1

Inside

Director’s Corner 2

WaterBlitz 2

David Hofmann 3

Western Water Future 3

Profile: Stephen Montzka 4

Storm Spoiler 5

Tsunamis from Space 5

Teachers in the Lab 7

Speeding Up Science 8

Achievements 10

Tracking the Sun 12

N2O: Not One of the Usual Suspects 

Chlorine-free nitrous oxide now top ozone-depleting emission

DRAFT 

Planet Earth won’t fit on a tabletop exhibit at a 

science museum—even at the seemingly magical Exploratorium in San Francisco. So Exploratorium staff spent a week at the Earth System 

Research Laboratory in August, brainstorming 

with researchers about how to convey system 

science to the public in an engaging way. 

“This visit has been incredibly stimulating, and 

also humbling,” said Mary Miller, online media 

producer for the Exploratorium and director of 

a new educational partnership between NOAA 

and the Exploratorium. “There’s this amazing 

sense of mission and responsibility,” Miller said. 

“NOAA scientists are ... just so interested in 

having the public understand what they do.” 

In July, NOAA and Exploratorium staff announced a five-year partnership to co-develop 

interactive exhibits, online learning experiences, professional development workshops, 

NOAA “teacher in the lab” Diane Stanitski 

cleans sensitive instruments during a mission 

to an ocean/climate buoy. See page 7.

NOAA-museum partnership 

aims to engage educators, 

visitors, scientists, more 

Exploring Earth 

ESRL Quarterly

News from NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory

Speeding Up Earth Science, page 8. 

Cheap, powerful processors improve 

NOAA weather, climate models.

Fall 2009

Nitrous oxide is better known to the public for 

inducing giggles in dentists’ offices than for 

wreaking havoc on Earth’s protective ozone layer. 

It bears little resemblance to the perpetrators of 

ozone-layer destruction currently regulated under 

the international Montreal Protocol agreement—

those chemicals all contain chlorine or bromine 

atoms, unlike nitrous oxide. But now that global 

actions have curtailed the use of those culprits, a 

new ESRL study has taken a fresh look at nitrous 

oxide (N2O). Nitrous oxide emissions have become 

the most significant ozone-depleting emission by 

people and are expected to remain so throughout 

the century, researchers in ESRL’s Chemical Sciences Division (CSD) concluded in a paper published 

in Science.

The scientists evaluated, for the first time, how the 

human-related emissions of nitrous oxide stack up 

against the emissions of other ozone-depleting 

substances in terms of the potential impact on the 

ozone layer. With the emissions of chlorine- and 

bromine-containing chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) 

and halons declining sharply as a result of the 

Montreal Protocol, nitrous oxide emissions have 

now emerged as the most significant among 

all anthropogenic ozone-depleting substances, 

the scientists found. Nitrous oxide emissions by 

people—from agriculture, industry, and other 

activities—are already more than twice as high 

(in terms of potential ozone impact) as the 

ozone-depleting substance with the next highest emissions, trichlorofluoromethane (CFC-11, a 

refrigerant). 

“The dramatic reduction in CFCs over the last 20 

years is an environmental success story,” said lead 

author A.R. Ravishankara, CSD Director. “But anthropogenic nitrous oxide is now the elephant in 

the room.”

A layer of ozone in Earth’s stratosphere protects 

the planet’s surface from damaging ultraviolet radiation from the Sun, and ozone-layer depletion is 

associated with skin cancer and crop damage. The 

Montreal Protocol of 1987 and its amendments 

phased out many ozone-depleting chemicals and 

have been credited with preventing millions of 

cancer cases—but the Protocol does not include 

nitrous oxide. 

Even so, atmospheric scientists have long understood that the chemical is involved in the depletion of stratospheric ozone—it is the main source 

of oxides of nitrogen which can eat away at ozone. 

ESRL researchers Ravishankara, John Daniel, and 

Robert Portmann (CSD) took that knowledge 

several steps further, to evaluate nitrous oxide in 

the same way as the ozone-depleting substances 

regulated today. The research team first pinned a 

number on the N2

O molecule’s ability to destroy 

the ozone layer, and then used that number to 

see page 9

see page 6
2

Director’s Corner

By the Numbers

WaterBlitz

195

Number of sites in Rocky Mountain National Park where volunteers collected water samples on August 19. The second annual “WaterBlitz” was funded by the Western Water Assessment, one of NOAA’s 

Regional Integrated Science Assessments and a joint project of ESRL and CIRES. Researchers suspect 

beetle-caused tree mortality is changing the concentration of nutrients in streams, which could affect 

ecosystems as well as water treatment downstream. Photo by Morgan Heim, CIRES.

Greetings from Venice where I am 

attending the OceanObs’09 Conference. I am 

co-author on a white paper on the global ocean 

observing system, but for me this conference is 

mainly a chance to understand a part of Earth 

system science that I have not had much experience with. This is the second OceanObs—the first 

was held in France 10 years ago, and is credited 

with propelling the significant increases in ocean 

observations, assimilation, understanding, and 

prediction of the last decade. For me, the similarities to the physical atmospheric problem are striking. The moored buoy networks (e.g., TAO, PIRATA, 

and RAMA) and ARGO floats are now providing, for 

the first time, the equivalent of the radiosondes 

for the atmosphere; profiles of state variables at a 

large number of points over the global ocean. The 

amazing satellite technology that provides surface 

altimetry of the ocean to heights of a few centimeters is, in some sense, analogous to the role that 

surface pressure plays in atmospheric analysis–an 

indication of the integrated mass field below the 

ocean surface. (The 30-cm high mound of warm 

water in the central Gulf of Mexico in late summer 

of 2005 was an indication of very warm water below, which was important in fueling the surges of 

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita to Category 5.) Finally, 

sea surface temperature around the globe constrains the surface thermodynamic field–so combining all three types of observations now gives a 

relatively complete portrayal of the physical ocean. 

The ocean community has also made much progress on assimilation with the Global Ocean Data 

Assimilation Experiment (GODEA).

Like atmospheric science, ocean science can be 

divided into three domains—physical, chemical, and biological—and understanding has not 

progressed evenly among all three. In both, initial 

efforts at full global systems science were primarily in the physical domain. Recently we have seen 

significant progress in global systems chemistry 

with, for example, ESRL’s Carbon Tracker. At OceanObs’09, there was much discussion of how to make 

progress in ocean chemistry. NOAA was well represented with leaders—such as Richard Feely of the 

Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory—who 

have brought ocean chemistry to the forefront of 

the global change issue. Conference participants 

discussed proposals to put sensors for carbon 

dioxide and oxygen onto the ARGO profilers, 

which would give researchers a global dataset on 

important ocean chemistry, to the 2000-m depth 

that the ARGO system samples. Our atmospheric 

equivalents are aircraft and tall tower chemistry

soundings, which ESRL’s Global Monitoring Division is pioneering.

There was a strong feeling at the OceanObs’09 

meeting among members of the biological oceanography community that they had not received 

the needed attention and support that this field 

deserves. Reasons for this disparity discussed at 

the meeting include the diversity of biology (for 

example, there are thousands of species of phytoplankton), the difficulty of observing ocean biology, and the complexity of biological change (e.g., 

as the ocean becomes warmer and more acidic, 

determining the resulting Darwinian evolution is 

very difficult). 

At NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory, 

we began with the vision of understanding and 

predicting the whole Earth system. Our strong 

capabilities in physical and chemical aspects of 

the atmosphere could be regarded as encompassing one-third of the Earth system. In addition, 

the global environmental research community 

must understand the physics and chemistry of the 

ocean, and terrestrial and oceanic biology. 

ESRL is contributing cutting edge efforts to understand the ocean’s role in global weather and 

climate, and in getting that new understanding 

implemented in the latest generation of computer models. Chris Fairall recently received an 

AGU medal for his work. He and his team in the 

Physical Sciences Division (PSD) have garnered 

wide acclaim for their efforts on air-sea fluxes 

and how they are parameterized in computer 

models. A number of other folks in PSD, including Marty Hoerling and CIRES partners Prashant 

Sardeshmukh and Gil Compo, have been publishing groundbreaking work on the ocean’s central 

role in the climate change we experience on the 

continents. Dan Murphy led a team, including illustrious Chemical Systems Division colleagues, that 

published findings in September in the Journal of 

Geophysical Research. Dan and company put the 

ocean in the context of radiative forcings and the 

total Earth system response in “An observationally 

based energy balance for the Earth since 1950.” 

ESRL’s strengths in atmospheric sciences are clearly 

multiplied by our growing capacity in understanding the ocean’s role, and by the significant progress 

that I am hearing about at OceanObs’09.

I leave this fascinating week with a main takehome message: The importance of partnerships 

within the scientific community. No one organization can cover all of Earth system science–we must 

work together.

—Alexander MacDonald

2
3

David Hofmann 

Pioneer of aerosol and ozone research dies

ESRL atmospheric scientist David Hofmann 

passed away in Boulder on 11 August 2009. He 

was 72. Hofmann has described his scientific 

focus as “simple in concept:” Commit to longterm, specific measurements; attend to the 

details; and focus on the big issues raised by 

the measurements. In a world of short-term 

contracts and annual budgets, such sustained 

endeavors can prove challenging. Yet Hofmann 

initiated, led, and upheld many such long-term 

programs during his 25 years at the University 

of Wyoming (UW) and 17 years at NOAA—

programs to measure and analyze ozone, ozonedepleting chemicals, greenhouse gases, aerosols, 

and other atmospheric constituents. Most of 

Hofmann’s programs (and the instruments he 

helped develop for them) are ongoing today, 

testifying to his scientific foresight, persistence, 

and lasting influence. 

Hofmann retired as Director of ESRL’s Global 

Monitoring Division in 2007, so that he could 

return to conducting science full time. At the 

Global Monitoring Annual Conference at ESRL 

this May, Hofmann presented results on the stillslow recovery of the Antarctic ozone layer. After 

Hofmann’s talk, ESRL Chemical Sciences Division 

Director A.R. Ravishankara said he was impressed 

with Hofmann’s return to research. “I can see 

that your retirement is good for the enterprise of 

science,” Ravishankara said.

The quality of Hofmann’s work is reflected in 

the papers he published just before his death—

analyses of global trends of anthropogenic 

carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and of 

stratospheric aerosol results from lidars in Mauna 

Loa and Boulder. Some of Hofmann’s earliest 

research, at UW, also involved analyzing routine 

measurements of stratospheric aerosol. Perhaps 

he mused on the fact that his recent work 

reflected his early work (both broke new ground 

in stratospheric aerosol science). More likely, he 

was planning his next research project.

Hofmann’s scientific contributions, generosity, 

wisdom, and humor will be missed. He is 

survived by his partner, Shirley Purcell, daughters 

Gretchen and Jennifer, and son Karl. 

As the West warms, a drier Colorado River system 

could see as much as a 1-in-2 chance of fully depleting all of its reservoir storage by mid-century, 

assuming current management practices continue. That’s grim news for the roughly 30 million 

people who depend on the Colorado for drinking and irrigation water.

A research team—including PSD’s Marty Hoerling, Andrea Ray, Joseph Barsugli (CIRES), and 

Bradley Udall (CIRES), and led by CIRES’ Balaji Rajagopalan—examined how vulnerable the Colorado River system is to water supply variability 

and to projected changes in water demand. The 

scientists found that through 2026, the risk of 

fully depleting reservoir storage in any given year 

remains less than 10 percent under any scenario 

of climate fluctuation or management alternative. During this period, reservoir storage could 

even recover from its current low level, about 65 

percent of capacity. 

But if climate change results in a 10-percent 

reduction in the Colorado River’s average streamflow, the chances of fully depleting reservoir 

storage will exceed 25 percent by 2057. If climate 

change results in a 20-percent reduction, the 

chances of fully depleting reservoir storage will 

exceed 50 percent by 2057, Rajagopalan said.

“On average, drying caused by climate change 

would increase the risk of fully depleting reservoir storage nearly ten times more than the risk 

we expect from population pressures alone,” said 

Rajagopalan. “A 50-percent chance in any given 

year is an enormous risk and huge water management challenge,” he said. 

The results were published in the American Geophysical Union journal Water Resources Research.

Even under the most extensive drying scenario, 

threats to water supplies won’t be felt immediately, the researchers found. Total storage capacity of reservoirs on the Colorado (including lakes 

Mead and Powell) exceeds 60 million acre feet, 

almost four times the longterm average annual flow of 

about 16 million acre feet. As 

a result, the risk of reservoir 

depletion will remain low 

through 2026, even if climate 

change induces a 20-percent 

reduction in streamflow.

However, after 2026, the risk of drying increases 

to 26-51 percent, depending on the effects of 

climate change and management, with lower 

risk associated with aggressive management to 

reduce demand. 

The Colorado’s flow has been very low in the last 

10 years, Hoerling said, averaging only about 10 

Western Water Outlook: Grim

But good management can lower the risk of reservoir depletion, study shows

Lake Powell in 2005.

CIRES: the Cooperative Institute 

for Research in Environmental 

Sciences is a joint institute of 

NOAA and the University of 

Colorado at Boulder.

million acre feet. Reservoirs have dropped to 

a little more than half capacity, but managers 

still delivered water where it 

needed to go. “So the system 

is working, from a gross point 

of view,” Hoerling said. But 

climate models and modelers are still struggling to 

understand the future of the 

system in a warmer world; 

some models don’t include the high-elevation 

snowpack critical to the Colorado River System, 

for example.

“Our models are not yet good enough to inform with the accuracy desired by most decision makers,” Hoerling said. 

U.S. BUREAU OF RECLAMATION 3
4

When Steve Montzka was considering a position 

at NOAA nearly 19 years ago, the job description 

was daunting. It involved continually analyzing 

air samples from around the world for chemicals 

that were eating away at Earth’s protective ozone 

layer. “The work was to do this, day in and day 

out, for...well, forever,” Montzka said. 

He took the job. Ozone depletion had become 

a hot topic in atmospheric science, and many of 

the key players—from NOAA’s Susan Solomon 

to Harvard University’s James Anderson—were 

returning from Antarctica, giving fascinating talks 

in Boulder, and planning new experiments. 

