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What Science Takes 

Methane data are rolling in from the Russian Arctic, 

after bug battles and an overturned research lab

ESRL Quarterly

News from NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory Winter 2009/10

In a remote part of the Russian Arctic, a land studded with thousands 

of lakes and a few towns, a thin electric cable connects a tiny research 

station and instrument tower with a power generator more than a mile 

away. The cable—made for indoor use—travels outdoors along juryrigged tripods made of branches. Moose will knock down anything, 

eventually, and the tripods are cheaper and easier to repair than more 

permanent structures, according to local Russian scientist Sergei Zimov. 

Here, near the town of Cherskii, ESRL researchers, Zimov, and other 

collaborators have managed to collect more than a year’s worth of 

nearly-continuous data on the atmospheric concentration of methane, 

a powerful greenhouse gas. Zimov travels to the research site at least 

a couple times a month, repairs the power line as needed, downloads 

data onto a thumb drive, and sends it back to ESRL through the web. 

“The data are very good,” said ESRL’s Ed Dlugokencky (Global Monitoring Division). “This is going to be a great site for understanding the Arctic processes that affect atmospheric methane.” 

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas that’s emitted directly by some 

human activity, by microbes in wetlands and permafrost, and through 

Inside

Director’s Corner 2

Communications Prize 3

SOS in Boulder, Denmark 3

Young Scientist 4

Climate and Water 4

Soaring for Science 5

Lidar Catches Algae 6

Upcoming Events 7

CalWater 8

More News, Honors 10

Near-Space Flight 12

During the iconic Dust Bowl, great clouds of dust swirled east out of the 

U.S. Northern Plains, blackening skies as far away as New York. Drought 

conditions set up in 1932 and didn’t ease for seven years. Just a decade 

later, another severe drought hit, this one scorching the Southern Plains 

and Southwest.

ESRL scientists seeking to improve today’s drought warning systems recently turned their investigative skills on better understanding the origins of those two events. In an analysis of historical records and climate 

model experiments, they discovered two very different setups. Their 

conclusions may improve scientists’ ability to give accurate early warning of drought, to help communities take precautions and prepare. 

Understanding events of the 1930s, 1950s may 

help in forecasting future drought 

Drought Origins Differ

see page 5

A coupled air-ocean-wave model lets scientists at 

the Naval Research Laboratory better predict the 

impact of hurricanes on the Gulf Coast. Researchers working with a NASA atmospheric general 

circulation model can swap in different chemistry 

packages, depending on the problem they are 

studying. People downloading data generated for the next Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, assessment will get consistent, thorough descriptions of the many models and experiments 

involved.

NESII software infrastructure makes these systems work. The new NOAA 

Environmental Software Infrastructure and Interoperability group, led 

by Cecelia DeLuca, moved in November from the National Center for Atmospheric Research to ESRL, bringing along a suite of projects focused 

on building, coupling, and using Earth system models. The need for interoperability between such models is growing, DeLuca said.

“For example, as computing power increases and global models can be 

run at higher resolution, climate modelers are interacting with weather 

modelers to understand and improve representation of smaller-scale 

processes,” DeLuca said. But often, weather and climate models cannot 

“speak” to one another because they were built so differently. So DeLuca’s team writes code that allows models from very different origins 

to interact. And that code is not just for linking components of weather 

and climate models— NESII helps modelers working in space weather, 

hydrology, and coastal processes build models that interact well with 

others. 

Building Connections 

New ESRL computing specialists 

advance federal efforts to link, 

improve Earth system models 

see page 7

see page 6
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Director’s Corner

By the Numbers

SOS installations

I

n December, I was honored to be 

a member of the NOAA delegation 

attending the international climate 

talks in Copenhagen. It was fascinating to 

see the whole international community 

grappling with the very difficult problems 

being driven by anthropogenic changes to 

our Earth system. 

I was pleased to be given two key 

communication challenges during 

the conference. The first day, I gave a 

presentation on how the United States 

monitors and understands the dynamics 

of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse 

gases. ESRL’s Janet Intrieri and others here 

(Pieter Tans, for example) and at NASA and 

the National Science Foundation were 

instrumental in helping me pull together 

the presentation. 

I also gave several presentations at the U.S. 

exhibit, where ESRL’s Science On a Sphere® 

was a centerpiece. I’d like to thank my 

ESRL colleagues, especially William Bendel, 

Beth Russell, and other members of the 

SOS team in the Global Systems Division 

for their extraordinary work during the 

conference and organizing behind the 

scenes. 

In a live “SphereCast,” I used SOS to discuss 

and illustrate climate change for audiences 

at museums around the world and many 

others who chose to watch online. Beth 

gave a well-attended presentation to 

a delegation from the U.S. House of 

Representatives, just before President 

Obama’s speech. SOS was also “on” nearly 

constantly at the two-week conference, 

sometimes displaying climate data 

quietly in the background, often driven by 

scientists discussing Arctic sea ice changes, 

climate change impacts on wildlife and 

wild lands, and other topics. 

After the Copenhagen conference, Dr. 

Lubchenco sent a very kind thank you to 

ESRL’s SOS team: “The Bella Center was 

abuzz with kudos for you and the US 

Center... You have made all of us very 

proud.” 

NOAA had a very strong presence at 

Copenhagen, and representatives 

throughout the agency played important 

roles. Among them: James Overland of the 

Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory 

(PMEL) spoke about the rapidly warming 

Arctic; PMEL’s Richard Feely focused on 

ocean acidification; Tom Karl, Director 

of the National Climate Data Center, 

presented research on extreme weather 

in a changing climate and climate change 

impacts in the United States; and Frank 

Niepold from our Climate Program Office 

discussed the importance of climate 

literacy. NOAA administrator Jane 

Lubchecno gave a critical talk on the 

impact of climate change on oceans and 

other ecosystems. 

U.S. negotiators played a positive, 

progressive role in this conference, 

articulating the need for strong action to 

mitigate some future warming, and to deal 

with the changes already inevitable. At the 

end of Copenhagen, however, international 

negotiators did not come to agreement on 

legally binding action. Countries agreed 

to emissions-control objectives and to 

develop international monitoring systems, 

and richer countries pledged to help 

poorer ones in dealing with climate change 

impacts. 

—Alexander MacDonald

“The future’s really in our 

hands. This is the critical 

time. We can’t wait for 

the end of this century to 

respond. The Earth is changing 

fast.”

