1

Croaker Climate

The fish’s future is bright, 

collaborative study suggests

ESRL Quarterly

Summer 2010

Inside

Director’s Corner 2

By the Numbers 3

Superplane 3

Balloon Science 5

Ozone 6

Greenland Science Blog 7

Climate Choices 7

CalNex and the Art of Inlets 8

Indigenous Knowledge

and Science 9

News, Honors, more... 10

Tracking Ash 12

Jonathan Hare of NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries 

Science Center in Narragansett, R.I. wanted to 

know how climate change information could 

be used to help plan for the future of our 

fisheries. “Most current management plans do 

not include the effect of climate change on 

specific fish populations, some of which will 

increase and others decrease as a result,” said 

Hare. 

Hare knew that the Atlantic croaker would 

be an excellent species of fish for such a 

study since its survival is directly related to 

temperature changes. Millions of pounds of 

this mild-flavored fish are caught in the United 

States every year. In the winter, croakers 

travel to shallow bay areas along the U.S. 

northeast coast and lay eggs. Once hatched, 

the young fish have a better chance of making 

it to adulthood when winters are warm. To 

figure out how climate change might affect 

croakers, Hare needed the right kind of climate 

information. 

So Hare gave ESRL’s Mike Alexander (Physical 

Sciences Division, PSD), a call. The two had 

previously served together on a scientific 

committee, and Hare knew Alexander worked 

Pseudo Storms, 

Key Decisions

OSSEs mimic reality to help NOAA 

prioritize resources

see page 5 see page 4 see page 6

It’s notoriously difficult to know when a 

hurricane is about to spin up into a monster, 

or when a storm will settle down a notch, 

sparing a coastal city of major damage. To 

predict those shifts in intensity and other 

changes, weather researchers and forecasters 

need better observations of hurricanes and 

storm environments. 

But what’s the most effective way to gather 

those observations? Launch a new billiondollar satellite? Buy a few multi-million-dollar 

unmanned aircraft systems, UAS, to gather 

observations? Or send instruments out over 

the ocean on relatively inexpensive balloons?

To help NOAA make such decisions, Yuanfu 

Xie, Nikki Privé and their colleagues are 

creating Observing System Simulations 

Experiments or OSSEs—worlds of makebelieve observations and simulated weather. 

OSSEs are designed to help researchers plan 

future observing systems, and how to best 

use the data from those systems.

“This is what you do when you want to know 

how much impact a new observing system 

On April 20, a now all-too-well known 

deepwater oil rig exploded in the Gulf of 

Mexico, killing 11 people on board and 

igniting a fireball visible for miles. 

ESRL’s Tom Ryerson (Chemical Sciences 

Division) was among several NOAA scientists 

scheduled to fly a research airplane from 

Florida to Colorado three days later, and he 

and his colleagues figured they might shift 

the flight slightly to sample the plume from 

the burning rig on the way. The airplane was 

already extensively outfitted for a major air 

quality and climate mission over California, 

with instruments that would be ideal for 

understanding some of the air quality 

implications of the disaster.

“We would have done it, but the rig sank the 

day before we flew,” Ryerson said, “we thought 

the sinking, which extinguished the rig fire, 

would be the end of it.” He and his colleagues 

left the Gulf tragedy behind and concentrated 

on CalNex (a study focused on the nexus of air 

quality and climate in California). It would be 

a week before the first eye-opening estimates 

of 5,000 barrels of spilled oil daily were 

available—now up to 35,000-60,000 barrels 

daily, of which about 24,000 barrels are being 

Target: Gulf Spill

Instrumented aircraft heads to 

Gulf, to help assess air quality 

News from NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory

U.S. Coast Guard
2

Director’s Corner

Like everyone, the story that has galvanized 

my attention during the last couple of months 

is the oil spill. If one could have imagined 

something that tested NOAA from one end 

of the organization to the other, its doubtful 

if we could have come up with anything as 

compelling and comprehensive as the disaster 

in the Gulf of Mexico. NOAA has mission 

responsibility for prediction of the oceans and 

atmosphere, and for stewardship of our coasts 

and our fisheries. NOAA’s Office of Restoration 

and Response, in fact, was set up to deal with 

events such as the oil spill, based on the hard 

experience of previous situations, such as the 

breakup of the Exxon Valdez in Prince William 

Sound. The National Weather Service is, as I 

write this, tracking a potential tropical storm 

that could enter the Gulf of Mexico in the next 

couple of days, and National Marine Fisheries 

staff are dealing with a host of issues including 

the moratorium on fishing in the affected 

areas.

Leading NOAA is one of the world’s 

preeminent scientists. Dr. Jane Lubchenco is 

a leader in the understanding of ocean life, 

which happens to be the primary issue we 

face with the Deepwater Horizon spill. I had 

the privilege of attending a symposium put 

together by NOAA to bring together scientists 

from academia and industry, and to ask them 

for their help on how to deal with the spill. It 

was held in Baton Rouge, LA on June 2 and 

3, and a highlight was the presentation by 

Dr. Lubchenco of the challenges we face, and 

the efforts that are underway to observe and 

deal with the situation. The thing that was 

impressive to me was talking to the various 

scientists—I met people who had investigated 

previous spills such as the Ixtoc (a Mexican 

spill similar to Deepwater Horizon), Exxon 

Valdez, and numerous others. There were 

experts on every facet of the fate of oil and 

how it will affect our ocean life and beaches. 

The next day I rode with Dr. Lubchenco in the 

NOAA P3 to look at the Deepwater Horizon site 

and the Gulf Coast. I took the picture below of 

a ship plowing through deep oil near the well 

site.

I am particularly proud of the role that ESRL 

has played in responding to this national 

emergency. A.R. Ravishankara (Director of 

the Chemical Sciences Division) and the team 

working on CalNex volunteered to suspend 

their work and fly missions over the Gulf to 

determine the effects of the disaster on air 

quality, as described on the front page of 

this ESRL Quarterly. NOAA’s Office of Oceanic 

and Atmospheric Research (OAR) has been 

using its people and research infrastructure 

repeatedly to provide capabilities required by 

the disaster. NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic 

and Meteorologial Laboratory has supplied 

expertise on ocean modeling, OAR people 

and our affiliates have participated in cruises 

to observe the northern Gulf, and NOAA Sea 

Grant has made a big effort to work with 

the local communities who have been so 

hard hit by the impact on their environment 

and livelihoods. As the hurricane season 

approaches, the outstanding work of the 

ESRL scientists, notably those involved with 

the ensemble Kalman filter developed in our 

Physical Sciences Division, and the FIM (Flowfollowing, finite-volume Icosahedral Model) 

developed in the Global Systems Division, 

will make the forecasts needed for hurricane 

preparedness significantly better. Not only 

are these predictions showing new skill, 

they are being run on the newly upgraded 

supercomputer in this building, highlighting 

the role of our IT professionals who have made 

these model runs feasible.

