1

Summer

ESRL’s Rich Jesuroga pulled up a map of Fort Worth, Texas on his computer, and clicked the 

mouse once in a suburb. “Suppose there’s a toxic release here,” he said. 

Within one minute, Jesuroga, a researcher in ESRL’s Global Systems Division, learned that 

prevailing conditions would swirl the imaginary airborne toxin west. Within two minutes, 

he traced a polygon over the “hottest” part of the dispersing plume—the people there 

would need to be evacuated first—and he pointed to an icon that, when clicked, would 

send out a warning through a variety of systems, including the Federal Emergency 

Management Agency’s (FEMA) Integrated Public Alert and Warning System.

This is Draft One of a collaborative NOAA project called the Geo-Targeted Alerting System, 

or GTAS, newly funded by FEMA for up to five years. ESRL researchers and colleagues at 

NOAA’s Air Resources Laboratory and the National Weather Service hope to learn how 

scientists can best support the emergency managers who must plan for and react to 

airborne threats, from tornadoes and flash floods to chemical releases.

“There are a lot of questions that we need answered,” Jesuroga said. How quickly can 

an advanced dispersion model be run at National Weather Service Forecast Offices? Is it 

enough to model a toxin’s spread at 15-minute intervals, or would 5-minute intervals be 

more helpful? What if the threat is a severe storm? Precisely what kind of information do 

emergency managers need before making warning or evacuation decisions? 

“We don’t know the answers yet, and that’s why we’re doing this,” Jesuroga said. 

GTAS starts with HySPLIT—the Hybrid Single Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory 

Model—a plume dispersion model developed at the Air Resources Laboratory, ARL. 

“We take the meteorological fields output from forecast models, and use those to move 

around particles in the airfield,” said ARL’s Roland Draxler. HySPLIT accounts for the facts 

2009

Inside

Director’s Corner 2

By the Numbers 2

Greenhouse Index 2008 3

Inventing an Instrument 4

Making a Difference 5

Monitoring Meeting 6

Science to Ops 8

Virtual NOAA 8

Powering Science 9

Achievements 10

NOAA Green Fair 12

ESRL researchers spent three days with 

National Weather Service forecasters in 

April, during a workshop designed to 

share scientific information about climate 

change, its impacts, and communicating 

with the public about the issues. About 

50 people attended the climate seminar, 

drawn from Weather Forecast Offices 

across the West. 

“I look at you as the first responders, the 

front-line people getting bombarded on a 

daily basis with requests for information,” 

said Robin Webb, from ESRL’s Physical 

Sciences Division, who participated in the 

conference. “We are trying to support you, 

to produce data and information you can 

use and you can distribute.” 

Andrea Ray, Brad Udall, Joe Barsugli, and 

Klaus Wolter from Physical Sciences also 

ESRL Quarterly

News from NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory

Climate for Forecasters

ESRL researchers discuss 

climate with Weather Service 

see p 7

see p 7

Emergency Planning 

ESRL helps develop a response system for airborne threats

See p 9. ESRL digital pioneer Eric Hackathorne, with a 

weather balloon in the virtual world Second Life. 

ESRL’s Robin Webb, left, speaks with participants in a 

climate workshop for weather forecasters. 

Barb DeLuisi, NOAA
2

Director’s Corner

By the Numbers 

Composting

Get ready! Things are changing in NOAA, 

and these changes are clearly going to 

be affecting us in ESRL. Collectively, the 

laboratories in Boulder have had 15 to 20 

years of flat or shrinking budgets (adjusted 

for inflation). The reasons are complex, 

and in part, involved changes in NOAA’s 

funding process. The repercussions have 

been relatively straightforward, however: 

NOAA’s weather programs, for example, 

have not grown for 20 years, and the 

National Weather Service modernization 

reached its completion with the installation 

of AWIPS around the year 2000, followed 

by years of decreasing emphasis on new 

capabilities. Although the climate program 

grew significantly in the 1990s, it has been 

very diversified by design, investing higher 

percentages of NOAA’s climate research 

dollars in competitive research grants 

outside of NOAA. It can be argued that 

if the emphasis is purely on a search for 

knowledge, such short-term (e.g., three year) 

principal investigator grants are a good way 

to invest research funds. However, NOAA 

also needs infrastructure and deep expertise 

to support its core mission of understanding 

and prediction. 

Given increasing demand for NOAA’s 

core mission capabilities in weather (e.g., 

improved hurricane prediction) and climate 

(e.g., better understanding global change), 

there is a new emphasis on supporting the 

necessary people and equipment. We in 

ESRL bring a lot to this endeavor, and recent 

planning and funding activities demonstrate 

that the administration and Congress see us 

in a bigger and more important role.

Congress makes the ultimate funding 

decision. Every fiscal year, the House and 

Senate each develop a proposed budget 

(the “mark”), and then meet to negotiate 

a final budget. The House has done its 

mark for the coming fiscal year (FY 2010), 

and it includes a number of efforts that 

would involve ESRL. In climate, the House 

mark includes significant increases for the 

National Integrated Drought Information 

Service, Regional Integrated Science 

Assessments (the Western Water Assessment 

is one), and Chemical Climate Research. 

In weather, it supports an increase for the 

Developmental Testbed Center and Severe 

Weather Forecast Improvements. 

Prospects for FY 2011 look even brighter. 

The creation of a National Climate Service 

is a strong priority for the administration, 

and ESRL will have many connections to 

this program. For example, there is a greatly 

increased need to monitor greenhouse 

gases as we move to a national and global 

mitigation effort. Similarly, the need for big 

increases in computing power —to make 

the next generation of Earth system models 

interoperable—are being met with funding.

During my 27 years as a director I have 

concluded that the easiest programs to 

manage are those that stay at the same 

funding level. Growing programs are 

difficult, and shrinking programs are even 

worse. We are coming into an era of growth: 

we will need more people, more space, 

more equipment, etc. The exciting new roles 

that we will be taking on will more than 

compensate for any difficulties.

In reading this issue of the ESRL Quarterly, 

you can see the harbingers of this new era. 

The ESRL Global Monitoring Conference was 

a huge success, in the number of attendees 

and in the quality of the presentations and 

discussions. ESRL covers the whole spectrum 

of things that are required for environmental 

services, from new instruments (ASTER), 

to new understanding (the use of satellite 

data to understand NO2

 emissions), and 

new ways to educate people about NOAA’s 

mission (Second Life). 

So, get ready! We have big, exciting, 

important work to do!

—Alexander MacDonald

110 tons

of CO2-equivalent greenhouse gas emissions avoided in seven months, thanks to an 

expanded recycling program at the David Skaggs Research Center in Boulder. 

