{"id":3641,"date":"2004-06-19T14:26:24","date_gmt":"2004-06-19T19:26:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/?p=3641"},"modified":"2013-07-24T16:43:36","modified_gmt":"2013-07-24T21:43:36","slug":"monthly-news-summary-june-2004","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/articles\/3641","title":{"rendered":"Monthly News Summary – June 2004"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hurricane Season Starts in Research<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

African Air Connects to Hurricanes,<\/strong>\u00a0by Alexis Johnson\u2014<\/em><\/p>\n

Meteorologists may soon be able to better understand and detect changes in hurricane intensity thanks to the work of Chris Velden, a CIMSS researcher, and Jason Dunion, a research meteorologist from the NOAA Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies (CIMAS<\/a>). Dunion and Velden found a connection between an African air mass, called the Saharan Air Layer (SAL), and Atlantic hurricane intensity changes. Their efforts are published in the March 2004 issue of the\u00a0Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society<\/em>\u00a0(BAMS).<\/p>\n

The SAL originates over the Saharan Desert and is characterized by dry air that is laden with dust. According to Velden, \u201cThis air mass frequently gets absorbed into the easterly trade wind belt and traverses a large portion of the tropical Atlantic Ocean during hurricane season.\u201d Although CIMAS director, Joseph Prospero, and others first recognized the SAL over 30 years ago, the connection to Atlantic hurricane activity had never been investigated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"june.2004sal2-ltl\"<\/a><\/td>\n\n
Saharan dust plume off the western coast of Africa<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Dunion and Velden developed a technique that utilizes multispectral infrared information from the NOAA GOES satellites to detect and track the SAL as it moves west over the tropical Atlantic. The resulting imagery indicates that when the SAL engulfs tropical waves, tropical disturbances or hurricanes, the associated dry air, temperature inversion and vertical wind shear can hinder intensification. The technique will provide forecasters with an additional tool to monitor Atlantic tropical cyclones. It may also lead to a better understanding of the impact that the SAL can have on hurricane intensity changes in the tropical Atlantic.<\/p>\n

Rare Event<\/a><\/strong>\u2014 Hurricane Catarina surprised meteorologists with a visit to the Brazilian coast in late March. Until then, it was said, no hurricane had occurred in the southern Atlantic Ocean. The topic was debated at a well-attended meeting at the American Meteorological Society\u2019s Hurricane Conference held in Miami in May. According to Chris Velden, who leads the CIMSS Tropical Cyclones group, \u201cThe debate was whether the system in question was a classic tropical cyclone (TC), or some sort of hybrid. The satellite data suggests it was a TC, but there is still some disagreement.\u201d Also at the meeting, Velden chaired a special session, \u201c30 years of the Dvorak Technique.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"june.2004brazil_huricane-ltl\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Isabel Loop Featured<\/strong>\u2014WVEC-TV in Norfolk, VA will use\u00a0satellite imagery<\/a>\u00a0of Hurricane Isabel in its annual hurricanes show to be aired June 9. CIMSS researcher Scott Bachmeier made several loops of this storm, showing its most unusual features.<\/p>\n

NAUSICA\u00c4<\/strong><\/a>, France\u2019s national sea-experience center in Boulogne-sur-Mer in northern France, has added the CIMSS Tropical Cyclones Web site to their database of links to \u201cthe most interesting\u00a0Web sites<\/a>concerning sea-related topics and marine activities.\u201d The goal of NAUSICA\u00c4 \u201cis to incite the general public to discover the sea and to love it, while raising its awareness on the need for a better management of marine resources.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Data and Imagery<\/em><\/h1>\n

SSEC\u2019s Web site<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0now includes as comprehensive a\u00a0list<\/a>\u00a0of current research projects as is possible. Each current research project, whatever the field\u2014atmospheric science, astrophysics, engineering, software design\u2014is included. Each project listed includes a link to a short page describing that project and a link to that project\u2019s Web site, if one exists. The SSEC Web group has tried to be as inclusive as possible, and would like to know if any current research project remains to be added. If you notice that a current research project is not included, please inform the SSEC Webmaster.<\/p>\n

Data from Europe<\/strong>\u2019s newest geostationary weather satellite,\u00a0MET-8<\/a>, were added to the\u00a0Images and Data<\/a>page in early May. An\u00a0informational page<\/a>\u00a0summarizes what each channel shows.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Engineering Feats<\/em><\/h1>\n

