Recent Publications & News:

Originally published in Science Express on July 15, 2010, an article co-authored by Matthew Burger is now available online. Check out Mercury's Complex Exosphere: Results from MESSENGER's Third Flyby at Sciencemag.org.

Sarith Mahanama, formerly of Code 610.1, has had an article titled "Skill of Streamflow Forecasts Derived from Large-Scale Estimates of Soil Moisture and Snow" recently accepted for publication in Nature Geoscience. Advance online publication is available at DOI:10.1038/NGEO944.

Inge ten Kate, Code 699, is presently out in the Scandanavian field of Svalbard, Norway, conducting research with VAPoR. They are participating in AMASE: Arctic Mars Analog Svalbard Expedition. To follow her team's research, please visit Dr. ten Kate's blog: VAPoR Field Testing.

Dan Bailey of UMBC's Imaging Research Center (IRC), who works in close collaboration with GEST's Media Specialists at Goddard, was recently interviewed on WMAR TV. The IRC's work is detailed in the GEST annual reports.

Teppei Yasunari (Code 613.2) and his co-authors have had an article published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics titled "Estimated impact of black carbon deposition during pre-monsoon season from Nepal Climate Observatory - Pyramid data and snow albedo changes over Himalayan glaciers". The article can be viewed online at ACP's website.

Scott Boardsen's article "Observations of Kelvin-Helmholtz Waves along the Dusk-side Boundary of Mercury's Magnetosphere during MESSENGER's Third Flyby", recently published in Geophysical Research Letters, has been selected as an AGU highlight. His article is available online.

Congratulations to Suzanne Imber (Code 670.0), who has been awarded the University of Leicester Faculty of Science Ph.D. Prize for 2009. The award was made on the basis of exceptional research contribution to Solar Terrestrial Physics. Dr. Imber will return to the Univ. of Leicester this week to receive her medal and certificate, and will present a lecture to the College of Science and Engineering on "The Northern Lights: Illuminating Near Earth Space".

The first NASA science demonstration of the GSFC Global Hawk Pacific unmanned aircraft system (GLOPAC UAS) has been completed! The GSFC team consists of Paul Newman, Co-Project Scientist; Cloud Physics Lidar Lead Dr. Matt McGill and Airborne Compact Atmospheric Mapper Lead Dr. Scott Janz; GSFC flight planning team: Dr. Leslie Lait and Dr. Huisheng Bian (GEST, Code 613.3), Dr. S. Randy Kawa, and Dr. Pete Colarco; and GMAO modeling and forecasts: Dr. Arlindo DaSilva and Dr. Steven Pawson.

GLOPAC's first mission explored trace gases, aerosols and dynamics of remote upper troposphere and lower stratosphere regions. Between April 2 - April 30, there were five flights with 82.5 of the total hours flown largely over the Pacific. Preliminary results include the observation of polar ozone vortex fragments, dust plumes from the Gobi desert as predicted by GSFC models, and stratospheric trace gas distributions.

For more information, please visit the NASA GLOPAC website: http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/Glopac/

Christopher Shuman participated in NASA'S DIGITAL LEARNING NETWORK PRESENTS EARTH DAY WITH KENJI WILLIAMS, a special performance of "Bella Gaia" (Beautiful Earth) on Monday, April 19. "Bella Gaia" is a "living atlas" multimedia journey of our planet and combines stunning perspectives of Earth from space with Williams' original and eclectic score. NASA's cryospheric scientist, Dr. Shuman joined Williams on Earth Day to give a first-hand look at a changing Antarctica. Dr. Shuman discussed what it is like to work in such a difficult and rewarding place as Antarctica and showed how the polar regions can affect our Earth's climate system. Viewers had the opportunity to ask Williams and Shuman questions during the event.

After reviewing 153 applications under ROSES 2008, NASA has selected Timothy Stubbs of Code 695 as an Early Career Fellow under his parent proposal, "Optical Scattering Processes Observed from the Moon: Measurements, Models and Implications", which was submitted to LASER 2008. Dr. Stubbs joins an elite group of eight Fellows, who each submitted a proposal of outstanding scientific merit and were identified as rising stars of the planetary science community. GEST congratulates Dr. Stubbs on this great honor.

A March 17th online article in ScienceNews features Bob Bindschadler of Code 614 and a surprising discovery during a test of drilling equipment in Antarctica.