As difficult as this oil spill is, it brings to the 

forefront the necessity of dealing with the 

nation’s energy future. I was privileged to 

testify before the House Science Committee 

last week, building on the excellent efforts of 

Melinda Marquis and other ESRL people who 

have been pushing the importance of NOAA’s 

contribution to Renewable Energy. Thus NOAA 

is not only the “go-to” agency to deal with 

the oil spill, it is also working on the ultimate 

solutions that the nation will need to avoid 

similar environmental problems.

A ship travels through oil in the Gulf of Mexico, leaving —Alexander MacDonald

a temporary trail of clear water behind.
3

By the Numbers 

Federal Virtual World Participants

people participated 

in this year’s Federal 

Consortium for Virtual 

Worlds, in May in Washington, 

D.C. This number of virtual enthusiasts has grown steadily from 

five founding members in 2007. ESRL’s Eric Hackathorn (Global 

Systems Division and also NOAA’s virtual worlds program manager) 

is an ambassador for developing virtual worlds for the federal 

government, and renowned as one of the first to establish a science 

presence in Second Life. Hackathorn went on to lead a multiorganizational effort to develop the expanding virtual continent 

SciLands, also within Second Life. In addition to NOAA, NASA, the 

National Institutes of Health, the Department of Energy, and others 

have created islands in this virtual archipelago; all neighbors with 

a focus on science education. “By being in close virtual proximity 

to one another, conversations take place and ideas take form that 

would have never have occurred in the real world Hackathorn said. 

More: http://www.scilands.org/

1,600

It’s a bird, it’s a man...it’s SuperPlane 

Spring mission demonstrates Global Hawk’s chemistry prowess; next up: Gulf hurricanes

This spring, NASA and NOAA outfitted an 

unmanned military airplane with atmospheric 

instruments and sent it on a spectacular series 

of flights to study the atmosphere over the 

Pacific Ocean. Now, scientists are aiming the 

research plane at hurricane formation and 

intensification in the Gulf of Mexico. Because 

the aircraft can soar for 30 hours per flight, 

researchers will get an unprecedented look at 

hurricanes as they develop and evolve.

“These long-endurance aircraft 

demonstrations represent a historic 

achievement for the Earth science 

community,” said Robbie Hood, NOAA 

Unmanned Aircraft Systems, UAS, program. 

“We now have a new observing tool that will 

allow us to closely study varying land, ocean, 

or atmospheric conditions in a single flight 

from the North Pole to the Equator or to stay 

and observe a rapidly changing event like a 

hurricane for more than a day.”

The Pacific. The Global Hawk Pacific mission 

(GloPac) represented the first science mission 

for the 116-foot wingspan unmanned aircraft, 

which NASA acquired from the U.S. Air Force 

two years ago. The drone, which can soar up 

to 65,000 feet and for 10,000 miles, is piloted 

remotely from NASA’s Dryden Flight Research 

Center in California. 

During GloPac flights, ESRL scientists and 

their colleagues anxiously watched computer 

screens in Dryden mission control. They 

cheered as data streamed in from instruments 

designed to measure greenhouse gases, 

ozone-depleting chemicals, and aerosols. 

Within a few weeks and after three long 

science flights up to 28 hours, scientists 

checked off all key science goals, according 

to ESRL’s David Fahey (Chemical Sciences 

Division), co-mission scientist on GloPac 

mission. They demonstrated the capability of 

the Global Hawk to routinely access chemical 

and dynamical events in different atmospheric 

regions from 85°N in the Arctic to 12°N in the 

near tropics. Highlights included sampling the 

chemistry and structure of a fragment of polar 

air, which swirled down into the northern 

Pacific from the Arctic; catching the edge of a 

dust plume sweeping across the Pacific; and 

atmospheric sampling coordinated with a 

NASA satellite passing overhead. 

The GloPac team also gathered stunning 

photographs—shot from the UAS—of Arctic 

sea ice, suggesting that the aircraft could be 

used to survey ice extent and thickness. 

“Part of this was luck,” Fahey said, “but luck 

favors the prepared.” 

The Atlantic. GRIP is next, the NASA 

Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes 

experiment, which will begin targeting 

hurricanes in late August for six weeks. 

For GRIP, the Global Hawk will carry a new 

suite of instruments, more appropriate for 

hurricane research—100 dropsondes for 

measuring temperature, pressure, humidity 

and winds from high altitude to the surface; 

a lightning detector; a wind and rain profiler; 

and a radiometer.

ESRL’s Gary Wick (Physical Sciences Division) 

is principal investigator for the dropsondes, 

and he expects to be busy well before August, 

testing out the new instruments and their 

deployment system, recently designed and 

built at the National Center for Atmospheric 

Research. 

NOAA already releases dropsondes into 

hurricanes from manned research and 

operational airplanes, Wick said, to better 

understand the wind and thermal structure 

of the storms and their environment – key 

information for better storm intensity and 

track predictions. 

But the range of those piloted airplanes is 

limited, usually to fewer than nine hours, Wick 

said. Those airplanes typically drop up to 30 

sondes, while the Global Hawk may be able to 

remain in hurricane regions for up to 20 hours 

at a time, releasing more than 90. On a map, 

conventional dropsonde locations look “like a 

few drops,” Wick said; Global Hawk’s releases 

look like “a pincushion.”

It’s not yet clear if the Global Hawk will be 

able to fly safely above hurricanes, Wick said. 

But even if the craft can only soar in close, 

the aircraft should be able to probe storm 

structure from several angles, characterize the 

environment in front of the storm, and track 

its evolution. “That’s what’s new here,” Wick 

said. “The fact that we will be able to follow 

the evolution of a storm.” 