That’s equivalent to taking 20 cars off the road for a year. From October 2008 to April 

2009, employees diverted more than 40 percent of the building’s waste from the landfill, 

by composting and recycling (see p 5). Compost photo is courtesy of Janet Wood; cars 

courtesy of Will von Dauster, NOAA.
3

The climate-warming gases carbon dioxide 

and methane continued to increase in the 

atmosphere last year, despite the global 

economic slump and a decrease in activities 

that consume fossil fuels. 

ESRL researchers released the annual 

greenhouse gas index in April, based on 

atmospheric data collected from 60 sites 

around the world. Researchers 

here measured an additional 16.2 

billion tons of carbon dioxide 

(CO2)—a byproduct of fossil fuel 

burning—at the end of 2008, 

compared with 2007’s yearend-figures. There were also an 

additional 12.2 million tons of the 

potent greenhouse gas methane, 

according to the new report.

“Only by reducing our dependence on fossil 

fuels and increasing energy production 

from renewable resources will we start to 

see improvements and begin to lessen the 

effects of climate change,” said ESRL scientist 

Pieter Tans, of the Global Monitoring 

Division. The Global Monitoring Division 

has monitored carbon dioxide emissions 

and other greenhouses gases for decades 

and will continue to do so to help assess 

the climate situation and advise decision 

makers, Tans said.

The increases in CO2 and methane during 

2008 are slightly less than those measured 

in 2007, but fall well within the range of 

yearly fluctuations from natural changes, 

according to NOAA experts. CO2 levels 

vary from year to year along with plant 

growth and decay, wildfire activity, and 

soil conditions. But people’s burning of 

coal, oil, and gas for transportation, power, 

and industry create the insistent increase 

underlying those fluctuations.

At the end of 2008, global average CO2

concentration was 386 parts per million 

(ppm); before the Industrial Revolution 

began in the 1880s, CO2 concentration was 

280 ppm. 

Methane levels rose in 2008 for the second 

consecutive year after a 10-year lull, for 

a 2008 global average concentration of 

1,788 parts per billion (ppb). Pound for 

pound, methane is 25 times more powerful 

as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, 

but because there is far less of it in the 

atmosphere, methane’s overall climate 

impact is half that of carbon dioxide.

Carbon dioxide growth rates have increased 

by more than two percent each year since 

preindustrial times, doubling every 31 

years, according to a study published in 

Atmospheric Environment in December by 

ESRL’s David Hofmann, James Butler, and 

Tans.

The carbon dioxide record does have dips: 

A slowdown occurred in 1930–1936 after 

the Great Depression, and another during 

the 1940s, possibly related to World War II. 

The large volcanic eruptions of Indonesia’s 

Mount Agung in 1963 and the Phillippines’ 

Mount Pinatubo in 1991 each 

slowed CO2 buildup for several 

years. Volcanic emissions cool 

the lower atmosphere and 

scatter sunlight. Those changes 

can reduce plant respiration, a 

process that releases CO2, and 

boost photosynthesis, which 

removes CO2 from the air. 

“Atmospheric CO2 growth is best reflected 

by the world population trend,” said 

Hofmann. “The two have tracked each other 

extremely well over the past century.”

A break in the close relationship between 

population growth and CO2 growth would 

be a clear sign of progress in efforts to limit 

atmospheric CO2, Hofmann said.

—contributed by Anatta

Annual Greenhouse Gas Index 2008

New data show unrelenting rise in carbon dioxide and other 

greenhouse gases

386 ppm, 

today’s CO2

concentration. Preindustrial revolution, 

it was 280 ppm.parts per million (ppm) parts per billion (ppb)

Methane

1800

1750

1700

1650

1600

1550

1978 1982 1986 1990 1994 1998 2002 2006 2010 

Carbon Dioxide

390

380

370

360

350

340

330

1978 1982 1986 1990 1994 1998 2002 2006 2010 

1900 1925 1950 1975 2000

Fossil Fuel Emissions (billion tonnes CO2 per year)

GDP (trillion U.S. dollars) Population (billions)

Anthropogenic CO2 (ppm)

200

100

50

30

10

5

3

1

GDP 

Fossil Fuels

Population

Ice Cores

CO2

Mauna 

Loa

Global

Several factors associated with CO2 emissions, presented on a logarithmic scale. Anthropogenic CO2

refers to CO2 levels above pre-industrial. Adapted 

from Hofmann et al. 2008. 
4

ESRL scientists need extremely precise instruments to answer critical questions about the atmosphere. Much of the time, there is no 

ASTER

catalogue to order from, so ESRL researchers and engineers do the instrument design and construction themselves. Below, we describe 

one pilot instrument in ESRL’s Chemical Sciences Division: Aerosol Scattering To Extinction Ratio (ASTER). Aerosol comprises tiny particles in 

the atmosphere with both natural and anthropogenic sources and are known to have climate impacts. Overall, atmospheric aerosol cools 

the atmosphere, partially offsetting warming by greenhouse gases. However, certain classes of aerosol—such as black carbon or soot—can 

warm the surrounding atmosphere and are of growing interest to climate scientists. A particle’s “radiative effect” depends, in part, on how 

it scatters (a cooling effect) and absorbs (warming) sunlight. 

The Need

Better understanding the behavior of atmospheric aerosol is critical for improving our 

predictions of how climate change will affect the Earth system. “In climate models, the 

uncertainty around aerosol effects is usually very large,” said Todd Sanford, who, with Daniel 

Murphy, is leading ASTER’s development. “The idea of this instrument is to help reduce that 

uncertainty.”

Multiple Errors

Today, scientists use a variety of instruments to measure how aerosol scatters and absorbs light. 

Each instrument has its own set of potential small errors, and there may also be differences 

between aerosol samples measured in each. That means multiple sets of errors are possible in 

measurements. 

Simultaneous Measurement

ASTER measures a single aerosol particle’s light scattering and extinction (extinction = 

scattering + absorption) simultaneously. From this, a scientist can calculate the climaticallyimportant metric of single-scattering albedo. A diode laser sends light into a three-mirror, high 

reflectivity cavity. Single aerosol particles are introduced into the cavity laser beam, from which 

they scatter and absorb light. A scattering cell captures and measures scattered light, and 

extinction is measured from the “leakage” of light through a cavity mirror. The instrument can 

also provide a measure of a particle’s size.

Serendipity

Waiting for a flight after a field mission in Costa Rica three years ago, ESRL’s Dan Murphy asked 

Sanford about an instrument Sanford was using to measure single-scattering albedos of single 

particles. Murphy asked if Sanford ever observed “dips” in the light transmitted through the 

cavity mirrors. “Actually, we do,” Sanford remembers saying. “And that was it. Until then, we 

didn’t appreciate that this cavity could measure extinction in a more direct, simpler way.” This 

development simplified the operation of ASTER, and will make field-deployment more feasible. 

