bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
TRMM precipitation radar helps address problems of ground‐based weather radar systems
Authors: Anagnostou Emmanouil N. , Morales Carlos A. 
Published: October 2006

The launch of the first spaceborne precipitation radar (PR) aboard the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite provides a unique opportunity to address the ground‐based weather radar system's calibration problem. The PR measures the same variable as ground‐based systems—radar reflectivity— and is proven to be consistent with respect to calibration accuracy. PR calibration tests, conducted by the Space Agency of Japan (NASDA) using an active radar calibration system [Kumagai et al, 1995] located in Japan, have shown calibration stability within ±0.8 dBZ [Kozu et al, in press, 2000].A fundamental error source in the measurement of precipitation by radar is the inaccurate definition of the radar calibration constant, which obviously affects the interpretation of radar measurements. This has become an emerging issue, as weather radar is used worldwide for applications ranging from hydrological to climatic. Typically radar systems use internally generated test signals to monitor variations of the radar system's parameters associated with temperature changes in the radar electronics. However, calibration drifts may occur due to gradual degradation of the system's performance. During these times, external calibration using either metal spheres or active sources of radiation required.
Experts look at future of volcanology
Authors: Showstack Randy 
Published: October 2006

Volcanologists do not need a crystal ball to forecast the future direction of their discipline. They only need to hear the rumblings of Pocopatépetl near Mexico City or see the flames and flows of other volcanoes to remind them of the need to better understand and forecast the behavior of these natural phenomena that are also often natural hazards.A December 15 briefing at the AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco took on the not‐too‐distant topic of “Volcanology in 2010.”
Estuarine Science: A Synthetic Approach to Research and Practice
Authors: Nuttle William 
Published: October 2006

Estuarine Science arrives at a time when our views about estuaries and how human activities interact with them is changing. The growing understanding of estuaries feeds a movement toward an active approach to their management. This movement, in turn, has spawned a number of monitoring and management programs, each of which is focused on a different coastal region.The Estuaries and Clean Waters Act of 2000, signed into law on November 7, authorizes $225 million over 5 years just to coordinate the numerous federal and nonfederal estuarine restoration programs now underway in the United States.The stakes are high. For example, failure to reverse decades of wetland loss in coastal Louisiana promises inevitable disaster for the one million residents of New Orleans. At an average elevation of 2.4 meters below sea level and sinking, New Orleans relies on the shrinking ∼50 km expanse of wetlands that lie between it and the Gulf of Mexico to absorb the storm surge from hurricanes that frequent this part of the coast.
Predictability and limits to prediction in hydrologic systems
Authors: Entekhabi Dara 
Published: October 2006

The National Research Council's (NRC's) Committee on Hydrologic Science (COHS) is engaged in studying the priorities and future strategies for hydrologic science. In order to involve a broad community representation, COHS is organizing three workshops on priority topics in hydrologic science: 1) predictability and limits‐to‐prediction in hydrologic systems, 2) integration of hydrological and ecological sciences, and 3) groundwater fluxes across interfaces [Entekhabi, 2000].These efforts will culminate in reports from the NRC on the individual workshops, as well as a synthesis report on strategic directions in hydrologic science. The first workshop, entitled Predictability and Limits to Prediction in Hydrologic Systems, was held at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, on September 21 and 22, 2000. Thirteen technical presentations covered basic research and understanding, model formulations and behavior, observing strategies, and transition to operational predictions.
Natural disasters linked to collapse of some indigenous populations
Authors: Showstack Randy 
Published: October 2006

Rodolfo Acuna‐Soto, an assistant professor of microbiology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City, was stunned by tree ring data he saw last March at a scientific meeting in Cuernavaca.Borehole research conducted by the University of Arkansas' Tree Ring Laboratory on 200 Douglas firs from the central Mexican highlands told the chronology of ring growth during a mega‐drought that withered the region from the mid‐1540s to the 1580s.
Revised position on natural hazards
Authors: Folger Peter 
Published: October 2006

At the 2000 Fall Meeting in December, the AGU Council reaffirmed a revised version of AGU's position statement, “Meeting the Challenges of Natural Hazards.” This position was first adopted in 1996. The revised version (see accompanying text box) contains the same message as the original, but in concise language more easily understood by policy‐makers and other non‐scientists.The statement calls for more research in the geophysical processes to help understand the nature of natural hazards. However, it also clearly indicates that research alone will not improve the ability of society to withstand a natural disaster. Multidisciplinary approaches involving groups as disparate as builders, insurers, and relief organizations are required to improve mitigation efforts worldwide. The policy statement also emphasizes the need to communicate the results of scientific research to the public, especially those communities situated in areas particularly susceptible to extreme natural hazards.
The Two‐Mile Time Machine: Ice Cores, Abrupt Climate Change and Our Future
Authors: van der Veen C. J. 
Published: October 2006

