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Ice

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New AWS placed on iceberg C-16, to track movement and weather conditions.

Data decoded from Italian automatic weather stations and the U.S. Antarctic Program AGO to add to AMRC’s growing databank.

AMRC found a new big tabular iceberg, C-19.

Susan Solomon, NOAA scientist and The Coldest March author, said she could make temperature comparisons because Charles Stearns invented the Automatic Weather Station.

Jonathan Thom, Douglas MacAyeal maintaining an AWS.

Snow

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The Schwerdtfeger Library, SSEC’s special campus library, formally released the Wilson Bentley snowflake image collection in May 2002.

Fernlike crystal

Record Warm Lows

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Warmest April low on record tied the low of 66 on April 5, 1929.

Neutrinos through the Ice

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Astronomy in the Ice was added to the IceCube Outreach Web site.

SSEC with NASA at the EAA

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SSEC attended the EAA with NASA’s DC-8 and crew.

CIMSS researcher Erik Olson poses with fan at EAA

NASA Connects

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Dane County Girl Scouts earned weather badge with OSSE, NASA help.

El Niño

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SSEC scientists helped media educate the public on El Niño.

University Programs

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With Wisconsin DOT and College of Engineering, OSSE taught Space to PEOPLE.

OSSE shared planetary exploration with Grandparents’ University participants.

PEOPLE at Space Place

Grandparents, grandkids and helper at Space Place

GLOBE

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Workshops brought teachers from South Africa and Turkey to Madison’s O’Keefe Middle School and Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwa Community College.

GLOBE school teachers at O'Keefe Middle School with M.Mooney (front, left) and S.Limaye (far right)

Working with High School Students

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OSSE talked to Gallaudet University’s Model Secondary School for the Deaf in Washington, D.C.

CIMSS researchers helped infuse weather satellite data into Waunakee High School science curriculum.

Teacher Professional Development

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OSSE gave workshops to enthusiastic Wisconsin and Illinois high school teachers for new course in Astronomy and Space Science.

OSSE and IceCube outreach presented at Wisconsin Society of Science Teachers conference.

The Schwerdtfeger Library

With a major space and holdings evaluation, the Library is developing its unique collection and maintaining a core collection of atmospheric science texts and journals to support research.

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Getting the Ship into Shape

Loading dock completely cleared of surplus equipment.

Huge ICDS warehouse holdings inventoried.

All SSEC stored belongings moved to a warehouse.

The Season of Water—Major water disaster averted, several times, with 35-year-old valves replaced, one by one.

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Staff at Work

Human Resources team resolutely faced great growth and change, working with more than ever before retirements, staff changing classifications, student salary increases, international staff and students’ visa updates, and leaves of absence and changes in status.

They also answered letters from 100s of applicants.

They helped SSEC’s 200+ staff make the right benefits choices when they’re hired and when they leave SSEC and all stages between.

SSEC’s Human Resources team documented the hiring process over the past three years and noted that growth is outstripping exits. See the table.

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SSEC’s purchasing team showed an increase in purchasing activity from 2000 through 2002. Over the last two years, the number of orders has increased by 67% and the dollar volume by 467%!

For NCAR’s Convective Weather and Oceanic Weather Product Development Teams, GOES data is processed to find thunderstorms about to form.

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MODIS winds make positive impact on ECMWF forecasts.

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Wetzel ingredients used widely by NWS forecasters.

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For more maps, click on Introduction to the Ingredient Maps, in the left frame.

sample map of twice-daily Wetzel ingredients

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In the Limelight

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SSEC’s MODIS imagery featured frequently in NASA’s Earth Observatory Web site, such as this one showing dark water off Florida’s coast in August.

IceCube logo developed, representing ice-bound detectors in stylized fashion.

Francis Halzen presents neutrino research, especially the innovative telescope IceCube, at UW–Madison Roundtable in October.

Aqua is launched, giving radically higher spectral resolution with greatly improved vertical information.

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Tom Achtor, SSEC executive director for science, demonstrates size of hail in Oklahoma/Texas storm, May 23, 2002.

AMRC Advances

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Prime Web product, Antarctic composite, is improved.

Tenth anniversary celebrated, staff increased.

Fog, chief reason for Antarctic flight cancellations, studied.

Aviation

GOES satellite data study shows that satellite data may improve FAA forecasts.

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CIMSS Research Using MODIS Data

TPW algorithm from MODIS data runs operationally at Goddard Space Flight Center showing greater accuracy over deserts, provides many other advantages.

MODIS data used to estimate strength and height of low-level atmospheric temperature inversions.

