Seminars

AOS Applications Seminar: How NASA's Spaceborne Active Sensors Have Contributed to Operational NOAA 3D Cloud Products for Aviation

The radar and lidar onboard CloudSat and CALIPSO have provided a decade and a half of joint observations of the vertical structure of clouds, aerosols, and precipitation in the atmosphere. These are research missions, but measurements from these instruments have contributed significantly to operational products through more indirect pathways. This work examines how historic spaceborne radar and lidar data have been used to add "depth" to the mostly cloud-top information provided by operational passive sensors like the GOES Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) and JPSS Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS), specifically through contributions to NOAA's Cloud Base Height and Cloud Cover Layers products. Applications that will be discussed include development of passive sensor-based cloud vertical cross sections for Alaska pilots operating in challenging terrain, as well as experimental global 3D gridded cloud products for aviation. The use of active sensor data to train a machine learning model to determine the presence of low-levels clouds in ABI/VIIRS scenes will also be discussed.

AOS Application Seminar: User Engagement and Best Practices

The Atmosphere Observing System (AOS) will help provide transformative three-dimensional space-based and suborbital observations enabling improved understanding of synergistic cloud, precipitation, and aerosol processes, leading to improved predictions of weather and climate that will directly support societal applications. However, to enable a variety of societal applications, capacity building, training, and stakeholder engagement activities are critical to prepare the community for the use of the next generation of AOS observation. In this seminar, invited speakers will discuss current capacity building efforts including the NASA Applied Remote Sensing Training (ARSET) Program and WMO’s Virtual Laboratory for Training and Education in Satellite Meteorology (WMO VLab), highlighting best practices and impacts employed by these programs. This will then be followed by a discussion on how AOS can become more involved in these activities as the mission progresses.

AOS Applications Seminar: Monitoring of Volcanic Eruptions, Pyrocumulonimbus (PyroCb), and Ensuing Impacts on the UTLS Worldwide

The stratospheric volcanic eruption creates both local hazards and climate-perturbation potential. The young volcanic cloud (VC) is inherently extreme and peculiar in its form and composition, which hampers accurate characterization; most individual satellite remote sensing (SRS) instruments are not designed for such extreme atmospheric conditions. The aged VC may be so tenuous as to be nearly undetectable by certain SRS techniques. A basic understanding of the evolving VC lies in combining observations from different sensors that together can fully capture the physical features- height and concentration of ash, sulfur, or ice. NRL's research thrust is to optimally combine measurements of volcanic events to better understand how the VC adversely affects individual SRS and impacts the earth/atmosphere system. Pyrocumulonimbus (pyroCb) are fire-induced and smoke-infused thunderstorms that serve as the primary pathway for smoke to reach the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere (UTLS). The magnitude of smoke plumes observed in the UTLS has increased significantly in recent years, rivaling or exceeding the impact from all volcanic eruptions observed over the last decade, with the potential for significant climate feedbacks on seasonal and hemispheric scales. We summarize what the community has learned from these extreme events and identify science questions that remain unanswered. Emphasis is placed on NASA satellite observations that serve a critical role in this rapidly growing and interdisciplinary research community.Meeting Summary

AOS Applications Seminar: Air Quality Applications Enhancements through Suborbital Activities

The Atmosphere Observing System (AOS) will have a suborbital component that will add measurements from the air and from the surface. It will measure "blind zones" where the satellite instruments are obscured, measure temporal evolution (lifecycle) of processes, and make direct measurements of cloud, precipitation, and aerosol particles. Suborbital measurements will provide validation for and enhanced interpretation of novel AOS satellite measurements that will directly support and address application gaps. In this seminar, invited speakers discussed how suborbital activities have enhanced or could enhance operations/applications among air agencies.

AOS Applications Seminar: The NASA EVS-3 project Investigation of Microphysics and Precipitation in Atlantic Coast-Threatening Snowstorms (IMPACTS): Relevance to AOS

The Investigation of Microphysics and Precipitation for Atlantic Coast-Threatening Snowstorms (IMPACTS) is a NASA funded EVS-3 project to study Northeast United States snowstorms. The goals of IMPACTS are to improve the understanding of snowfall processes, remote sensing of snow, and the prediction of banded structure and evolution. The primary observing platforms for IMPACTS are two research aircraft: the "satellite-simulating" ER-2, which flies high above the storms equipped with passive and active remote sensing instruments relevant to both the AOS inclined and polar projects and the "storm-penetrating" P-3, which flies within clouds equipped with microphysical probes and environmental measuring instrumentation. These two aircraft sample in coordinated flight legs so that the remote sensing measurements by the ER-2 are directly related to the microphysical measurements by the P-3. These coordinated datasets can be used to create and test AOS cloud and precipitation algorithms, especially the estimation of microphysical properties from remote sensors. This presentation will highlight the measurements taken so far in the 2020 and 2022 deployments and present preliminary results from select storm systems sampled.