Eric Brown de Colstoun, formerly with GEST in the Biospheric Sciences/Code 614.4, has joined GSFC's Earth Sciences Division as the new Coordinator of Earth Science Education and Public Outreach (E/PO). He will be working with the newly-formed Earth Science E/PO Forum (SEPOF) to centralize and better coordinate Earth Science E/PO efforts between various NASA centers, E/PO professionals/programs, and NASA HQ. He will also help to plan, coordinate and promote Earth Science E/PO activities at Goddard in collaboration with management of ESD, the Goddard E/PO Council, scientists, mission E/PO leads, and the GSFC Education and Public Affairs offices. Finally, he will work across the GSFC science and E/PO communities in developing additional and more effective partnerships between NASA-funded scientists and educators.

GEST congratulates Asaph Anyamba, Code 614.4, and Compton J. Tucker, Jennifer Small, and Edwin Pak as 2010 recipients of the Interagency Partnership Award from the Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer (FLC). This award recognizes agency and/or laboratory employees from at least two different agencies who have collaboratively accomplished outstanding work in transferring a technology, according to the Federal Labs website. The team will be honored at the 2010 FLC Awards Program on April 29th in Albuquerque, NM.

Charles Gatebe, Code 613.2, Rajesh Poudyal (SSAI/613.2), and Eric Wilcox (613.2) won the "Best Science Story" at the Third Annual Science and Exploration Directorate (Code 600) New Year's Poster Party Blowout on January 28, 2010. The discovery of enhanced reflectance (>70%) in the solar principal plane by the wakes trailing large ships was serendipitous. Enhanced ship wake reflectance has potential global implications for the ocean energy balance and provides further evidence of the impact of human activities on climate.

Ritesh Gautam, Code 613.2, was selected to receive the 2009 Climate and Radiation Award for Scientific Leadership Award. Additionally, Dr. Gautam's Op-Ed article on the intense winter haze and fog over northern India was published recently in The Indian Express. A .pdf version is also available here.

Liang Liao of Code 613.1 was honored on January 15th, for his scientific achievements in the past year, his first year with the Mesoscale Atmospheric Processes Branch. Specifically, he is being recognized for Best Paper: Measurements and Simulation of Nadir-viewing Radar Returns from the Melting Layer at X and W band, Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, November, 2009. Dr. Liao was first-author on three publications in 2009. The awards celebration was in Building 33, H114 at 2:30pm.

A December 15th article in Scientific American features Teppei Yasunari of Code 613.2 and Goddard colleague William Lau and their research into the effects of soot on the warming climate of the Himalayas.

GEST congratulates Andrea Molod and Hailan Wang, both of Code 610.1, on receiving GMAO Peer Awards, which will be presented today, November 20th. Dr. Molod is being recognized for outstanding contributions in GEOS-5 model development through the implementation of Monin-Obukhov surface layer theory and improved turbulence and moist processes tuning, leading to improved AMIP climate and AOGCM simulations. Dr. Wang is being honored for outstanding work in the successful production and initial analysis of the post-war (1948-1978) extension of the 2° reanalysis used for the MERRA Scout run. The awards ceremony will take place in Building 33, Room H114, at 1:30pm.

Shin-Chan Han, Code 698.0, was informed by the AGU geodesy section president that he has been selected for the 2009 Geodesy Section Award of the American Geophysical Union. The Geodesy Section Award is intended to honor young members (40 years of age or younger) of AGU's Geodesy Section who show the potential to become AGU Fellows in the future, but who are not yet Fellows. The Geodesy Section Award is given in recognition of major advances in geodesy. These advances can be in geodetic science, technology, applications, observations, or theory. A plaque will be awarded at the Geodesy Section Reception in San Francisco on December 15th, at which Han will be invited to describe highlights of his research.

This recent article from NASA discusses Einstein's theory of relativity and Erricos Pavlis' work with the Italian Space Agency (ASI) on the Laser Relativity Satellite (LARES): "A Snag in Space-Time".

Tom Narock, Code 698.0, is featured in a November 9th article in Scientific American regarding a grant to Rensslaer Polytechnic Institute that will fund "a software development tool kit to better connect researchers with the information they seek."

Scott Boardsen's paper, "Comparison of ultra-low-frequency waves at Mercury under northward and southward IMF", was published on September 23, 2009 in Geophysical Research Letters.

GEST congratulates Shin-Chan Han Code 698.0 and Nickolay Krotkov Code 613.3 on receiving Robert H. Goddard Honor Awards, and Wayne Kasprzak Code 699.0 on receiving a Robert H. Goddard Merit Award. Dr. Han and Dr. Krotkov both will be presented with an Individual Award in the area of Exceptional Achievement for Science at the awards ceremony to be held on Tuesday, September 22nd at 10:00 am in the GSFC Building 8 Auditorium.

Assaf Anyamba's paper, "Prediction of a Rift Valley Fever Outbreak", published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) is one of PNAS' most-read online papers during the month of July 2009.

