McGrath-Spangler, E. L., W. McCarty, N. Prive', I. Moradi, B. Karpowicz, and J. McCorkel (2022), Using OSSEs to Evaluate the Impacts of Geostationary Infrared Sounders, Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, https://doi.org/10.1175/JTECH-D-22-0033.1.

Join us for a virtual seminar by Dr. Vernon Morris, ASU Associate Director, GESTAR II, Foundation Professor of Chemistry and Environmental Sciences and the Director of the School of Mathematical and Natural Sciences, Arizona State University. His talk is titled "An Overview of the AERosols and Ocean Science Expeditions (AEREOSE): Research Cruises Integrating Inclusive Geoscience and Field-based Science."

Date and Time: Thursday, September 8, 2022 at 11:00am

Join us via Teams.

Dr. Morris is a Foundation Professor of Chemistry and Environmental Sciences and the Director of the School of Mathematical and Natural Sciences at the New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at Arizona State University. He has faculty affiliations with the School of Earth and Space Exploration, the Global Futures Laboratory, and the Center for Gender Equity in Science and Technology (CGEST). Previously, Dr. Morris was a Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Director of the Atmospheric Sciences Program at Howard University. At Howard, he was the Principal Investigator and Founding Director of the NOAA Cooperative Science Center in Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology (NCAS-M). Dr. Morris also founded the HU Graduate Program in Atmospheric Sciences (HUPAS). HUPAS is the first PhD-degree granting Atmospheric Sciences program at any minority-serving institution and is a national leader in the production of minority PhDs in its field. Under his leadership, over 50% of the African American and 30% of the Hispanic American PhDs in Atmospheric Sciences produced from 2006 to 2018 in the United States graduated from this program. Of the program’s alumni, 97% are working in their respective fields across federal agencies, the private sector, and academia.

Dr. Morris’ research focuses on the chemical evolution of atmospheric particulate during transport and residence times in the lower troposphere and the implications to aerobiology, climate, and cloud processes. To this end he has conducted field experiments in South America, North America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. He has served as Chief Scientist for twelve trans-Atlantic science expeditions (the AERosols and Ocean Science Expeditions – AEROSE) aboard the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) class-1 research vessel, the Ronald H. Brown. Each time, he led an international team of scientists in a multidisciplinary study of the influences and life cycle of atmospheric particles emitted from the Saharan Desert on the regional atmosphere and ocean. The AEROSE data represent the most extensive set of in situ observations of Saharan Air Layer in the Tropical Atlantic. These data have been used for improved satellite retrievals, data assimilation for hurricane and tropical storm forecasts, validation of NOAA, DoD, and European numerical weather prediction models, and improved parameterizations for global forecasts. His current research projects span tropospheric chemistry, environmental justice, aerobiology, and aerosol microphysics. 

Dr. Morris’ honors include the AGU’s Presidential Citation for Science and Society (2020), election as a Fellow of the African Science Institute (2019), the AMS Charles Anderson Award (2017), and election as a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society (2016). He currently serves on the National Climate Security Roundtable, The NSF Committee for Equal Opportunities in Science and Engineering (CEOSE), the American Geophysical Unions Diversity and Inclusion Committee, the UCAR Board of Trustees, and as a Councilor of the American Meteorological Society.

For more information on the GESTAR II Seminar Series, click here.

Jie Gong (613/UMBC) is the PI of the proposal "Atmospheric Radiative Transfer Simulator (ARTS) to support the Electrojet Zeeman Imaging Explorer (EZIE) mission," which was selected for funding by the NASA Heliophysics Data Environment and Enhancements Program. Tyler Summers is the Co-I and Dong L. Wu (613/GSFC) is Collaborator; the period of performance is October 2022 - October 2024. According to Dr. Gong, "This project will develop an online interactive calculation and visualization tool to simulate the full Stokes of Zeeman split effect from oxygen emission features in the upper mesosphere and lower thermosphere under user-specified magnetic field. This tool will support the NASA EZIE mission as well as enhance the education and support of the solar and space physics science community."

Eunjee Lee (610.1/UMBC) is the Co-I on the NASA ROSES proposal "Improved Hydrometeorological Prediction in an S2S system through Improved Treatments of Evapotranspiration, Runoff, and Carbon Cycle Processes," which was awarded funding. Randal Koster (610.1/GSFC) is the PI of this three-year grant. According to Dr. Lee, "The goal of this project is to improve the hydrometeorological predictability in the GMAO's Subseasonal-to-Seasonal prediction (S2S) system."

Lionel Arteaga (610.1/UMBC) is lead author of a paper accepted for publication in Global Biogeochemical Cycles and is part of a special edition. 

