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Author: Travis Swaim

Gerst, Kenney, Wolfinger Published on Visualizing Climate Forecasts

ESSIC/CISESS scientists Michael Gerst, Melissa Kenney, J. Felix Wolfinger, Allison E. Baer, and Amanda Speciale have a publication out in Weather Climate and Society about the use of visualization science to improve expert and public understanding of probabilistic temperature and precipitation outlooks. Visually communicating temperature and precipitation climate outlooks graphics is challenging as it requires viewers to have subject familiarity and specific visual literacy.  Additionally, …

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Smail Involved in Launch of Plastics Data Challenge in Asia

ESSIC/CISESS Senior Faculty Specialist Emily Smail is on the advisory council of the Plastics Data Challenge for Asia, a global innovation challenge to end ocean plastic pollution. The challenge will source, support, and scale innovative solutions that address the leakage of plastic waste into the environment.  Participants will co-create technologies, methodologies, and working prototypes to discover solutions that address the lack of data across Asia’s plastics value chains as well as …

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ESSIC Hosts Annual CISESS Science Meeting

Last month, ESSIC hosted the annual CISESS Science Meeting. The weeklong meeting featured presentations of nearly 40 ESSIC/CISESS scientists and served as a collaborative forum for them to exchange ideas, identify research priorities, and define research topics. Among the speakers were local researchers as well as scientists from the North Carolina CISESS campus and the Cooperative Remote Sensing Science and Technology Center (CREST) at the City College of New York. Several STAR scientists …

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ESSIC Seminars Now Posted on YouTube

ESSIC’s weekly seminars are now available for viewing on YouTube! The ESSICUMD YouTube channel houses nearly all of the seminars of the past year, and is constantly uploading new seminar recordings as they occur. The ESSIC Seminar Series is a biweekly event meant to bring new science to the researchers of ESSIC and CISESS.  In the past, it has boasted such speakers as Dr. Norman Grody, one of the chief NESDIS scientists who helped design sensors such as the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit, …

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GOES-R Series Book Features Chapters by ESSIC/CISESS Scientists

Early last month, the publishing company Elsevier released a new book titled The GOES-R Series: A New Generation of Geostationary Environmental Satellites. The book introduced the GOES-R series, geostationary operational environmental satellites described by the author as “the most significant advance in weather technology in a generation”. ESSIC/CISESS Visiting Assistant Research Scientist Scott Rudlosky was the lead author on “Chapter 16: Lightning Detection: GOES-R Series …

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ESSIC/CISESS Lightning Team Attend Stormchaser Convention

On Oct. 26th, the CISESS Lightning Team— ESSIC/CISESS scientists Mason Quick, Jonathan Wynn Smith, and Daile Zhang— went to the Mid-Atlantic ChaserCon in Richmond, Virginia.  The conference was a forum for National Weather Service meteorologists, broadcast meteorologists, storm chasers and other professional and amateur meteorologists across the Mid-Atlantic area to network and discuss local severe storms. During the event, meteorologists promoted ideas to raise public awareness of severe …

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ESSIC/CISESS Scientists Attend Joint Satellite Conference

Last month, NOAA/AMS/EUMETSAT held their annual Joint Satellite Conference in Boston, Massachusetts. ESSIC/CISESS had a large contingent of scientists at the meeting presenting posters and giving talks, listed below. ESSIC scientists’ talks included:

  • Scott Rudlosky (SCSB/STAR/NESDIS/NOAA) on Geostationary Lightning Mapper Products
  • Hu Yang on Lunar Calibration for Space Borne Microwave Radiometers
  • Jingjing Peng on Evaluation of JPSS VIIRS Albedo Estimates against MODIS, APP-x, and

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UMD Ranks #12 for Best Global Universities for Geoscience

A new ranking has placed the University of Maryland, College Park as #12 in a list of the 250 best global university for geosciences. The list, published by U.S. News, ranks the top 1,500 universities overall and by region and country.  This year, they also included a ranking of the leaders in 28 key academic subject areas. Positions are based on academic research performance in those subjects as well as publications, citations, and global reputation.  University of Maryland’s position is …

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Quick and Rudlosky Explain Rogue Lightning Strike Over DC

ESSIC/CISESS scientists Mason Quick and Scott Rudlosky (SCSB) contributed to an article that ran in the Washington Post describing thunderstorm behavior and lightning. In the piece, author Kevin Ambrose from the Capital Weather Gang investigates an unexpected lightning bolt that struck the ground near the Washington Monument last August.  Using Ambrose’s photo and timestamp, Quick and Rudlosky determined that this was a compact flash of negative lightning produced by a rapidly dissipating …

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Arctic Ozone Hole Overview Cites Salawitch

A recent article published in Nature’s “News and Views” column cited a 2006 article co-written by ESSIC Scientist Ross Salawitch as one of the most significant studies in the history of the Antarctic ozone hole and the successful environmental policy that followed. In the article, author Susan Solomon from the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology chronicles the ozone hole from the moment it was discovered to the enactment of …

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