Alexander MacDonald, NOAA Earth 

System Laboratory Director, during a live 

“SphereCast” December 8, at the United 

Nations Climate Change Conference in 

Copenhagen, Denmark. Hundreds of 

people watched the Science on a Sphere® 

presentation from 11 museums and other 

institutions around the world. 

http://sos.noaa.gov/

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Communication Prize

ESRL’s David Fahey wins Daniel L. Albritton honor

David Fahey (Chemical Sciences Division) was 

honored with the 2009 Daniel L. Albritton 

Outstanding Science Communication Award, 

for his extraordinary work communicating 

scientific information about the ozone layer to 

decision makers, educators, and the public.

In presenting the award, ESRL Director 

Alexander MacDonald said Fahey’s efforts, 

particularly on the depletion of Earth’s 

protective ozone layer, exemplify those 

of Albritton, who was Fahey’s first NOAA 

supervisor 30 years ago. 

“Dr. Fahey clearly lays out the science, from 

the big picture down to the details, in a way 

that reminds me of Dan’s ability to convey 

importance,” MacDonald said. “This award is 

so important, because communication is so 

important.”

Fahey has worked on many scientific problems 

during his decades at NOAA, from ozone 

depletion to climate change, and has won 

many awards for his contributions. In 2007, 

he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with other 

authors of the Intergovernmental Panel on 

Climate Change climate science assessment. 

Fahey received the Albritton prize for 

his ongoing work to communicate the 

importance of ozone layer depletion. Nearly 

a decade ago, Albritton himself asked Fahey 

to help with the 2002 Ozone Assessment (a 

quadrennial state-of-the-science assessment 

in support of the Montreal Protocol on 

Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer). 

Albritton asked Fahey to write the “Questions 

and Answers” section, a feature of the 

assessments pioneered in 1994 and 1998 by 

ESRL’s Susan Solomon (also Chemical Sciences) 

and the late French scientist Gérard Mégie. 

Fahey greatly expanded the text and graphics 

to produce a stand-alone booklet called 

Twenty Questions and Answers about the Ozone 

Layer, published in 2002 (and updated in 2006) 

and distributed around the world. Fahey is 

working with Canadian scientist Michaela 

Hegglin on the Twenty Questions update for 

the 2010 assessment, currently in preparation.

The document’s accessibility to those without 

scientific expertise, and its impeccable 

accuracy propelled its global reach, said A.R. 

Ravishankara, Director of the ESRL’s Chemical 

Sciences Division. 

Fahey said he was humbled to receive the 

award, having witnessed the communications 

acumen of Albritton himself. He said he also 

felt like his role was as a “transcriber, not the 

one source,” given the contributions of many 

colleagues. 

When accepting the award, Fahey said that in 

his research and communications work, he often reminds himself of a quote by Victor Hugo, 

conveyed to him by Albritton. “‘Science has 

the first word on everything and the last word 

on nothing,’” Fahey said. “So let’s make the first 

word as clear and complete and accessible as 

possible, so the people who make the decisions can make the most reasonable ones.” 

Science On a Sphere®, an educational tool 

developed at ESRL, now wows audiences at 

41 science museums and other institutions 

around the world. In November, nearly 100 

people from those institutions visited ESRL for 

the third annual SOS Users Collaborative Network Workshop. Participants traveled from as 

far away as Mexico, Finland, and South Korea. 

They shared stories about how to best engage 

visitors with the giant animated globe, and 

presented evidence that watching climate 

data swirl across the sphere (or hurricanes, or 

clouds, or ocean currents) can measurably improve people’s understanding of the planet.

John Schneider, ESRL’s Deputy Director for Science, welcomed the workshop participants. 

“Our mission, at heart, is to develop scientific 

and technical knowledge and share it with the 

world,” Schneider said. “So where we are concerned, SOS is a big success.” 

Christos Michalopoulos, Assistant Director of 

NOAA’s Office of Education, also spoke to the 

group. “These are really opportune times for 

science education, because the new administration views STEM (science, technology, 

engineering and mathematics) as a necessity 

for the competitiveness of this country,” Michalopoulos said. “We feel that SOS, and all of 

you, have a key role to play.” 

Manjit Goldberg, from the Maryland Science 

Center, explained how her team has built 

hands-on kiosks near the SOS, with interactive 

programming that helps visitors understand 

what they’re seeing on the sphere. “We found 

an increase in curiosity...and better understanding of color keys and geographical references,” Goldberg said. 

Elizabeth Ban from the Smithsonian Natural 

History Museum said a recent evaluation of 

the museum’s Sant Ocean Hall showed that 

visitors enjoy, and are learning from, SOS. 

Many visitors leave the Ocean Hall with the 

museum’s intended primary message, that 

the ocean is one, interconnected system, Ban 

said. “When we ask them where they got that 

message, one place they point to is our Global 

Ocean Systems section, which has our SOS.” 

SOS Users

International science educators gather to discuss innovative use, impact of ESRL’s Science On a Sphere®

Left: Sanna Reponen from Heureka, the Finnish Science 

Center. Right: Maurice Henderson from NASA Goddard 

Space Flight Center (left) and ESRL’s William Bendell (Global 

Systems Division). Photos by Will von Dauster, NOAA.
4

Like “Doogie Howser, M.D.,” TV’s teen prodigy 

from the 1980s, 14-year-old Hunter Solheim is 

ahead of most of the other kids in his Boulder 

middle school. But Hunter is not only a real 

teenager, the young inventor also won a U.S. 

patent early in 2009, for an instrument he devised to measure cloud-bottom temperature.

Hunter and his dad, Fredrick Solheim, visited 

ESRL in October to have Hunter’s infrared 

thermometer—the “IRT”—tested by NOAA 

scientists who hope to use it to support field 

operations.

Hunter’s instrument is designed to monitor the conditions of the bottom of clouds. 

Combined with radar data, the IRT would let 

researchers and forecasters monitor more 

accurately the tropospheric environment 

where weather occurs. For example, operating remotely, the IRT can observe the base of 

clouds, which tend to be very low (and cold) 

when they are about to snow. Instruments 

on NOAA’s GOES satellites measure cloud-top 

temperature, but cannot “see” through clouds 

to weather below.

In addition, scientists who use lidar instruments to measure small particles in the 

stratosphere could use an instrument that 

can remotely and continuously monitor cloud 

cover, because the lidar needs cloud-free 

conditions to measure upper atmospheric 

aerosols. “We can use Hunter’s instrument to 

see if it’s cloudy, and to turn our lidars on or 

off automatically,” said Ryan Neely, a CIRES 

graduate student in ESRL’s Global Monitoring 

Division.

In remote places like Summit Station in 

Greenland, Neely said, automation is particularly useful: “This detection device will help us 

get more data without wasting laser lifetime 

or operator time.”

