The ASDC would like to bring your attention to the Atmospheric Science User Forum. The purpose of this forum is to improve user service, quality, and efficiency of NASA atmospheric science data. The forum intends to provide a quick and easy way to facilitate scientific discussion among scientists and data users. All are welcome to use this forum, simply create an Earthdata Login account. Directions for using the forum are provided on the homepage.
On Sept. 7, the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument on NASA's Terra satellite passed over Hurricane Irma at approximately 11:20 am local time. The MISR instrument comprises nine cameras that view the Earth at different angles, and since it takes roughly seven minutes for all nine cameras to capture the same location, the motion of the clouds between images allows scientists to calculate the wind speed at the cloud tops.
This stereo anaglyph combines two of the MISR angles to show a three-dimensional view of Irma. You will need red-blue glasses to view the anaglyph; place the red lens over your left eye.
The Toolsets for Airborne Data (TAD), developed at the Atmospheric Science Data Center (ASDC) at NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) to promote the airborne data use, has added additional data sets! Now available is the entire NASA Deriving Information on Surface Conditions from COlumn and VERtically Resolved Observations Relevant to Air Quality (DISCOVER-AQ) Campaign including Maryland, Texas, California, and Colorado. To order and download the aircraft data sets you can access TAD at: https://tad.larc.nasa.gov.
This plot shows smoke in the atmosphere before and during the deadly tornado outbreak of April 27, 2011. Thin blue lines trace the flow of smoke from the Yucatán towards the southeastern United States, where black dots indicate clusters of violent EF4 and EF5 tornadoes. Blue circles show where the aerosols were first observed over the ocean on April 27; the color scale on the right side indicates aerosol concentrations as particles were dispersed through the atmosphere. Fires are shown as light grey dots. The line of small black dots running from Mexico to Mississippi reveals the path of the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) satellite as it passed over the area collecting smoke plume heights. (Courtesy P. Saide)
Climate change may eventually change global cloud heights, but scientists need a longer data set to know whether that's happening already.
This study used data from the Multi-angle Imaging Spectroradiometer (MISR) instrument on NASA's Terra satellite, where the images allow researchers to distinguish the amounts, types and heights of clouds.
Drought turns the Fertile Crescent into a dust bowl.
These plots show the ratio of change in dust activity across the Arabian Peninsula between 2008 and 2012, compared to the time period 2001 to 2005. The blue polygon shows the area of greatest vegetation decline. Data are from the Multi-angle Imaging Spectroradiometer (MISR) satellite instrument. (Courtesy M. Notaro, et al., 2015, Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres)
Tuesday, October 17, 2017 to Wednesday, November 1, 2017
Due to the unplanned maintenance on all CALIPSO related websites at the NASA Langley ASDC users are unable to view the standard suite of CALIPSO browse images. An OpenDAP portal with the expedited browse images has been created and is available at:
The CALIPSO mission announces that as of 11 October 2017 the Version 4.00 Lidar Level 1 product will no longer be publicly available from the Atmospheric Science Data Center (ASDC) at NASA Langley Research Center.
September 2017 Atmospheric Science Forum Newsletter
Wednesday, September 13, 2017
The Atmospheric Science Forum Newsletter for September 2017 features recent AirMSPI efforts for the new release of data from the ORACLES campaign, reprocessing of both PODEX and SEAC4RS data, and release of CALIPSO IIR L1 Standard V2-00 data. Access the full article at:
Aerosols
Clouds
Radiation Budget
Tropospheric Composition