Stability 

ASTER’s diode laser may be rugged, but it’s signal is noisy. Sanford stabilizes the laser by using 

the cavity as a stable, frequency reference, in a technique called Pound-Drever-Hall frequency 

stabilization. 

Initial Results 

In a test of air pulled from outside ESRL, where a nearby construction project produces dust 

and engine exhaust, Sanford found that most of the sampled particles were purely scattering 

(cooling), but a small fraction were dark and more absorbing. A more traditional “bulk” 

measurement could have concluded only that the aerosols were primarily scattering and 

therefore cooling. “The bulk measurements are very useful, but important information is lost in 

the averaging process,” Sanford said. “We would have missed these highly absorbing particles, 

which are very important for climate.”

Future Tests

Sanford hopes to test ASTER in the field sometime this year, in the foothills behind the 

David Skaggs Research Center in Boulder, Colo. He also wants to compare the instrument’s 

measurements with existing aerosol optical and composition instruments. With luck, the 

instrument could be deployed in a ground-based setting during CalNex, a 2009-2010 mission 

to study climate change and air quality in California. Ultimately, ASTER could fly on research 

aircraft.

A. Earth, courtesy of NASA. B. An early ASTER prototype, NOAA photograph. C. ESRL’s Dan Murphy (left) and Todd 

Sanford (right), of the Chemical Sciences Division, next to the current ASTER instrument. Photo courtesy of Will von 

Dauster, NOAA. D. Construction next to the David Skaggs Research Center, ESRL’s home in Boulder, Colo. Photo courtesy of Will von Dauster, NOAA. E. Foothills behind the David Skaggs Research Center, where ASTER may be initially 

field-deployed. Photo courtesy of Will von Dauster, NOAA.

Inventing an Instrument

A

E

D

C

B
5

ESRL researcher Molly Heller coordinates 

NOAA’s cooperative air sampling and aircraft 

networks of more than 80 atmospheric 

sampling sites around the world. She makes 

sure each has what it needs to collect air 

samples for the precise measurement of 

greenhouse gases and other constituents. 

During the last year, Heller also made time 

to create a building-wide composting 

program for the David Skaggs Research 

Center, DSRC, which includes ESRL. 

Heller, a NOAA affiliate with the Cooperative 

Institute for Research in Environmental 

Studies (CIRES), was honored with a CIRES 

Outstanding Performance in Service Award 

this year, for her “exceptional” work in both 

categories. 

In ESRL’s Global Monitoring Division, Heller 

so effectively streamlined the processes 

involved in the logistics of sampling 

networks and preparing sample containers 

that she handles the workload once meant 

for two people. 

She also composts. Dedicated to minimizing 

her climate impact on the planet, Heller 

used to walk several blocks from her home 

to carry her own compostables to a public 

drop-off site. At work, Heller was frustrated 

to see compostable material in trash bins. 

She also tired of carrying her own lunch 

scraps home in the evening. “It was getting 

messy,” Heller said. 

In the spring of 2008, Heller began 

investigating the science and economics 

of composting. She soon learned that 

the DSRC could save both greenhouse 

gas emissions and money by adding 

composting to the recycling mix. 

Composting—an aerobic process—

generates the greenhouse gas carbon 

dioxide. But in landfills, decomposition 

is anaerobic—without oxygen—and 

that process releases the more potent 

greenhouse gas methane, Heller said. 

Reducing methane emissions would have 

72 times the impact of reducing equivalent 

emissions of carbon dioxide (measured as 

“global warming potential” during a 20-year 

time horizon).

So Heller and a few colleagues with 

NOAA and the U.S. General Services 

Administration, began crafting a plan to 

bring composting to the David Skaggs 

Research Center.

It wasn’t easy, Heller said. She had to 

scramble to find the few hundred dollars 

it would take, up front, to purchase new 

composting bins and create signs. She and a 

colleague spent a weekend in the building, 

setting up bins and posters to explain the 

new system. She is still frustrated to find 

people putting compostable paper towels 

in trash bins and trash in the compost, but 

recognizes that employees have come a 

long way. DSRC workers now compost and 

recycle about 40 percent of our waste. “I 

would like that number to be closer to 70 

percent,” Heller said. 

Still, she said she is pleased with the 

response. “To me, this is about the whole 

environmental package,” said Heller, who 

also rides the bus to work. “We didn’t have 

all this stuff 100 years ago, and we need to 

figure out what we’re going to do with it all. 

One small thing is putting waste in the right 

place.”

Making a Difference

One researcher’s push to cut human climate impact 

Molly Heller helped direct traffic during an electronics 

recycling event she helped organize for David Skaggs 

Research Center workers and the community. Photos 

courtesy of Will von Dauster, NOAA. 

Waste, in millions of tons per year

Business As Usual (top) and Zero Waste Approach 

(bottom) to disposing of waste in the United States. By 

2030, 90 percent of domestic waste could be diverted 

from landfills to recycling and composting. This would 

achieve seven percent of the cuts in equivalent CO2

emissions needed to reduce total U.S. emissions 80 

percent below 1990 levels by 2050. 

350

300

250

200

150

50

0

1960 1970 1980 1991 2000 2010 2020 2030 

350

300

250

200

150

50

0

1960 1970 1980 1991 2000 2010 2020 2030 
6

Monitoring Meeting 

“21st Century Challenges for Long-Term Monitoring” draws 

atmospheric scientists from around the world

More than 250 people attended ESRL’s Global Monitoring Annual Conference in May, 

presenting dozens of talks and posters on atmospheric trends and analyses, many of them 

derived from ESRL-collected data. For three days, researchers from 19 countries discussed 

regional emissions of greenhouse gases, how best to interpret data showing a rise in global 

methane levels, and the dynamics and speed of the ozone layer’s recovery. 

“First: thanks,” said Barry Huebert, a professor of oceanography at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, who gave a research talk. Huebert 

used data from NOAA’s Mauna Loa Observatory (MLO) to analyze patterns in atmospheric particles called aerosols, which can influence 

both air quality and climate. “The staff at MLO is fantastic,” Huebert said. “It’s hard to imagine how much they do there, and how much we 

all rely on them.” ESRL’s Global Monitoring Division operates Mauna Loa as one of five baseline atmospheric observatories that stretch from 

northern Alaska to the Antarctic. The others are in Barrow, Alaska; Trinidad Head, Calif.; American Samoa; and the South Pole.

Jim Butler, director of ESRL’s Global Monitoring Division, opened the 36th annual monitoring conference with a commitment to continue 

and improve upon the division’s atmospheric monitoring, data collection, and analysis. Below are summaries from a few talks. Abstracts 

from all talks and posters are available at: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/annualconference/.