If it tests as well as NOAA scientists expect, 

Hunter’s instrument will travel to Greenland 

for the ICECAP project (Integrated Characterization of Energy, Clouds, Atmospheric state, 

and Precipitation) to take measurements of 

the atmosphere, clouds, and precipitation 

for four years as part of the Arctic Observing 

Network (AON). NOAA is a long-time partner 

of AON.

Hunter’s father, president of the instrumentation firm Radiometrics, said Hunter was a 

kid “who always fiddled with things.” Hunter 

loved spinning the wheels of his sister’s baby 

carriage and was frustrated when he tried to 

spin the wheels on a parked SUV. He played 

with wires, including once dismantling an 

electric outlet.

Radiometrics has an instrument to measure 

temperatures of “really cold things,” Hunter 

said. But it was his “aha!” moment to point 

it up at the clouds. When he mentioned the 

idea to his dad, the elder Solheim said, “Brilliant!” They went to work on the IRT, which 

includes a rain and snow sensor and gauge. 

NOAA scientists and Hunter’s family know 

about his scientific accomplishments, but 

Hunter keeps a low profile elsewhere. “I don’t 

talk about this stuff at school,” he said. “I don’t 

like to brag.”

—Carol Knight, NOAA

ESRL Tests Young Scientist’s Invention

Western Climate 

and Water

NOAA’s Ryan Neely watches young scientist Hunter Solheim put together his instrument, an infrared thermometer 

that can monitor cloud-bottom conditions. Photo by Will von Dauster, NOAA.

It’s hard enough to figure out, in a too-short, 

two-year fellowship, how precipitation in the 

Colorado River Basin has varied historically, 

and how that variability may change with 

future warming. But ESRL postdoctoral researcher Galina Guentchev wants to push her 

research work even further.

“I want to do a better job relating my results 

to the needs of the people who are sponsoring my research, the Southern Nevada Water 

Authority (SNWA) and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) ,” Guentchev said. “I would 

like to be able to tell them what this variability 

means in terms of streamflow, and put it into a 

hydrological model.”

Guentchev is one of four ESRL postdocs working on western water and climate issues this 

year, with support from NOAA’s Climate Program Office, USBR, SNWA, and the National 

Research Council.

Joe Barsugli (Physical Sciences Division) organized a mid-November “mini-workshop” 

for the four postdocs, and he invited water 

management professionals with the Bureau 

of Reclamation and other agencies to attend 

and help the young researchers refine their 

research plans. 

After Guentchev presented her project, Imtiaz 

Rangwala discussed his proposal to dissect 

elevation-dependent warming in the Upper 

Basin of the Colorado River. “I’d like to improve 

our understanding of what’s happening—in 

terms of past and future climate change—at 

elevations above 9,000 feet,” Rangawala said. 

Kelly Mahoney described her goal to better 

understand how climate change will affect extreme precipitation events and therefore dam 

operations in the West. And Stephanie McAfee 

discussed how she plans to use tree-ring data 

and physiological plant models to investigate 

what appears to be accelerating tree mortality 

across the West. “We will be asking if today’s 

events really are unique or unprecedented, or 

if they are widescale and jarring, but also standard,” McAfee said.

Kristen Averyt, Deputy Director of NOAA/University of Colorado Western Water Assessment, 

praised the young scientists for tackling soci-
5

An unmanned aircraft with wings stretching 116 feet soared into the air over NASA’s 

Dryden Flight Research Center in October, 

in preparation for its first science mission in 

February. The Global Hawk Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS), built by Northrop Grumman Corp. and operated jointly by NASA and 

NOAA, will take at least six long-duration 

flights (as long as 30 hours) above the Pacific Ocean this spring, in a mission dubbed 

GloPac, for Global Hawk Pacific. A groundbased crew will guide the aircraft from the 

equator to the Arctic Circle, as remotely 

controlled scientific payloads on board collect data on key regions of the atmosphere 

important in climate change and ozone layer 

research.

Researchers on the ground will be able to 

watch their data arrive in near real-time via 

satellite link, and can redirect the aircraft to 

certain phenomena or regions of interest 

along the flight track.

“This first Earth science mission of the Global 

Hawk will demonstrate the value of this 

unique and powerful resource to atmospheric science, to our national agencies, and to 

the world,” said ESRL’s David Fahey (Chemical 

Sciences Division), one of two GloPac mission 

scientists (with Paul Newman from NASA’s 

Goddard Space Flight Center). 

In October, the Global Hawk completed 

several successful test flights in controlled 

airspace above Edwards Air Force Base, spiraling up to about 61,000 feet in altitude. 

The aircraft is one of two that NASA and 

Northrop Grumman have partnered on to 

convert from military test aircraft to scientific 

and aeronautical research platforms. Before 

October’s flights, neither had been in the air 

for more than six years.

“That’s a big story from our perspective,” 

said Global Hawk pilot and NOAA Corps officer CDR Philip Hall. “In 18 months, we’ve 

taken an airplane that sat on the ground 

for six years and we made it flyable with a 

completely new communications system and 

ground control station optimized for scientific payloads. These programs normally would 

take years, and a lot more money.” 

In February, 

scientists will travel to Dryden 

to install sophisticated instruments on 

the airplane, including two from ESRL—one 

to measure ozone and the other to measure 

a variety of gases in the atmosphere. Jim 

Elkins (Global Monitoring Division) is principal investigator on UCATS, the Unmanned 

aircraft systems Chromatograph for Atmospheric Trace Species, which measures water 

vapor, ozone, nitrous oxide, sulfur hexafluoride, hydrogen, methane, and carbon 

monoxide. Ru-Shan Gao (Chemical Sciences 

Division) is in charge of the dedicated ozone 

instrument on board. 

“As with David Fahey, these guys are all 

world-class leaders in atmospheric science.,” 

Hall said. “They have vast backgrounds in 

flying their instruments on a variety of airplanes, so they bring a lot of experience and 

knowledge to the program.” 

One of the science goals this spring, Fahey 

said, will be to investigate what happens 

to the Arctic polar vortex as it breaks up. In 

winter, high-altitude winds tend to sweep 

around the pole, isolating high northern 

latitudes chemically and dynamically. When 

the vortex breaks up every spring, it can spin 

fragments of Arctic air to lower latitudes and 

altitudes, providing opportunities to sample 

the chemical nature of Arctic stratospheric 

air and to test models that simulate atmospheric air motions. 

The Global Hawk will also “underfly” a suite 

of NASA satellites, specifically, the Aura satellite, to provide “ground-truth” data for comparison with atmospheric measurements 

taken from space, Hall said. 

Hall described the GloPac mission as a “hybrid” of satellite and aircraft capabilities, 

with a field of view somewhere in between 

the two. The extreme range, duration, and 

altitude of the Global Hawk’s flight envelope 

give it remarkable capabilities for the scientific community, not previously obtainable, 

he said.