Enhanced greenhouse warming attributable to our profligate consumption of fossil fuels has established itself as perhaps the most contentious environmental issue currently being debated in the international political arena. To a large extent, the debate over whether societies should undertake actions to mitigate potentially adverse effects of climate change focuses on uncertainties in climate predictions and societal impacts. In an effort to reduce some of the uncertainty the climate community has expended considerable efforts to obtain detailed records of past climates, recognizing that the past may hold the key to our future.The Two‐Mile Time Machine by Richard Alley tells the captivating story of how one such record reconstructed from the GISP2 core, drilled through the more than 3‐km thick Greenland Ice Sheet, has revealed startling clues about past climates and shattering many of our ideas on how climate operates.
AGU Panel to write statement on Earth and space science education in K‐12
Authors: Folger Peter 
Published: October 2006

AGU has convened a panel to write a policy statement that can be used by AGU members and others to argue for effective Earth and space science education at the K‐12 level. The panel welcomes comments from AGU members to help them craft a relevant and effective statement.AGU's Committee on Education and Human Resources (CEHR) first proposed the idea for the position statement in 1999. The Committee's reasoning was that the Earth and space sciences should be included at all levels of education, because increased public understanding of those sciences is needed to ensure their appropriate application to societal needs and challenges.
The old ways worked
Authors: Beck Myrl E. , Burmester Russell F. , Kondopoulou Despina P. 
Published: October 2006

Most people working in paleomagnetism today have access to a high‐speed computer, a fast and sensitive magnetometer, and sophisticated data‐reduction programs. Until very recently this was not true.This increased efficiency should have made our lives simpler, but, of course, it hasn't. Work expands to fill the time available to do it, as everyone knows; hence, our enhanced paleomagnetic efficiency has propelled a substantial increase in the number of steps used in routine demagnetization, in order to make use of principal component analysis [PCA; Kirschvink, 1980]. In most cases, one hopes, all this extra work is rewarded by “better” results. But, as this note will demonstrate, sometimes it isn't.
John A. O'Keefe (1916–2000)
Authors: Lowman Paul D. , Rubincam David P. 
Published: October 2006

John A. O'Keefe, a pioneer of the Space Age and the man whom Eugene Shoemaker called “the godfather of astrogeology” died September 8 of complications due to liver cancer. He was a Fellow of the AGU.O'Keefe's best‐known scientific achievement was the 1959 discovery of the third harmonic of the Earth's gravitational field, derived from tracking the Vanguard 1 satellite. O'Keefe, together with coauthors Ann Eckels (now Bailey) and Ken Squires (now deceased), analyzed the data at the newly formed NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and concluded that “The third zonal harmonic modifies the geoid toward the shape of a pear,” with an amplitude of 15 meters. This careful statement was headlined as “the pear‐shaped earth.” The first discoveries from satellite tracking had already been made by British scientists, who found a new value for the flattening of the Earth from Sputnik 2. However, the third harmonic was the first geodetic result from an American satellite, and its discovery attracted worldwide attention.
Dead Sea gives life to a unique seismic calibration experiment
Authors: Gitterman Yefim , Shapira Avi 
Published: October 2006

An unusual seismic and hydro‐acoustic experiment involving large underwater chemical explosions has been conducted in the Dead Sea. The purpose of this creative, cost‐efficient venture was to improve monitoring and verification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in the Middle East.The goals of the experiment were to calibrate the regional travel times of the seismic waves from the explosions; to provide data for source characterization; and to improve detection, location, and discrimination capabilities of the International Monitoring System (IMS) stations. From a seismologist's point of view, the experiment's main 5‐ton explosion exceeded expectations. The blast was recorded at 8 IMS stations (including PDYAR in Russia, more than 5000 km away), with the estimated location only 2.3 km from ground truth, and an event magnitude of mb=3.9 [Center for Monitoring Research, 1999]. These results compare to the predicted local magnitude of about 4 and the maximal observable range of about 2600 km [Gitterman, 1998]. A lack of a detectable signal on some nearer stations will likely reveal important path effects.
NEAR spacecraft makes first‐ever landing on an asteroid
Authors: Showstack Randy 
Published: October 2006

Robert Farquhar had a little extra reason to feel optimistic on February 12.The newspaper horoscope for Virgo for that day had indicated that his lucky number is five. “I thought, ‘Wait a minute, we have five burns today’” said Farquhar, mission director for the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory's (APL) NEAR Shoemaker mission.
Investigating groundwater systems at regional and national scales
Authors: Bradbury K. R. , Logan W. S. 
Published: October 2006

