{"id":3766,"date":"2003-10-27T13:49:08","date_gmt":"2003-10-27T19:49:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/?p=3766"},"modified":"2013-07-24T16:54:32","modified_gmt":"2013-07-24T21:54:32","slug":"monthly-news-summary-october-2003","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/articles\/3766","title":{"rendered":"Monthly News Summary – October 2003"},"content":{"rendered":"

Isabel Tracked<\/h1>\n

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This issue of\u00a0SSEC In the News\u00a0covers news and research results primarily from September 2003. It does not include all news from the month. 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>.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0CIMSS Tropical Cyclone<\/a>\u00a0research group was busy following Hurricane Isabel in September. Real-time satellite products were sent to the National Hurricane Center and the Satellite Analysis Branch in real time to help track the storm. The products included estimates of environmental wind shear, current storm intensity from the latest CIMSS microwave (Advanced Microwave Sounder Unit) and infrared (Advanced Objective Dvorak Technique) algorithms, and vortex wind structure from high-resolution GOES winds adjusted to surface values. The products were acknowledged as critical information by NHC, especially before hurricane hunter aircraft reached the storm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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The 250m (in left frame) version of this MODIS image shows structure in the eye of Hurricane Isabel that CIMSS\u2019 Jim Kossin had hypothesized in a paper written while working at the National Hurricane Center.<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

On September 15,\u00a0Yahoo<\/a>\u00a0published the storm track that CIMSS produces using information from the National Hurricane Center.\u00a0USA Today<\/em>\u00a0used it at the top of their front page, with a nice graphic on the inside, the next day. Local media interviewed Tropical Cyclone\u2019s Chris Velden, Derrick Herndon, and Jim Kossin as the storm threatened land and after it made landfall. Those calling or visiting were WIBA Radio, WISC-TV\u00a0Madison Channel 3<\/a>. The office of University Communications sent out a news release, bringing in media from Milwaukee. Television stations 4 and 58 visited. The\u00a0Milwaukee Journal<\/em>\u2019s Meg Jones covered the research, starting on the paper\u2019s front page. The article included a good graphical explanation of the storm and a photograph of part of the Tropical Cyclone\u2019s group. The campus newspaper,\u00a0Wisconsin Week,<\/em>\u00a0used a MODIS image of the storm from SSEC\u2019s direct broadcast facility and touted our research. Throughout the storm\u2019s life, especially as it approached the U.S. coast, the National Hurricane Center referred often to CIMSS track and intensity predictions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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A montage of Hurricane Isabel was created with infrared images from the GOES-12 at 11:45 UTC from each of thirteen days, September 7\u201319, 2003. The sequence shows the evolution and track of Hurricane Isabel in one figure.\u00a0(Gary Wade, NOAA, at SSEC)<\/em><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

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Antarctica<\/h1>\n

ICDS Activities<\/a><\/strong>\u2014WKOW, Madison\u2019s Channel 15; WIBA Radio; and the\u00a0Badger Herald,<\/em>\u00a0a campus student newspaper, covered preparations for IceCube during a media event held Friday, September 19 at UW\u2013Madison\u2019s Physical Sciences Laboratory near Stoughton, Wisconsin. SSEC\u2019s Ice Coring and Drilling Services has constructed the mammoth hose reel holding the hose that will power the hot water drill making deep holes for sensor modules. The hose reel, buildings, and hot water tanks and compressors will all be transported to the Antarctic so that drilling can begin this season. The hot water drill hose reel is shown below, as photographed by Michael Forster Rothbart for\u00a0Wisconsin Week,<\/em>\u00a0September 22.<\/p>\n

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Medevac<\/strong>\u2014SSEC\u2019s\u00a0Antarctic Meteorological Research Center<\/a>\u00a0assisted in weather forecasting for a medical evacuation from Antarctica. The actual forecasting was done by SPAWAR System Center in Charleston, SC, with assistance from the AMRC, NCAR, and the polar sciences group at Ohio State headed by David Bromwich. USA Today\u2019s Jack Williams used AMRC information, including composite imagery, in his\u00a0online column<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Polar Media<\/strong>\u2014Polar Press Clips 2003<\/em>\u00a0has been published by NSF\u2019s\u00a0Office of Polar Programs<\/a>, Peter West, managing editor. SSEC\u2019s Ice Coring and Drilling Services are mentioned mostly indirectly; wherever holes are drilled, if another group is not specifically noted, almost certainly the ICDS made them. The ICDS\u2019s essential role is noted for two projects and an ICDS employee is noted in a third. The ITASE, or International Trans-Antarctic Scientific Expedition, train is pictured on the publication\u2019s back cover, wending its way across the continent on an ice-coring mission. ITASE studies the progress of global warming using ice cores that show climate change over time. Many articles about ITASE mention ice cores and drilling, and Ernie Mastroianni, writing for the\u00a0Milwaukee Journal Sentinel,<\/em>\u00a0noted the UW contribution in a headline (p.98). An NSF press release notes the role of the ICDS in drilling holes for SPRESO, the South Pole Remote Earth Science Observatory, whose seismometers are about the most sensitive on earth (p.62). Bruce Koci, an ICDS drilling engineer, is mentioned (p.71) in a\u00a0Science<\/em>\u00a0magazine article on Lonnie Thompson\u2019s Ice Core Paleoclimatology Group from Ohio State. Koci is the (then) University of Nebraska engineer that Thompson asked to design a \u201clighter drill that could be disassembled and powered by solar energy.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Neutrino News<\/h1>\n