Air Quality Problem

David Parrish, from ESRL’s Chemical 

Sciences Division, analyzed weekly 

measurements taken by ESRL colleagues 

in Trinidad Head, Calif., to look at the effect 

of background ozone levels on air quality 

in inland Northern California. The U.S. 

Environmental Protection Agency regulates 

levels of surface ozone, which, at high levels, 

can damage people’s lungs. Normally, ozone 

violations occur when sunlight “cooks” 

local chemical pollutants—from cars, oil 

and gas operations, manufacturing, and 

other sources—into ozone smog. Parrish 

found that air from over the Eastern Pacific 

was transported ashore at high altitude 

and mixed down to Northern California 

surface sites. Ozone levels in this air made 

substantial contributions to ozone-level 

violations. “Background ozone alone can 

exceed the national standard,” Parrish said. 

“That means achieving the standard may 

not be possible in this region with only local 

and regional control efforts.”

Constraining the Amazon

John Miller, from ESRL’s Global Monitoring 

Division, presented data collected above 

Brazil’s Amazon Basin, during nearly a 

decade of close collaboration with Brazil’s 

Atmospheric Chemistry Laboratory (part of 

IPEN, the Instituto de Pesquisas Energeticas 

e Nucleares) in Sao Paulo. The Amazon 

Basin is one of the most poorly sampled 

regions of the globe in terms of atmospheric 

chemistry, Miller said. During an ongoing 

air-based measurement program Miller and 

his colleagues discovered methane fluxes 

that were significantly larger than previous 

estimates (including those made by GMD’s 

background sites in the Atlantic Ocean, 

2,000 miles away). Data from the ongoing 

international collaboration suggest aircraft 

and other measurements are needed to 

support ground-based measurements, 

to detect important details in the global 

carbon cycle. 

Ozone Layer Recovery Slow

ESRL’s Dave Hofmann presented data on 

the recovery of Earth’s Antarctic ozone hole 

in the stratosphere. High-altitude ozone 

protects the Earth surface from damaging 

ultraviolet radiation. Man-made chemicals 

that are now regulated can destroy 

stratospheric ozone, triggering higher 

skin cancer rates and damaging crops. A 

little more than a decade ago, when the 

emissions of ozone-depleting chemicals 

began dropping, researchers calculated that 

the Antarctic ozone hole would show early 

signs of recovery by 2010, with complete 

recovery by 2050. “I can tell you that ozone is 

not showing any sign of recovery,” Hofmann 

said, flashing a slide of data from 2006. 

“We’re still seeing fantastic loss.” Hofmann 

and his colleagues now calculate that the 

ozone hole in Antarctica may begin to 

recover by 2030, with complete recovery 

closer to 2065.

Invited Talks 

Michael B. McElroy, Gilbert Butler Professor 

of Environmental Studies at Harvard 

University, gave a keynote speech entitled 

“Prospects for a Low-Carbon Energy Future.” 

McElroy outlined the climate problem—the 

need to dramatically reduce carbon dioxide 

emissions around the world—and laid 

out a plan for the United States and other 

countries to obtain power from wind. 

Chet Koblinsky, Director of NOAA’s Climate 

Program Office, updated the group on 

NOAA’s growing commitment to provide 

the nation with climate products and 

services. Decision makers are “knocking on 

NOAA’s door” for more information about 

heat waves, droughts, Atlantic hurricanes, 

wave heights, heavy rain events, and other 

environmental events, Koblinsky said. 

“They’re aware we’re going into a different 

world in which these statistics are changing, 

and they’re all looking for ways to interact 

with us to gain better access to information.” 

NOAA’s global monitoring community 

knows how to provide such services and 

data, Koblinsky said. He lauded conference 

attendees for already helping to build 

the foundation for NOAA’s future climate 

services. 

Left: Bernie Zak from Sandia National Laboratory 

speaks with Russ Schnell, Deputy Director of ESRL’s 

Global Monitoring Division, during the annual Global 

Monitoring Conference. Right: Jim Butler, director of 

ESRL’s Global Monitoring Division, speaks with Paul 

Fraser of CSIRO in Australia. Photos courtesy of Will 

von Dauster, NOAA.
7

that some toxins—radiological ones, for 

example—are heavier than others, and 

that toxic gases will behave differently than 

dusts or liquids.

Jesuroga, Draxler, and their colleagues 

are selecting five weather forecast offices 

around the country as test sites—DallasFort-Worth in Texas and Seattle, Wash. are 

the first two—and are installing HySPLIT 

locally, so the same people keeping an 

eye on local weather can turn around and 

quickly run a plume dispersion model. 

The HySPLIT dispersion model will be 

run on a platform that enables real-time 

collaboration—emergency managers 

across town can watch forecasters run the 

dispersion model, and forecasters can watch 

as emergency managers draw polygonal 

warning areas. That kind of collaboration 

could strengthen helpful relationships 

between forecast offices and state and local 

emergency managers, Jesuroga said.

Draxler said that for his team, the project 

represents a valuable opportunity to 

develop a complete warning system, 

from front-end forecasts to final decisionmaking. “We are used to running models 

and coming up 

with outputs, 

maybe ending up 

with a radiation 

dose. But is that 

important? Often, 

I don’t know,” 

Draxler said. 

“Here, we’ll be 

involved from the 

front to the back, 

and that’s useful 

to us.” 

Jesuroga led a similar pilot warning 

project in Boulder a few years ago, to warn 

about dangerous storm conditions. His 

team tested a system that would send 

out warnings to people within high-risk 

polygons, and that project, too, relied on a 

vendor to distribute the reverse-911-type 

warning calls. 

“Homeland Security learned about what we 

were doing, and their idea was, could we 

use this kind of system in the case of a toxic 

plume?” Jesuroga said. 

spoke during the workshop, as did Pieter 

Tans from ESRL’s Global Monitoring Division, 

and Susan Solomon from the Chemical 

Sciences Division.

Climate research and communication have 

become major priorities for NOAA, Ahsha 

Tribble, the National Weather Service’s 

(NWS) Climate Services Division chief, told 

the seminar participants. The National 

Weather Service has developed a plan to 

overhaul national and local climate web 

pages, Tribble said, and people across NOAA 

are designing other climate 

web portals and discussing 

how best to connect weather 

products with longer-term 

climate services, from seasonal 

outlooks to decades-out 

temperature projections. 

Such weather-climate 

and operations-research 

connections are already being 

forged, said Ray, a researcher 

with ESRL’s Physical Sciences 

Division who works closely with the Western 

Water Assessment. “Climate outlooks are 

used operationally every summer in national 

wildfire planning,” Ray said. “And ENSO (El 

Niño-Southern Oscillation) forecasts are 

consulted routinely by decision makers 

in the Pacific Northwest, California, the 

Southwest, the Southeast...”