“It’s kind of an exciting time in hurricane 

research,” said Michael Black, with NOAA’s 

Atlantic Oceaographic and Meteorological 

Laboratory, who is working closely with 

Wick and other colleagues 

this summer. “A platform 

like this Global Hawk...

could be really 

tremendous for us.”

A virtual conference. 3
4

...OSSE, from page 1

could have on numerical weather prediction—you set up an OSSE,” 

Privé said. “We are supporting NOAA’s UAS program (Unmanned Aircraft 

Systems) and others, to determine the best potential use.” 

Privé, Xie, Scott Mackaro, and other ESRL Global Systems Division 

scientists are working with colleagues at the National Centers for 

Environmental Prediction, NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and 

Meteorological Laboratory , AOML, NASA, and the European Center 

for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts to finish building two OSSEs this 

year: A global one, focused on improving hurricane track forecasts, and 

a finer-resolution regional OSSE, targeting hurricane intensity. 

In the case of the global system, the interagency research team has 

already created a “nature run,” which represents global weather and 

atmospheric conditions for the entire year of 2006, at a resolution of 

about 40 km. The run includes 10 hurricanes and typhoons that formed 

between June and August, three of them near the United States.

It was tricky enough to create a complete and accurate representation 

of Earth’s weather for an entire year, but next came the task of creating 

synthetic observations from existing meteorology networks and 

proposed new ones. Creating observations is an exacting science, said 

GSD’s Steve Weygandt, who has worked on OSSEs for about a decade 

now. The simulated observations cannot be perfect—they need to 

be riddled with the same kinds of errors and missing data points that 

plague reality. 

“Everything is in specifying the errors,” Weygandt said. “If synthetic 

observations from proposed new systems are too perfect, it’s very 

easy to get an overly optimistic result about the effect of a proposed 

observing system.” 

Synthetic observations for the global OSSE 

will be complete this summer, Xie and 

Privé said, and then can be used to run 

weather prediction experiments toward 

the end of the summer. How skillfully 

does the model predict weather, given 

conventional observations? Does skill 

improve if measurements from a new 

observing system—say a system of UAS 

with dropsondes—are assimilated? 

“We can do this because we know the 

truth,” Xie said. “We know what (weather) 

actually happens.” 

“You can even use the models to tell you 

about where to collect observations,” 

Weygandt said. For example, which 

improves forecasts more significantly: Observations from near the 

center of a hurricane, or around the edges of it?

“Some really Interesting questions emerge about reality,” Privé said. In 

the global model nature run, one of the three hurricanes that swing 

near the United States passes directly over Cuba. Would a system of 

UAS airplanes—similar to military drones—be allowed to conduct 

atmospheric surveillance over that country?

Xie and his colleagues will ask researchers at AOML for guidance about 

which UAS to “fly” in the simulation, along what routes, and carrying 

what payloads. “Then we can ask, could we do a better job if we took a 

different route?” Xie said.

 The regional OSSE is also nearly ready for experiments, Privé said, and 

although it is at significantly finer resolution than the global one, it has 

not yet been calibrated. The resolution of about 4 km, however, will 

allow researchers to investigate hurricane intensity changes (hurricane 

intensity forecasts have not improved in 20 years; hurricane track 

forecasts have improved 50 percent in that 

time). That OSSE will focus on three days in 

the development of a single storm: 2008’s 

Hurricane Ike. 

Privé said she and her colleagues will be 

cautious when interpreting the results of 

the two OSSEs. “Both of these are really 

case studies,” she said. Results may speak 

to potential forecast improvement in the 

specific forecast models used: GFS/GSI in the 

case of the global OSSE; and HWRF/GSI in the 

case of the regional one.

Even given those limits, OSSEs represent 

the best way to evaluate expensive systems, 

without actually deploying them, Privé and 

Weygandt said. 

“What else could we do? Fly a new satellite 

for two months and study the global impact 

of the observations on forecast skill and other statistics? What if it 

doesn’t help?” Privé asked.

Xie and Weygandt estimated that OSSEs—which can cost $1 million, 

given the many agencies, computing power, and people involved—

cost a small fraction of a new observation system, whether a satellite or 

UAS-based observation network. 

“Many of us who have 

worked on OSSEs believe 

they should be used 

to help NOAA make 

wise decisions about 

major observing system 

investments. 

—Steven Koch, Global Systems Division 

Director

Hurricane Ike in 2008.

NOAA

Observing Systems. A GOES satellite at launch, a Global Hawk unmanned aircraft, two “hurricane hunter” airplanes. ESRL scientists are creating models to help NOAA understand the 

potential value of future observations for improving hurricane forecasts. 
5

recovered.

The ESRL-led team got its chance in early June. NOAA redirected the 

WP-3D airplane from California back to the Gulf of Mexico, to help in a 

multi-agency effort to understand the environmental effects of the now 

disastrous BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. The spill itself and controlled 

burns of spilled oil and natural gas could affect air quality, with 

implications for the health and safety of response workers and others.

The WP-3D—filled with customized, real-time chemistry instruments 

and air sample flasks—flew for a total of about 14 hours directly over 

the spill site, downwind, and in “clean air” parts of the Gulf, currently 

unaffected by the spill, Ryerson said. During two flights June 8 and 

10, the aircraft flew mostly between altitudes of 600 to 2,000 feet, to 

sample the marine boundary layer, which was expected to trap most 

pollutants. At its lowest, the airplane was just 200 feet above the water.

“The only way we could have responded so quickly is that CalNex was 

happening, so we already had everything tested, installed, and ready 

to go,” Ryerson said. “We were lucky to already have had the aircraft 

instrumented for an air quality study. Even if we had plenty of time 

to figure out a specific payload for this sort of incident, we probably 

wouldn’t have changed much.”

In California, the airplane was one of several platforms involved in 

CalNex, which has been in planning for more than four years and 

included researchers from all ESRL divisions, several other NOAA 

laboratories and centers, the state of California, and academic and 

international collaborators. 

ESRL’s custom instruments onboard included those to assess the 

concentrations of volatile organic compounds (some of which are 

damaging to human health), aerosols, ozone (a lung-damaging 

pollutant at Earth’s surface), and particulate matter including soot, as 

well as the transport and evolution of plumes of polluted air.

