter can be found athttp://www.ecmwf.int/sites/default/files/NL-144.pdf. (D. Santek, CIMSS, 608-263-7410; Jerrold Robaidek, SSEC) 

  (Click image to enlarge)

Figure caption: An example of SMS-2 satellite images extracted from 9-track tapes at 1818 UTC (bottom) and 1823 UTC (top) on 6 May 1975. 

ITEMS FOR THE DIVISION CHIEF, CoRP:

WxSat iOS and Android Mobile Device Update: The "Weather Sat" (WxSat) Mobile App for iOS has been updated. The App displays near-realtime global visible, infrared, and water vapor imagery. Users can pan and zoom the imagery in a map interface and can animate with different time steps and modes. Since its release in April 2013 there have been over 12,000 downloads of the free app. The Android version, released in February of 2014, has nearly 2,000 downloads. The updates streamline the interface and conform to new operating system requirements. The imagery represents a composite of geostationary and polar orbiting weather satellite data. The imagery is acquired by the Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC) Data Center where a server dedicated to WxSat blends the images into single hourly global composites for the three different products. The server builds the most complete hourly images (back-filled when necessary) every hour at 36 minutes past the hour. This allows for a majority of the satellite sources to be included in the composites. The hourly composites are then staged on a web mapping server called "RealEarth" and form the basis of the animations. The imagery can be viewed and animated in the RealEarth desktop browser as well at this location: http://realearth.ssec.wisc.edu/s/G4CFh. (S. Battzli, SSEC, 608-263-3126)

Visiting Scientist Positions at the Developmental Testbed Center: Jason Otkin and Chris Rozoff completed visiting scientist trips to the Development Testbed Center at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). The primary focus of these trips was to learn how to use the Method for Object-Based Diagnostic Evaluation (MODE) system and associated visualization tools developed by researchers at the Developmental Testbed Center. The goal of this new one-year project is to use object based verification techniques to assess the accuracy of the cloud field in High Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) model forecasts. These verification methods can provide very useful information about object attributes that are not available with traditional verification tools. Early results are encouraging. (J. Otkin, CIMSS, 608-265-2476; C. Rozoff, CIMSS)

Presentation to LADCO on Lake Breeze Effects on Surface Ozone: Brad Pierce gave a presentation entitled “High resolution OMI NO2 retrievals for urban scale AQ monitoring using VIIRS day-night-band radiances: Application to Wisconsin DNR/LADCO Lake Breeze Study” to the Lake Michigan Air Directors Consortium (LADCO, http://www.ladco.org/). The talk demonstrated the utility of using the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) spatially enhanced nitrogen dioxide (NO2) retrievals to understand urban NO2 distributions by looking at the impact of uncertainties in NO2 emissions on modeled ozone enhancements associated with lake breeze circulations along the western shore of Lake Michigan during July 2011. LADCO provides technical assessments and assistance to its member states (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Minnesota) on problems of air quality and provides a forum to discuss air quality issues.

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