{"id":3667,"date":"2004-02-20T13:13:26","date_gmt":"2004-02-20T19:13:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/?p=3667"},"modified":"2013-07-24T16:45:44","modified_gmt":"2013-07-24T21:45:44","slug":"monthly-news-summary-february-2004","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/articles\/3667","title":{"rendered":"Monthly News Summary – February 2004"},"content":{"rendered":"

Showing the Cold<\/em><\/h1>\n

This issue of\u00a0<\/em>SSEC In the News\u00a0covers news and research results primarily from January 2004.\u00a0<\/em>Use images freely with credit to the Space Science and Engineering Center, University of Wisconsin\u2013Madison, but please notify\u00a0SSEC’s Public Information Officer<\/a>. Individual photographers retain copyright; contact them or me to use a photo.<\/em><\/p>\n

In Wisconsin, you\u2019d think we\u2019d be used to cold winters. However, the last two have been unseasonably warm, so when the polar winds started to blow in December, and kept steadily blowing through January, we found we were not completely prepared. For all the snow and wind, there\u2019s a bright side\u2014impressive imagery of various cold weather outbreaks, throughout the world, not only in Wisconsin.<\/p>\n

So Cold, So Dry\u2026<\/a><\/strong>\u2014Surface features across the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada (the northern Great Lakes, coastal New England, and the Saint Lawrence River) could be seen in \u201cwater vapor channel\u201d (6.5 micrometer wavelength) data from the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES-12) imager on January 13 and 14. The air mass across that region was extremely cold and dry, and water vapor weighting functions calculated from weather balloon data showed that the radiation sensed by this channel originated from unusually low levels of the troposphere; i.e., close to the surface of the earth. The atmosphere was so cold and dry that the water vapor channel was able to \u201csee\u201d much deeper through the atmosphere than normal. In fact, it could see all the way to the ground, where it was able to detect the temperature contrasts (not the water vapor content) of the Great Lakes and New England. Normally the signal from water vapor in the middle troposphere dominates this channel, but since there was nothing to attenuate (block) the surface signal, the satellite could receive the signal of surface temperature contrasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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This \u201cwater vapor channel\u201d image taken by the GOES-12 imager at a wavelength of 6.5 micrometers shows surface features on January 14, 2004.<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Super Cool(ed)<\/strong><\/a>\u2014 The big, wormy-looking cloud in this image from the MODerate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) is an \u201caircraft-induced cloud dissipation trail.\u201d Scott Bachmeier has posted a study of these clouds and explains that \u201cparticles within the \u2018trail\u2019 of jet exhaust are acting as cloud condensation nuclei, initiating a chain reaction of cloud glaciation (becoming ice). The planes fly through a cloud that consists of super-cooled water droplets (droplets that are liquid at below-freezing temperatures), the exhaust particles touch these super-cooled droplets, and they freeze instantly, turning into ice particles that begin to fall. They grow as they fall by colliding with other super-cooled cloud droplets, and other ice particles. As this process continues, the cloud begins to dissipate somewhat (the larger ice particles fall out as virga), but a narrow path of ice crystals remains in the portion of the cloud that the plane flew through\u2014these particles are too small to fall to the ground. So the cloud dissipates somewhat, but not completely … and the character of the cloud (super-cooled water droplets) changes to ice particles.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Spotlighting Cold Places<\/strong><\/a>\u2014Through SSEC\u2019s MODIS direct broadcast facility, Scott Bachmeier found images of Canada\u2019s frozen Hudson Bay, at -50\u00b0 F. For SSEC\u2019s spotlight, he also showed extreme cold in Siberia, down to -70\u00b0 F.<\/p>\n

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Antarctica<\/em><\/h1>\n

Field Season<\/a><\/strong>, by George Weidner\u2014In January, the Antarctic Automatic Weather Station Program began its annual field season. While based in McMurdo Station, Antarctica, this year\u2019s field team of researchers George Weidner (Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences) and Jonathan Thom (SSEC) travel around the continent doing preventive maintenance and repairing weather stations. The team maintains their own array of stations and will deploy three stations with Dr. John Cassano of the University of Colorado, also at McMurdo Station, and with Ron Ross of Stanford University. Ross is installing a Webcam for educational outreach, collaborating with Douglas MacAyeal, University of Chicago glaciologist, on one of the large icebergs that calved from the Ross Ice Shelf since 2000 and has remained near McMurdo Station.<\/p>\n