“It was exciting to be involved in this community 

of scientists at the forefront of the issue,” Montzka 

said. “And frankly, it was a way to stay in Boulder, 

which my wife was going to do with or without 

me,” he said, smiling. 

Since then, Montzka has combined his expertise—in chemistry, atmospheric science, and data 

analysis—to go well beyond filling a database 

with 18 years of ozone-depleting gas data. With 

his colleagues he tracks about 40 different gases 

now, his papers are very highly cited in the field, 

and Montzka has worked closely with colleagues 

across ESRL and NOAA to contribute to national 

and international scientific assessments read by 

policy makers around the globe.

“Our bread and butter is still to analyze air samples from remote locations day after day,” Montzka said, “but on top of that, there have been all 

sorts of interesting twists and turns in the science 

we’ve been able to do.” 

From 1989 to 1991, Montzka worked as a postdoctorate researcher with Fred Fehsenfeld and 

Paul Goldan, studying how plant-produced 

volatile organic compounds were involved in the 

generation of rural haze and tropospheric ozone 

(ozone is a pollutant at low altitudes, but up in 

the stratosphere, a layer of ozone protects the 

Earth from damaging radiation).

Soon after starting at NOAA, Montzka participated with Jim Butler (today, Director of ESRL’s 

Global Monitoring Division) in a cruise from 

Seattle to San Francisco, to study natural oceanic 

sources and cycling of methyl bromide, a significant ozone-depleter. The chemical has manmade 

sources, too, as a fumigant pesticide, and the 

relative importance of each source wasn’t clear at 

the time. “Our data really helped refine the methyl bromide budget,” Montzka said. And the cruise 

itself, on the NOAA ship Discoverer, was terrifically 

exciting. “I felt like I was in a National Geographic 

special,” he admitted. 

A few years later, in 1996, Montzka and his NOAA 

colleagues hit another scientific high: Documenting a drawdown in the global atmospheric 

concentration of ozone-depleting substances—a 

direct consequence of a 1987 international treaty, 

the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, and its amendments. 

“Seeing that turnaround in our data and being 

able to tell others about the Protocol’s initial 

success, well, it was nice to be a part of that,” 

Montzka said. 

Since then, the researcher has 

been involved in groundbreaking 

measurements of 100-year-old 

air trapped in Antarctica’s snow—

which revealed an atmosphere remarkably free of industrial ozonedepleting substances. He helps 

with aircraft missions that soar 

into the stratosphere to measure 

ozone-depleters directly in the 

environment in which they wreak 

havoc. And Montzka and his colleagues have been able to take 

advantage of policy decisions—

the mandated end of most methyl 

chloroform production, for example—to gain 

insight into fundamental atmospheric processes. 

“It was similar to studying the decay of radiocarbon after the nuclear tests of the 1950s,” Montzka 

said. “We were there, equipped to study the 

atmospheric changes with the appropriate tools, 

and we were able to draw some powerful conclusions about the chemistry of the atmosphere and 

how it rids itself of pollutants.” 

Two years ago, Montzka shared the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Ozone Protection 

Award of 2007 with other ESRL scientists. He has 

also shared two Department of Commerce Silver 

Medals, was named NOAA Research Employee 

of the year in 2000, and co-authored nine papers 

that won Outstanding Scientific Paper awards 

(some of those and other papers that bear 

Montzka’s name have been cited more than 100 

times—a very high rate).

Today, he continues to track trace atmospheric 

chemicals along with his colleagues in the halocarbons research group, especially chemicals that 

are substitutes for ozone-depleting substances. 

Some of those chemicals are milder ozonedepleters, and others are potent greenhouse gases—so Montzka is collaborating increasingly with 

ESRL’s carbon cycle and greenhouse gas experts. 

He’s also a bit busier than usual now, because he’s 

one of two coordinating lead authors of Chapter 

1 of the 2010 Scientific Assessment of Ozone 

Depletion, conducted by the World Meteorological Organization and the UN Environment Programme. The assessments, published every four 

years, update scientists, policy makers, and the 

public on the status of ozone depletion. 

The extra work is worth it, Montzka said. “We at 

NOAA get to take the pulse of the global atmosphere weekly—those samples are a tremendous 

resource. Using them to address science issues is 

great fun, and being able to address policy issues 

as well makes it very rewarding.” 

Profile: Stephen A. Montzka

The ESRL scientist’s work tracking ozone-depleting 

substances has helped underpin scientific discoveries, 

international policy 

Steve Montzka in the laboratory (above) and at the South Pole (below). 
5

Hurricane Bill couldn’t outrun FIM. The ESRLdeveloped forecast model kept pace with that 

storm and others this summer in a series of 

supercomputer-based hurricane forecast experiments. 

“The results are preliminary, but the track forecasts seem to be looking better when the model 

is run at higher resolution (30 km vs. 15 km vs. 10 

km),” said ESRL’s Stan Benjamin, Chief of the Assimilation and Modeling Branch of ESRL’s Global 

Systems Division. “At higher resolution, we are 

seeing intensity improvements, too, based on 

this season’s tropical storms so far,” Benjamin 

added. 

He and colleagues from across NOAA, supported 

by the Hurricane Forecast Improvement Program, HFIP, used TACC supercomputers to run 

FIM at high resolutions this summer. Although 

forecasters have improved hurricane track errors 

by about 50 percent during the last 20 years, 

HFIP has set a goal of further, significant improvements in track and intensity forecasts and 

forecast lead time. 

It’s hard to spin up a realistic, intense hurricane 

in lower-resolution models, such as the operational Global Forecast System (GFS), which 

usually runs at 40 km. The storms alter the wind 

and other systems in which they’re embedded, 

and those changes can then push around the 

storm itself. Researchers calculate they need 

resolutions of 5-15 km to perform this kind of 

modeling, and those resolutions require intense 

computing power (shifting FIM from 30-km 

resolution to 10-km resolution required 27 times 

more computing power). 

So this summer, Benjamin and his colleagues 

used more than 12 million processor hours at 

TACC to run hurricane forecasts on FIM at 30-, 15-, and 

10-km resolution, to study 

the effect of resolution on 

forecast accuracy. The team 

is also comparing the effectiveness of two methods that 

could be used to initialize the 

models. The first is a traditional data assimilation 

system, used operationally with GFS, that ingests 

real-time meteorological data from a broad 

region around developing hurricanes. The second is an experimental system, developed at 

ESRL, which treats those data 

first with a statistical technique 

called the ensemble Kalman filter, EnKF. Initial data from those 

trials already suggest that both 

FIM and the operational GFS can deliver better 

forecasts using the EnKF. 

Storm Spoiler

ESRL’s FIM model excels during 

summertime hurricane trials

FIM: Flow-following finitevolume Icosahedral Model

TACC: Texas Advanced 

Computing Center

Forecast tracks by the FIM global 

model and global ensemble, initialized 

at 0000 GMT Aug. 20. The black track is 

Hurricane Bill’s observed track. White 

tracks are from the 20-member, 30-km 

ensemble; magenta and green are 30-

km deterministic runs with different 

initial conditions (EnKF vs. GFS); yellow and red tracks are from the 15-km 

deterministic model with the different 

initial conditions; and blue is from the 

10-km deterministic run using the EnKF 

initial condition.