An article previously published in\u00a0Letters and Science Today<\/em>\u00a0[UW\u2013Madison], Spring 2003 was reproduced in Polar Press Clips 2003 (p. 14). IceCube and AMANDA are featured. Only the first page was published, omitting credit information. The article notes that strings of detectors will \u201cconvert a cubic kilometer of South Pole ice into the world\u2019s largest scientific instrument.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Weather Experts<\/h1>\n

Weather Guys<\/strong>\u2014Larry Meiller\u2019s WHA Radio show on September 29 began with hurricane questions, leading into a lively hour with Steve Ackerman (director, CIMSS and professor, Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences) and Jonathan Martin (professor, Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences). September was surely the month for huricanes. Martin and Ackerman explained that those enormous cyclonic storms are called hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean and Typhoons in the Pacific, and they explained naming conventions. Until the late 1980s, hurricanes were always given traditionally female names. Some say that hurricane forecasters named the storms after mother-in-laws. Now the names alternate male to female and they are more often given region-appropriate names. As the Guys said, there will be no Hurricane Larry in the Pacific. They also discussed damage due to storm surge, the water that a hurricane leaves behind, and wind speed and wave height. Hurricane Andrew, for example, at one point had 150 mph winds, probably before landfall. A caller noted that Pacific Ocean typhoon waves washed across the 90-foot deck of his aircraft carrier. They also discussed the storm\u2019s huge pressure difference from the middle to its edges, causing the strong winds. The storms move slowly, though, because they\u2019re not connected to any existing flows.<\/p>\n

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Weather Research<\/h1>\n

Software Aid to Mexico\u2019s Water Commission<\/strong>\u2014SSEC and the Man computer Interactive Data Access System (McIDAS) User\u2019s Group (MUG) are supporting Mexico\u2019s Comisi\u00f3n Nacional del Agua (CNA) in the installation of McIDAS software until CNA becomes an official MUG member in 2004. Robert Masters of the U.S. National Weather Service (NWS) requested the assistance in support of the NWS agreement with CNA to transfer meteorological and hydrological software to Mexico. CNA will run the Hydro-Estimator, which requires the McIDAS environment.<\/p>\n

Fire Products for South American University\u2014<\/strong>The GOES biomass burning monitoring team at CIMSS recently responded to a request by D. Selhorst (Universidade Federal do Acre – Parque Zoobot\u00e2nico) for satellite observations of fires in Rondonia, Brazi,l and Bolivia for the dates of August 31\u2013September 5, 2003. Heavy smoke covered the Rio Branco region of Brazil as shown in D. Selhorst\u2019s photo. The GOES Wildfire Automated Biomass Burning Algorithm (WF_ABBA) alpha-blended composites verified burning in the Rondonia and Bolivia regions and also smoke over the Rio Branco region. Alphablending is a technique in which a semitransparent image is overlaid onto another image. Since the appearance of thin to moderate smoke is often masked in the current alpha-blending technique, the appearance of smoke in the WF_ABBA alpha-blended imagery is significant.<\/p>\n

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This alpha-blended (layered) composite image shows fires detected with the GOES-12 WF_ABBA on September 3, 2003 at 15:15 UTC. The inset is a photo taken in Rio Branco, Brazil showing heavy smoke coverage in the region.<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

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GOES Wildfire ABBA<\/a>\u00a0Validation Study in Quebec\u2014<\/strong>Joleen Feltz and Chris Schmidt (in SSEC\u2019s CIMSS) and Elaine Prins (NOAA\/NESDIS, assigned to SSEC) have collaborated for several years with M. Moreau in Environment Canada\/Meteorological Services\/Quebec Region to develop fire detection products for the region, using the the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite Wildfire Automated Biomass Burning Algorithm (WF_ABBA). They compared fire products for the 2002 fire season with ground truth information provided by SOPFEU (SOci\u00e9t\u00e9 de Protection des for\u00eats contre le FEU), Quebec\u2019s forest fire detection and prevention agency. When considering fires that burned more than 10 hectares, the ABBA detected 91 out of 111 reported fires and a number of additional remote fires located above 50 degrees north where there is no systematic daily reporting. In one case, outside of the intensive protection zone, the WF_ABBA detected a fire 17 days in advance of the first fire agency report; this fire eventually burned about 136,000 acres. While SOPFEU neither has a mandate to regularily monitor this area nor does it attempt to extinguish fires which do not threaten native communities or human installations in this region, this study shows the usefulness of diurnal remote sensing fire products in remote areas at northerly latitudes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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This composite image shows fires that were detected by the WF_ABBA using GOES-8 data in Quebec, Canada at 17:45 UTC on July 6, 2002 prior to the initial fire agency report. These fires are located in the restricted protective zone of Quebec, where there is no daily systematic detection capability.<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Papers, Presentations<\/h2>\n

Where SSEC staff or students are first through third authors, or, if not, the contributions are substantial.<\/p>\n

The CIMSS Biomass Burning Detection group has submitted extended abstracts to the 2nd International Wildland Fire Ecology and Fire Management Congress, part of the American Meteorological Society’s (AMS) 5th Symposium on Fire and Forest Meteorology to be held November 16-20, 2003 in Orlando, Florida:<\/p>\n