...Gulf spill, from page 1

In the Gulf, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, has been 

conducting extensive air quality monitoring throughout the oil spill 

response effort. EPA, NOAA, and the Occupational Safety and Health 

Administration, OSHA, worked collaboratively to take advantage of 

NOAA’s specialized instruments. 

“Ensuring the health and safety of Gulf Coast families is a priority for 

NOAA,” Jane Lubchenco, under secretary of commerce for oceans and 

atmosphere and NOAA administrator, said in a statement. “We want to 

make certain that the air is safe for coastal residents as well as workers 

on the water. We are pleased to partner with EPA in this effort and 

to provide state-of-the-science air quality instruments in our flying 

laboratory aboard the P-3 aircraft.”

“We have a lot of data to get through and we’re still trying to 

understand everything we saw,” Ryerson said. An initial assessment 

suggested that most pollutants were trapped within a wellmixed boundary layer, and data from the WP-3D were consistent 

with measurements taken by EPA and OSHA, and independent 

measurements from a ship in the region. More detailed information will 

be available in coming weeks. 

A six-foot diameter weather balloon soared 

into low clouds over Boulder, CO, April 21, its 

historic payload dangling from a string below. 

For 30 years now, NOAA researchers have sent 

balloon-borne instruments nearly 100,000 

feet into the air twice a month, to collect data 

about the atmosphere, from the ground up 

to the darkness of near space. Among the 

measurements the balloon would take on its 

journey was water vapor concentration, which 

is critical for understanding climate change. 

A few dozen scientists, journalists, and 

members of the general public watched the 

NOAA-instrumented balloon disappear into 

the clouds, during a celebration of the unique, 

30-year “Boulder Record” of water vapor 

measurements. 

“Today, we sing a little bit about something 

that often goes unsung: long-term 

monitoring,” said Jim Butler, Director of the 

NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory’s 

(ESRL) Global Monitoring Division (GMD). 

Butler and several colleagues recognized the 

scientific foresight of ESRL’s Sam Oltmans, who 

began the water vapor measurements in 1980. 

Scientists are increasingly interested to know 

if the amount and distribution of water vapor 

in the upper atmosphere are changing, said 

Dale Hurst, who runs the Boulder water vapor 

program today. Water vapor is a greenhouse 

gas that plays critical roles in climate change.

When Oltmans began the measurement 

program, the balloons had to be even bigger 

to carry water vapor instruments, called frostpoint hygrometers, that weighed three times 

as much as today’s miniaturized versions. Over 

the years, Oltmans and his colleagues have 

worked to ensure that the water vapor data 

are precise, accurate, and comparable with 

those from previous years. Along the way, 

these data have helped solve some significant 

scientific disputes about the amounts of water 

vapor in various parts of the atmosphere, 

Oltmans said, and they’ve uncovered patterns 

that remain puzzling today. 

ESRL’s Susan Solomon, who helped lead the 

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 

effort that earned the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, 

spoke at the ceremony. She thanked Oltmans 

and his colleagues for their dedication, and 

described how she used the Boulder water 

vapor record—and satellite data—in a recent 

paper linking changes in upper atmospheric 

water vapor levels to temperatures here at 

Earth’s surface. 

“You can be assured that the world scientific 

community recognizes the incredible value of 

this dataset,” Solomon said. 

Balloon Science

ESRL celebrates 30 years of water vapor data 

Sam Oltmans (GMD) holds an historic computer printout of data from a balloon-borne water vapor instrument called a frost-point hygrometer.

Dan Lack, CIRES/NOAA

Oil slick seen 

from a window 

of the NOAA 

WP-3D research 

airplane, which 

flew over the 

Gulf spill to collect air quality 

data.
6

with climate data.

“I was excited about the prospect of 

collaborating,” said Alexander, a climate 

scientist who has always been interested in 

marine biology. He had already done research 

on how climate variability may impact 

amphibians and stellar sea lions, for example. 

He worked with Hare to determine what data 

would be best for this study and where to get it. 

Because ocean temperatures in near-shore 

bays and estuaries generally track the 

overlying air temperature, the latter could 

be used as input to the croaker model. 

Alexander and Jamie Scott (PSD and CIRES), 

extracted air temperatures along the U.S. East 

Coast spanning 1870-2001 from 14 General 

Circulation Models (GCMs) that were used 

in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate 

Change Fourth Assessment Report. Also 

used from this widely established and freely 

available dataset were three different CO2

scenarios that estimate greenhouse gas and air 

temperature changes from the present out to 

the year 2100. Alexander also helped explain 

the climate models, how to use the data, and 

checked the consistency of the information 

both in nature and within the model.

Hare and his colleagues at NFSC then fed the 

climate data into a fish population model that 

combined temperature and fishing rates; two 

key factors that affect fish mortality. This new 

fish-climate model is one of the first to look at 

the relationship between temperature change 

and its impact on a specific fish population.

The results looked pretty positive for the 

Atlantic croaker: If global temperatures 

continue to increase as predicted, more 

croakers will make it to adulthood and, 

therefore, the population will grow. Climate 

change may also widen the geographic range 

of croakers. Currently the Chesapeake Bay 

houses the highest density of croakers. Over 

time their range could expand into an area 

around New York. 

The team of scientists published their work in 

the March 2010 issue of Ecology Applications. 

Alexander cautioned that the results are specific 

to the Atlantic croaker: “While climate change 

may increase the population and range of 

croakers, it is likely to adversely affect other fish 

such as cod,” he said. Because climate change 

information has not traditionally been included 

in fisheries planning, this model could be a 

breakthrough in performing stock assessments 

and planning for sustainable fisheries. 

Hare concluded: “Our results demonstrate 

that climate effects on fisheries must be 

identified, understood, and incorporated into 

the scientific advice provided to managers if 

sustainable exploitation is to be achieved and 

maintained in a changing climate.”

Current GCMs can only provide forecasts out 

to 50-100 years, a bit far in the future for most 

fisheries planning, said Hare. Shorter-term 

forecasts ranging between 5-50 years may 

soon become available for incorporation into 

fisheries models, to make even better informed 

decisions. 

—Barb DeLuisi

Twenty-five years ago in May, scientists with 

the British Antarctic Survey reported that the 

springtime stratospheric ozone layer over 

the Antarctic was thinning dramatically. In 

the years since then, ESRL scientists have 

been extensively involved in 

understanding the reasons 

for that decline, 

tracking levels of 

the chemicals 

that deplete 

stratospheric ozone, and calculating the 

effectiveness of international policies to allow 

ozone layer recovery.