Chasing Shadows

ESRL researchers, colleagues develop a new technique for detecting tsunamis from space

Long, shallow tsunami waves racing through 

open ocean change the roughness of the sea 

surface ahead of them, and ESRL scientists 

demonstrated this summer that such “shadows” 

can be measured by satellite-borne radars. The 

finding could one day help save lives through 

improved detection and forecasting of tsunami 

intensity and direction at the ocean surface.

“We’ve found that roughness of the surface 

water provides a good measure of the true 

strength of the tsunami along its entire leading 

edge,” said Oleg Godin of ESRL’s Physical Sciences Division. “This is the first time that we can 

see tsunami propagation in this way across the 

open ocean.”

Large tsunamis crossing the open ocean stir up 

and darken the surface waters along the leading edge of the wave, according to the study. 

The rougher water forms a long, shadow-like 

strip parallel to the wave and proportional to 

the strength of the tsunami. That shadow can be 

measured by orbiting radars and could one day 

help scientists improve early warning systems. 

The research was published in the journal, Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, and Godin’s co-authors are from the Physical Sciences 

Division, ZelTechnology, LLC, and the University 

of Colorado.

The new study challenges the traditional belief 

that tsunamis are too subtle in the open ocean 

to be seen at the surface, and it confirms a theory that Godin published five years ago.

It also helps explain anecdotes that have long 

puzzled tsunami scientists, and inspired Godin. 

In 1994, a tsunami shadow was captured on video from shore, moments before the wave struck. 

Written reports from 1946 similarly document a 

shadow that accompanied a deadly tsunami on 

April 1. 

Godin tested his theory during the deadly 2004 

Indian Ocean tsunami, the result of the massive 

Sumatra-Andaman earthquake. Godin and colleagues analyzed altimeter measurements of 

the 2004 tsunami from NASA’s Jason-1 satellite. 

The data revealed clear evidence of increased 

surface roughness along the leading edge of the 

tsunami as it passed across the Indian Ocean between two and six degrees south latitude. 

The new study identifies a third way of detecting tsunamis. Today, tsunamis that threaten 

coastal U.S. communities are picked up by an 

extensive buoy network, NOAA’s Deep-ocean 

Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis (DART) 

system. DART uses ocean-floor sensors to measure the pressure changes that accompany 

passing tsunami waves. A second method uses 

space-borne altimeters to detect tsunamis 

by measuring small changes in sea surface 

height—but only a handful of these instruments 

are in orbit and observations are limited to 

points along a line. 

Godin’s team found that relatively common 

scientific instruments, microwave radars and 

radiometers, can pick up the contrast between a 

rough, dark tsunami “shadow” and the smooth, 

bright water on either side. From orbit, microwave radars and radiometers can observe a 

band of ocean hundreds of kilometers wide and 

thousands of kilometers long. If programmed 

correctly, they could potentially map an entire 

tsunami, Godin said.
6

and more. NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco and Exploratorium 

Executive Director Dennis Bartels made the announcement on the San 

Francisco pier where the Exploratorium will move within five years. 

During a brownbag lunch at ESRL, Miller described the scene: “What I 

really loved was that Dr. Lubchenco said ‘This is going to be so cool!’ ” 

Exploratorium staff visited ESRL most recently, but have also toured 

NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory and smaller NOAA offices in California, and they’re planning other trips. 

The Exploratorium, a “museum of science, art, and human perception,” 

has long excelled at developing hands-on, experiential exhibits, said 

Exploratorium senior scientist Thomas Humphrey. Visitors can swirl 

up a tornado from rising mist or investigate the motion of spinning 

discs. Now, Humphrey said, the museum’s exhibit staff have been challenged to develop a new approach to communicating environmental 

and Earth system science: Perhaps by instrumenting the museum with 

state-of-the-art NOAA equipment and letting visitors explore data 

through visualizations. Or giving visitors access to real-time greenhouse gas and pollution data collected at NOAA’s nearby tall tower 

sites. Or establishing a two-way video connection between NOAA’s 

Okeanos Explorer and the museum. 

The latter project is already in the works: Exploratorium staff are creating an online presence for the Okeanos, so ship scientists can highlight 

new discoveries in short video clips, blogs, tweets, and other modes. 

In Boulder, Miller, Humphrey, Exploratorium Associate Director Robert 

Semper, artist Susan Schwartzenberg, and program and project coordinator Kate O’Donnell spoke with dozens of NOAA scientists about 

their work and ideas. 

Eric Hakathorne in ESRL’s Global Systems Division discussed his experience using new media—including the virtual world Second Life—to 

educate the public. John Miller and Russ Schnell of the Global Monitoring Division discussed NOAA’s role as the atmosphere’s accountant: 

ESRL’s monitoring programs track the ups and downs of critical greenhouse gases, ozone-depleting substances, and other atmospheric 

constituents. 

Susan Solomon of the Chemical Sciences Division and ESRL Director Sandy MacDonald said they hoped the Exploratorium could help 

NOAA communicate more clearly about climate change. “This problem 

humanity is facing is more important than anything out there,” MacDonald said.

ESRL scientists also spoke about research into California’s atmospheric 

rivers, which deliver vital water resources to the state but pose a critical flood risk. Exploratorium staff were delighted by the group’s raindrop disdrometers, which measure the size distribution of raindrops—

important in forecasting floods and debris flows.

“We’re thinking about something called ‘Anatomy of a Raindrop,’ “ 

Miller said. “We’ll definitely be continuing to talk with that group.” 

...NOAA-Exploratorium partnership, from page 1

Top: ESRL’s Tim Schneider makes it “rain,” to show Exploratorium staff how a raindrop 

disdrometer works (photo by Barb DeLuisi, NOAA). Bottom: ESRL’s Russ Schnell 

explains rooftop instruments to the Exploratorium’s Thomas Humphrey, with Mary 

Miller at right (photo by Rhonda Lange, NOAA).

Ongoing Collaborations

Long before signing an official partnership, Exploratorium staff were working informally with NOAA scientists and their academic colleagues to 

communicate about fascinating and important field work. Ice Stories: Dispatches from Polar Scientists is an Exploratorium web site that highlights 

some of those collaborations. Museum staff train researchers to use multi-media tools, from video production and editing to storytelling and 

blogging. Trained scientists then use those skills to file dispatches from the field. NOAA Corps Officer Nick Morgan (ESRL Global Monitoring Division) will file dispatches on Ice Stories this year, from NOAA’s South Pole Observatory.

More: http://icestories.exploratorium.edu/

This fall, the Exploratorium and NOAA will set up a private blog site, where 

staff from either side of the collaboration can pitch ideas and comment on 

them. 

NOAA 6
7

In a break from their school-year routines standing in front of classroom Smart Carts and holding office hours, university professors Peter 

Blanken and Diane Stanitski worked in the lab and field with ESRL scientists this summer. Blanken, whose own research is in boundary layer 

climatology, worked with Dan Wolfe (ESRL’s Physical Sciences Division, 

PSD), and spent hours making measurements at ESRL’s 300-meter tall 

tower in Erie, Colo. Stanitski expanded her ocean-climate knowledge 

by participating in air-sea flux research in the ESRL lab with Chris 

Fairall (also PSD), before hopping aboard the University of Hawaii research vessel Kilo Moana to collect field data. 