Andrea Bair with the NWS Western Region 

Headquarters presented results of a recent 

survey assessing the climate perceptions 

and knowledge of Western Region field 

office staff. The survey was conducted after 

other studies suggested that meteorologists 

are, in general, more skeptical about humancaused climate change than scientists. 

More than 10 percent of Western 

Region forecasters surveyed said they 

had never heard of the United Nations’ 

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate 

Change, Bair said. Of those that had, 

only one-third believed the document 

represented the consensus of the scientific 

community.

Most of those attending the 

NWS climate change workshop 

believed humans were the 

main cause of climate change, 

according to a quick raiseyour-hands survey. But some 

attendees said Bair’s results 

made sense. “There are folks in 

my office who are passionate in 

denying there is climate change,” 

one forecaster said. “I just kind of 

cringe when the phone goes to them.” 

Susan Solomon spoke with workshop 

participants about the role of science in the 

1987 Montreal Protocol, an international 

agreement to protect Earth’s ozone layer, 

and launched a discussion about the 

appropriate role of science in current 

discussions about climate change policy. 

In the case of ozone depletion, it wasn’t just 

that the science was good, it was critical that 

the scientists were good communicators, 

Solomon said. “We were able to present 

clear, consistent information... that anyone 

could understand.” In the case of climate 

change, she continued, “there really is a 

huge role in communications, and nobody’s 

better than you, the National Weather 

Service, at that.” 

On the last day of the workshop, Susan Buhr 

from the Cooperative Institute for Research 

in Environmental Sciences at the University 

of Colorado at Boulder, led participants in a 

two-hour, research-based exercise to hone 

climate communication skills.

The threat of a wet spring snowstorm sent 

some participants to Denver International 

Airport half a day early. The storm ultimately 

took shape almost exactly as the NWS 

predicted, dropping more than four inches 

of moisture on Boulder.

...CLIMATE for Forecasters from p 1

...EMERGENCY Technology from p 1

“I look at you 

as the first 

responders, 

the front-line 

people getting 

bombarded on 

a daily basis 

with requests for 

information.” ESRL’s Chad McNutt, Lisa Darby, and Andrea Ray (all 

from the Physical Sciences Division) at a forecasters 

conference on climate change. Photo courtesy of Barb 

DeLuisi, NOAA.

In a simulation, an airborne toxin in Fort Worth, Texas 

moves west 15, 30, and 45 minutes after release. 

Rich Jesuroga
68

A powerful tsunami kills no one in the online 

virtual world Second Life, and the house 

blown apart by waves reassembles itself 

within seconds. Glaciers that melt and flow 

into the ocean are quickly sculpted back into 

cold, hard ice. But visitors to NOAA’s Second 

Life exhibits still get the point: Climate 

change is reshaping the planet. Tsunamis 

are deadly strong.

“You can read about a tsunami in a textbook 

or you can experience one in a virtual world,” 

ERSL’s Eric Hackathorn, told Linden Lab (the 

creator of Second Life) this spring. “I believe 

that experience has a greater impact.” 

Hackathorn, part of ESRL’s Global Systems 

Division, serves as NOAA’s Virtual Worlds 

Program Manager and has directed the 

creation of NOAA islands. Avatars (people’s 

virtual representations online) who visit 

Science to Ops 

First NOAA Testbed Workshop draws innovators, operators

Nearly 70 weather and climate experts 

from around the country gathered at 

ESRL in April, for the First NOAA Testbed 

USWRP Workshop. In NOAA testbeds, 

researchers tackle serious, practical forecast 

challenges—improving flood forecasts in 

California, for example, or getting more 

lead-time on landfalling hurricanes. Testbed 

research involves innovative strategies 

that are not guaranteed to work, but serve 

society in powerful ways if they do, said 

Marty Ralph, chair of the U.S. Weather 

Research Program (USWRP) executive 

committee that organized and sponsored 

the Testbed Workshop, and part of ESRL’s 

Physical Sciences Division.

“I’m excited to see this group here,” ESRL 

Director Alexander (“Sandy”) MacDonald 

said in a talk welcoming testbed workshop 

participants to Boulder. “We at the Earth 

System Research Laboratory are hell-bent to 

make all of our operational weather services 

the best,” MacDonald said. “Testbeds are a 

way to take what we have 

learned and get it into 

operations. Our job is to apply 

the science, so we provide 

the people of the United 

States with the best possible 

weather services.” 

NOAA has been 

experimenting with testbeds 

for about a decade now, 

said Janet Intrieri from the Earth System 

Research Laboratory, who coordinated 

Testbed Workshop. Intrieri, Ralph, and John 

Gaynor (NOAA’s Office of Atmospheric and 

Oceanic Research) organized the workshop 

so as to ensure that a wide variety of 

projects were represented, so participants 

could share best practices and potential 

pitfalls. Testbeds represented at the 

workshop included: 

•	 Joint Hurricane Testbed 

•	 Hydrometeorology Testbed

•	 Developmental Testbed Center 

•	 Societal Impacts Program of the 

National Center for Atmospheric 

Research

•	 Collaborative Science, Technology, and 

Applied Research 

•	 Joint Center for Satellite Data 

Assimilation 

•	 Short-Term Prediction Research and 

Transition Center

•	 Hazardous Weather Testbed 

•	 GOES-R Proving Ground

•	 Climate Testbed

Researchers involved in each 

testbed discussed recent and 

long-term achievements, and 

shared ideas for future work, 

especially collaborations. 

Diversity is part of what makes 

NOAA’s testbed program so 

strong, Ralph said. “It’s similar 

to ensemble forecasting. We all 

know that a diversity of models 

makes forecasts better,” he said. “A diversity 

of approaches in testbeds also leads to 

improvements.” 

Among the attendees was Don Berchoff, 

the new Director of the Office of Science 

and Technology in the National Weather 

Service. “I found this extremely valuable,” 

Berchoff said after the workshop. “The 

testbed community needs to think about 

interoperability between the testbeds,” and 

the forum represented a start. Berchoff 

said that since the National Weather 

Service is laying plans to better incorporate 

uncertainty into forecasting, the social 

science presentations at the workshop were 

important for him to hear. “The briefings 

helped me to formulate a strategy and 

framework that I believe will help us focus 

our limited resources on what promises to 

deliver the biggest payback.” 

“Our job is to apply 

the science, so we 

provide the people 

of the United 

States with the best 

possible weather 

services.” 

