# Aqua Teleconference February 1, 2007

**On the phone:**

*Project science*: Claire Parkinson (telecon chair), Steve Platnick,
Steve Graham

*Instruments*: Vince Salomonson, Jack Xiong, Roy Spencer, Elena Lobl,
Dawn Conway, Mous Chahine, Tom Pagano, Denis Elliott, Edward Olsen,
Steve Friedman, Bruce Wielicki, Norm Loeb

*ESMO*: Bill Guit, Angie Kelly

*Education/outreach*: David Herring

## **Mission Ops (Guit):** see distributed ppt file for details. 

Everything is going well. AMSR-E had an error flag set but it isn't
considered an anomaly. Our attention is on getting ready for the spring
IAMs.

**Senior Review:**

Proposal due date is Friday, 16 March 2007. The next Aqua Senior Review
meeting will be held Wednesday, 21 February, at GSFC in building 33. It
will be an all-day meeting starting at 8:30 am.

*Education/Outreach* (Dave Herring): See email and attachment for
further information.

Don Anderson has been promoting the "Climate at Home" program that would
run model experiments distributed among personal computers. This would
have two purposes: more capability for model runs as well as outreach
activities. This could be an important/major component of the
Education/outreach portion of the Aqua Senior Review proposal. The email
I sent earlier describes a possible outline of activities.

VS: Why Terra and Aqua for this effort? DH: It wasn't explicitly Don
Anderson's directive, but came from my discussions with Steve Graham and
others. VS: And what do we mean by "no new money" is available for this
effort? DH: Yes, that's the problem with the Senior Review. But if we
propose something that would get positive feedback from HQ, then I
envision we might be able to get some monies for this effort. BW: This
concept started in the UK (climateprediction.net) to get at model
physics sensitivities. But is this appropriate for Senior Review, or
should it be taken on by Don through his program? It probably would be
of interest to students, but it might be hard to get the budget.

SP: With regard to the Senior Review letter, is there really a current
Aqua E/PO budget that can be used as a baseline for a table (p. 9)? Does
such a current breakdown exist? DH: There is no budget directly, other
than King's funding across missions, so the E/PO budget table in the
Senior Review letter is not relevant to the way this funding has
occurred in the past. SG: Yes, the E/PO budget request is really a
disconnect from the current approach.

*Senior Review Update* (Claire):

Thanks very much for the input all the teams have provided. Everyone
deserves considerable praise: Vince for his massive efforts in
coordinating for a team with over 90 members and for all the inputs he
has provided, the AIRS Team for their very substantial, high quality
inputs, the AMSR-E Team for providing the inputs not just on time but
also well within the page limits, Angie for coordinating and providing a
very welcome set of Mission Operations inputs, and the CERES Team for
agreeing to do all the cutting back and getting a near-finished set of
inputs, in a reasonable number of pages, early next week. However,
despite the well-deserved praise for everyone, we do have a real
problem. The volume of material is way too much from the MODIS and AIRS
teams. Also, regarding figures, I've received dozens from MODIS, but
none from anyone else. Can each team bring a set of figures (5-15
figures) to the Feb. 21 meeting, so that we as a group can then decide
which illustrations to include? If so, then I could concentrate just on
the text in the meantime, which would make it much more manageable for
me to get a draft to everyone several days before the February meeting.

BW: Shouldn't MODIS and AIRS get their pages down to the limit, instead
of having you do it for them? TP: We'll work to cut it down. VS: I'm
perfectly willing to work with Claire and get it down to the page limit.
CP: I've gone through a first cut with the AIRS text, but further
reductions may be needed; we'll wait and see after formatting. NL: I'm
already writing text that refers to figures. CP: In that case,
definitely go ahead and proceed with that approach since you've already
started. AMSR-E and AIRS can bring figures to the February meeting if
they wish.

I still need a list of AIRS data products (with 100-word descriptions)
for the appendix. EO: We'll get it to you early next week. DE:
Definition of data products is different from instrument to instrument,
e.g., "standard" data product for AIRS includes a number of products.
CP. Each team should do what they consider most appropriate for the
document.

This morning I had a meeting with a group from an office at Goddard that
helps out with proposals (Bldg. 8). The meeting was a result of Marc
Imhoff's initiative in seeing if there was assistance from that office
for the Senior Review effort. Evidently, this office is now coming up
with an outline for all the Goddard Senior Review mission proposals,
aligning it with the instructions from Steve Volz. This might have been
great if only the timing were different, but I explained that we already
have an outline, and needed it weeks ago because of the major effort
required for Terra and Aqua, which are each missions with several
science teams. After the meeting, I called Marc Imhoff (Terra Project
Scientist) about this, and he was also surprised that they were working
on an outline. The people from the proposal office also said that they
would like us to put money into the Aqua budget to pay for proposal
writing assistance for the next senior review.

*Budget* (Platnick):

There are three action items every team had from the 5 January meeting:
(1) Have your RA's make contact with the Aqua RA here at GSFC (Teresa
Mautino); (2) determine the POP (N2 and submitted) budget; (3) provide
baseline budgets and enhanced budgets (separately), each with a
statement of work. After clarification with Steve Volz (via Marc
Imhoff), we don't have to worry about breaking down the POP, though that
would still be helpful for those that have these numbers.

[AMSR-E]{.underline}: I did get budgets and a statement of work (thank
you). Teresa has given the baseline budget a quick look and had a couple
of requests, but overall it contained the numbers she needs.

[Mission ops]{.underline}: Darlene Capone communicated to Teresa that
she'd provide budgets by February 12. AK: We're working off the POP
numbers.

[JPL]{.underline}: Teresa spoke with Kylie Choy (AIRS RA). Kylie said
she would send the budgets by February 12.

[MODIS]{.underline}: Teresa is working on this budget with Jack Xiong.

[CERES]{.underline}: No word from your RA. BW: We'll make sure she
contacts you. We're working the numbers.

[ROSES in-kind costs]{.underline}: Wasn't able to get any response/help
from HQ. After talking with Michael King, it appeared doubtful that
anyone would have individual RA proposals broken down by mission.
However, Michael had generated spreadsheets of all 2003 EOS re-compete,
IDS, and RSP proposal titles and categorized them by instrument science
teams. Along with hard copies of award letters (which contain the
original proposed budgets), we have the information to make a very good
estimate of ROSES contribution. Steve Graham is working through those
spreadsheets and award letters.

Keep in mind that the budget associated with the enhanced portion of the
proposal have to be linked to text describing details of the proposed
work effort and/or procurement costs -- either in the statement of work
or the main text.

**Data system/EOSDIS:**

No report.

**CERES (Wielicki, Loeb):**

Nothing further to report.

**MODIS (Salomonson, Xiong):**

Nothing further to report.

**AMSR-E (Lobl, Spencer):**

### 

EL: Went to an AMSR-E workshop in Japan (the 2^nd^ of such workshops).

### **AIRS/AMSU (Pagano, Olsen, Friedman, Elliott):**

Nothing further to report.

### **HQ:**

No report.

**Outreach, web site, etc. (Graham):**

Nothing further to report.

***Next Telecon:*** Thursday, 1 March 2007.

Minutes are being placed on the following site:
[*http://aqua.nasa.gov/minutes*](http://aqua.nasa.gov/minutes).
Corrections/additions can be sent to Steve Platnick.