More: http://www.espo.nasa.gov/glopac/

Soaring the Pacific 

for Science

Galina Guentchev, Imtiaz Rangwala, and Kelly Mahoney 

on their way to Colorado’s Fraser Experimental Forest. 

Photo by Robin Webb, NOAA.

etal challenges in their research. “It’s all about 

making science useful and getting it into the 

hands of people who are making decisions.” 

“This is a great lesson for NOAA, as it struggles 

to define the role of research in a national climate service,” added ESRL’s Robin Webb (Physical Sciences Division).

Other ESRL postdocs (and advisors): 

Mimi Hughes (Marty Ralph) is working on 

connections between atmospheric rivers, orographic precipitation, and climate variability

Sara Lance (Graham Feingold) is making airborne measurements of cloud microphysical 

properties and the aerosol Indirect effect in 

the springtime lower Arctic troposphere. 

Stephanie Leroux (George Kiladis) is working 

on interseasonal variability of tropical convection. 

Scott Mackaro (Yuan Suxie and Nikki Privé) is 

developing a regional observing system simulation experiment (OSSE) for Atlantic storms.

Shane Murphy (Daniel Murphy) is working on 

understanding the aerosol direct effect with 

novel measurements of the single scattering 

albedo of individual aerosol particles 

Jocelyn Turnbull (Pieter Tans) is quantifying 

fossil fuel and biofuel emissions from East Asia.

“In the case of the severe 1950s drought of the 

Southern Plains states, it appears global sea 

surface temperatures were the principal cause. 

However, the 1930s Dust Bowl drought ... was 

not caused by ocean conditions, but rather 

the evidence points to random changes in the 

atmosphere as the instigator,” said lead author 

Martin Hoerling. 

Hoerling, Xiao-Wei Quan, and Jon Eischeid 

(all Physical Sciences Division) published their 

work, “Distinct Causes for Two Principal U.S. 

Droughts of the 20th Century,” in Geophysical 

Research Letters this fall.

Drought variability over the Southern Plains 

was strongly forced by variability in sea surface 

temperatures, the researchers found, and the 

primary driver was the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, a pattern of ocean temperatures in the 

tropical Pacific Ocean that includes El Niño 

and La Niña. During La Niña years, characterized by unusually cold water in the equatorial 

Pacific Ocean, droughts in the Southern Plains 

were common—both in observations and in 

models. 

But northern lands hit hardest during the Dust 

Bowl were farther away from weather patterns 

influenced by the tropical Pacific Ocean. Instead, random atmospheric variation was likely 

responsible. 

The authors note that while an ocean observing system—a network of instruments including stationary and free-floating buoys as well 

as satellites—is vital to any drought early 

warning system, it may not adequately warn 

of a drought caused by other factors, and may 

not provide early warning for a drought over 

the northern Plains states, such as what occurred in the 1930s.

... from page 1: Drought
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other processes that can be amplified by 

warming. Many researchers are concerned 

that someday, a dangerous feedback cycle will 

occur as warming triggers the release of methane that’s tied up today in wetlands and frozen 

soils. “The methane feedback is a big, open 

question for science right now,” Dlugokencky 

said. 

In a paper published last fall, he and colleagues reported that global methane data 

do not yet show evidence of feedback. Dlugokencky’s team analyzed air samples collected 

in flasks and from towers around the world. 

Methane levels did increase in 2007 and 2008, 

following nearly a decade of near-zero growth. 

But the spatial pattern of those increases was 

most likely related to unusual weather patterns—first, anomalous warmth in the Arctic 

in 2007, and then very high precipitation in 

the tropics in 2008. In 2007, forest fires also 

contributed to the growth in methane, the researchers reported.

Despite ESRL’s extensive air sampling network 

and ability to study global trends, researchers 

still don’t understand the details of the methane cycle, Dlugokencky said. “We need better 

data on the ground, to figure out the processes 

that are going on that relate to what is going 

on in the atmosphere.” 

Such data would help global climate modelers 

refine models to better depict the reality of 

the methane cycle, and would help scientists 

and others understand what to expect in the 

future. 

The Cherskii site seems ideal for studying such 

land-air processes, Dlugokencky said. Last year, 

his colleague Andrew Crotwell (ESRL’s Global 

Monitoring Division) traveled with a University 

of Alaska researcher to the remote site, and installed the instrument that continuously measures methane, wind speed, and direction. 

It was not an easy install, Crotwell admitted. 

His group first had to retrofit an old shack once 

used to warm the tundra enough to punch in 

fence posts and to smoke fish. Then, after the 

equipment was carefully installed, the scientists hooked the “laboratory” to an old tank to 

pull it more than a mile away to a new site. The 

shack caught on a tree stump and flipped. 

Crotwell un-installed the equipment, pulled 

it out of the shack, and reinstalled it after the 

team managed to right the structure. It took 

hours, Crotwell said, and the mosquitoes were 

nearly unbearable. 

The data, however, already make the effort 

seem worthwhile. The tower site data contains 

an anthropogenic signal only rarely, when 

winds sweep down from Cherskii, which lies 40 

km to the northeast. “When the wind comes 

from the lowland sector to the northwest, we 

see methane enhancement from local wetlands,” Dlugokencky said. 

6

...from page 1: Methane

ESRL’s Jim Churnside (Chemical Sciences Division) has used lidar instruments on airplanes 

to find schools of fish and squid. He’s used 

lidar—which bounces laser light off distant objects and captures the information-rich return 

signals—to find abandoned “ghost nets,” which 

can ensnare and kill ocean animals. Now, 

Churnside is using airborne lidar to find layers 

of phytoplankton—tiny plant-like creatures 

that are the foundation of most oceanic food 

chains. 

This spring, Churnside and his colleagues took 

an unprecedented look at the progression of 

a phytoplankton bloom in Washington’s East 

Sound, by flying a remotely-controlled lidar on 

a small Cessna airplane over the water. Backed 

by ship and underwater glider data from Percy 

Donaghay, Jan Rines, and Jim Sullivan of the 

University of Rhode Island, and Alan Weidemann of the Naval Research Laboratory, the 

study provided the first on-the-ground validation that airborne lidar can detect thin layers of 

phytoplankton in water. 

The technique could help fisheries biologists 

seeking to better understand fish population 

dynamics, Churnside said, as well as scientists 

trying to understand how climate change is 

affecting the oceans. The U.S. Navy, which 

funded part of Churnside’s research, is also interested in thin layers of plankton, which affect 

can acoustics and optics. 