Blanken and Stanitski were two of five teachers accepted to participate in NOAA’s pilot Teacher in the Lab program, an extension of 

the Teacher at Sea program, with the purpose of providing teachers 

hands-on experience working side-by-side with NOAA scientists. Blanken’s and Stanitski’s summer research projects both focused on the 

air-surface interface, but in two very different environments. Knowledge of the boundary layer is key for understanding future climate—

dynamics in the boundary layer influence energy exchanged between 

the atmosphere and the surface, and better understanding of those 

dynamics could significantly improve weather and climate models.

Blanken, an Associate Professor in the Geography Department at the 

University of Colorado at Boulder, and Wolfe worked in the boundary layer at the Boulder Atmospheric Observatory (BAO) tall tower, 

to monitor atmospheric profiles of temperature, moisture, wind, and 

carbon. To human eyes, the view from the top of the BAO is sweeping, 

but Blanken and Wolfe were more interested in the sensor view, or 

“sample footprint” at the BAO. The area “seen” by the tower’s radiometric and turbulent flux measurements depends on several factors, from 

sensor height and design to atmospheric conditions such as turbulence and stability. In a series of experiments, Blanken and Wolfe ran 

sensors up and down the tower on an external carriage, to examine 

changes in sampling area. The researchers expect to help scientists 

better understand satellite measurements through comparisons with 

data from the BAO.

Wolfe and Blanken continue to collaborate, using new and historic 

BAO data to develop undergraduate-level lesson plans that follow 

NOAA’s Climate Literacy Principles.

Stanitski, an adjunct oceanography professor at the U.S. Naval 

Academy, and ESRL physicist Fairall are working together on an 

ongoing “intercomparison” study between precise flux sensors 

mounted on long-term ocean reference stations and nearby ship 

instruments. These flux measurements help researchers quantify 

air-sea exchanges of heat, freshwater, and momentum—key 

data for understanding and describing how ocean regions respond to atmospheric changes. This summer’s cruise was to the 

Woods Hole Hawaii Ocean Timeseries Station (WHOTS) mooring 

100 km north of Oahu, one of a network of long-term ocean reference stations.

Aboard the Kilo Moana, Stanitski launched weather balloons by 

day and night, crunched large datasets in the lab, mounted radiometers on the ship, and took sea surface temperature readings 

throughout the cruise. She focused on shortwave and longwave 

radiation measurements and data from onboard meteorological 

instruments important to compute air-sea fluxes. 

Fairall, Stanitski, and other scientists participating in the WHOTS 

study plan to co-author a report on the intercomparison findings. Stanitski is incorporating NOAA data into a Global Climate 

Change course she is teaching at the U.S. Naval Academy this 

fall. She also plans to write a children’s book about careers in 

the atmospheric sciences, based on interviews conducted with 

NOAA scientists.

Wolfe, Blanken, Fairall, and Stanitski will co-author a presentation 

at the American Meteorological Society annual meeting, describing the value of their Teacher in the Lab experience and research 

conducted during their summer interactions. 

Teachers in the Lab 

ESRL scientists, university professors 

collaborate to study air and sea 

What’s WHOTS? 

The moored surface buoy WHOTS (Woods Hole Hawaii Ocean 

Timeseries Station) was established in 2004, instrumented with a 

full complement of meteoroloical sensors. It provides long-term, 

precise data on air-sea fluxes. The focus of this summer’s WHOTS 

cruise—on the Kilo Moana, shown below —was to calibrate instruments as precisely as possible. Data on ocean-atmosphere interactions are critical for understanding weather and climate. 

Peter Blanken and the view from 

the top of ESRL’s Boulder Atmospheric Observatory tower. 

NOAA

DAN WOLFE, NOAA

7
8

ESRL’s Mark Govett felt a bit out of place at a conference in California last fall. He was surrounded 

by hundreds of video game developers and players, few older than 30. Gaggles of teenagers were 

in attendance, drawn by a gaming contest involving incredibly realistic electronic simulations of 

people.

Govett, 52, has worked for 24 years at NOAA, 

steadily improving the computer systems used 

to predict weather and climate. The corners of his 

eyes wrinkle when he smiles. 

Like everyone else at last year’s GPU Technology 

Conference in San Jose, Govett wanted to learn 

more about the latest innovations in computer 

processing. For most attendees, those innovations would lead to better games. Govett and a 

handful of others were more interested in how 

GPUs—graphics processing

units—might improve science. 

“We are getting to the point where parallel 

processors based on CPUs cannot do what we 

need,” Govett said. An experimental weather and 

climate model in development now 

at ESRL, for example, will eventually 

require about 200,000 CPU cores to 

spit out operational forecasts, he 

estimated. Weather forecasting requires speed: Useful forecast models must run at about 2 percent of 

real time. ESRL’s fastest machine 

has about 5,000 cores and occupies 

about 15 closet-sized racks. The 

space and energy requirements of 

such banks of machines are becoming onerous. 

“They’re going to require small power plants to 

run our models,” Govett said. “Clearly, we need 

another way.” 

GPUs may not be the only answer, he said: There 

are other types of fast, co-processing chips. But 

for now, Govett and colleagues believe GPUs are 

one of the most promising. The processors are 

staggeringly powerful, cheap, and 

require far less energy and space 

than CPU-based computing systems. 

Govett’s small team in the Global 

Systems Division is now leading 

NOAA’s investigation into GPUs, 

following in the footsteps of ESRL 

Director Sandy MacDonald. MacDonald helped revolutionize NOAA’s 

computing power 18 years ago, with 

parallel processors that were many 

times less expensive—and faster—than Crays 

and other vector computers of the time. 

Powering the improvements in GPUs is the video 

game industry. In just one quarter of 2008, GPU 

manufacturers around the world shipped out 

more than 110 million units, according to Jon 

Peddie Research, an industry consulting firm. 

“Science is riding on the back of this,” Govett said. 

A GPU differs from a conventional CPU in the 

structure of the chip. GPUs are typically split up 

into thousands of lightweight microprocessors called threads, which run in small 

batches and use fast and slow memory to maximize performance. The 

programming trick, Govett said, 

is to take advantage of the 

fast memory, so computations are never waiting 

in line. 

Speeding Up Science 

Cheap, poweful processors designed for life-like video games improve NOAA weather, climate models

...the code runs 

25 times faster 

on a GPU

Results from a sample FIM run, overlaid on Google Earth. Icosahedrons, the 

computational unit in FIM, are visible. Colors indicate predicted temperature on 

the 250-km resolution grid shown. Graphic by Jeff Smith and Evan Polster, Global 

Systems Division. 

8
9

Mark Govett. Photo by Will von Dauster, NOAA.

“Vendors have been saying that GPUs have 100 

times the performance of CPUs,” Govett said. “We 

asked, To what extent can we take advantage of 

that?” 

Until recently, it wasn’t feasible to even try. To 

program GPUs, researchers would need to write 

in a low-level machine language that would be 

impractical. “People knew the promise was huge, 

but we couldn’t work with them yet,” Govett said. 