First visited was the Automatic Weather Station (AWS) site at Minna Bluff, named for the geographic feature where the station is located. Here, winds can exceed 60 mph for long periods of time. During this year’s visit, Dr. Cassano and George Weidner discovered that the power cable had been worn through as the tower motion, caused by the extreme winds during the past year, rubbed the cable against the battery boxes at the base of the tower.<\/p>\n

During the three-week maintenance season, Weidner and Thom serviced six stations, scattered across about one fourth of the giant continent. UW\u2013Madison\u2019s\u00a0Antarctic Automatic Weather Station Program<\/a>\u00a0is funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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The Automatic Weather Station Minna Bluff named for the formation it is near.<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

A picture of an Automatic Weather Station was used in a children\u2019s book on weather and climate change, published by Usborne Publishing Ltd. in England.<\/p>\n

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

Heat<\/a><\/strong>\u2014Jeff Miller, photojournalist in the university\u2019s Communications Office, took an unusual photo of buildings on campus for the campus newspaper, Wisconsin Week, January 28. Using an infrared camera, Miller took pictures of the south campus, which showed heat in the physical plant\u2019s smoke stack and in the midsection of the Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences building. Miller was surprised to see that parts of the building\u2019s 7th floor were nearly as hot as the smoke stack. A call to the building manager, JoAnn Banks, determined that on 7th floor is located the building\u2019s furnace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"feb.2004AtmospBldg_IR\"<\/a><\/td>\n\n
An infrared photograph of the Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences Building (foreground) with hot spotson 7th floor. Behind that building the Physical Plant’s smokestack and a steam plume can be seen prominently. Jeff Miller, University Communications photojournalist, took this picture.<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

An Infinite Variety<\/strong><\/a>\u2014On January 13, SSEC\u2019s direct broadcast facility served up a variety of fascinating earth images from the MODIS instrument on NASA\u2019s Aqua satellite. Many different atmospheric phenomena were observed on a single day. Through an X-band tracking antenna on its roof, SSEC receives data from as far north as Hudson Bay and as far south as the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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An example of wave clouds, centered on Maryland, taken by the Aqua satellite’s MODIS instrument.<\/h5>\n
Click on the image for more.<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Terra Returns<\/a><\/strong>\u2014From November through mid-January, NASA\u2019s Terra satellite had not sent data to earth. After working patiently through the issues plaguing the satellite, NASA was able to put the satellite back on line. SSEC\u2019s Data Center received the first \u201cnew\u201d MODIS image on January 15.<\/p>\n

NASA Data to NOAA via SSEC<\/strong><\/a>\u2014Through a collaborative project with NOAA, SPoRT (Short-term Prediction Research and Transition), NASA is providing data from its research satellites Terra and Aqua to help forecasters in the National Weather Service. According to Gary Jedlovec, a meteorologist at NASA\u2019s Marshall Space Flight Center, \u201cWhat we\u2019re trying to do is to give the National Weather Service a head start with incorporating this higher-quality data into their forecasts.\u201d Jedlovec is a leader of this NASA\/NOAA collaboration. SSEC provides high-quality data from the MODIS instrument in near-real time from its\u00a0direct broadcast facility<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Image Use<\/a><\/strong>\u2014Jacques van Delft, a member of the solar section of ASSA Bloemfontein (Astronomical Society of South Africa), used an infrared global composite weather satellite image from SSEC\u2019s Web site to illustrate an article on climate change in Landbou Weekblad a weekly farm magazine. Van Delft color-enhanced the image to more nearly represent the seas\u2019 true colors. The article is written in the Afrikaans language. It shows that solar activities are indeed affecting the climate and shows how unstable conditions in the upper Antarctic low-pressure region lead to developing low-pressure systems that contribute to climatic changes.<\/a><\/p>\n

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

Tracks<\/strong><\/a>\u2014The giant hose reel for an\u00a0Enhanced Hot Water Drill<\/a>\u00a0has been assembled at the South Pole, in readiness for installing the neutrino telescope IceCube in Antarctic ice. IceCube Logistics Manager Terry Hannaford (Triad Project Management) explained that all the IceCube equipment, which takes up half a city block when assembled, was moved from Wisconsin in December on two flatbed trailer trucks to California.<\/p>\n

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The equipment went via ship to Christchurch, New Zealand where it was flown on a C-141 cargo plane to the U.S. research base in McMurdo. From there, all the equipment was flown on an LC-130, a ski-equipped cargo plane, to the South Pole. IceCube is a multinational, multiorganizational effort, headquartered in UW\u2013Madison\u2019s Antarctic Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Institute. SSEC\u2019s\u00a0Ice Coring and Drilling Services<\/a>\u00a0provides engineering support, including drilling holes more than a kilometer deep for neutrino detectors. The National Science Foundation supports the IceCube project, as it does nearly all U.S. Antarctic research. UW\u2013Madison\u2019s campus newspaper,\u00a0Wisconsin Week<\/a>,<\/em>\u00a0reported the news on January 28, in \u201cAdvances.\u201d A longer version of this story is on the IceCube Web site.<\/a><\/p>\n