In May, Churnside’s team “watched” with lidar 

as a bloom of algal phytoplankton formed and 

then dissipated in East Sound. Measurements 

from a nearby channel captured the inflow of 

turbid water, as the bloom dissipated, and the 

lidar data captured the vertical movement of 

the bloom, as well. The phytoplankton dynamics were apparently related to the temperature 

stratification of the water, the tide, and possibly to biological factors as well, Churnside said. 

He reported his team’s results at the annual 

December meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

Airborne lidar catches algae

Top: The Cherskii methane measurement site. Left: Investigating the damage after the instrument “lab” flipped over 

(insects are visible). Right: Righting the lab. Photos by Andrew Crotwell, NOAA. 

Cherskii

sampling 

site

Chuckchi Sea

Photomicrograph of diatoms in East Sound, courtesy of 

Jan Rines, University of Rhode Island. 
7

7

“We grew up at NCAR, but as our group 

evolved, we got more and more involved with 

the federal modeling centers,” DeLuca said, 

explaining her team’s move to ESRL. “NOAA 

offers closer proximity to the 

modeling groups we are working 

with, and NOAA has a service philosophy that’s closer to our values 

and the goals of our work.”

One of NESII’s main projects 

is the Earth System Modeling 

Framework, ESMF, which the 

team began working on in 2002 

with many community partners. 

ESMF lets modelers wrap their 

whole model (or individual components) in 

standard interfaces. It also offers toolkits for 

grid remapping, time management, and other 

common functions. The project’s sponsors include NOAA, the National Science Foundation, 

the Department of Defense, and the National 

Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA. 

ESMF has been incorporated into models 

funded by each of these agencies and is managed by a multiagency consortium.

DeLuca’s group includes 10 people, from software engineers and computational scientists 

to metadata and database experts. Six work 

remotely from locations across the country; 

four work from ESRL: DeLuca, NESII 

manager; Sylvia Murphy, a technical 

project manager; Silverio Vasquez, 

ESMF tester and release manager; 

and Robert Oehmke, a computer 

scientist.

Mark Govett, from ESRL’s Global 

Systems Division, said NESII’s move 

demonstrates NOAA’s growing recognition that collaboration is critical 

in Earth system modeling. Increasingly, agencies are using pieces of one another’s code, often informally, he said. That means 

when ESRL, for example, makes a change to 

an atmospheric model, it might be critical for 

the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to 

understand how the change could affect their 

air pollution models. 

“As models become increasingly complex, we 

can no longer afford to develop every part of 

Earth system models ourselves. We must collaborate with other laboratories and agencies, 

and use tools such as ESMF to link the science 

needed,” Govett said. “ NESII is helping us 

do that in a formal way.” 

Global Interoperability Program (GIP): The 

new GIP program includes projects involving weather prediction, climate research, and 

teaching graduate students how to build and 

use models. What connects these efforts is a 

base of software infrastructure—some shared, 

and some specialized—built by NESII and other groups around the country and the world. 

GIP, which is funded by the NOAA Climate 

Program Office, is working to improve the 

software that underlies high-priority efforts 

such as the fifth IPCC assessment, due in 2014. 

The goal is to help ensure that the United 

States can respond to increasing demands for 

weather and climate information. 

Earth System Curator: The Curator project 

builds software to support running, documenting, and using climate models. The current focus is on delivering a system for displaying the model metadata collected for the fifth 

IPCC assessment. It’s a broad effort: Curator is 

supported by the NSF and NASA, and works 

closely with the DOE’s Earth System Grid 

data portal, and other partners from federal, 

academic, and international institutions. The 

metadata available for the upcoming assessment will be a big improvement over what 

was available for the IPCC’s fourth assessment 

report, DeLuca said. “When you’re downloading the older data, it’s hard to tell the difference between two model versions ,” she said. 

“You might want to ask, ‘Did that run include 

the indirect effects of aerosols?’’”

Earth System Modeling Framework (ESMF): 

ESMF continues to grow and evolve, taking on 

new grids, new remapping approaches, new 

computing platforms, new communities who 

are interested in it, and different ways of linking components. Much of the NESII group’s 

time is spent on ongoing development and 

support of the framework, as more and more 

modelers around the world seek to use it.

National Unified Operational Prediction 

Capability (NUOPC): The Air Force, Navy, 

and NOAA are coordinating to improve their 

operational forecasting systems, and collaborating on a new multi-model ensemble for 

numerical weather prediction that’s based on 

ESMF. A central element of the ensemble is 

the National Environmental Modeling System 

(NEMS), a next-generation weather model 

being developed by the National Weather 

Service. NEMS uses ESMF to connect to other 

models and model components for research 

and operations, including ESRL’s Flow-following finite-volume Icosahedral Model. NESII 

staff have been working with NUOPC partners 

to understand operational requirements and 

lay out a plan for technical development.

NESII is also involved the Battlespace Environments Institute, an effort within the Department of Defense to create an ESMF-based 

“whole Earth modeling environment,” and the 

Modeling Analysis and Prediction Program

at NASA, which used ESMF extensively to develop the GEOS-5 atmospheric general circulation model.

“NOAA has 

a service 

philosophy 

that’s close to 

our values...

... from page 1: Interoperability group

Some of NESII’s current projects (more: http://gip.noaa.gov/)

Upcoming Events at ESRL 

Physical Science Research Review >> March 9-12

Global Monitoring Annual Conference >> May 19-20
8

Water security is never far from the mind of 

any decision maker in the U.S. West—but it’s 

not a terrorist attack on a dam or canal that 

triggers the most anxiety, it’s climate change. 

This fall, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger called his state’s water troubles a “holy water war” pitting “north versus south, California 

versus the feds, rural versus urban....” And wellknown challenges—the vicissitudes of weather, periodic drought, and a growing demand 

for water from a growing population—could 

be exacerbated by climate change, the governor told a state water committee this fall. 

In that fraught setting, ESRL scientists helped 

launch CalWater this fall, a major mission to 

better understand how climate change could 

affect California’s water resources, through 

changes in rain and snowfall patterns. The 

project involves researchers from a wide variety of institutions, including the University of 

California, the California Department of Natural Resources, the state’s Air Resource Board, 

the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and 

others; and it is funded by NOAA, Scripps, and 

the California Energy Commission. 

“There’s evidence from modeling studies that 

climate change could affect the pattern and intensity of precipitation in North America,” said 

Marty Ralph (Physical Sciences Division). “We 

want to understand exactly how that could 

play out across the state of California, but our 

results could be applicable to other parts of 

the country as well.” 