Three of those ESRL researchers traveled 

to the University of Cambridge this spring, 

to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the 

publication describing the discovery 

of ozone depletion, and to 

honor the authors of that 

paper—Joe Farman, 

Brian Gardiner, 

and Jonathan 

Shanklin. 

Susan Solomon (Chemical Sciences Division, 

CSD) spoke about past and future ozone 

depletion. David Fahey (CSD) described how 

an international treaty to regulate ozonedepleting chemicals has also benefitted 

climate. A.R. Ravishankara (CSD Director) 

attended the symposium; he was at nearby 

Oxford University, serving as the distinguished 

Hinshelwood Lecturer. 

Quadrennial Assessment 

ESRL scientists from the Global Monitoring and 

Chemical Sciences divisions are helping to coauthor the 2010 Scientific Assessment of Ozone 

Depletion, conducted under the auspices of 

the World Meteorological Organization and 

the United Nations Environment Programme. 

The last assessment came out in 2006; the 

executive summary of the 2010 assessment 

will be released in July. 

A.R. Ravishankara is co-chair of the 2010 

assessment, and coordinating lead authors 

include John Daniel (CSD), Steve Montzka 

(GMD), and David Fahey (CSD). Christine Ennis 

(CSD) is coordinating editor, and other ESRL 

staff are serving as lead authors, coauthors, 

reviewers, and in other roles. 

Ozone Symposium

... Fish, from page 1

NASA Ozone minimum over Antarctica in September 2009. 

NOAA
7

Matt Shupe

In search of clouds over Greenland

At 10,000 feet high in the middle of the 

Greenland Ice Sheet, ESRL’s Matthew Shupe 

and colleagues spent part of May and June 

installing a powerful suite of climate and 

weather instruments to better understand 

how clouds contribute to rapid warming and 

melting in the region.

The work required the help of skilled 

carpenters, careful insulation of the 

instruments, and sleeping in tents in subzero 

temperatures. Some days, the air sparkled with 

“diamond dust” ice crystals, swept around by 

the wind. Others, fog swept through, leaving 

a rime of feather-like ice crystals on exposed 

surfaces.

Shupe (also with CIRES) blogged about his 

work in Summit at http://cires.colorado.edu/

blogs/shupe/. He wrote about the challenges 

of installing instruments, living in a tent city, 

and doing yoga in Carhartt pants.

Scientifically, Shupe is working with David 

Turner (University of Wisconsin) and Von 

Walden (University of Idaho) to study clouds, 

precipitation, and atmospheric structure, 

all of which are poorly understood over 

the Greenland Ice Sheet. Clouds can have 

profound effects on climate and climate 

change by altering the radiative balance 

in the atmosphere and at the surface, and 

through their roles in converting water 

between vapor, liquid, and ice phases. An 

improved understanding of cloud structure 

and processes is vital to understanding climate 

change.

The researchers installed many new 

instruments at Summit: a cloud radar, two 

microwave radiometers, a ceilometer, an 

Atmospheric Emitted Radiance Interferometer, 

an X-band precipitation sensor, a sodar, a 

cloud and aerosol polarization and backscatter 

lidar, and a micropulse lidar. The researchers 

also initiated a program to launch radiosondes 

twice daily, to measure the atmospheric 

structure above the station. The full suite of 

instruments will be operated for at least the 

next four years.

Shupe’s work is funded by a five-year 

National Science Foundation, NSF, grant, 

and the Summit project is part of the Arctic 

Observing Network, an NSF effort to expand 

understanding of Arctic climate change. 

Additional support for the project is coming 

from the NOAA Earth System Research 

Laboratory, the Department of Energy, and 

Environment Canada.

The project is called ICECAPS: Integrated 

Characterization of Energy, Clouds, 

Atmospheric state, and Precipitation at 

Summit.

More: http://cires.colorado.edu/blogs/shupe/

America’s Climate Choices 

A.R. Ravishankara, Susan Solomon co-author National Research Council reports

Credible, strong science shows that humancaused climate change is occurring, and poses 

serious risk for human and natural systems, 

according to Advancing the Science of Climate 

Change, one of three reports issued by the 

National Research Council, NRC, in May. 

The NRC will release two more reports later 

this year, for the five-part study known as 

America’s Climate Choices, requested by 

Congress. ESRL’s Susan Solomon (Chemical 

Sciences Division, CSD) is co-authoring the 

overarching study, which aims to provide “a 

scientific framework for shaping the policy 

choices underlying the nation’s efforts to 

confront climate change.” 

ESRL’s A.R. Ravishankara (CSD Director) was 

one of 21 authors of the new Advancing 

the Science report. That report outlines 

what is known about climate change, from 

steady increases in Earth’s average surface 

temperature during the past century, to 

the predominant cause of those changes—

“human activities that release carbon dioxide 

and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases 

into the atmosphere.” 

It also calls for significant changes to the 

way climate change research is organized, 

including an expanded integrative and 

interdisciplinary approach to studying climate 

change issues, combining physical, social, 

biological, health, and engineering sciences.

Advancing the Science recommends that a 

single federal 

entity or program 

coordinate a 

national climate 

research effort, and 

urges the nation 

to deploy a more 

comprehensive 

climate observing 

system. CIRES 

scientist Waleed 

Abdalati was 

also a report 

co-author, and 

Pamela Matson of Stanford University served 

as chair.

More: http://americasclimatechoices.org/

Christopher Cox, University of Idaho

Susan Solomon speaks during 

an America’s Climate Choices 

Summit in 2009. 

NRC
8

It’s tricky to study the atmosphere from a 

research airplane speeding faster than 325 

feet per second through thin air. Researchers 

rely on “inlets” to draw samples into custom 

instruments onboard—and designing those 

inlets can take exquisite attention to detail. 

“Some of them are dead simple, but some 

are full-on instruments in their own right,” 

said ESRL’s Tom Ryerson (Chemical Sciences 

Division, CSD). 

It’s not just a matter of avoiding jet exhaust: If 

an inlet isn’t designed correctly, particles could 

shoot by the opening, evading observation by 

instruments onboard. Gases might chemically 

react with the lining of an inlet tube, or 

temporarily absorb enough to mess up 

measurements. 