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

GOES-R Users Conference<\/strong><\/a>\u2014A conference will be held May 10\u201313, 2004, in Boulder, Colorado for potential users of the next GOES to help them prepare to acquire, digest, and use the new data and to assist with advanced planning of requirements, products, communications, and distribution of data. The conference will consist of speaker presentations, poster sessions, and facilitated breakout sessions. The conference is designed to provide two-way communication between NOAA\u2019s National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service, who manage operational weather satellites, and the GOES user community; inform GOES data users of plans for the next generation of satellites; provide information on potential applications; determine user needs for new products; and assess potential user and societal benefits of GOES capabilities. According to NOAA, this new GOES, planned for launch in 2012, will \u201cscan the Earth nearly five times faster than the current GOES. The satellites will provide the user community (television meteorologists, private weather companies, the aviation and agriculture communities, and national and international government agencies) with about one hundred times the amount of data currently provided.\u201d Read more about the conference on its\u00a0Web site<\/a>. Conference coordinators\u00a0Tim Schmit<\/a>\u00a0(NOAA, stationed at SSEC) andDick Reynolds<\/a>\u00a0are seeking poster papers.<\/p>\n

Two images produced in SSEC\u2019s Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS), who do research with GOES data and provide science input into instrument design, are prominent on the front of the conference brochure. Featured are a montage made from a series of GOES images of Hurricane Isabel produced by Gary Wade (NOAA, stationed at SSEC), and a MODIS image of Hurricane Isabel produced by Chris Schmidt (CIMSS\u2019 group that monitors biomass burning with GOES data). On the brochure\u2019s back cover is a water vapor image, provided by the SSEC Data Center.<\/p>\n

India-U.S. Collaborative Conference<\/strong>\u2014Rose Pertzborn, director of SSEC\u2019s\u00a0Office of Space Science Education<\/a>, will co-chair the education committee of a joint India-U.S. conference on future space science programs and opportunities for bilateral collaboration. Her Indian counterpart is a yet-to-be-named physicist. This preliminary conference will produce findings and recommendations toward a memorandum of understanding. Participants will examine the current status of math and science education, kindergarten through college, in both countries. The conference will be held in June in Bangalore, India.<\/p>\n

AMS 84th Annual Meeting<\/a><\/strong>\u2014SSEC annually rents booth space in the exhibit area at the AMS Annual Meeting. As SSEC has in the past, so this year the booth was used to demonstrate SSEC\u2019s visualization tools and science, and to provide information on its close connection with UW\u2013Madison\u2019s Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences. In the booth, researchers used four computers for demos and scientific presentations and gave impromptu talks about SSEC\u2019s research. For the four days of the conference, the booth was not empty of visitors while the exhibition hall was open. Valuable connections were made\u2014potential collaborators, educators, students, interested scientists, and technical people\u2014all visited the booth to learn about SSEC\u2019s activities. Moreover, SSEC people were able to network at the booth, in other booths, and throughout the meeting. SSEC researchers presented posters and papers, and a CIMSS researcher noted that, while the conference enabled scientific exchange, it provided an opportunity to be briefed on government initiatives such as new instruments and programs like NPOESS.<\/p>\n

As has occurred in the past, SSEC and its CIMSS work was noted in meetings and in other exhibition booths. For Example,\u00a0SeaSpace<\/a>, a company making hardware and software to receive and process remote sensing data, prominently featured the\u00a0Advanced Objective Dvorak Technique<\/a>, an algorithm developed by the CIMSS\u00a0Tropical Cyclones<\/a>\u00a0group to track storm track and intensity. The SeaSpace software program, TeraScan, incorporates the CIMSS algorithm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Terri Gregory, SSEC\u2019s Public Information Coordinator, and Tom Achtor, SSEC\u2019s Executive Director for Science, wait for customers on the first day the exhibit hall is open for business.<\/h5>\n
Many more images of the AMS Annual Meeting and activities of participants are in a\u00a0Web album<\/a>.<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

With Seattle\u2019s NWS office, SSEC was responsible for daily weather briefings given twice daily at the conference. Robert Aune gave the last briefing, showing the latest applications of GOES sounder data to numerical weather prediction.<\/p>\n