ESRL’s involvement in CalWater is two-fold, 

Ralph said: ESRL scientists will study how tiny 

particles of air pollution called aerosols affect 

the amount and location of rainfall in California; and how changes in the frequency and 

intensity of atmospheric rivers affect extreme 

rainfall, water supply, and flood risk in the 

state. Both will help assess the performance of 

regional climate models, which decision makers rely upon to understand the future of water 

resources in the state. 

Christopher Williams (Physical Sciences Division and CIRES) is helping to lead the aerosol 

research. Scientists understand, generally, that 

aerosols from air pollution can affect climate, 

cloud formation and behavior, Williams said. 

High levels of aerosol can make some clouds 

less likely to drop rain or snow, for example, 

and can lead to clouds that reflect more or less 

sunlight back into space, cooling or warming 

the surface. But how those behaviors modify 

precipitation processes within clouds is not yet 

well understood, creating uncertainty in global 

and regional climate models.

Some researchers have proposed that air pollution has already changed the pattern of rainfall in the state, letting water-rich clouds travel 

over the Sierra Nevada mountains into Nevada 

before dropping their rain, leaving California 

with less. Williams and his colleagues suspect 

other factors, distinct from aerosol effects, may 

be at play, too, such as the “Sierra barrier jet” 

that can form along the Sierra Nevada. The 

scientists will use sophisticated instruments 

and techniques—from ground-based radars 

and airborne instruments to chemical “fingerprinting” of particles found in falling rain and 

snow—to gather data across California for the 

next several years, to build a more accurate 

picture of the relationship between air quality, 

water resources, and climate.

Since climate models try to represent the 

physical processes that occur in clouds, better 

understanding from ESRL research will create 

more accurate projections as California experiences a changing climate, Williams said.

Atmospheric rivers also play a major role in 

California’s water resources. These moisturerich “rivers” of air can sweep up from the Pacific, dumping rain on California’s coast and snow 

in the mountains. In earlier work in the state, 

scientists have estimated that atmospheric rivers deliver as much as 50 percent of the state’s 

precipitation every year, and are responsible 

for most of the major flood events.

ESRL researchers suspect that some of the 

uncertainty in climate model projections of 

California’s future is the fault of poor representation of atmospheric rivers in the models. CalWater’s measurement-intensive campaign—

involving atmospheric river and climate 

observatories on the coast of California and 

inland—should help, said Gary Wick (Physical 

Sciences Division). Those observatories include 

sophisticated radars, raindrop disdrometers, 

GPS-meteorology instruments, and others 

that will let Wick and his colleagues record the 

structure and variability of atmospheric river 

systems at sea and as they move onto land, 

where they are transformed by regional topography and weather systems. 

Because atmospheric rivers events in California 

can end droughts, fill reservoirs, and trigger 

dangerous flooding, Wick said, it’s critical to 

better understand how climate change could 

affect the systems. The findings will be relevant 

for policy makers considering decisions about 

public investments in flood control and water 

storage projects, including new reservoirs. 

CalWater and HMT 

instrument sites in 

California 

CalWater 

ESRL scientists study California’s water future in a changing climate
9

CalWater draws from another major ESRL effort focused on California—HMT-West—taking 

advantage of some of the custom instruments, 

sites, and knowledge developed earlier by 

HMT (NOAA’s Hydrometeorology Testbed Program).

Weather forecasters know that conventional 

instrument suites aren’t always enough to accurately predict hazardous weather. Deadly 

storms can sneak in literally below radar, and 

runoff models sometimes don’t capture an 

imminent flood. HMT, which involves ESRL scientists and research products, is developing, 

prototyping, and infusing new science and 

technology into the daily operations of the 

National Weather Service and its River Forecast 

Centers. ESRL researchers have helped design 

and place custom instrument packages (from 

disdrometers and radars to weather instruments launched on balloons) and run experimental models in regions of California that are 

prone to winter floods. 

The knowledge and tools generated through 

HMT are aiding in the design of climatefocused field studies, such as CalWater, and are 

providing new methods for regional climate 

monitoring, such as soil moisture measurement methods and systems that are useful for 

NIDIS pilot studies.

Isidora Jankov, Steve Albers, and colleagues 

in the Global Systems Division are doing the 

modeling. The team gathers all available observations—from HMT-West’s custom instrument suites to conventional meteorological 

data gathered in both California and Washington regions—and uses it to fire up forecast 

models.

“See that blue? That’s enhanced moisture flux 

moving toward the coast,” Jankov said, pointing to her computer screen in November. 

“That’s going to hit Seattle tomorrow, but today, it’s hitting Vancouver. They’re going to get 

some heavy rain.”

The modelers are producing some of the 

longest-lead-time, high-resolution forecasts 

ever for the California and Pacific Northwest 

regions, Jankov and Albers explain, and they 

are mixing-and-matching different physics, 

dynamics, and initialization schemes to create 

ensembles. (Model ensembles are widely recognized as being able to produce more skillful 

forecasts than single, or “deterministic” model 

runs).

Jankov and Albers say they are still working 

closely with the HMT and CalWater teams, 

including the River Forecast Centers, and the 

National Weather Service, to figure out what 

combinations of model components and ensemble methods will produce the best precipitation forecasts. The researchers are especially 

interested in accurately forecasting when and 

where rain turns to snow, or vice versa. “This 

is very helpful information for the water managers who need accurate runoff predictions,” 

Albers said.

ESRL scientists have developed an inexpensive radar system that can detect and monitor 

snow level during winter storms. Because snow 

level can determine how much of a particular 

mountain basin will experience rain versus 

snow, it is an important predictor of snowpack 

levels and streamflow amount and timing—

key data for water supply managers and for 

flood control. 

ESRL’s new snow-level radars have been installed at two sites in California, with seven 

more to follow in the next few years. With 18 

other snow-level detecting radars deployed 

across the state this winter, these new systems 

will serve climate missions in the CalWater 

project and a legacy of the HMT-West project, 

the California Department of Water Resources 

EFREP (Enhanced Flood Response and Emergency Preparedness) program. 

HMT’s legacy project, which also involves 

other state-of-the-art monitoring equipment, 

modeling efforts and decision support tools, 

is intended to help California deal with the 

challenges of an aging water infrastructure, 

increased standards for urban flood protection, 

and the impacts of climate change. 

The snow-level radars record cloud and precipitation information every 35 seconds, and 

report snow level every 10 minutes. These radars will help determine if there are long-term 

trends in snow level, and will assist forecasters 

in providing more accurate and timely forecasts of winter storms. Data from the radars, 

combined with CalWater measurements, will 

also provide critical data scientists need to 

improve regional climate models. Better modeling can help water managers prepare for 

California’s future under climate change.