Then in 2007, a major GPU manufacturer, made 

public its language, CUDA, which is similar to 

C. Most scientists still program in Fortran, so for 

most academic researchers, it was too difficult to 

convert their codes to CUDA—it would take too 

long to get results. But Govett’s background is in 

computer languages, and he was able to write 

translational software that does 95 percent of the 

work automatically. “That has allowed us to make 

progress faster than anyone else,” he said. 

His team purchased a 16-node GPU from NVIDIA 

last year. Now, Govett, Craig Tierney, Leslie Hart, 

Tom Henderson, and Jacques Middelcoff are converting model code to CUDA and optimizing it 

for high performance on the GPU system. 

The initial results have been incredibly exciting, 

Govett said. Running part of FIM—the Flowfollowing finite-volume Icosahedral Model, ESRL’s 

experimental weather and climate model being 

used to improve hurricane prediction—was 15 to 

20 times faster on the GPU node than on the CPU, 

Tierney reported nine months ago. 

Now Govett has a large segment of the next-generation NIM model (Non-hydrostatic Icosahedral 

Model) running on a GPU. NIM is an even more 

computationally intensive model that is expected 

to run at resolutions of 3-4 km within two years. 

“To date, no global model has been run at such a 

high resolution in real time because of the compute requirements are so large,” Govett said. “It 

may not even be possible to run the NIM at this 

fine scale in real time without something like a 

GPU.“ In recent experiments, the code has run 25 

times faster on the GPU than the CPU. “I’m just 

so excited about this I’m working on this at night 

and weekends,” Govett said. 

He acknowledged that there remain uncertainties in the use of GPUs for high-performance 

computing. It’s not entirely clear yet, for example, 

how efficiently GPU units will perform when 

linked in parallel. “But we believe we have good 

strategies for dealing with that issue,” Govett said. 

He put up his translational software for free 

online a few months ago, and users around the 

world have downloaded it. An industry group 

has offered a similar product, and Govett’s team 

plans to run tests to compare the efficiency of the 

two programs. 

“GPUs are seen now as the next revolutionary 

advance in computing, and NOAA is looking to 

our laboratory to do this kind of research,” Govett said. “In terms of atmospheric science, we’ve 

come further, faster, with GPUs than anyone else 

out there. It’s very exciting to work at ESRL on 

this.” 

GPU>>CPU 

CENTRAL PROCESSING UNIT This all-purpose 

processor is the core of most computers. CPU 

performance has doubled about every 18 months 

(Moore’s law), but is running into physical limits. Today’s CPUs perform about 20 billion floating-point 

operations per second—20 gigaflops. 

GRAPHICS PROCESSING UNIT A processor with 

parallel structure, traditionally used to support 

3-D graphics. GPU performance is increasing 

faster than CPU performance and GPUs are cheap, 

partly because they are manufactured in high 

volume for computer games. Today’s fastest GPUs 

process at about 2 teraflops, 100 times faster than 

most CPUs. 

Efficiency 50 Gflops per Watt of waste heat Efficiency 1 Gflop per Watt of waste heat

...N2O top ozone-depleting emission, from page 1

“weight” N2O emissions to quantify their potential to deplete the ozone layer. 

Per molecule, nitrous oxide is comparable to the 

weakest of regulated ozone-depleting chemicals, 

the team found. The molecule’s “ozone depletion 

potential” in the year 2000 was 0.017. CFC -11 

(the standard by which other ozone-depleting 

substances are measured) has an ozone depletion potential of 1, and some bromine-containing 

chemicals have ozone depletion potentials 

higher than 10. But when Ravishankara and his 

colleagues used N2

O’s number and took its large 

emissions (today and projected throughout this 

century) into consideration, nitrous oxide’s importance emerged.

“We have demonstrated that N2

O can be thought 

of as an ozone-depleting substance in many of 

the same ways as other gases that are currently 

regulated by the Montreal Protocol,” Portmann 

said.

While the emissions of many of the Protocol’s 

ozone-depleters are dropping, emissions of 

nitrous oxide are increasing, and N2

O’s concentration in the atmosphere continues to rise: It was 

about 270 parts per billion (ppb) in pre-industrial 

times, and is roughly 325 ppb today. Though nitrous oxide emission is the single most important 

ozone-depleting emission by people today, the 

ozone depletion occurring today is still dominated by the CFCs and other regulated ozone-depleting chemicals that remain in the atmosphere 

in large amounts because of their long lifetimes 

and large historical emissions.

“Today’s human-caused N2

O emissions represent 

a larger commitment to future ozone depletion 

than any other ozone-depleting substance humans are currently emitting,” Daniel concluded. 

“Soon, human-caused N2

O emissions will represent a greater commitment than the anthropogenic emissions of all other ozone-depleting 

substances combined.”

Nitrous oxide—also a greenhouse gas—is emitted from fertilized soils, livestock manure, sewage treatment, combustion and other industrial processes, and a very small amount comes from dental sedation. In nature, bacteria in soil and the oceans break down nitrogen-containing compounds, releasing 

nitrous oxide. Human activities account for about one-third of global nitrous oxide emissions today. 

The figure below shows historical and projected ODP-weighted emissions of the most important 

ozone-depleting substances (from Ravishankara et al. 2009).

1980 2000 2020 2040 2060 2080 2100

CH3Br

HCFCs

CH3CCl3, CCl4

Halons

CFCs

N2O

1200

1000

0

200

400

800

600

ODP-Weighted Emission, 106kg CFC-11/yr
10

ESRL Director Sandy MacDonald speaks with NOAA 

Administrator Jane Lubchenco (second from left) and 

other staff, at the Barrow Observatory in Alaska. Photo 

by Bill Mowitt, NOAA.

Achievement

More news, publications, and honors from NOAA’s 

Earth System Research Laboratory.

News

Quake damages NOAA site

Mark Cunningham, Station Chief of NOAA’s baseline atmospheric observatory in American Samoa, 

has reported that he, his family, and the observatory’s groundskeeper are fine following a major 

undersea earthquake in the region, which triggered deadly tsunami waves, although the home 

of NOAA’s groundskeeper was destroyed. At 

least 140 died Tuesday, Sept. 29 on the islands of 

Samoa and American Samoa, according to news 

reports. NOAA’s American Samoa observatory 

sits on the northeastern tip of Tutuila Island, on a 

ridge about 42 m above the South Pacific Ocean. 

Jim Butler, Director of ESRL’s Global Monitoring 

Division, has been speaking with Cunningham by 

mobile phone at least briefly every day since the 

earthquake and tsunami. Cunningham updated 

his boss on the status of the NOAA observatory, 

and told him about ferrying people from devastated, low-lying areas to the higher observatory 

site, and providing shelter. The NOAA observatory 

has become the second largest designated shelter 

area in American Samoa due to its elevated location and substantial self-supporting infrastructure, including electrical generation capacity. 

“Once again, Mark is a hero when heroes are 

called for,” Butler said. “We owe him a lot.” Cunningham received a Bronze Medal from NOAA’s 

Workforce Management Office in 2005, following 

the Category 5 Cyclone Heta in January 2004. 

The award praised Cunningham’s service in restoring operations to the Samoa Baseline Atmospheric Observatory, which had been pounded by 

90-foot-high waves. More: www.esrl.noaa.gov.