Arteaga, L. A., M, Behrenfeld, E. Boss, and T. K. Westberry (2022), Vertical structure in phytoplankton growth and productivity inferred from Biogeochemical-Argo floats and the Carbon-based Productivity Model, in Global Biogeochemical Cycles, Special Edition: Southern Ocean and Climate: Biogeochemical and Physical Fluxes and Processes, https://doi.org/10.1029/2022GB007389.

From Dr. Arteaga: "The oceanic production of organic carbon by photosynthesis is a key process that regulates marine food-webs and the planet's climate. This production takes place not only at the surface of the ocean, but also in the subsurface, where it is difficult for ocean-viewing satellites to retrieve accurate information. In this work, we combine information on water column biogeochemical properties collected by bio-optical sensors on autonomous profiling floats with a mathematical model to estimate biological primary production throughout the water column. Our results show that this combination of model and float data can reproduce depth profiles of productivity observed in various ocean regions. We also test the ability of the model to infer subsurface productivity in Southern Ocean waters based on information of averaged biogeochemical properties in the surface ocean mixed layer alone. We find that the model improves the estimation of subsurface productivity when accounting for the limiting effect of scarce nutrients in Antarctic waters, such as iron. Our results provide confidence in the combination of float data and existing models to describe the vertical structure in marine biological productivity, and guide the improvement of productivity algorithms in specific regions of the global ocean."

From August 1-5, 2022, a week-long graduate-level course on the upcoming NASA Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission was held at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). The class covered both oceanic and atmospheric aspects of PACE. Early Career Scientists and 42 students participated, coming from US-based institutions as well as Australia, Canada, Ireland, Uganda, and Uruguay. The course included lectures, hands-on activities, and field trips that allowed students to explore all aspects of the PACE mission. Several instructors contributed to this class, including visits from NASA's Earth Communication team, NASA HQ program managers, those from the PACE engineering component, and members of the NASA PACE in-house science and science application team, among them GESTAR II scientists Pengwang Zhai (613/UMBC), Lorraine Remer (613/UMBC), Vanderlei Martins (613/UMBC), Andy Sayer (616/UMBC), and Ivona Cetinic' (616/MSU). This course was supported by the Ocean Carbon and Biogeochemistry (OCB) Program.

(Photo: Participants at group picnic at Patapsco Valley State Park, MD. Photo Credit: Courtesy of drone of Riley Blocker, course attendee.)

Dr. Steve Guimond, his graduate student Badrul Hasan (UMBC, Department of Mechanical Engineering) and collaborators have published a fundamental paper on the computational physics of the hurricane rapid intensification process in the Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems (JAMES). This paper demonstrates that the models used by the atmospheric physics community (e.g., Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model and its variants, such as NU-WRF) contain significant numerical dissipation that limits their use for accurately predicting hurricane rapid intensification and other nonlinear dynamical systems. The kinetic energy associated with convective bursts, the primary mechanism for heat transfer, is diminished in WRF, which leads to a weaker system-scale intensification through the upscale transfer of kinetic energy. These results can have potentially important consequences for operational forecasts, especially the rapid intensification process. For example, the under-prediction or low bias of rapid intensification forecasts may be partly due to excessive numerical dissipation. 

Hasan, M.B., S.R. Guimond, M. Yu, S. Reddy and F.X. Giraldo (2022), The effects of numerical dissipation on hurricane rapid intensification with observational heating, Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, https://doi.org/10.1029/2021MS002897.

Students who were part of the 2022 SaSa program had the opportunity "to receive professional development training including scientific abstract writing, comprehensive literature review, networking and professional presentations (oral and poster)." On Friday, July 29, 2022, interns with the first year of SaSa presented in-person and virtual three-minute flash talks on their posters related to the science they conducted over the summer. Research locations included Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New York, Pennsylvania, northern California, Puerto Rico, and others. Students shared the motivation for their research topics, the methodology, which included the use of the NASA P-3 aircraft, various NASA satellites and studies (e.g., MODIS, MERRA, OMI aboard TRMM and GPM, etc.), federal websites (e.g., EPA, CDC, and the US Census Bureau for population data), and next steps, plus the relevance of each study to NASA. Topics ranged from algal blooms' effect on ozone, heat islands, lead in water, contrails, and other topics related to climate, ozone, air quality, storms, and more. Additional information about SaSa is available here. Congratulations to the students who presented and participated in this year's program. (Photo: Dr. Belay Demoz (UMBC), SaSa Co-PI with Dr. Ruben Delgado (UMBC).)