HMT-West

Measuring water in the air

Another key tool for CalWater is the Physical Sciences Division’s scanning “SkyWater” 

radar, which is being set up north of Sacramento, to monitor the interaction between 

landfalling atmospheric rivers and the 

Sacramento barrier jet for two winters. The 

jet is not included in climate models, and 

detailed observations from the Sacramento 

instruments will help scientists assess how 

its absence from models affects projections 

of California precipitation. 

Emerging science: Snow-level radar and HMT’s legacy project

Snow-level radar, NOAA photo.

SkyWater radar, NOAA photo.
10

International air quality forecasting experts gathered at 

ESRL for a research conference. Photo by Will von Dauster, 

NOAA.

Achievem

More news, publications, and hono

Earth System Research Laboratory

2008 Cooling

It was strangely cool in 2008 in North 

America. ESRL scientists and colleagues evaluated temperature trends and patterns from 

that year and concluded that the cooling was 

likely from natural variation—North American 

temperatures would have been considerably 

colder in 2008 without human-induced climate warming, they found. 

Lead author Judith Perlwitz (ESRL Physical 

Sciences Division and the Cooperative Institute 

for Research Environmental Sciences) and her 

colleagues used observations and computer 

climate models to investigate the sources of 

observed climate and weather patterns in 

2008—a technique called “attribution.” Cold 

North American temperatures were primarily 

due to the fact that the region is sensitive to 

natural variation in the tropical and northeastern Pacific sea surface, which was unusually 

cold that year. 

“The implication is that the pace of North 

American warming is likely to resume in 

coming years, and that climate is unlikely 

embarking upon a prolonged cooling,” the 

scientists concluded in a paper published 

Dec. 8 in Geophysical Research Letters. More: 

doi:10.1029/2009GL041188.

Air Quality Workshop

More than 100 researchers from around the 

world gathered in Boulder in December, for 

the first International Workshop on Air Quality 

Forecasting Research, sponsored by NOAA and 

Environment Canada. Participants described 

ongoing efforts to develop and improve 

operational air quality forecast models and 

discussed the challenges faced by researchers 

and by agencies, including the need for more 

and better observations.

“Our focus is on research that is specifically 

related to operational air quality forecasting, 

and I don’t have to tell this group about the 

growing need,” said Jim Meagher, Deputy 

Director of ESRL’s Chemical Sciences Division, 

during an introductory plenary session. 

Paula Davidson, NOAA’s Project Manager 

for Air Quality Forecasting, described the 

impact of air pollution in the United States: 

“There are more than 60,000 premature 

deaths in the U.S. from poor air quality, with 

huge associated health costs, more than $100 

billion per year.” 

Davidson and Veronique Bouchet (Environment Canada) discussed the models and data 

used today by each country to forecast levels 

of air pollutants—from smoke to surface 

ozone—and described forecasting successes 

and challenges. Both researchers focused on 

the difficulty of accurately predicting particulate matter, fine particles and droplets from a 

variety of sources that can affect human health 

and are regulated in both countries. 

Meagher said that he hopes that the workshop will be the first of an annual series. More: 

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/csd/events/iwaqfr/.

AGU Town Hall

Instead of the usual NOAA-Research “All Hands” 

meeting at the American 

Geophysical Union, AGU, 

meeting in San Francisco, 

NOAA and Exploratorium 

leaders hosted a Town Hall 

meeting to talk about the 

educational collaboration 

between the agency and the museum.

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

is an international leader in informal science 

education, said Rick Spinrad, NOAA’s Assistant 

Administrator for Research. Earlier this year, 

NOAA and the museum signed an agreement 

to codevelop interactive exhibits, online learning experiences, professional development 

workshops, and more.

Spinrad invited researchers and staff across 

NOAA to have fun with the new collaboration, 

and build connections with the Exploratorium’s exhibit designers and program managers. “You have carte blanche,” Spinrad said. 

“Literally: a NOAA badge will get you into the 

Exploratorium free.”

Rob Semper, Exploratorium Executive Associate Director, described the museum’s plans 

to move to an expansive new location on a 

pier near downtown San Francisco, a site that 

will include outdoors and dock space. “It would 

be daunting to move into this opportunity, 

this environment, without someone who really 

knows about it, and that’s you,” Semper said. 

Mary Miller, the Exploratorium’s director of 

the new partnership, said it has already resulted 

in tangible results: Exploratorium visitors online 

and in person can learn about– and communicate with–NOAA’s Okeanos Explorer. And Exploratorium staff are working with ESRL’s Physical 

Sciences Division, to develop an exhibit based 

on innovative weather and climate instruments 

researchers here developed for field work in 

California. Miller described ESRL’s raindrop disdrometers, which help researchers understand 

the physics of precipitating clouds, as “poetic 

and artistic, as well as scientific. “We know this 

is going to result in some really cool exhibits on 

the floor,” she said. 

AGU Science

Hundreds of ESRL researchers and affiliates 

from CIRES and CIRA attended the AGU meeting. ESRL scientists and affiliates chaired more 

than a dozen sessions, gave talks and posters, 

spoke as invited presenters and during press 

conferences, and led additional smaller meetings during the larger conference (which included more than 15,500 presentations). ESRL 

outreach staff maintained a strong presence 

at the NOAA booth in the AGU Exhibition Hall. 

More: http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm09/.

Climate “Roadshows”

One-day workshops can significantly improve the “climate literacy” of resource managers, according to ESRL data presented at the 

American Geophysical Union annual meeting 

in San Francisco. 

Kristen Averyt (Physical Sciences Division 

and CIRES) discussed a series of workshops 

held across Colorado in 2009, to disseminate 

information about how climate variability and 

change affect the state’s water resources. The 

workshop involved short presentations, extensive interactions between participants and climate scientists, and breakout discussions. The 

information presented was based on Climate 

Change in Colorado, a report written last year 

by the Western Water Assessment (a joint project of NOAA and CIRES) in support of Colorado 

Governor Bill Ritter’s Climate Action Plan. 

The 80 workshop participants were quizzed 

about climate facts both before and after the 

10

News
11

workshop, Averyt said, 

and made significant 

gains in understanding. Before the workshop, participants 

tended to accurately 

identify global climate change impacts, but did not understand 

some basic climate science concepts. Only 

23 percent of those who completed surveys 

understood basic climate trends in Colorado 

(increased temperature and variable precipitation, for example); after the workshop, that 

number jumped to 74 percent. 

“Some misconceptions remained,” Averyt 

said. “People still confuse climate change and 

climate variability, and the influence of ENSO 

in Colorado...so we need to work on better 

communicating those messages.” 