Global Change as Godzilla<\/strong><\/a>\u2014Tony Wendricks, coordinator in SSEC\u2019s\u00a0Ice Coring and Drilling Service<\/a>, consulted with Twentieth Century Fox props people for the movie,\u00a0The Day After Tomorrow,<\/em>\u00a0based onThe Coming Global Superstorm<\/a><\/em>\u00a0by Art Bell and Whitley Strieber who both write about paranormal occurrences. In the movie, Dennis Quaid stars as a climatologist who witnesses \u201crapid climate change\u201d when the ice shelf supporting him and his ice-coring crew suddenly crumbles. Wendricks said that the props crew seemed to want to get every aspect of ice drilling absolutely right. SSEC was not asked to consult on any scientific aspect of the film. NOAA and NASA, whose operations are used as backdrops in the movie (a situation room for numerical modeling, the international space station), were credited for providing only \u201cphotos.\u201d The movie is exciting and entertaining and flouts the laws of physics.<\/p>\n

Answering an email message from a mother of a child terrified by the movie, meteorologist Shelley Knuth of SSEC\u2019s Antarctic Meteorological Research Center said, \u201cScientific data from the past (from ice cores) has shown that there may possibly have been a dramatic climate change that ended our last ice age. However, the abrupt climate change this data was referring to happened over the span of ten years or more, not within a few days as in the movie. Many of the incidents in the movie are physically unrealistic; for example, the freezing scenes, where the temperature drops 10 degrees per second, is completely bogus because there is a very simple rule of physics called \u2018absolute zero,\u2019 which is the temperature at which all matter is dead and unmoving, and if the circumstances in that movie were true, we would not only reach absolute zero in less than a minute, but we would also pass it up, which isn\u2019t possible.\u201d Although rapid climate change is possible (for example, the temperature cooled quickly around the globe when\u00a0Krakatoa<\/a>\u00a0erupted in the 19th century), most of what the film shows can only be computer generated; it is impossible in real life. Remember, director Roland Emmerich also directed\u00a0Independence Day<\/em>.\u00a0Emagazine.com<\/a>\u00a0notes that what\u2019s really happening to our climate is even scarier than in this movie, because \u201cthe effects are subtle and incremental. Problems that are slow to develop and ongoing, like population growth, sprawl and air pollution, are a media blind spot.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Field Experiments and Meetings<\/em><\/h1>\n

GOES Users Conference<\/strong>\u2014The Daily Camera<\/a>,<\/em>\u00a0a newspaper in Boulder, CO, covered a conference held there in May for users of future GOES. The article noted that a new generation of satellites will face new demands and, while budget constraints may demand that the same two instruments will fly on the next GOES, they will be much more powerful, according to Brig. Gen. David L. Johnson, assistant administrator for NOAA\u2019s National Weather Service. CIMSS researchers Bormin Huang and Alok Ahuja were shown with their poster, which discussed how to compress the huge amount of data to be transmitted from a new weather and climate forecasting satellite. The Advanced Satellite Products Team (NOAA group stationed at SSEC), SSEC, and its CIMSS were well represented at the conference. Combined participation of federal and CIMSS personnel included 9 oral presentations and 23 posters on a wide range of topics. Wisconsin participants were also active during the break-out session and many discussions.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0program<\/a>\u00a0for the American Meteorological Society\u2019s 13th\u00a0Conference on Satellite Meteorology and Oceanography<\/strong>\u00a0to be held September 20\u201323 in Norfolk, VA has been posted on-line. The special theme for the conference is \u201cNext Generation Environmental Sensors and Emerging Applications in Satellite Meteorology and Oceanography.\u201d Program chairs Elaine Prins (NOAA, working with SSEC) and Chris Velden (CIMSS) said that more than 200 abstracts were submitted in six topic areas: 1) Climatology and Long-Term Satellite Studies; 2) Environmental Applications; 3) Operational Products; 4) Retrievals and Cloud Products; 5) Data Assimilation; and 6) New and Future Sensors and Applications.<\/a><\/p>\n

Planets<\/em><\/h1>\n

Observing Venus<\/strong>\u2014In early May, planetary scientist Sanjay Limaye called for astronomers, both professional and amateur, to \u201cmake coordinated observations of Venus in the near infrared.\u201d From his backyard in Bruz, France, Christophe Pellier answered the call with the \u201cfirst-ever amateur image of the surface of Venus.\u201d Their collaboration is featured in\u00a0Sky and Telescope<\/a><\/em>\u00a0magazine for June 2004. Limaye notes that Pellier \u201cprovided the first long-term coverage of [Venus\u2019s] night side.\u201d Until now, no one has done that. Limaye himself\u00a0observed Venus<\/a>\u00a0with a telescope on a mountain in India. Astronomers in Colorado, Sweden and India did the same.<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n

