ASPB and CIMSS Weekly Report
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ASPB AND CIMSS WEEKLY HIGHLIGHTS FOR THE WEEK ENDING JANUARY 26, 2013

IN THE PRESS:

ITEMS FOR THE ADMINISTRATOR:

ITEMS FOR THE ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR:

ITEMS FOR THE OFFICE DIRECTOR, STAR:

Comments on R&D Portfolio Review Task Force Report: The following summarizes Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS) feedback to the NOAA Science Advisory Board (SAB) draft report on NOAA's research and development portfolio, "In the Nation's Best Interest: Making the Most of NOAA's Science Enterprise". This report is a very thoughtful review. It puts research and development directly under the NOAA umbrella. CIMSS has two major comments: 1) The report notes the values of the Cooperative Institutes (CIs) and NOAA scientists. One of the successful attributes of the CIs is their ability to help transition current research to operations. This is particularly affective for those institutes that have NOAA employees co-located with the institute. Any downsizing of CI should include consideration the value of having collocated NOAA scientists with the University staff. As NOAA seeks to reduce its own work force, it should seek to preserve the scientists stationed at CIs in order to best maintain the strong collaborations and deliver high returns per dollar invested in them. 2) Research to operations is an important aspect of NOAA science. It should be remembered that this transition varies in time. In other words, some transitions may only take a year, while others many years. So it is important to remember that not all research can be transitioned to operations in one year or at the end of a three year project. Sometimes the path to operations is a bit blurry and more time consuming. Grants with one or two year time periods do not typically engage graduate students at the PhD level. (S. Ackerman, CIMSS, 608-263-3647)

RAQMS Supporting NASA AJAX and DISCOVER-AQ Missions: The Real-time Air Quality Modeling system (RAQMS) is currently providing ozone (O3), carbon monoxide (CO), and methane (CH4) forecasts over California (http://raqms.ssec.wisc.edu/data/forecast/) to support the NASA Ames Research Center Alpha Jet Atmospheric eXperiment (AJAX) field experiment (http://geo.arc.nasa.gov/ajax/ajax_index.html). AJAX flights are conducting in situ measurements over California to provide information on free tropospheric background conditions to support the NASA DISCOVER-AQ (Deriving Information on Surface Conditions from Column and Vertically Resolved Observations Relevant to Air Quality) airborne mission. DISCOVER-AQ (http://discover-aq.larc.nasa.gov/) is a 4 year NASA Earth Venture airborne program to improve the use of satellites to monitor air quality for public health and environmental benefit. Through targeted airborne and ground-based observations, DISCOVER-AQ will enable more effective use of current and future satellites to diagnose ground level conditions influencing air quality (R.B. Pierce, E/RA2, 608-890-1892, brad.pierce@noaa.gov, T. Schaack, SSEC, 608-263-3210, A. Lenzen, SSEC, 608-263-3897)

  (Click image to enlarge)

Figure caption: 54hr RAQMS forecast of 5km O3 (upper left) and CO (upper right) and O3 (lower left) and CO (lower right) cross-sections at 124W valid at 18Z January 26, 2013 showing enhanced O3 due to both Stratosphere-Troposphere Exchange (STE) and tropospheric ozone production associated with long-range transport of pollution (elevated CO) from Asia.

ITEMS FOR THE DIVISION CHIEF, CoRP:

IPCC Lead Authors Meeting: Jim Kossin (NCDC/RSAD) attended the 4th Lead Authors Meeting of the IPCC AR5, held in Hobart, Tasmania on 13-18 January. Strategies to address the comments from the open review of the Second Order Draft were defined, and required tasks and deadlines for crafting the Final Draft were established. Kossin is a Lead Author on Chapter 14 (Climate Phenomena and their Relevance for Future Regional Climate Change) and a Contributing Author on Chapter 2 (Observations: Atmosphere and Surface) and Chapter 10 (Detection and Attribution of Climate Change: from Global to Regional). (J. Kossin, NCDC/RSAD, 608-265-5356)

Co-registration of the GOES-13 Imager Band 2: Due to a measurable mis-registration of Band 2 (central wavelength of 3.9 micrometers) for the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) -13 Imager instrument, researchers at the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS) have been working with NESDIS GOES engineers to assess a suitable correction, which has been observed to vary with respect to time and location. The latest iteration (known as "Shift Value 1" and "Shift Value 2") is very close to alleviating the problem, which creates havoc when quantitative products based on the differences of various GOES Imager bands are generated. Some additional work is needed to determine the reliability of the corrected registration technique, before it is implemented as part of the operational processing stream. (T. Schmit, E/RA2, 608-263-0291, tim.j.schmit@noaa.gov, J. Nelson, CIMSS, 608-263-6013, T. Schreiner, CIMSS, 608-263-6754)

  (Click image to enlarge)

Figure caption: A comparison of Band 2 (Original plus two registration correction techniques) minus Band 4 (Original) difference images over the Baja Peninsula on 15 May 2012 at 18:15 UTC. The "black shadow" along the east coast of the Baja Peninisula and "white shadows" along the west coast of Mexico and the Baja Peninsula indicate a misalignment of Band 2 with respect to Band 4 (upper left hand image). "Shift Value 1" and "Shift Value 2" (upper right and lower left corners, respectively) show a significant improvement in the registration (i.e. elimination or near elimination of the "black and white shadows"). The lower right hand corner image (Band 4 Original) is included for geographical reference purposes.

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