AOS Applications Seminar: Understanding Data Needs in the Aviation Community

The Atmosphere Observing System (AOS) will help provide transformative three-dimensional space-based and suborbital observations of essential collocated cloud, dynamic, precipitation and aerosol processes, leading to improved predictions of weather and smoke that will directly support and enhance aviation applications. In this seminar invited panelists, Danny Sims (FAA AWRP), Nathan Polderman (United Airlines), and Ty Higginbotham (AWC), discussed their current uses of remote sensing products for monitoring and modeling hazardous weather, with a particular focus on data product use for turbulence, icing and low-level cloud hazards.Meeting Summary

AOS Applications Seminar: UNICEF Data Needs and Barriers for Air Quality and Public Health

UNICEF data needs and barriers in the area of public health and air quality. This talk, presented by Amy Wickman (UNICEF), provided an overview of UNICEF's work in the climate, energy, environment and disaster risk reduction sectors, including action to address air pollution. This was then followed by a discussion of how measurements from the upcoming AOS mission such as weather and air quality forecasting and modeling can benefit UNICEF, its partners and communities where UNICEF works.Meeting Summary

AOS Applications Seminar: AOS and Benefits of Lidar for Applications

The Atmosphere Observing System (AOS) will help provide transformative three-dimensional space-based and suborbital observations of essential collocated cloud, dynamic, precipitation and aerosol processes, leading to improved predictions of weather, air quality and climate for the benefit of society. AOS Lidar observations will, for the first time, capture diurnally variability in the vertical profile of aerosols as well as provide unprecedented accuracy in aerosol speciation. In this seminar, invited panelists will discuss their current uses of lidar for applications and the benefits of these instruments for societal decision-making activities.

AOS Applications Seminar: Could Wildfires Amplify Drought and Heatwave?

The influence of drought and heatwaves on wildfires has been clearly shown in literature, but whether wildfires, especially their resultant aerosols, can amplify drought and heatwave is still largely unknown. This question has become increasingly important as wildfires have increased rapidly over many parts of the world, such as over western United States, in recent decades. In this presentation, I will give evidence of the non-linear influences of aerosols on clouds, precipitation and diabatic heating of the atmosphere as shown by joint use of MODIS, CloudSat, Aura/MLS, CALIPSO, and TRMM/GPM datasets to suggest that aerosols can induce a positive feedback between wildfire, drought and extreme surface temperatures both at cloud and regional scales. The limitations and challenges of these results and needed improvements of observations were discussed in this series.

AOS Applications Seminar: The NASA Short-term Prediction Research and Transition Center and a Paradigm for Engaging Stakeholders

Speakers Emily Berndt (MSFC/SPoRT), Aaron Naeger (UAH/SPoRT), Anita LeRoy (UAH/SPoRT), and Aaron Jacobs (NOAA NWS), discussed NASA's SPoRT research and application activities as well as application opportunities relevant to the future AOS mission.

AOS Applications Seminar: The Aerosol Cloud meTeorology Interactions oVer the western ATlantic Experiment (ACTIVATE)

Invited speaker, Armin Sorooshian (U. of Arizona), spoke about NASA's ACTIVATE program and AOS applications in this series.Meeting Summary

AOS Applications Seminar: Advances in Aerosol Assimilation and Future Perspectives

The Aerosol and Cloud, Convection and Precipitation (ACCP) Webinar Series leads off with Advances in Aerosol Assimilation and Future Perspectives by Dr. Angela Benedetti, European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF).
Abstract
Recent years have seen the rise of global operational atmospheric composition models for several applications including climate monitoring, air quality forecasting, provision of boundary conditions for regional air quality models, and energy sector applications, to mention a few. Typically global forecasts are provided in the medium-range, up to five days ahead. Centres with aerosol analysis and forecasting capabilities have invested a considerable amount of effort in exploiting aerosol related observations from spaceborne sensors as well as ground-based networks both for assimilation and verification. For example, ECMWF has developed the capability to run its Integrated Forecast System (IFS) with atmospheric composition variables, thanks to a series of EU-funded projects (GEMS, MACC, MACC-II, MACC-III), and now Copernicus. The composition configuration is at the core of the Copernicus Atmospheric Service (CAMS) which provides operational 4D-Var analyses and forecasts of aerosols and reactive gases. Other operational and research centres such as NRL, NASA and JMA, UK MetOffice, to mention a few, run aerosol forecasts and analysis. The collaborative efforts of these centres have culminated in the International Cooperative for Aerosol Prediction (ICAP) which maintains a multi-model ensemble system for aerosol forecasts, based on the systems run at the individual participating centres. At the heart of this effort there has been constant dialogue and collaboration with data providers such as space agencies (NASA, ESA, EUMETSAT, JAXA, etc) with the intention of using the datasets in the most meaningful way. In this seminar, we will review the state-of-the-art in aerosol analysis by providing an overview of the current status of the aerosol analyses at the various centres with an emphasis on the data used in the assimilation, rather than the specific assimilation approach. Additionally we will provide an outlook on future use of aerosol data for analysis applications based on current and planned missions.