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Research with New AIRS Data

AIRS initial retrievals are compared with RAOB, MODIS and GOES retrievals.

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CIMSS’ GOES Team achieved myriad objectives, including:

• Single field-of-view GOES sounder products for IHOP
• Continuous 5-minute imaging from GOES-11
• Invaluable input for Mitre Corporation’s GOES-R imager and sounder Cost-Benefit Analysis
• GOES-9 Sounder products evaluated for use as GMS backup
• GOES-8/10 Imager Clear-Sky (average) brightness temperature product for ECMWF model
• CO₂ slicing technique enabled measurements to be directly used to determine cloud altitude

HES Development

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More bands suggested for proposed next generation imager.

MODIS data used in ABI compression study.

High-spectral AVIRIS aircraft data simulates visible and near-infrared ABI bands.

Library Research Support

Schwerdtfeger Library staff made unique and varied research contributions.

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Satellite Data Helps Identify Pre-storm Conditions

Algorithms developed to identify important precursors of rain-producing convective clouds.

.5–6 hour nowcasts provided of convective initiation across large geographical regions at high spatial resolution (1-5 km).

For the image on the right, and the larger image, cloud elements highlighted in red represent small immature cumulus clouds. The green color highlights mature cumulus that have brightnesses greater than a “time-of-day” dependent threshold. The blue color indicates actively growing deep cumulus (locations where the 6.7–10.7 micron band difference is near 0). It is likely that the “green” cloud elements are precipitating, with the “blue” elements having the heaviest precipitation.

Monitoring Fires with GOES

• GOES WF-ABBA goes operational in NOAA.
• CIMSS Biomass Burning Monitoring Team provides real-time support for North American wildfires.
  • They documented the rapid intensification of wildfires in Colorado, Arizona, and Canada.
  • The team provided fire products to the NWS SPC fire weather forecasters in Oklahoma.
  • Forecasters say, WF-ABBA fire products very useful for fire weather outlooks.
• Studies show good agreement between the WF-ABBA fire product and regions of elevated MOPITT derived CO values.
• Two years of half-hourly GOES Wildfire ABBA fire products provide new insight on wildfires and agricultural burning throughout the Western Hemisphere.
• Biomass Burning Team collaborates with a consortium of international government and university research centers and environmental policy groups to study land cover and land use change, carbon dynamics, and fire dynamics in South America, for two publications.
• San Francisco Exploratorium incorporates Wildfire ABBA into on-line Global Climate Change Research Explorer Web site.
• Two collaborations represent first semi-operational assimilation of satellite-derived fire products into atmospheric models.

GOES-8 Wildfire ABBA Summary
Composite of Filtered Half-Hourly Fire Observations for the Western Hemisphere

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Polar Science

Polar winds are produced in nearly real time.

Tropical Cyclone Research

Significant strides made in tracking storm intensity.

Toward Simulating GIFTS

MM5 model data used toward deriving wind measurements from GIFTS observations.

Different weather conditions are simulated in high spatial and temporal resolution.

Highly realistic simulation of initiation and development of convection produced during IHOP with simulated GIFTS data.

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Using a VisAD display utility to visualize winds illustrates the vertical distribution and density of data.

Numerical Modeling

CRAS gives more accurate precipitation forecast using GOES water vapor and cloud-top pressure measurements.

Vegetation fraction information derived from satellite data to be used in MM5 (image at right).

Model (MM5) output used to simulate clouds, GOES-8 brightness temperature (image at right, below).

Methods developed to compare simulated data with actual remotely-sensed observations, including those from the AERI and GOES-8.

Brightness temperatures extracted from MM5 radiative transfer scheme and compared with GOES-8 brightness temperatures.

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The associated animation shows simulated clouds (white), water vapor (colored haze), and wind vectors at an altitude of 2 km, from 14:15 to 22:00 UTC on 12 June 2002.

Validating IAPP and ICI Products

IAPP (CIMSS) and ICI (Meteo France) retrieval packages were tested for NOAA-17 satellite data.

CIMSS scientists appointed chairs of influential committees:

• National Academies’ Committee on Environmental Satellite Data Utilization
• AMS Satellite Conference
• International TOVS (TIROS Operational Vertical Sounder) Working Group (ITWG)

NOAA/NESDIS names CIMSS researcher Team Member of the Month for June 2002 for GOES cloud product development.

China’s Nanjing Institute of Meteorology awards adjunct professorship to senior scientist.

First Suomi-Simpson Graduate Fellowship granted CIMSS graduate student for EOS work with NASA Goddard scientists.