There is an acute need for assessment of the groundwater resources of the United States at regional and national scales. This is the principal finding of a National Research Council (NRC) report titled “Investigating Groundwater Systems on Regional and National Scales” published in December 2000.While groundwater knows no political boundaries, groundwater studies, unfortunately do. In the United States, most regional‐scale groundwater studies are conducted either by state geological surveys or by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Most groundwater studies conducted by the USGS, with the exception of those of the National Water Quality Assessment (NAWQA) Program, are done under the Federal‐State Cooperative Water (Co‐op) Program. Co‐op studies only occasionally cross county lines, much less state lines. This is because they must be funded at least 50% by a local partner.
Making Waves: Stories From My Life
Authors: Benson Robert F. 
Published: October 2006

Yakov Alpert, a scientist internationally respected for his research on the ionosphere and magnetosphere, selected an apt title for his most recent book. Scientists familiar with Alpert's pioneering papers and books in radio‐wave physics over many decades will immediately recognize the significance of the first part of the title, Making Waves.It is unlikely however, that many could imagine the challenges faced by Alpert in the former Soviet system to produce these achievements and present them to the outside world. The second part of the title, “Stories from my Life,” relates to these episodes, which are vividly described in the book. It is also strongly tied to the first part of the title, because to survive as a productive scientist, Alpert had to make waves within the established bureaucracy in addition to making them within the ionosphere. He did so with a high degree of integrity as illustrated in the book's epilogue. Here, Alpert states,“…I have always found it difficult, even impossible, to behave in such a way as to be in contradiction with myself, to be at odds with my own conscience. I am aware that such a stance can lead to conflict with others…It helped to save my self‐respect… What I say here can also be an answer to those in the West who have asked me,‘How did you save yourself? What is your secret?’”
Further emissions cuts needed for speedier acid rain recovery
Authors: Showstack Randy 
Published: October 2006

Some people may have thought that the problem of acid deposition, commonly referred to as acid rain, had been solved in the United States with the passage of the Acid Deposition Control Program under Title IV of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments (CAAA).Although that legislation has helped to dramatically limit emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide—gases that can react in the atmosphere and form acidic compounds, including fine particles of sulfates and nitrates— much steeper cuts are needed for a quicker recovery from acid rain in the north‐eastern United States, according to a new scientific appraisal of the effectiveness of measures called for in that law. The appraisal was issued on March 26 and is entitled “Acidic Deposition in the Northeastern United States: Sources and Inputs, Ecosystem Effects, and Management Strategies.”
[Comment on “Teaching evolution, the Kansas School Board of Education, and the democratization of science”] The causes of anti‐science views
Authors: White R. Stephen 
Published: October 2006

Johnny Wei‐Bing Lin recently suggested (Eos, August 2, 2000) that the action of the Kansas State Board of Education to exclude questions about evolution by natural selection and “Big Bang” cosmology from required state tests, was driven primarily by the populism of science—the belief that the judgment of everyday men and women in matters deemed scientific is better than that of the trained scientists. In his view, inadequate public science education is only a secondary reason.Lin and Baylor University theologian Barry Harvey [2000] have argued that science is now under siege by populism, and that the ruling of the Kansas Board is but one example. To combat this populism, he urges a wider dialogue between scientists and historians, philosophers and theologians, so that we understand better the limits of our work and discover ways of being more precise and logical. Such discussions may be necessary, but they are not sufficient.
Conference focuses attention on Sun‐Earth System
Authors: Baker Daniel N. , Allen Joseph H. , Kamide Y. , Matsumoto H. 
Published: October 2006

The International Council for Scientific Unions' (ICSU) Scientific Committee on Solar‐Terrestrial Physics (SCOSTEP) has organized several scientific programs in the area of solar‐terrestrial physics. One such program is the STEP‐Results, Applications, and Modeling Phase (S‐RAMP). Scheduled to run from 1998 through 2002, it is capitalizing on the vast data sets and powerful modeling techniques that were developed under STEP its predecessor.S‐RAMP has three main goals: to enable detailed understanding of Sun‐Earth coupling mechanisms; to facilitate effective information transfer between experimentalists, theoreticians, and modelers; and to demonstrate the successful benefits of the STEP endeavor to funding agencies, the media, and the general public. For more information about S‐RAMP, see the program's Web site (http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/SRAMP/sramp.html).
U.S. budget would increase R&D, but cut many science programs
Authors: Showstack Randy 
Published: October 2006

The $1.96‐trillion fiscal year 2002 federal budget proposed by the Bush administration on April 9 holds overall discretionary funding to a 4% increase in an effort to meet the funding requirements of non‐discretionary needs, a 10‐year tax cut, and big increases in defense, education, and medical research.The budget also takes what one White House official called a “pause” from the 8% “spending spree” under the Clinton administration during FY2001, as deliberations proceed on future funding priorities following the drawn‐out presidential election and the short budget preparation period.
Access to the scientific literature
Authors: Albarède Francis 
Published: October 2006