NOAA’s islands can ride into a hurricane on 

a research airplane, or walk across a weather 

map of the United States, experiencing 

current conditions—rain in eastern Oregon, 

scattered clouds over Maryland’s beaches. 

Linden Lab featured NOAA’s Second 

Life presence in a case study this spring, 

concluding “NOAA has found ways to reach 

new audiences in profound and meaningful 

ways.” Forty percent of visitors to NOAA’s 

Second Life islands had never heard of the 

agency before, Linden Lab reported. 

NOAA’s activities in virtual worlds address 

a particular challenge in communicating 

climate change—those changes happen 

too slowly for many people to perceive 

them as threatening. When a virtual glacier 

crumbles before visitors’ eyes, or a coral 

reef’s brilliant, digital colors fade to gray in 

seconds, the effects of climate change can 

become strangely more real, Hackathorn 

said.

NOAA began incorporating Second Life into 

communication and educational programs 

in 2006 to reach new audiences and raise 

general brand awareness at home and 

abroad. NOAA’s vision for the virtual world is 

the same as in reality: To create an informed 

society that understands the role of the 

ocean, coasts, and atmosphere in the global 

ecosystem to make the best social and 

economic decisions.

The Linden Lab report also found that 

NOAA’s efforts in Second Life are considered 

“pioneering,” so much so that Hackathorn 

and his supervisor William Bendel, also in 

the Global Systems Division, are 

Virtual NOAA

Many visitors to NOAA in Second Life had never heard of the agency, but hope NOAA’s new 

media efforts will expand

see p 8
9

Second Life visitor Melanie O. watched NOAA’s glacial melt, and posted her images on Flikr. “The start of the 

NOAA glacier simulation. So beautiful,” she wrote in her post. “ ... and after global warming, no more glacier.” 

Images courtesy of Melanie O.

Powering Science

Coal-fired power plants help ESRL scientists and colleagues 

verify satellite pollution measurements 

In a strange twist, polluting power plants 

in the West are actually helping advance 

air quality research. A new study by ESRL 

scientists and colleagues used the large 

pollution plumes from rural Western power 

plants to understand satellite measurements 

of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) pollution over 

urban areas including Los Angeles, Las 

Vegas, Denver, and Phoenix. There’s good 

news in the data: urban NO2 emissions 

appear to be much lower than estimated 

using the latest vetted conventional, 

bottom-up approaches.

By fine-tuning space-based 

measurements with such an 

approach, scientists believe 

satellites could offer a new view 

on emissions to improve air 

quality policy-making. NO2 and 

other nitrogen oxide gases are 

emitted by industry and motor 

vehicles and are key ingredients 

in ground-level ozone—smog—a 

lung-damaging pollutant. 

“Because there are very few other large 

sources of NO2 in areas like the Four 

Corners, pollution plumes from coal-fired 

power plants in this region are easily visible 

from space,” said atmospheric chemist 

Greg Frost, a researcher in ESRL’s Chemical 

Sciences Division and the University 

of Colorado’s Cooperative Institute for 

Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES). 

Frost is a coauthor of the new study, 

published in the Journal of Geophysical 

Research—Atmospheres. “These plumes 

provide a unique reference point against 

which we can test the accuracy of satellite 

measurements of NO2, because power 

plants measure the emissions coming from 

their smokestacks,” Frost said. 

In urban areas, emissions from cars and 

trucks are often the dominant source of NO2, 

which complicates pollution monitoring, 

said Frost. While power plants are required 

to keep close tabs on smokestack emissions, 

regulators have no reliable way to track 

all tailpipe emissions. Instead, most urban 

emission inventories are 

modeled off estimates of miles 

traveled per vehicle type, and 

checked with spot roadside 

measurements, said Frost. 

Such bottom-up estimates are 

updated only every few years.

“Satellites are one of the few 

tools available to us on a daily 

basis that can help us evaluate 

emissions of dangerous air pollutants from 

the top down,” said study lead author Si-Wan 

Kim, with ESRL’s Chemical Sciences Division 

and CIRES, who has also used satellites to 

study changes in power plant emissions in 

the eastern United States. 

Other studies have investigated large-scale 

changes in global air pollution patterns 

with satellites, but the new study is the first 

to test whether satellites can accurately 

measure urban emissions by comparison 

 P2

 P3

 P13

 C1

 C2

 C3

 C4

 C5

 C6

 C7

 C14

 P4 P1

 P5

 P6

 P7

 P8

 P9

 P11

 P10

 P12

 C8

 C9

 C10

 C11 C12

 C13

UB SCIAMACHY

Summer 2005 NO2 column measurements by satellite, 

with greens, blues, and reds indicating increasing concentration. Boxes highlight plumes from power plants 

(P) and cities (C). 

“...pollution 

plumes from 

coal-fired power 

plants in this 

region are easily 

visible from 

space.” 

Things to Do

on NOAA’s Second Life Islands: 

•	Float on a weather balloon

•	Fish for Alaska king crab 

•	Soar through a hurricane 

•	Explore underwater caves 

•	Clean up an oil spill 

•	Walk through real-time weather

•	Trigger a tsunami

•	Watch Science On a Sphere

•	Traverse a glacier 

•	Map the ocean floor

with power plant emissions. The authors 

hope their work will inform air quality policy 

making at a local scale.

Using the NO2 emissions records from 

Western power plants, Kim and Frost 

evaluated three satellite datasets that 

captured NO2 pollution plumes from space. 

They also ran a weather and air quality 

model incorporating emission data from a 

regional inventory and power plant records. 

The satellite data and models agreed on 

NO2 emissions from power plants, the 

study reported. However, Kim and Frost 

found large discrepancies in NO2 measured 

over cities, with satellites consistently 

documenting less NO2 than the inventorybased models predicted.

The satellite measurements also show that 

NO2 over cities has declined in recent years. 

Ongoing work should help the researchers 

come up with a more quantitative 

understanding of the causes of the modelmeasurement differences and satellite 

changes.

—Contributed by Adriana Bailey, CIRES 

regularly approached by other government 

agencies seeking to develop a presence in 

the virtual world. 

More: http://secondlifegrid.net/casestudies 

(then see Corporate/Government Case 

Studies)

...VIRTUAL NOAA
10

News

Climate Report Contributions

ESRL’s Roger Pulwarty 

and Brad Udall were 

among the many 

NOAA co-authors of 

Global Climate Change 

Impacts in the United 

States, a multi-agency 

report released in 

June and extensively 

covered by the media. 