NOAA chief visits Barrow, AK

A delegation of leaders—including NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco, several members of 

the White House Council on Environmental Quality, and Congressional staffers—visited ESRL’s Barrow Observatory August 19. ESRL Director Sandy 

MacDonald traveled with the group to discuss 

the importance of environmental monitoring, 

especially in the fastchanging Arctic, where 

the air and oceans are 

warming and sea ice is 

retreating. Steve Grove 

and Jason Johns of 

ESRL’s Global Monitoring Division led a tour 

of the Barrow Observatory, which Dr. Lubchenco 

called “a model” for an international network of 

atmospheric climate observatories. For her, the 

visit was part of a week of traveling in Alaska with 

U.S. Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thad Allen 

and Nancy Sutley, Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality. 

“Climate change is happening faster in the Arctic 

than any other place on Earth—and with wideranging global consequences,” Dr. Lubchenco 

later wrote in a memo 

to NOAA. “As efforts to 

explore and understand 

the Arctic region expand, 

NOAA will be called 

upon by a growing number of stakeholders—

from the U.S. military to 

tour operators to commercial shippers—to 

provide an even greater 

suite of services to help 

ensure these activities 

are conducted safely and 

efficiently.”

HFCs threaten climate

Chemicals called hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) are 

likely to play an increasingly significant role in 

future climate warming, ESRL’s David Fahey, John 

Daniel (Chemical Sciences Division), and international colleagues projected in a study published 

in late June. HFCs—used as substitutes for ozonedepleting compounds in applications such as 

refrigeration, air conditioning, and the production 

of insulating foams—are greenhouse gases. 

“HFCs are good for protecting the ozone layer, 

but they are not climate friendly,” Fahey said. The 

authors calculated that HFCs, which currently 

have a relatively small climate contribution (~1% 

of carbon dioxide emissions), could become 

9-19% of business-as-usual CO2

 emissions by 

2050, because of growing HFC production and 

use, especially in developing countries. The study 

was published in the Proceedings of the National 

Academy of Sciences.

In related policy news... Parties to a Montreal Protocol working group in July discussed 

whether and how to regulate HFCs, described as 

“high-global warming potential alternatives for 

ozone-depleting substances.” The Montreal Protocol and its amendments regulate substances 

that deplete the ozone layer. HFC use is growing 

rapidly, in part because the protocol has phased 

out production of chemicals that destroy ozone. 

In the July meeting report, parties wrote that 

because HFCs are considered greenhouse gases, 

results from the December international climate 

meeting in Copenhagen should be taken into account before the ozone community decides what 

action to consider. 

One month later, the leaders of Canada, Mexico, 

and the United States included language about 

HFCs in the August 10 “North American Leaders’ 

Declaration on Climate 

Change and Clean Energy.” The document affirmed the necessity of 

taking aggressive action 

against climate change. 

In it, Canadian Prime 

Minister Harper, Mexican President Calderon, and U.S. President 

Obama wrote “...we will: 

Work together under 

the Montreal Protocol 

to phase down the use 

of HFCs and bring about 

significant reductions of this potent greenhouse 

gas.” More recently, the same nations submitted 

language to amend the Montreal Protocol to accept the task of regulating HFCs. The amendment 

will be discussed in the November annual meeting of parties.

AirCore patented

AirCore, an ESRL-invented “system and method for providing 

vertical profile measurements of 

atmospheric gases,” will receive a 

patent October 6, according to the U.S. 

Patent and Trademark Office. The patent, number 

7,597,014, credits Pieter Tans of the Global Monitoring Division for the invention.

AirCore, a long coil of stainless steel tubing, can 

be lifted to high altitudes by balloon or airplane 

to collect a high-resolution altitude-specific, continuous sample of air. On launch, one end of the 

tube is open, letting out pre-filled standard air as 

the pressure drops. During descent, as the pressure increases, the tube refills with atmospheric 

air. The small diameter of the tube acts to prevent 

significant mixing of air from different altitudes 

through rapid diffusion in the radial direction in 

the tube. Thus, the air that flows in at high altitude gets pushed toward the back of the tube by 

air that comes in later at lower altitudes. The tube 

is closed upon landing to preserve the layers of 

air inside, which can then be analyzed sequentially for greenhouse gases and other trace gases 

that do not interact with the walls of the tube.

The system is cheap, rugged, and accurate, according to experiments comparing AirCore meaPublished

ESRL’s peer-reviewed publications:

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/search/pubs/

Publcations by Division:

GMD: www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/publications/

PSD: www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd//pubs

CSD: www.esrl.noaa.gov/csd/pubs/

GSD: www.fsl.noaa.gov/publications/

10
11

surements with those from more expensive flask 

sampling systems or on-board analyzers.

Other members of the ESRL AirCore team include 

Colm Sweeney and Anna Karion (CIRES) of the 

Global Monitoring Division. Russ Chadwick and 

Randy Collander (CIRA) of the Global Systems 

Division were involved with the high-altitude balloon testing of the AirCore.

Haze less...hazy

Atmospheric particles called aerosol have complex effects on climate—some particles can 

cause cooling, others warming, and the particles 

can also affect the formation of clouds, with their 

own radiative effects. The Intergovernmental 

Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) identified aerosol 

as one of the most uncertain aspects of humancaused climate change. A new ESRL study, which 

calculated the effect of anthropogenic aerosols in 

a completely new way (without climate models) 

has sharpened scientists’ understanding of the 

climate effect of the particles. Daniel Murphy and 

colleagues in ESRL’s Chemical Sciences Division, 

the University of Leeds, and NASA used observations and basic conservation of energy principles 

to construct a global energy budget since 1950. 

The team calculated anthropogenic aerosol’s 

effect at 1.1 Watts/m2

 of cooling, in good agreement with the IPCC’s 2007 estimate of 1.2 Watts/

m2. Importantly, the researchers also narrowed 

the uncertainty around that figure, ruling out, 

for example, the possibility of significantly larger 

cooling effects once thought possible.

Target: Arctic feedback

ESRL scientists teamed up with the U.S. Coast 

Guard this spring, summer and fall, to fly sophisticated instruments over the Alaskan tundra and 

look for manmade and natural sources of the 

greenhouse gases methane and carbon dioxide. 

Recent observations have suggested that the air 

above Alaska contains early signs of a regional increase in greenhouse gas emissions, which could 

contribute to climate change around the globe. 

Using a Coast Guard C-130 airplane, NOAA researchers swapped out a window for a plate 

with air inlets. They installed instruments that 

can measure methane and carbon dioxide levels Susan Solomon receives an honorary degree from 

the University of Reading. Photo by the University of 

Reading.

Steve Albers (Global Systems Division) was 

awarded the 2009 R.R. Newton Award for 

Scientific History, for proposing the idea that 

records kept by centuries-old astronomers 

might contain information about thenunknown planets. Albers published a record 

of mutual planetary conjunctions from 

1557-2230. An astronomer used those data 

to conduct a targeted search of Galileo’s 

manuscripts, and found that the astronomer 

had seen Neptune in 1612 and 1613, more 

than two centuries before the planet was officially discovered. 

