Satellite Animation Shows February Return of the Pineapple Express

An animation of satellite imagery from NOAA's GOES-West satellite from Feb. 1 to Feb. 4, 2015 captured the movement of a stream of clouds associated with moisture called "The Pineapple Express." Image Credit: NASA/NOAA GOES Project, Dennis Chesters

The "Pineapple Express" has set up again and is bringing wet weather to the U.S. Pacific Northwest. An animation of satellite imagery from NOAA's GOES-West satellite from Feb. 1 to Feb. 4, 2015 captured the movement of a stream of clouds associated with moisture that is expected to bring rain and snow to the region over the next several days.

The ‘‘Pineapple Express’’ occurs when warm air and lots of moisture are transported from the Central Pacific, near Hawaii, to the Eastern Pacific Ocean.

A wide-field movie by NOAA's GOES-West satellite shows the Pineapple Express' stream of clouds and moisture moving into the Pacific Northwest. The video was created by NASA/NOAA's GOES Project at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

“Good news for Northern California and the Pacific Northwest," said Bill Patzert, climatologist for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "Beginning Wednesday, a series of storms pumped up by a moisture-laden ‘Pineapple Express’ system surging out of the warm tropical Pacific will deliver some small relief to rain and snow starved California. Though not a drought buster, we Californians are hoping this might be a preview of coming attractions for February and March. We are in the fourth quarter of our winter rain season and need a ‘hail mary’ to beat this drought down,” Patzert said.

On Feb.4 NOAA's National Weather Service Weather Prediction Center (NPC) in College Park, Maryland issued a short range forecast discussion about the Pineapple Express. NPC noted: A weather system that's tapping into abundant moisture in the Pacific will bring moderate to heavy rainfall to the Pacific Northwest beginning Wednesday. The rain will spread into northern California on Thursday and is expected to continue through the weekend. Some areas could see in excess of 10 inches of rain through early Saturday.

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The Pineapple Express is expected to affect areas from northwest California into coastal Oregon and Washington State. NPC noted that the "Express" is expected to produce mostly light to moderate rainfall totals for the coastal Pacific Northwest on Feb. 4, with much heavier totals expected the following two days.

GOES satellites provide the kind of continuous monitoring necessary for intensive data analysis. Geostationary describes an orbit in which a satellite is always in the same position with respect to the rotating Earth. This allows GOES to hover continuously over one position on Earth's surface, appearing stationary. As a result, GOES provide a constant vigil for the atmospheric "triggers" for severe weather conditions such as tornadoes, flash floods, hail storms and hurricanes.

Source: Nasa

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Putting the Blizzard of 2015 into Historical Context

                    January-25-28-2015-Snowfall-Totals-Map Credit: NOAA

The recent “Blizzard of 2015” shutdown several major metropolitan areas in the Northeast and left several locations across Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and New York covered in over two feet of snow. But, how did this snowstorm compare to the region’s most historic storms? To place this storm and its societal impacts into historical context, NCDC used the Regional Snowfall Index or RSI to rank it on a scale from 1 to 5—similar to the Fujita scale for tornadoes or the Saffir-Simpson scale for hurricanes. These ranks are based on the snowfall amount within the region’s borders, the spatial extent of the storm, and the relationship of these elements to the area’s population.

The RSI value for January 25­–28, 2015, snowstorm is 6.16, which makes it a Category 3 or major event for the Northeast. With that RSI value, the snowstorm ranks 26th out of the 423 northeastern snowstorms NCDC has analyzed since 1900. The area of snowfall and population affected by 20 inches of snow or more were the primary drivers for this storm’s raw RSI score. Almost 5 million people experienced over 20 inches of snow and 15 million experienced over 10 inches of new snow. While these are significant impacts, the footprint of the heavy snow was relatively small compared to RSI Category 5 storms. These rare events typically have over 45 million people experiencing over 10 inches of snow. Nonetheless, this storm is well within the top 10% of storms analyzed for the Northeast.

The late February snowstorm of 1969 remains the strongest storm to hit the Northeast, with an RSI value of 34.03 making it a Category 5 or extreme event. The March 1993 “Storm of the Century” remains the second strongest snowstorm to hit the Northeast, with an RSI value of 22.12 also making it a Category 5 event.

Learn more about the Regional Snowfall Index and use our interactive mapping tool to see RSI rankings for almost 600 snowstorms since 1900.

Source: NOAA

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Building a Better Weather Forecast? SMAP May Help

SMAP's soil moisture measurements will help with forecasts of precipitation and temperature. Image credit: UCAR

If you were trying to forecast tomorrow's weather, you would probably look up at the sky rather than down at the ground. But if you live in the U.S. Midwest or someplace with a similar climate, one key to a better weather forecast may lie beneath your feet.