As NOAA’s WP-3D research airplane—studded 

with inlets—headed out for the CalNex 

mission in California this spring, it stopped 

for a few days at the Rocky Mountain Region 

Airport in Broomfield, CO. ESRL researchers 

installed and tested equipment on a practice 

flight before the mission, a major study of 

the nexus of air quality and climate change in 

California. Ryerson, Carsten Warneke (CSD and 

CIRES), and Chuck Brock (CSD) also showed 

curious colleagues around the airplane, 

explaining the science and art of airplanebased sampling. 

Art of the Inlet 

Precision engineering and innovation for airborne science 

The LTI, low-turbulence inlet

“There are only a handful of these in the world,” 

Chuck Brock said, pointing to an arrow-shaped 

inlet emerging from the left side of the WP-3D. 

Brock is in charge of a suite of instruments on 

the WP-3D designed to study many aspects of 

particles (aerosol) in the atmosphere: their mass, 

size distribution, light-absorption and extinction 

behavior, and whether they can take up water and 

help form clouds. These measurements are critical 

for understanding how particulate pollutants are 

transported and transformed in the atmosphere, 

and how they affect climate directly (by absorbing 

or scattering light) and indirectly (via clouds). 

The Experiment

“This is an experiment,” Ryerson said, 

pointing to an oddly angled inlet on 

the right side of the WP-3D. Researchers 

have struggled for years to obtain 

accurate measurements of nitrogen oxide 

compounds as a group, Ryerson said. 

“You want to measure them all in the gas 

phase, but you also want to exclude the 

aerosols, some of which have nitrogen 

components. That’s very hard to do.” 

His inlet uses a ring-shaped point-of-entry 

to smooth the airflow, and also angles the 

main tube, which is roughly parallel to 

the aircraft body, to make that smoothed 

airflow race even faster. The idea is to trick 

lightweight aerosols into speeding past the 

gas intake, in the center of that tube, so that 

only true gases are sucked in. 

The angle of Ryerson’s inlet can be adjusted 

mid-flight, and he based his design, in 

part, on the pattern of sticky oil residue on 

a research airplane (similar to the WP-3D) 

that flew through the Kuwaiti oil fires in the 

early 1990s. When that plane landed, the 

oil smudges quickly dripped off—but the 

photograph someone took as the airplane 

landed traced the pattern of airflow over 

the airplanes’ body—key information for 

Ryerson’s instrument. His experimental inlet 

is flying for the first time during CalNex.

The Workhorse

Stainless steel tubes three-eights of an inch 

in diameter collect air samples for many 

instruments on board—those measuring 

carbon monoxide, for example (that gas can 

be used to calculate the age of an airmass or 

to help trace its source) and carbon dioxide 

(a key greenhouse gas). Ryerson puts both 

CO and CO2 in the “non-sticky” gas category. 

“You could sample those through old socks 

and still get a good measurement,” he joked. 

For some instruments, steel inlets must 

be lined with Teflon—necessary if you’re 

sampling ozone, for example. “Steel eats 

ozone,” Ryerson said. Other Teflon inlets are 

heated so that water can’t condense inside 

and “blur” the measurements of “stickier” 

gases such as sulfur dioxide, nitric acid, and 

ammonia. 

CalNex Completed 

Mission probes nexus of air quality 

and climate change in California

The CalNex mission, led by ESRL’s Chemical 

Sciences Division, CSD, began winding down 

June, after three months of work to assess air 

quality and climate in California. Hundreds 

of researchers from across ESRL and NOAA, 

NASA, the state of California, academia, and 

international institutions took to the land, sea, 

and air to measure and track greenhouse gases 

and air pollutants. The scale of the mission was 

unprecedented for an atmospheric research 

project in California. CalNex involved four 

instrumented aircraft; the research vessel 

Atlantis; and two ground sites in Pasadena 

and Bakersfield. CalNex also included six-daysee page 9

Morgan Heim, CIRES
9

Indigenous Knowledge and Science

Inuit forecasters with generations of environmental knowledge help 

scientists understand Arctic weather

An Inuk living in the Canadian Arctic looks 

to the sky and can tell by the way the wind 

scatters a cloud whether a storm is coming or 

if it’s safe to go on a hunt. Thousands of miles 

away in a Boulder laboratory, scientists collect 

data and use computer models to predict 

weather. They are two practices serving the 

same purpose, living in separate worlds. 

But in the past 20 years, something’s run amok 

with Inuit forecasting. Old weather signals 

don’t mean what they used to. The cloud that 

scatters could signal a storm that comes in an 

hour, instead of a day. And now a melding of 

indigenous environmental knowledge with 

modern science is helping researchers learn 

something new about what’s happening to 

the Arctic climate. 

Researchers had heard reports of 

unpredictable weather coming in from Arctic 

communities. But their stories didn’t seem 

to match up with the numbers. By scientific 

measurement, weather around the world 

appeared to be growing more persistent with 

less variation. The disparity left scientists—

including ESRL’s Betsy Weatherhead (Global 

Systems Division and CIRES), who has long 

been interested in the issue—scratching their 

heads. 

She contacted Shari Gearheard, a scientist with 

CIRES’ National Snow and Ice Data Center, who 

lives in Clyde River, Nunavut, Canada, an Inuit 

community on eastern Baffin Island. For the 

past 10 years, Gearheard has been working 

with Inuit hunters and elders to document 

their knowledge of the environment 

and environmental change. Gearheard 

meticulously collects the stories told to her 

by the Inuit and makes systematic records 

of indigenous environmental knowledge. 

Through this, patterns begin to emerge, 

leading Weatherhead and colleague Roger 

Barry, a CIRES Fellow, to focus their analysis 

on patterns of weather “persistence” in the 

springtime.

Statistical analysis of day-to-day temperatures 

at Baker Lake, Nunavut, showed that in May 

to June, the persistence of temperature has 

recently declined, matching Inuit reports of 

greater unpredictability for that season.

The scientific story matched what people 

were witnessing on the ground. Weather 

along the Arctic latitudes was behaving more 

unpredictably than in other parts of the world. 