JGR has published a paper by Thomas Eck, et al. titled "Optical properties of boreal region biomass burning aerosols in Central Alaska and seasonal variation of aerosol optical depth at an Arctic coastal site", which currently occupies the #2 spot of Top Weekly Downloads from the JGR-Atmospheres website (as of June 8). Eck's paper was published June 2, 2009 in J. Geophys. Res., 114, D11201, doi:10.1029/2008JD010870.

A paper by Hongbin Yu, Mian Chin, Lorraine A. Remer, Richard Kleidman, Nicolas Bellouin, Huisheng Bian, and Thomas Diehl titled "Variability of marine aerosol fine-mode fraction and estimates of anthropogenic aerosol component over cloud-free oceans from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS)" was published in May 2009 in J. Geophys. Res., 114, D10206, doi:10.1029/2008JD010648.

On April 28, at a meeting chaired by Jennie Gromoll of the International Security and Nonproliferation Bureau, Deputy, Office of Chemical and Biological Weapons Threat Reduction, Assaf Anyamba (614/GEST-UMBC) and Dr. Kenneth J. Linthicum (Center Director USDA-Center for Medical, Agricultural & Veterinary Entomology) jointly presented their inter-agency (NASA-DoD-USDA) collaboration efforts in monitoring, detection and prediction of climatic and ecological conditions associated with vector-borne disease outbreaks to the State-run interagency group overseeing the Biological Weapons Convention. In preparation for an Experts Meeting of BWC States Parties to be held in Geneva in August, the State Department is vetting possible U.S. presentations to be made highlighting key U.S. efforts towards disease surveillance capacity-building.

Anyamba and Linthicum presented on the Biology, Ecology, Climate Variability, Remote Sensing Mapping and Prediction of Rift Valley Fever Outbreaks and provided a detailed programmatic synthesis of how NASA remote sensing data, science and applications expertise contribute towards DoD and USDA efforts in monitoring prediction of vector-borne disease, and how these efforts contribute to early warnings for global public health through coordinated efforts with international agencies, including the World Health Organization and the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. The State Department indicated that elements of the presentation would indeed be very helpful for the gathered scientists, WHO, FAO, OIE, the diplomatic corps as well as industry and NGO/professional society representatives. In response to a request from the State Department, a presentation will be created to highlight this uniquely American capacity to share predictive satellite data on Rift Valley Fever, Dengue, etc. in an effort to enhance disease surveillance, particularly in Africa and South East Asia.

Mei Han, (UMBC, 613.1), S. A. Braun, P. O. G. Persson, and J.-W. Bao, have recently had their paper titled "Along-front variability of precipitation associated with a midlatitudes frontal zone: TRMM observation and MM5 simulation" (2009) published in Mon. Wea. Rev., 137, 1008-1028.

From Code 698, Shin-Chan Han, Erwan Mazarico and Frank Lemoine are co-authors of a paper, "Improved nearside gravity field of the Moon by localizing the power law constraint", which was recently submitted to Geophysical Research Letters, and for which only minor revisions have been requested prior to publication.

Timothy Stubb's continued research into dust from the moon is featured in this latest release from NASA, "LRO to Help Astronauts Survive in Infinity".

A paper by Oreste Reale, William Lau, Joel Susskind, Eugenia Brin, Emily Liu, Lars Peter Riishojgaard, Marangelly Fuentes, and Robert Rosenberg titled "AIRS impact on the analysis and forecast track of tropical cyclone Nargis in a global data assimilation and forecasting system" was published in March 2009 in Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L06812, doi:10.1029/2008GL037122.

Maria Frostic's film, Plight of the Puffin, has been selected as a finalist and will be screened at the 32nd International Wildlife Film Festival in Missoula, Montana in May 2009.

A paper titled "Prediction of a Rift Valley fever outbreak" by Assaf Anyamba, Jean-Paul Chretien, Jennifer Small, Compton Tucker, Pierre Formenty, Jason Richardson, Seth Britch, David Schnabel, Ralph Erickson, and Kenneth Linthicum was published this week in PNAS, 106, No. 3, doi:10.1073/pnas.0806490106(2009).

A paper by Scott Boardsen, Brian Anderson, Mario Acuña, James Slavin, Haje Korth, and Sean Solomon is being published this week in GRL: "Narrow-band ultra-low-frequency wave observations by MESSENGER during its January 2008 flyby through Mercury's magnetosphere", Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L01104, doi:101029/2008GL036034 (2009).

Peter M. Norris, Lazaros Oreopoulos, Arthur Y. Hou, Wei-Kuo Tao and Xiping Zeng have a new paper "Representation of 3D heterogeneous cloud fields using copulas: Theory for water clouds" in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 134, 1843-1864 (2008).

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