Weather Experts<\/em><\/h1>\n

Wisconsin weather-records maven<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0Scott Lindstrom was interviewed by David Medaris for\u00a0Isthmus<\/a>,<\/em>Madison\u2019s alternative newspaper (June 4). The wide-ranging article goes into some depth on Lindstrom\u2019s study of climate data. Like most meteorologists, his interest in weather forecasting was piqued by a significant event, in Lindstrom\u2019s case, a bad forecast\u2014during his school years, a forecast called for enough snow to close schools. He woke disappointed, without having done his homework. He decided then to learn enough about the weather to do his own forecasts. Medaris notes that the data Lindstrom collects is found on theWeb<\/a>; Lindstrom finds the patterns in it. He recently noted that \u201cMadison had the wettest calendar month ever in May\u201410.84″.\u201d Lindstrom works for\u00a0SSEC<\/a>\u00a0as an information technologist, comparing precipitable water estimates from satellites and developing software, with more than one hundred other technical experts, each unique in his and her own way, doing their own bits to make weather forecasts better.<\/a><\/p>\n

Weather Research<\/em><\/h1>\n

Simulating Satellite Data<\/strong>\u2014SSEC and its Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS) have a long history of simulating data from proposed satellite instruments. They have begun to use Meteosat-8, MODerate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), and Atmospheric InfraRed Sounder (AIRS) data to spectrally simulate the bands on the future Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES)-R Imager. The GOES-R Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) will have sixteen spectral bands, two visible, four near-infrared, and ten infrared, with spatial resolutions ranging from 500m to 2km. Mat Gunshor (SSEC\u2019s CIMSS) and Tim Schmit (NOAA at SSEC) are researchers primarily involved in the research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"june.abi-bands\"<\/a><\/td>\n\n
These are just three spectral bands proposed for the GOES-R Advanced Baseline Imager. Click on the image for all of them.<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Satellite Observations Increase for Navy<\/strong>\u2014Recently, the U.S. Air Force Weather Agency (AFWA) improved their weather forecast model by including satellite wind measurements using an algorithm developed and provided by UW\u2013Madison\u2019s SSEC. The automated algorithm, called Feature Track Winds, allows the routine production of wind vectors from multiple satellite platforms, and has greatly increased the volume of data available to be assimilated into their weather forecast models. As a result, the quality of the model output improved considerably. AFWA Staff Sargeant Carl Schuett added that \u201cthe model error in winds measurement dropped by 2.5m per second.\u201d<\/p>\n

Papers<\/h2>\n

Tim Schmit and Bob Aune (both in NOAA\u2019s Advanced Satellite Products Branch at SSEC) participated in the National\u00a0Highway Visibility Conference<\/a>\u00a0held in Madison, WI , May 17\u201318, 2004. They presented \u201cFuture Geostationary Observations for the Improved Detection and Short Range Prediction of Fog.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDaytime cloud overlap detection from AVHRR and VIIRS,\u201d by M. Pavolonis (SSEC\u2019s CIMSS) and A. Heidinger (NOAA, at SSEC), was published in the May issue of the\u00a0Journal of Applied Meteorology.\u00a0<\/em>The paper describes two automated algorithms for detecting cloud overlap using daytime satellite imagery.<\/p>\n

\u201cSea ice surface temperature product from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS)<\/a>\u201d was published in\u00a0IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing<\/em>\u00a0(2004, Vol. 42, No. 5). The authors include D. Hall (NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC)), Jeff Key (NOAA, at SSEC), and others at GSFC. The paper introduces the MODIS sea ice temperature product, the retrieval methodology, and validation over the Arctic and Antarctic. NOAA\u2019s Advanced Satellite Products Team at SSEC\u2019s Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies developed the ice surface temperature algorithm. This product extends the use of existing sea surface temperature products to the frozen ocean. The algorithm is relevant to NOAA\u2019s future Visible\/Infrared Imager and Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument. A figure from the paper was used on the journal cover.<\/p>\n

A paper on nighttime cloud detection in the polar regions using the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) was accepted for publication in the\u00a0Remote Sensing of Environment<\/em>\u00a0journal. \u201cNighttime polar cloud detection with MODIS,\u201d by Y. Liu (CIMSS), J. Key, R. Frey (CIMSS), S. Ackerman (CIMSS), and W.P. Menzel, presents new cloud detection tests that utilize water vapor and carbon dioxide bands.<\/p>\n

These abstracts have been submitted to the SPIE\u2019s Fourth International Asia-Pacific Environmental Remote Sensing Symposium, Applications with Weather Satellites II, to be held in November in Honolulu, Hawaii.<\/p>\n