“That’s an incredibly important parameter 

to care about, incredibly important,” said 

Weatherhead. “The way I try to describe it to 

some people, if we get an inch of rain out at 

my house in the month of July, I don’t need to 

turn on the sprinklers. But if we get an inch of 

rain on July 1, and no rain after that, my lawn 

is dead.” 

“Ecosystems have evolved under a certain 

type of pattern. So if that is changing, that 

could be just as important as a small increase 

in temperature or some of the other changes 

we’re talking about,” Weatherhead continued. 

The study helps refine and test climate 

models, while also providing these models 

with a new category of information to 

consider. And Gearheard’s work with the Inuit 

is demonstrating the value of indigenous 

environmental knowledge to modern climate 

science. 

“When we first started talking about this, 

indigenous knowledge didn’t have the place 

it does now in research,” Gearheard added. “It’s 

growing. People are becoming more familiar 

with it, more respectful of it.” 

—Morgan Heim, CIRES

More, including a podcast interview with the 

paper authors: http://cires.colorado.edu/news/

press/2010/gearheardInuit.html

Brock’s inlet needed to slow the airflow from 

about 100 m/s down to 10 m/s, without 

creating turbulence. Turbulence allows larger 

aerosol particles, with greater inertia, to spin 

off into walls, changing the composition of 

samples that pass through to the instruments. 

So the low-turbulence inlet has porous walls 

that remove air from the turbulent edges of 

the tube, allowing a central, laminar core of 

air to flow into instruments. Only about 35 

percent of the air mass pulled into the tip of 

the inlet makes it to the instruments inside the 

plane.

Above: Smog in the Los Angeles Basin, photographed 

from NOAA’s P3-WD research airplane, during the CalNex 

mission on air quality and climate change in California.

Far left: The experimental inlet and two conventional 

workhorse inlets. 

Left: The low-turbulence inlet.

Dan Lack, CIRES/NOAA

...low-turbulence inlet, from 8

Shari Gearheard, NSIDC

a-week ozonesonde releases from six sites 

across California, and atmospheric data from 

more than a dozen radar wind profilers, two 

tall towers, and more than 100 state air quality 

sites. 

The mission was a great success, said 

David Parrish (CSD). A quick look at the 

data shows that the scientists were able to 

capture simultaneous measurements of air 

quality and greenhouse gases emitted from 

California’s agricultural region—including 

during agricultural burning events. Nighttime 

chemistry measurements should let scientists 

significantly improve understanding of air 

quality in the Los Angeles region, Parrish said, 

and CalNex captured detailed information on 

the transport of some pollutants, particularly 

ozone, into, within, and out of California. 

 Haze hangs over Los Angeles during CalNex.
10

Achievement

More news, publications, and honors from NOAA’s 

Earth System Research Laboratory

SOS® update

ESRL unveiled a new traveling Science 

On a Sphere® (SOS) exhibit on Ocean 

Discovery Day (May 1) at NOAA’s Flower 

Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary 

in Galveston, TX. SOS, an educational tool 

developed at ESRL, now wows audiences 

at more than 50 science museums and 

other institutions around the world. The 

sphere is a six-foot-diameter sphereand-projection system, used to illustrate 

Earth System science, from hurricane 

development to climate change.

Projectors supporting the old traveling 

sphere were eight years old and the 

computers were five, said Beth Russell 

(Global Systems Division and CIRES). 

Moreover, the new traveling exhibit takes 

one day to setup—the old one took twoand-a-half days. 

Also, SOS is showing in the MeteoWorld 

Pavilion at the World Expo, which is 

running from May to October in Shanghai, 

China.

Published

ESRL’s peer-reviewed publications are 

available in a searchable database:

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

Divisions also have Publication pages:

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/

Science On a Sphere® in the MeteoWorld Pavilion at the 

World Expo in Shanghai, China.

Sea ice 

forecasts

NOAA is 

making plans to 

forecast Arctic 

sea ice extent on 

several time scales, ranging from one day 

out to a decade or more in the future. The 

forecasts could be critical for local Arctic 

communities, the shipping industry, and 

marine mammal stewardship, said ESRL’s 

Janet Intrieri (Director’s Office).

She and John Calder (NOAA’s Arctic 

Research Office) hosted a multi-agency 

workshop at ESRL in May, to begin 

developing plans for the sea ice forecasts. 

The work will involve close collaborations 

with other agencies, from the U.S. Coast 

Guard and Navy to international research 

and meteorology institutions.

Near-term forecasts, on the order of 

a few days, would likely focus on sea ice 

along the northern coast of Alaska: extent, 

concentration, thickness, and timing 

of ice formation and melt. Long-term 

forecasts would rely on understanding 

about natural and greenhouse-gas driven 

changes in the Arctic climate, ensemble 

forecasts, and estimates of snow cover (to 

support marine mammal stewardship). 

Testbeds workshop

In May, ESRL hosted the second annual 

NOAA Testbed Workshop, sponsored 

by the NOAA U.S. Weather Research 

Program’s Executive Committee, and 

chaired by Marty Ralph (Physical Sciences 

Division). About 80 people participated 

from across NOAA, the National Center 

for Atmospheric Research, and NASA. 

Testbeds link weather research and 

operational forecasting through the 

development, demonstration, and 

evaluation of new technologies and 

predictive models—making researchers 

more aware of critical forecast challenges, 

and forecasters more aware of advances in 

science and technology.

Testbeds represented were: the Joint 

Hurricane Testbed, Hydrometeorology 

Testbed, Hazardous Weather Testbed, 

Developmental Testbed Center, Climate 

Testbed, Societal Impacts Program, and 

the Short-term Prediction Research and 

Transition Center. The Testbed workshop 

let participants from diverse sectors share 

experiences and lessons learned. Those 

gathered at this year’s workshop agreed 

that testbed research should be important 

in NOAA’s out-year planning process, 

especially research related to observing 

system and other potential major 

infrastructure investments.

Australian honor shared

Greg Ayers, Director of Meteorology 

at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology 

(BoM), thanked NOAA this spring for 

support in implementing the Graphical 

Forecast Editor (GFE) and the associated 

digital database at Australia’s Victoria 

Regional Office in Melbourne. 

The GFE allows forecasters to prepare 

a gridded database of weather forecast 

elements. Those gridded elements, 

including temperature, clouds, winds, 

and precipitation, form the basis for many 

forecast products. Since 2006, the Global 

Systems Division’s GFE team has worked to 

tailor this suite of graphical editing tools 

to BoM’s needs. 