The Public Library of Science Open Letter (http://www.publiclibraryofscience.org) is a very generous initiative, but, as most similar initiatives since the advent of electronic publishing, it misses the critical aspects of electronic publishing.Ten years ago, a Publisher would be in charge of running a system called a “scientific journal.” In such a system, the presence of an Editor and peer Reviewers secures the strength of the science and the rigor of writing; the Publisher guarantees the professional quality of printing, efficient dissemination, and long‐term archiving. Publishing used to be in everyone's best interest, or nearly everyone. The Publisher, because he/she is financially motivated, ensures widespread dissemination of the journal amongst libraries and individual subscribers. The interest of the Author is that the system guarantees a broad potential readership. The interest of the Reader is that a line is drawn between professionally edited literature, presumably of better quality, and gray literature or home publishing, so that he/she does not waste time going through ‘low yield’ ungraded information. The Publisher could either be a private company, an academic institution, or a scholarly society. My experience is that, when page charges and subscription rates are compounded, journals published by scholarly societies are not necessarily cheaper. The difference between these cases is not the cost of running an office with rents, wages, printing, postage, advertisement, and archiving, but that a private Publisher pays shareholders. Shareholders have the bad habit of minding their own business and, therefore, they may interfere negatively with scientific publishing. Nevertheless, while the stranglehold imposed by private Publishers on our libraries over the last 10 years by increasing subscription rates may in part be due to shareholders' greed, this is true only in part. The increases are also a consequence of the booming number of pages being printed.
Earthquakes' impact on hydrothermal systems may be far‐reaching
Authors: Johnson H. Paul , Dziak Robert P. , Fisher Charles R. , Fox Christopher G. , Pruis Matthew J. 
Published: October 2006

Recent work has linked earthquake activity with changes in flow and temperature due to hydrothermal venting at mid‐ocean ridges. These intriguing relationships are important motivation for modeling marine hydrothermal systems. However, a re‐examination of some earlier vent monitoring data from the Juan de Fuca Ridge, combined with analysis of recently reprocessed SOSUS (SOund Surveillance System) hydrophone data (Figure 1), suggest that such activity may be linked over considerable distances of greater than 200 km and reaction intervals of over a month.The available observational data are sparse, so the direct association between earthquakes and changes in crustal fluid circulation are difficult to verify. However, the response times and distance scales are consistent with other observations, including earthquakes in land‐based settings [Hill et al., 1993] and modeling of flow in porous media [Pruis et al., 2000]. If true, these associations imply that marine hydrothermal systems are extremely complex and may be sensitive to very subtle environmental changes.
Efforts afoot to stem the flow of invasive species from ballast water
Authors: Showstack Randy 
Published: October 2006

With the U.S. National Invasive Species Act of 1996, or NISA, due for reauthorization next year by Congress, interest groups already are staking out their positions about how to protect the nation's waters from aquatic nuisance species that arrive in ballast water, and that can cause significant ecological and economic harm.At a Capitol Hill briefing on July 9, representatives of the U.S. shipping industry called for mandatory ballast management and a ballast water management standard. They also called for certification of ballast water management technologies and practices, which they noted still require much research; and for federal preemption of state regulations that they said present shippers with a confusing patchwork of rules.
Deep sea vibracoring system improves ROV sampling capability
Authors: Paull Charles , Stratton Stuart , Conway Mike , Brekke Knuete , Dawe T. Craig , Maher Norm , Ussler William 
Published: October 2006

A vibracoring system developed at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) for use off remotely‐operated vehicles (ROVs) is capable of obtaining 7.7‐cm‐diameter sediment cores that are up to 2.5 m in length. The ability to collect long core samples, even in coarse‐grained materials, from precisely‐located sites vastly expands the geologic sampling capabilities of ROVs.Obtaining sea floor samples from topographically complicated deep‐sea environments where sediment is coarse‐grained has been challenging. Sub‐sea floor sediment sampling traditionally depends on wire‐line gravity or piston coring systems. However, wire‐line samplers are ineffective at penetrating into sand or gravel, do not provide visualization of the sea floor sample site, and are difficult to precisely locate.
Elevating EPA
Authors: Showstack Randy 
Published: October 2006

Raising the stature of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) appears to be a popular bipartisan measure.U.S. President George W. Bush, as well as former Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton, have provided the EPA administrator with a seat at cabinet meetings, and have supported legislation to make the agency a full department. Yet, several legislative initiatives have failed to gain approval because the bills have been weighed down with side issues.
USGS introduces water data Web site
Authors: Showstack Randy 
Published: October 2006

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has been collecting data about the nation's water for more than a century.Now, the survey's new National Water Information System, or NWISWeb, provides online users—including scientists, water managers, emergency managers, and recreational water users—with access to hundreds of millions of pieces of archival and real‐time data.