Tag: Precipitation

Two animations made by Yongzhen Fan’s team using their snowfall rate product showing the evolution of the two winter storms.

Virtual Workshop on “Precipitation Estimation from LEO Satellites: Retrieval and Applications”

March 8, 2023

Last week, NOAA NESDIS held a two-day virtual workshop on “Precipitation Estimation from LEO Satellites: Retrieval and Applications”. The workshop was organized by CISESS Consortium Scientist Kuolin Hsu at University of California, Irvine through a task funded by NESDIS’ Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) Program Office. The primary goal of the workshop was to determine future satellite observation requirements for global precipitation. The workshop had nearly 100 participants for each of the four sessions that spanned two days.

ESSIC Scientists to Address Climate Change, Predict Future COVID Variants, and Remediate Methane with Grand Challenges Grants

February 17, 2023

The University of Maryland today awarded $30 million to 50 projects through its Grand Challenges Grants Program, an institution-wide initiative to tackle major societal issues.

The College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences (CMNS) received 16 Grand Challenges grants, five of which include ESSIC scientists.

ESSIC/CISESS at the AMS Annual Meeting

February 1, 2023

ESSIC/CISESS had a large presence at the AMS Annual Meeting, held in mid-January in Denver and virtually.

Evaluation of Snowfall Retrieval Performance of GPM Constellation Radiometers Relative to Spaceborne Radars

January 4, 2023

Several current and former ESSIC/CISESS scientists are co-authors on a new paper in Journal of Hydrometeorology titled “Evaluation of Snowfall Retrieval Performance of GPM Constellation Radiometers Relative to Spaceborne Radars”. Former ESSIC scientist Yalei You was first author on the paper. Current ESSIC/CISESS scientists on the paper are Veljko Petkovic, Lisa Milani, John Yang, and Guojun Gu.

Progress on the Snowfall Rate Product and its New Website

December 19, 2022

The Snowfall Rate (SFR) team at STAR and ESSIC/CISESS, including Huan Meng, Yongzhen Fan, and Jun Dong, has made some notable progress recently that significantly enhances the product and its accessibility to users.

Observed GPCP precipitation trend (mm day-1 per decade) during (a) 1979-2014 and (b) 1979-2020. (c) AMIP6 and (d) CMIP6 historical full forcing simulated precipitation trend (mm day-1 per decade) during 1979-2014.

Observed Variability and Trends in Global Precipitation During the Satellite Era

November 16, 2022

ESSIC/CISESS scientists Guojun Gu and Robert Adler have a new article in Climate Dynamics that examines changes in global precipitation during the satellite (post-1979) era using the Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP) V2.3 monthly precipitation analysis. They compared GPCP data with results from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 6 (CMIP6) and the Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project (AMIP5) with the goal of improving current understanding of the effects of major physical mechanisms on precipitation change. They also aimed to assess the skills of current climate models and discover some clues for diagnosing possible limitations in observed precipitation.

Figure: (Top panel) Rain-Rate predicted by eTRaP and observed by MRMS. (Bottom panel) Scatter plot and estimation metrics for Tropical Storm Fiona between September 18, 2022 12 UTC to September 19, 2022 12 UTC.

NPreciSe Evaluation of eTRaP during Tropical Storm Fiona

October 3, 2022

Tropical Storm Fiona struck Puerto Rico on September 17-18, 2022 causing catastrophic floods and leaving most of the island with a major power outage. Fiona is the first Atlantic storm this season to cause a major disaster. NPreciSe (NOAA Satellite Precipitation Validation System) led by the CISESS science team (Malar Arulraj, Veljko Petkovic, Ralph Ferraro, and Huan Meng), evaluated the performance of the Ensemble Tropical Rainfall Potential (eTRaP) forecasts during this event, using a recently added Multi-Radar/Multi-Sensor (MRMS) observation product over Caribbean Islands.

A screenshot of the virtual attendees at the summer intern party

CISESS Welcomes Summer Interns in 2022

September 7, 2022

This past summer, ESSIC’s Cooperative Institute for Satellite Earth System Studies (CISESS) welcomed 22 interns to assist in the research of 24 ESSIC/CISESS scientists. Of the interns, three were graduate students, 14 were undergraduates and five were high school students. Several of these students were returning interns from previous semesters.

The Role of Satellite Information in Forecasting, Modeling, and Mapping the 2019 Mozambique Flood

August 26, 2022

ESSIC/CISESS scientists Robert Adler, Guojun Gu, and Huan Wu have a new article in Journal of Flood Risk Management that examines results from the UMD/ESSIC Global Flood Monitoring System (GFMS) and various remote-sensing-based flood products in the context of the major 2019 flood in Mozambique.

Figure: Snapshot of (Left panel) Dr. Zhang’s lightning observation video; (Right panel) Dr. Arulraj’s research results presented at the 2022 NOAA CoRP Science Symposium.

ESSIC/CISESS Scientists Attended the 2022 NOAA CoRP Science Symposium

August 5, 2022

CISESS sponsored two early career scientists, Drs. Malar Arulraj and Daile Zhang, to attend the 2022 Cooperative Research Program (CoRP) Science Symposium, which was held in person on July 25th to 27th at the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA) of Colorado State University located in Fort Collins, CO.