The BoM was presented the 2009 

annual Innovation Award for the agency’s 

implementation of the GFE under the 

banner of the Australian Government 

Leadership Network. The BoM was given 

the top award for “vastly improved level 

of service that the Bureau can provide, 

especially to remote regional areas that 

have previously received only basic service.”

BoM is in the process of extending the 

implementation to all parts of Australia 

during the next four years under the 

title of the Next Generation Forecast and 

Warning System. 
11

Flight 

guidance 

Migrating birds could 

put the most stateof-the art GPS to 

shame with their 

arsenal of built in 

navigation sensors. These frequent 

flyers use tools such as Earth’s magnetic 

field, the sun’s orientation, visual cues, 

and weather to navigate migration routes 

sometimes spanning thousands of miles 

and multiple continents. Now a new 

study in progress looks at the possibility 

that waterfalls might also help birds stay 

on track. Waterfalls send out distinct 

sound signatures, so ESRL’s Alfred Bedard 

(Physical Sciences Division and CIRES), is 

comparing the soundscape of Niagara 

Falls with the hearing power of pigeons 

and migration patterns of birds traveling 

along the Atlantic Flyway. If Bedard’s 

suspicions prove correct, this would be the 

first evidence that birds use waterfalls as 

navigation beacons while migrating. 

Dry times ahead

Brad Udall of the NOAA/CIRES Western 

Water Assessment co-authored a 

Susan Solomon (Chemical Sciences Division, 

CSD) was one of two NOAA scientists named 

Service to America Medal finalists. Solomon 

was selected for nearly three decades of 

influential scientific research with NOAA, 

including identifying the cause of the ozone 

hole and service as co-chair of Working 

Group I of the Intergovernmental Panel 

on Climate Change. Also a finalist is Joe 

Schaefer, retired Director of NOAA’s Storm 

Prediction Center. Winners will be announced 

in September.

Curtis Alexander, Ming Hu, and Tatiana

Smirnova (Global Systems Division) were 

awarded a CIRES Bronze Medal in April for 

their roles in developing the first National 

Centers for Environmental Prediction 

operational radar reflectivity assimilation 

technique and improving convective storm 

forecasting. 

Steve Peckham (GSD) received a CIRES 

Service Award for helping to develop and 

provide support to the complex modeling 

system, WRF-Chem (Weather Research 

Honors

CIRES Director Koni Steffen presents Steve 

Peckham with the CIRES Service Award.

Tom Karl (third from right, blue shirt) speaks with other 

participants during a break in the Global Monitoring 

Annual Conference. Karl gave a keynote speech at the 

May conference—an annual event hosted by ESRL 

that draws researchers from around the world. More: 

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

perspective piece in Science at the end of 

June, calling for a “no-regrets” approach 

to planning for climate change in 

the U.S. West. The region is already 

experiencing higher temperatures, 

declining late-season snowpack, 

north-shifting winter storm 

tracks, and more frequent 

large wildfires, Udall and 

colleague Jonathan 

Overpeck of CLIMAS (the 

Climate Assessment of the Southwest), 

point out. They wrote that it is “both 

reassuring and troubling” that climate 

models project trends very similar to 

those observed. Udall and Overpeck call 

for smarter water use and an economyboosting focus on harnessing the West’s 

potential for solar, wind, and geothermal 

energy. 

More: http://www.sciencemag.org

and Forecasting-Chemistry). WRF-Chem 

allows research relevant to many current 

environmental challenges, including air 

quality and global climate change. 

Solomon received an honorary Ph.D. from 

the Université Pierre et Marie Curie, the 

largest science and medical institution in 

France. 

Solomon was also named as 

one of the 125 “Women who 

Changed our World,” by Good 

Housekeeping magazine. She 

was lauded alongside Rachel 

Carson, Jane Goodall, Barbara 

Walters, and Madeline Albright. 

http://www.goodhousekeeping.

com/family/real/women-whochanged-our-world

Valery Zavorotny (Physical 

Sciences Division) was selected 

as a 2009 Top Reviewer for IEEE 

Transactions on Geoscience and 

Remote Sensing.

Laurel Watts (CSD) is a 

finalist for graphical system 

design achievement award from National 

Instruments, for her design of the system 

that controls a new ozone instrument 

flown on this spring’s GloPac mission over 

the Pacific Ocean. Award recipients will be 

announced in August.
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: Barb DeLuisi, Chris Ennis, Morgan Heim, Annie Reiser 

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. 

FIM Chem-Ash

ESRL model forecasts volcanic ash cloud in real time

In April and May, European authorities 

canceled more than 100,000 flights affecting 

10 million passengers and costing the aviation 

industry billions in lost business due to the 

eruption of Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull. 

NOAA established a volcanic ash forecast 

response effort aimed at improving 

international guidance. ESRL responded with 

a new forecasting model, the FIM-CHEM-Ash, 

that began producing experimental real-time 

volcanic ash forecasts in May. This is the first 

time that a global model has been run with inline chemistry; with 17 aerosol and gas-phase 

tracer concentrations and four size bins of 

volcanic ash. 

The model currently includes eruption data 

from Eyjafjallajökull and has cycled 14 aerosol 

concentration and three gas-phase prognostic 

variables since April 14, the start of the 

Icelandic volcano’s explosive eruption. Using 

the Global Forecast System for atmospheric 

initial conditions, the FIM-CHEM-Ash is run at 

30-km resolution and maintains the aerosol/

ash cycling with new five-day forecasts run on 

a daily basis. The inline treatment of chemistry 

and ash (interaction with other meteorological 

variables) within FIM-Chem-Ash will very likely 

provide a considerable improvement over 

current abilities to predict ash dispersion with 

regards to both accuracy and timeliness. 

These new runs, though still under 

development and not considered official 

guidance, are an example of NOAA’s effort to 

help the international VAAC community as it 

continues to deal with new waves of dense 

volcanic ash in European airspaces and for 

future volcanic eruptions worldwide. There 

are nine VAACs: http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/

VAAC/vaac.html strategically located that were 

created when the International Civil Aviation 

Organization and other Aviation concerns 

recognized the need to keep aviators informed 

of volcanic hazards. 

More: http://fim.noaa.gov/

—Annie Reiser

Henrik Thorburn