Eight ESRL researchers won NOAA OAR 

Outstanding Paper Awards, for their contributions to two of the five winning papers: 

1) On the global distribution, seasonality, 

and budget of atmospheric carbonyl sulfide 

(COS) and some similarities to CO2, Journal 

of Geophysical Research (by Global Monitoring Division’s Stephen Montzka, Brad Hall, 

Jim Elkins, Tom Conway, Pieter Tans, and 

CIRES’ Paul Calvert and Colm Sweeney; and 

2) Meteorological characteristics and overland precipitation impacts of atmospheric 

rivers affecting the West Coast of North 

America based on eight years of SSM/I satellite Observations, Journal of Hydrometeorology (by Physical Sciences Division’s Paul 

Neiman, Martin Ralph, and Gary Wick, 

with CIRES’ Jessica Lundquist and the U.S. 

Geological Survey’s Michael Dettinger).

Tracy Hansen, Thomas LeFebvre, Mark 

Mathewson, and Mike Romberg (Global 

Sciences Division) were awarded a NOAA 

Technology Transfer Award “for continuing 

improvements to the Graphical Forecast Editor (GFE) allowing the system to be used in 

River Forecast and National Centers, as well 

as for tailoring GFE systems for the meteorological agencies of Taiwan and Australia.”

Martin Ralph also won a 2009 NOAA Administrator’s Award, “for exemplary leadership of the NOAA Unmanned Aircraft System Program during its formative stage.” 

A.R. Ravishankara (Chemical Sciences Division Director) was awarded the 2009 Morino 

Foundation Fellowship by the Tokyo Institute of Technology, the Morino Foundation, 

and the National Institute for Environmental 

Studies. Ravishankara presented his Morino 

lecture in Tokyo in September. 

Susan Solomon (Chemical Sciences Division) won the 2009 Volvo Environmental 

Prize, for her distinguished work in the Antarctic as well as her exemplary leadership 

during the last Intergovernmental Panel on 

Climate Change. Dr. Solomon also earned 

an honorary degree from the University of 

Reading, for her contributions to the understanding of ozone depletion and climate 

change. 

Honored

A U.S. Coast Guard C-130 airplane, bearing ESRL instruments to study 

greenhouse gases in the Arctic. NOAA photo.

every other second, and others that capture 

air for more detailed analysis back in Boulder, 

Colo. The data should help scientists map 

natural and manmade emission sites of carbon 

dioxide and methane.

Billions of tons of carbon are buried in the frozen Arctic tundra, which is now heating up because of human-caused climate change. NOAA 

is trying to understand what that means for 

the future of the region: Will warming dry out 

the tundra, leading to the exhalation of carbon 

dioxide? Or will warmth let lakes and pools 

form, allowing microbes to feast on buried organic matter and burp up methane? 

“So far profiles north of the Brooks Range indicate significant enhancements in methane 

emissions near the surface,” said Colm Sweeney, from ESRL’s Global Monitoring Division 

and CIRES. “But it’s uncertain whether those 

are local emissions from human activities or 

outgassing from natural sources.” 

11
12

Earth System Research Laboratory

325 Broadway, Boulder, CO 80305

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/

ESRL Quarterly Editor: Katy Human, katy.g.human@noaa.gov

Photographer: Will von Dauster

Other Contributors: Anatta, John Barnes, Adriana Bailey, James Butler, Barb DeLuisi, 

Terry Deshler (UW), Annie Reiser, Russel Schnell, Susan Solomon, Diane Stanitski

www.esrl.noaa.gov/news/quarterly 

ESRL Leadership

Alexander MacDonald, Director

John Schneider, Deputy Director for Research

Donald Mock, Deputy Director for Administration

A.R. Ravishankara, Chemical Sciences Division Director

James Butler, Global Monitoring Division Director

Steven Koch, Global Systems Division Director

William Neff, Physical Sciences Division Director

At NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory, we observe, understand, and predict the Earth system through 

research that advances NOAA’s environmental information and services, from minutes to millennia on global to local 

scales. ESRL’s partners are the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. 

A redesigned web site that lets users calculate 

the Sun’s precise position, including the times of 

sunrise and sunset, has captured the interest of 

thousands of web surfers since early July. 

The NOAA Solar Calculator is now one of ESRL’s 

most popular web pages, surpassed regularly 

only by ESRL’s home page, trends in carbon cycle 

and greenhouse gases, and the ever-popular 

South Pole live camera.

ESRL’s Chris Cornwall redesigned his group’s solar 

calculator this summer, to improve upon a page 

that has proved far more popular than he imagined. Originally intended to help ESRL researchers install solar radiation instruments in the field, 

the solar calculator now serves amateur photographers around the world, green architects, robot 

engineers, and even movie makers.

Cornwall is the information technology manager 

of ESRL’s Global Monitoring Division, and his 

work during the last 12 years has included helping to set up and maintain the group’s network 

of surface radiation monitors. Radiation monitors gather critical on-the-ground information 

about Earth’s energy budget and climate. Such 

instruments can’t capture accurate data unless 

installed precisely in a north-south direction, 

Cornwall said. In the field, that can mean aligning 

instrumentation along the shadow of a plumb 

bob at exactly solar noon. 

“And we miss solar noon a lot,” Cornwall said. “You 

can have a nice clear morning, and suddenly at 

solar noon you get a cloud. You can’t align an 

instrument without a shadow. Then we need to 

figure out when the Sun will be exactly 5° off 

solar noon...” 

Cornwall, Chris Lehman, and Aaron Horiuchi created the original NOAA Solar Calculator site for 

colleagues 10 years ago, opening it up to public 

use about a year later. The emails have been rolling in since then, from unexpected users: 

•	 A Canadian defense researcher working on 

navigation by autonomous robots

•	 An ecologist studying how albacore tuna behavior changes by day and night

•	 A fire department manager scheduling annual training

•	 A movie maker who needed to line up and 

time a sunset shot 

•	 A green architect designing a passive solar 

building 

•	 A small business owner who ran deep-sea 

fishing trips and wanted sunrise times

In July, Cornwall improved the Solar Calculator substantially, taking into account user 

suggestions. He included a feature to let users 

pinpoint their location on Google’s familiar map 

interface—something made possible by NOAA’s 

2007 licensing of Google Earth and Google Maps 

API. And the visitors arrived, more than 6,000 in 

August alone.

NOAA researchers still rely on the site to set up 

sensitive instruments, Cornwall said, and public 

users have come to depend on it, too. 

Tracking the Sun

NOAA site serves scientists, 

photographers, deep-sea fishers

Top: Chris Cornwall demonstrates how to align an 

instrument with the shadow of a plumb bob at 

solar noon Sept. 4, on the roof of the David Skaggs 

Research Center. Photo by Will von Dauster, NOAA.

Right: Solar Calculator output. If a photographer 

wants to capture a picture of the Washington 

Monument framed by the sunset next Fourth of 

July, NOAA’s Solar Calculator can help pick a spot. 

In the screenshot at right, the red line (sunset) 

intersects the base of the Monument when a viewer 

is positioned to the southeast. 

“Hey you guys, don’t you *dare* take down this 

page,” an elementary school teacher wrote him 

recently. “You gotta keep it working nicely!”