She and her colleagues also asked participants prior to the workshop whether they use 

climate information to inform decisions, and 

where they obtained that information. People 

tended to use just a couple federal sources 

of climate data, and were unaware of many 

regional and other federal sources, Averyt 

said. During the workshop, the team discussed 

many sources of information, and participants 

said they were eager to begin using some of 

the climate tools they’d just learned about—

especially from the National Integrated 

Drought Information System, NIDIS.

Ozone Hole

The Antarctic ozone hole 

reached its 2009 peak circumference in late September, according to ESRL measurements. Slightly smaller 

than the North American 

continent, the ozone hole 

covered 9.2 million square miles, 

according to satellite observations. 

This ranks as the 10th largest since satellite 

measurements began in 1979.

Ozone over South Pole Station, Antarctica, 

also reached its thinnest point of the year 

on Sept. 26. Measured in Dobson Units (DU), 

which indicate the amount of ozone in a vertical column of air, the 2009 low level of 98 DU 

is the seventh smallest since 1986 (the record 

low of 89 DU was recorded on Oct. 6, 1993). 

The atmospheric ozone layer protects the 

Earth from harmful ultraviolet radiation. It has 

been damaged by human-produced compounds known as chlorofluorocarbons, or 

CFCs, which release ozone-destroying bromine 

and chlorine into the atmosphere. International agreements have strictly limited the use 

of CFCs since the early 1990s.

 “The Montreal Protocol has been effective 

in reducing emissions of long-lived CFC gases, 

but high enough concentrations remain in the 

atmosphere to lead to significant ozone destruction in polar regions,” said Bryan Johnson, 

project leader of ESRL’s Ozonesonde Group. 

“Monitoring ozone over Antarctica provides 

the essential yardstick to see whether we are 

on the predicted track for recovery based on 

the current rate of declining CFCs.” Although 

CFCs are slowly decreasing in the atmosphere, 

scientists project that the ozone hole will not 

fully recover before 2060.

Aerosol Effects on Climate 

Cloud systems are complicated, characterized by feedbacks and buffering mechanisms, 

many of them involving tiny atmospheric 

particles (aerosol). Overall, aerosol particles are 

estimated to cool the climate system—partly 

offsetting warming by greenhouse gases—but 

their effects vary from place to place, and uncertainty about aerosol-cloud-climate interactions still plagues global climate models. 

A study by Graham Feingold (Chemical Sciences Division) and Max Planck Institute scientist Bjorn Stevens reviewed research to date 

on the aerosol-cloud-climate system, to assess 

why the uncertainties remain so large on this 

topic. They identified problems in the ways 

researchers attempt to investigate aerosolcloud-climate systems—including a failure to 

take into account the ways that the aerosol, 

clouds, and precipitation can each affect the 

other, with one effect sometimes compensating or canceling out another. Moreover, those 

interactions differ in different regions of the 

world in ways that are still not well understood 

or represented in climate models.

Feingold and Stevens proposed a new research strategy—a coordinated effort to study 

cloud system behaviors on timescales of days 

to seasons. Arrays of sophisticated equipment 

at the surface and aboard airplanes could be 

placed to make long-term measurements and 

to take advantage of “natural” experiments, 

such as episodes of biomass burning in regions where the meteorological variability is 

small. Their study was published Oct. 1 in Nature (doi:10.1038/nature08281).

Electric Annie

Outreach expert Annie Reiser helped scientist Tom Lefebvre (both Global Systems 

Division) develop a hands-on student exercise 

with a Van de Graaff generator, which accumulates electrical charge on a metal globe. The 

exercise demonstrates several effects of static 

electricity charge and its relationship to atmospheric lightning. It will be unveiled at the 9th

annual WeatherFest in Atlanta, Ga. in January. 

The WeatherFest is a science fair focused on 

weather, climate, and related fields, held by the 

American Meteorological Society.

Three researchers in ESRL’s Global Systems 

Division won Research and Service Initiative 

Awards from CIRA, the Cooperative Institute 

for Research in the Atmosphere at Colorado 

State University. Jacques Middlecoff and 

Ning Wang were lauded for outstanding 

performance in helping develop the stateof-the-art global weather and climate prediction model FIM. CIRA gave Sher Schranz

the award “for outstanding leadership in the 

design, development, testing, deployment, 

and operational support for FX-Net, Gridded FX-Net and Fire Weather Projects.”

Robert (Robin) Webb and Mary Cécile 

Penland De Garcia (Physical Sciences) 

were part of a team awarded a Department 

of Commerce Silver Medal for Scientific/

Engineering Achievement, for their development of the Coral Reef Bleaching Outlook 

tool. The team was recognized “for providing timely ocean information and capacity 

for improved global monitoring and management of coral reef ecosystems relative to 

climate change.”

Scott Woodruff (Physical Sciences) was reselected to serve as the Chair of the Expert 

Team on Marine Climatology, for the Joint 

World Meteorological Organization-IOC 

Technical Committee for Oceanography 

and Marine Meteorology. The expert team 

collaborates with international programs to 

determine procedures and principles for the 

development and management of global 

and regional oceanographic and marine 

meteorological climatological datasets. 

http://icoads.noaa.gov/etmc/.

Valery Zavorotny (Physical Sciences) was 

elevated to a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), for 

contributions to ocean remote sensing and 

wave propagation in random media.

ment

ors from NOAA’s 

.

Honored

Published

ESRL’s peer-reviewed publications:

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

Pubilcations 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.esrl.noaa.gov/gsd/publications/

Annie Reiser and the Van de Graaff generator. Photo 

by Will von Dauster, NOAA.

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, Cecelia DeLuca, Barb DeLuisi, Linda Joy, Carol Knight, 

Marty Ralph, Gary Wick, Christopher Williams 

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. 

Near-Space Flight

Every week, ESRL sends balloons 100,000 feet into the atmosphere 

bearing ozone and water vapor instruments. The balloon-borne 

instruments, released from several sites around the world, create longterm records of the concentrations and distributions of the two gases, 

which are important in terms of climate and Earth’s protective ozone 

layer. 

On one flight from Boulder, CO this fall, engineers Allen Jordan and 

Emrys Hall (Global Monitoring Division) added a lightweight digital 

camera to the package. The stunning photographs captured the 

curvature of the Earth and the blackness of space. 

“We weren’t sure what we would learn,” Hall admitted, “but in some 

of the images, you can see smoke from a controlled burn.” The smoke 

might help researchers better understand the ozone and water data, 

likely affected by the fire. 

The experience of adding the camera to the flight package may also 

help ESRL engineers better integrate a new instrument they’re hoping 

to begin flying regularly, soon: an Aethalometer, which measures the 

amount of black carbon in the atmosphere. Black carbon particles are 

air pollutants and also contribute to atmospheric warming.