The 190-page report, 

a synthesis of findings by the U.S. Global 

Change Research program, was released 

during a White House briefing. “This report 

provides the concrete scientific information 

that says unequivocally that climate change 

is happening now, and it’s happening 

in our own backyards, and it affects the 

kind of things people care about,” NOAA 

Administrator Jane Lubchenco said during 

the briefing. More: http://globalchange.gov/

CalWater Begins Early

ESRL scientists and colleagues installed 

an aerosol-meteorological observatory 

package in California’s Sierra Nevada 

early this spring, to observe the aerosol 

content within individual raindrops and 

snowflakes. The deployment represents 

an early start to the CalWater experiment, 

scheduled to begin in November. CalWater, 

funded by NOAA and the California Energy 

Commission, will address the controversial 

concept that aerosol pollution is affecting 

the timing and location of rainfall in the 

Sierra Nevada region, leaving the state with 

fewer water resources.

Unmanned Aircraft

NOAA’s Climate Program Office (CPO) 

received $1 million in the 2009 budget 

to fund data analysis from the agency’s 

budding Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) 

work in the Arctic. Because there are not 

many data yet from Arctic UAS projects, 

said CPO Director John Calder, the money 

will fund work to analyze regional data 

from other sources, which will give context 

to UAS data as they come in, and to fund 

planning meetings. ESRL’s Robbie Hood 

directs NOAA’s UAS program. “This gives us 

an opportunity for UAS and CPO to plan a 

robust research venture,” Hood said.

Also: In April, ministers from each of the 

eight countries with territory in the Arctic 

unanimously agreed to create a team of 

scientists and aviation authorities who will 

coordinate and facilitate “the safe use of 

unmanned aircraft systems for research 

and monitoring in the Arctic.” ESRL’s Betsy 

Weatherhead, with the Global Systems 

Division, worked in scientific and political 

circles to bring the issue to the attention 

of the Arctic Council. “This is a major 

step forward that will allow us to take 

measurements we’ve never been able to 

take before,” said Weatherhead, who is the 

co-lead of NOAA’s UAS Arctic Testbed. More: 

http://arctic-council.org/

Fire Weather Conference

Several dozen fire, weather and climate 

specialists convened at ESRL in April for 

the seventh annual National Seasonal 

Assessment Workshop. The interagency 

group spent three days generating a 

“seasonal assessment” for the Western States 

and Alaska, and the assessment process 

included evaluation of many NOAA and 

ESRL research products.

 “I look at everything—I’m a geek,” said 

Rich Naden, a National Park Service 

meteorologist in Albuquerque, N.M. 

and prediction coordinator for regional 

interagency fire group. Naden said he 

is especially interested in several of the 

Physical Sciences Division’s experimental 

outlooks. “Basically, the stuff coming out of 

this building is all good,” Naden said during 

the workshop. “We need more of this kind 

of interaction between academia and the 

people doing the science.”

Volcanic Ash Tool Delivers

When Alaska’s Mount Redoubt erupted 

this spring, the National Weather Service 

and the Federal Aviation Administration 

used the Volcanic Ash Coordination Tool 

(VACT)—developed by ESRL’s Global 

Systems Division—in real time. VACT helped 

the National Weather Service report the 

location, aerial extent, and movements of 

ash. The volcano spewed plumes of ash and 

gas to heights of 65,000 feet, disrupting 

flights and closing the Anchorage airport. 

VACT integrates high-resolution weather, 

aircraft location, FAA routing, enhanced 

satellite imagery, and ash dispersion 

modeling data sets to help users graphically 

display and predict the path of the volcano’s 

plume. 

Visitors

Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke visited 

ESRL in early May, as part of a visit to all 

Commerce facilities in Boulder, Colo. ESRL 

Director Sandy MacDonald gave Locke a 

briefing with ESRL’s unique visualization 

tool, Science On a Sphere®, and Secretary 

Locke took a short tour of ESRL’s laboratories 

before answering questions during a town 

hall meeting for Commerce employees. 

In late May, NOAA Administrator Jane 

Lubchenco toured ESRL’s research 

laboratories, and spoke with employees. 

“It’s clear that there’s so much going on here 

that is not only scientifically interesting, 

but important for the world,” Lubchenco 

said. She also gave a brief update on the 

multi-agency effort to create a National 

Climate Service—NOAA’s climate services 

Achievements, in Brief The following sections—News, Honored, and Published—

highlight a few measures of ESRL’s impact.

Left: Mt. Redoubt’s eruption, courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey. Middle: ESRL Director Sandy MacDonald and NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco, photo courtesy of 

Steve Peckham, NOAA. Right: ESRL Deputy Director for Administration Don Mock with U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, photo courtesy of Will von Dauster, NOAA. 
11

Left: David Welsh with ESRL’s Physical Sciences Division and Tammy Morrison, a North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University student. Photo courtesy of Will von 

Dauster, NOAA. Middle: Air traffic, http://radar.zhaw.ch. Right: 2008 Wildfire in Australia, courtesy of Mark Maupin. 

are now directed by Tom Karl. “My hope 

and expectation is that there will be an 

interagency mechanism,” Lubchenco said 

of the national effort, “and NOAA will be the 

lead agency.” 

Summer Students Arrive

More than 50 interns arrived at ESRL May 

26 to begin a summer of research. ESRL 

Director Sandy MacDonald welcomed 

the students, noted that they had an 

opportunity to deal with some of the world’s 

most pressing problems, and urged them to 

contribute their talents to future solutions. 

ESRL researchers from all divisions chatted 

with the students over refreshments. 

Climate-Changing Planes

Airplane emissions affect climate in many 

ways—oxides of nitrogen indirectly warm 

the atmosphere, some types of aerosols 

cool it, and carbon dioxide, water, and 

aviation-induced clouds all warm it. ESRL’s 

David Fahey and colleagues updated 

an assessment of the “radiative forcing” 

of aviation—its overall warming and 

cooling effect—and published findings 

in Atmospheric Environment this spring. 

Aviation represented about 3.5 percent of all 

anthoropogenic radiative forcing effects in 

2005, the team concluded, and that number 

is likely to increase to 4-4.7 percent by 2050.

Fahey is also engaged in discussions with 

the International Civil Aviation Organization 

about how to quantify the non-CO2

effects of aviation. These effects are often 

quantified simply as a multiple of the CO2

climate effect. However, such a multiplier 

is not a scientifically defensible way to 

calculate aviation’s full climate effect, Fahey 

said. A more suitable metric is required to 

explicitly include the radiative forcing of all 

aviation emissions and cloudiness changes. 

Some ‘carbon calculators’ used to offset an 

aircraft passenger’s contribution to climate 

forcing use multipliers incorrectly.