Besides the researchers, whose papers are listed in the meeting\u2019s program, and the exhibiters, many other SSEC people made our conference presence possible\u2014Maria Vasys, Marlene McCaffery, and Mike Dean primarily.<\/p>\n

Arctic Climate Workshop<\/strong>\u2014Jeffrey Key, team leader of NOAA\u2019s research group at SSEC, the Advanced Satellite Products Branch, gave an invited talk at an international workshop on Arctic climate change held at the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, NY, in January. Key spoke on surface, cloud, and radiative properties of the Arctic as observed by satellite. The workshop, titled \u201cCentral Arctic: Battleground of Natural and Man-Made Climate Forcing,\u201d covered topics from current Arctic climate characteristics to the relationship between recent Arctic warming and that experienced in the 1930s and 1940s.<\/p>\n

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

Mars Exploration<\/a><\/strong>\u2014When President Bush announced his proposal for a moon base and manned Mars mission, WKOW Madison TV channel 27 spoke with Rose Pertzborn, director of SSEC\u2019s Office of Space Science Education. Pertzborn, who worked at NASA Headquarters in 2002, noted that the costs were \u201cvastly underestimated\u201d and that interest in space exploration would surely increase. Indeed, her office has received many calls from local schools to talk about Mars just since the segment ran on nightly news on January 14. Both she and planetary scientist Sanjay Limaye have given numerous talks to groups, including schools, since Opportunity and Spirit have touched down on Mars.<\/p>\n

Neptune<\/strong><\/a>\u2014The weekly magazine,\u00a0Science News,<\/em>\u00a0mentions Neptune seasonal changes in its annual highlights column (vol. 163, p. 325). SSEC planetary scientist Lawrence Sromovsky leads that research.<\/p>\n

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Polar Science<\/em><\/h1>\n

The\u00a0Canadian Meteorological Centre<\/a>\u2019s (CMC) numerical weather prediction (NWP) system is demonstrating a positive impact on forecasts when they assimilate polar wind measurements from MODIS, particularly over the Arctic and Southern Hemisphere (poleward of 20 degrees south latitude). The results are part of an experiment that began November 5, 2003 and involves CMC, NASA\u2019s Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (associated with the Joint Center for Satellite Data Assimilation), the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), and the UK Met Office. All centers are experimenting with wind measurements from CIMSS and from NOAA\u2019s Office of Research and Applications Forecast Products Development Team.<\/p>\n

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Software<\/em><\/h1>\n

VISITview Highlighted<\/a><\/strong>\u2014A World Meteorological Organization (WMO<\/a>) Workshop held at the Regional Meteorological Training Center (RMTC) in Barbados in December 2003 made extensive use of VISITview, according to Anthony Mostek of NOAA\u2019s National Weather Service Office of Climate, Water, and Weather Services. VISITview is a real-time training software package that connects instructors and students via the Web. The instructor and students are linked together to share graphics, animations, annotations and questions to provide a rich learning experience.<\/p>\n

Mostek is acting Branch Chief of the Training Division\u2019s Cooperative Program for Operational Meteorology Education and Training. In his report on the WMO sponsored workshop, Mostek said, \u201cThe organizers of the WMO workshop wanted to build on the success of the first international satellite weather briefing in May 2002 in Melbourne, Australia, during the Asian Pacific Satellite Applications Training Seminar (APSATS<\/a>).\u201d In May 2002, VISITview made possible the first long-range, multisite weather briefing of satellite imagery. Another long-range weather briefing was given at the Barbados workshop with scientists participating remotely from the\u00a0Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere<\/a>\u00a0in Ft. Collins, Colorado; the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS<\/a>) in Madison, Wisconsin; and from Costa Rica\u2019s RMTC. Attending in Barbados were instructors from Australia\u2019s Bureau of Meteorology, WMO and CIRA, and the students. At the workshop, Mostek presented training on how to use VISITview, and then allowed participants to \u201cbuild\u201d their own VISITview training sessions. Selvin Burton of the Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology said, \u201cVISITview was the highlight of the WMO RMTC workshop on satellite meteorology.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Virtual Institute for Satellite Integration Training (VISIT) includes staff from cooperative institutes CIMSS and CIRA, and from NOAA\u2019s National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service and National Weather Service training division. The VISIT project developed VISITview as a tool to provide distance training and live collaboration. Over the past three years, several other WMO training events have used VISITview to facilitate participation for people who could not attend the event in person, as well as for those who could. Those events were held in Nanjing, China in December 2000; in Melbourne, Australia in May 2002; in Niamey, Niger in July 2003; as well as the most recent workshop held in Barbados.<\/p>\n

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For more information<\/h5>\n<\/blockquote>\n