Raytheon Polar Services grants service patches to Antarctica’s researchers for help with weather forecasts.

Two dozen manuscripts edited for Journal of Applied Meteorology.

Sharing Information

Meetings

Annual MUG Meeting drew 44 attendees from U.S. sites, Australian Bureau of Meteorology, Eumetsat (Darmstadt, Germany) and Kwajalein Island.

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Annual meeting for Antarctic projects held May 21–22 in Madison with 30 attendees including participants in NSF’s research program and users of AWS data.

Directors of UW–Madison special libraries begin meeting to discuss roles following UW–Madison’s Chancellor’s Strategic Plan.

Many scientists presented at China’s satellite meteorology meeting.

SSEC technical experts and research participated in NOAA international direct readout satellite conference.

Provided weather forecasting support for University football games, per Chancellor’s request.

Papers

Published:

• Monthly Weather Review, September 2002—“Daily hurricane variability inferred from GOES infrared imagery” (BAMS paper of note)
• Monthly Weather Review, December 2002—“Vortical swirls in hurricane eye clouds”
• Journal of Applied Meteorology, Vol. 42 No.2—A paper on surface and cloud-type classification using MODIS multispectral band radiance measurements
• Weather and Forecasting—“Monitoring high-temporal-resolution convective stability indices using the ground-based atmospheric Emitted Radiance Interferometer (AERI) during the 3 May 1999 Oklahoma-Kansas tornado outbreak.”

Accepted for publication:

• Journal of Applied Meteorology—the CIMSS MODIS algorithm
• Journal of Applied Meteorology—“Near continuous profiling of temperature, moisture, and atmospheric stability using the Atmospheric Emitted Radiance Interferometer (AERI)”

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CIMSS Publications

The Schwerdtfeger Library

In Print and On Line

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English/Spanish IceCube brochure, AMANDA and IceCube bookmarks produced.

WINNERSS poster shows multiple cosmic Wisconsin images.

GET-WISE course streams onto the Internet in 3 video formats.

WINNERSS poster

IceCube Web site features Education and Outreach.

A3RI Web site redesigned, GOES U.S. Full Resolution Visible Image Browser created.

The Schwerdtfeger Library templates unify their Web site.

Winter weather retrospective for 2001-2 showed snow depth, geographic extent, images, much, much more.

AniS Java applet used all over the world, in several languages, in NWS radar images and to fuel SSEC’s GOES Image Browser’s animation.

Museums

“Playing With Time” at Science Museum of Minnesota opens with SSEC imagery.

AMANDA featured in San Francisco’s Exploratorium’s Origins Project and in magazine.

Drilling Services

SSEC’s Ice Coring and Drilling Services (ICDS) supported five projects with drilling components in Antarctica with 14 people altogether.

• Shot-hole drill demonstration
• SPRESO
• The U.S. ITASE
• Queen Maud Land, collaboration with German group
• Dome C, collaoration with Danes

ICDS completed the design of the Enhanced Hot Water Drill, which will be used to drill 80 holes at the South Pole for the IceCube neutrino telescope.

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EHWD Hose Reel fabricated at UW–Madison’s Physical Sciences Laboratory

The Shot Hole Drill is completed, to drill as many as 600 30-meter deep “shot holes” for seismic studies.

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Shot Hole Drill being tested near McMurdo October 2002

McIDAS Software Updates

McIDAS-X, -XCD and -XRD were upgraded to version 2002 in May. The -X upgrade includes an updated country code database, a new configuration GUI and new MODIS HDF servers. The -XRD upgrade includes 22 new commands.

Four software updates were issued for the SDI, including modifications for GOES-12 and NOAA-17 satellites.

Data Center

McIDAS-Lite, popular free McIDAS subset, was released with 200 downloads over the summer.

It was also added to GSFC’s HDF-EOS Tools page.

Java applet written to control color selection.

McIDAS-Lite is a simple tool for working with image files.

SSEC Instruments in IHOP

A grid of six AERI systems worked continuously to provide detailed nowcasting information, a first.

The AERIbago was deployed in the western Oklahoma panhandle operating a fully automated AERI system.

S-HIS detected atmospheric moisture and temperature variation before thunderstorm development.

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Breadboard produced for Planetary Imaging Fourier Transform Spectrometer (PIFTS).

Excellent radiance agreement of AERI and PIFTS with clear-sky data.

Neptune studies continue with Space Telescope. The planet is brightening over time.

The eruption of Italy’s Mt. Etna was captured by MODIS on October 28 and ash plume analyzed.

MODIS “true color” image of Etna and one indicating presence of ice particles