Monitoring in Congress

ESRL Director Sandy MacDonald detailed 

NOAA’s greenhouse gas and aerosol 

monitoring activities in a hearing of 

the House Committee on Science and 

Technology this spring. Representatives 

from two universities, the U.S. Forest Service, 

NASA, the Environmental Protection Agency, 

and the National Institute of Standards 

and Technology also testified. More: http://

science.house.gov/Publications/hearings_

markups_details.aspx?NewsID=2424

Honored

Wayne Angevine (ESRL’s Chemical Sciences 

Division) was appointed as the Chair of 

the American Meteorological Society 

Committee on Boundary Layers and 

Turbulence.

Susan Solomon (ESRL’s Chemical Sciences 

Division) became a Chevalier (“knight”) in 

the French Legion of Honor. “This award 

testifies to the President’s high esteem for 

your merits and accomplishments,” French 

Ambassador to the United States Pierre 

Vimont wrote in a letter informing Solomon 

of the award.

Brad Udall, director of the Western Water 

Assessment (WWA) and several colleagues 

were honored with the U.S. Department 

of the Interior’s “Partners in Conservation 

Award” for their role in creating guidelines 

for managing the Colorado River during 

droughts. WWA, a joint effort of ESRL’s 

Physical Sciences Division and the University 

of Colorado at Boulder, shared the award 

with the University of Colorado at Boulder’s 

Center for Advanced Decision Support for 

Water and Environmental Systems, CADWES. 

“In the midst of the worst drought in more 

than a century they formed an agreement 

that promises a future of cooperation in the 

Colorado River Basin,” said Interior Secretary 

Ken Salazar, who presented the award.

Twelve ESRL scientists received significant 

awards at the fourth annual Rendezvous 

Science Symposium of the Cooperative 

Institute for Research in Environmental 

Sciences (CIRES): 

•	Andrew Crotwell, Geoff Dutton, Molly 

Heller, Debra Mondeel, Carolina 

Siso, and Kelly Sours of ESRL’s Global 

Monitoring Division received the CIRES 

Silver Medal for their contributions to the 

Annual Greenhouse Gas Index (AGGI). Their 

NOAA colleagues won a Department of 

Commerce Silver Medal.

•	Christine Ennis (in ESRL’s Chemical 

Sciences Division) received a CIRES 

Director’s Award for her excellent work 

on the Climate Change Science Program’s 

“Synthesis and Assessment Product 2.4,” 

on ozone-depleting substances and the 

stratospheric ozone layer. Ennis’ NOAA 

colleagues were awarded the NOAA 

Administrator’s Award. 

•	Molly Heller also received a CIRES 

Outstanding Service Award for her 

contributions in logistics for the carbon 

cycle and greenhouse gases flask program, 

and for creating the David Skaggs Research 

Center’s new recycling program. 

•	 John Holloway (in ESRL’s Chemical 

Sciences Division) received an Outstanding 

Performance Award in Science and 

Engineering for work on a state-of-the-art 

instrument to measure carbon monoxide 

from aircraft. 

•	Sergey Matrosov (in ESRL’s Physical 

Sciences Division) also received an 

Outstanding Performance in Science and 

Engineering Award for his use of millimeter 

wavelength radar to study the properties 

of clouds and precipitation.

•	Sonja Wolter, Doug Guenther, and 

Fred Moore (in ESRL’s Global Monitoring 

Division) received an Outstanding 

Performance in Science and Engineering 

Award for their work on a programmable 

flask package air sampler. 

Published 

ESRL’s peer-reviewed publications are now 

available digitally:

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

Division publication sites remain: 

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

publications/

PSD: www.cdc.noaa.gov/pubs

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

GSD: www.fsl.noaa.gov/publications/
12

Earth System Research Laboratory

325 Broadway

Boulder, CO 80305

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

ESRL Quarterly Editor: Katy Human 

Photographers: Will von Dauster, Barb DeLuisi, Annie Reiser

Other Contributors: Anatta, Adriana Bailey, Debra Dailey-Fisher

Contact: katy.g.human@noaa.gov

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. 

Hundreds Attend NOAA Green Fair

“Bring Your Child Down to Earth Day” focused on science, fun

Victoria Loughe, 10, led her team to victory 

in a recycling relay at NOAA’s Boulder 

laboratories April 23, and she said she 

spent the day learning not only about 

compost, but about Earth’s atmosphere 

and oceans. 

“It was lots of fun,” Victoria said after 

NOAA’s “Bring Your Child Down to Earth 

Day,” a day of activities for employees, 

children, and the public. NOAA held its 

own version of “Bring Your Child to Work 

Day” the day after Earth Day, in tandem 

with a Green Fair.

More than 300 people wandered through 

an outdoors tent featuring products and 

information from local green vendors, 

moved inside to watch presentations on 

ESRL’s unique visualization tool, Science 

On a Sphere®, and created flip-books 

to illustrate Arctic Sea ice loss. Kids also 

watched presentations of “Big Green 

Rabbit,” a television program about 

conservation.

“I liked that Science On a Sphere®,” Victoria 

said, “especially how it showed hurricanes.” 

Richard Roth, president of Cool Solar, 

Inc. in Boulder, said he was grateful for 

the invitation to spend a day at NOAA, 

displaying products and chatting with 

employees. Cool Solar installs photovoltaic 

panels on homes and businesses. “Our 

company did get some interest,” Roth said, 

“but it was also interesting and informative 

for me to just meet some of the people 

from NOAA. I had extensive discussions 

about issues relevant to the solar industry.” 

Dozens of NOAA employees helped staff 

children’s activities, inflate balloons, 

present Science On a Sphere®, and discuss 

CarbonTracker, a NOAA system that tracks 

the global release and uptake of carbon 

dioxide, a critical greenhouse gas. 

Beth Powell, outreach coordinator for the 

city of Boulder’s ClimateSmart Program, set 

up a table of materials at the fair, including 

information on a new county-wide loan 

program to help homeowners purchase 

solar panels, energy efficient windows, 

tankless water heaters, etc.

“By the end of the day, all my materials 

had been taken,” Powell said. Although 

many NOAA employees study climate 

change or factors that influence climate 

and the weather, Powell said, she did not 

feel like she was “preaching to the choir” 

when discussing the climate impacts of 

energy use, transportation choices, and 

purchasing decisions. “Many of us in our 

daily, busy lives may not be thinking about 

how what we do each day affects our 

atmosphere for decades.” 

Victoria said the recycling relay was her 

favorite part of the day. She and two 

teammates accurately tossed a plastic 

fork into the trash bin, a slip of paper 

into recycling, and a dandelion into the 

compost bin. 

“I didn’t know what compost was before 

that,” Victoria said. 

Top: Checking out bins set up for a recycling relay. Photo courtesy of Annie Reiser, NOAA. Bottom: Visitors 

work with ESRL meteorologist Sara Summers (Global Systems Division ) on a soil and water experiment. Photo 

courtesy of Will von Dauster, NOAA.