Precipitation and temperature are part of every weather forecast. Precipitation comes from clouds, clouds are formed of airborne water vapor, and vapor comes from evaporating soil moisture -- so soil moisture governs precipitation. Evaporating soil moisture also makes air cooler, so it affects temperature. In certain kinds of climate, scientists believe, soil moisture is so influential that better observations of it might improve weather forecasts. These climates are transitional: not too humid and not too dry. For example, the agriculturally productive states of the U.S. Midwest fall into that category.

"Better soil moisture observations lead to better land-atmosphere interaction in weather forecasting models and ultimately to a better prediction of temperature and precipitation," said Michael Ek, leader of the Land Hydrology Team at the Environmental Monitoring Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). "Weather models need good initial observations of the land surface, or you're starting from the wrong place."

Better soil moisture observations are just what the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission will provide. Scheduled for launch on Jan. 29, SMAP will collect the most accurate and highest-resolution soil moisture measurements ever made from a satellite SMAP will cover the entire globe in two to three days. Ek is a member of one of five groups in SMAP's Early Adopter program that have been working for several years on the question of how best to incorporate the new data into national weather forecasting models.

Forecasts will not improve, however, the moment SMAP starts collecting data. U.S. Department of Agriculture research scientist Wade Crow, a member of SMAP's science team, explained that, since closely spaced global soil moisture measurements have never existed before, the mathematical models used in weather forecasting are not configured to include them directly. Getting the best use out of the new observations has been a subject of active research for several years and will require some significant changes in how soil moisture data are assimilated into the models.

Data assimilation is necessary because weather forecasting models all drift a bit, like cars. If you're driving on a perfectly straight road, you still need to keep a hand on the steering wheel or you'll run off the edge sooner or later. Data assimilation in a model serves the same purpose as the slight movements of your hands that keep your car on course.

Drift is not a fatal flaw for a weather forecasting model any more than it is for a car. It is simply a sign that the Earth system is too vast and complicated to model perfectly with the resources available today. To steer forecasts toward greater realism, models ingest, or assimilate, real-world data and use them in sophisticated mathematical techniques. Each time updated observations become available, they are assimilated to improve the starting point for the next forecast.

Closely spaced and highly accurate global measurements are an important part of the process. For soil moisture, however, current observations are not on a fine enough scale to meet the needs of weather forecasting models directly. "Modelers compensate for the lack of direct observations of soil moisture by using more indirect measures, such as estimating it from observations of temperature and precipitation," Crow explained. "As a consequence, modeled soil moisture tends to diverge from reality. SMAP will be directly observing the state that they want, so they won't have to back it out from proxy measurements."

JPL scientist Eni Njoku is working with researchers at another forecasting center, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) in Reading, England. Njoku said, "SMAP will provide benefits of higher soil moisture accuracy and spatial resolution than have previously been available from satellites. This could lead potentially to improved regional and global weather forecasts by ECMWF." Environment Canada, the branch of the Canadian government responsible for weather forecasting in that nation, is also working on assimilating SMAP data into its models.

"The numerical weather prediction centers are adapting to the new availability of soil moisture information and thinking of ways they can exploit it," Crow summarized. "It will be really exciting to see what they find."

SMAP is managed for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington by the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, with instrument hardware and science contributions made by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. JPL is responsible for project management, system engineering, radar instrumentation, mission operations and the ground data system. Goddard is responsible for the radiometer instrument. Both centers collaborate on science data processing and delivery to the Alaska Satellite Facility, in Fairbanks, and the National Snow and Ice Data Center, at the University of Colorado in Boulder, for public distribution and archiving. NASA's Launch Services Program at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida is responsible for launch management. JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Source: Nasa

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The NASA and NOAA's Nighttime and Daytime Views of the Blizzard of 2015

On January 27, 2015 at 17:35 UTC (12:35 p.m. EST) NOAA's Geostationary Operational Environmental or GOES- East satellite captured an image of the nor'easter over New England. Credit: NASA/NOAA GOES Project

NASA and NOAA have provided night-time and daytime views of the Blizzard of 2015 from the Suomi NPP and the GOES-East satellites.

A combination of the day-night band and high resolution infrared imagery from the NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite showed the historic blizzard near peak intensity as it moves over the New York through Boston Metropolitan areas at 06:45Z (1:45 a.m. EST) on January 27, 2015. The nighttime lights of the region were blurred by the high cloud tops associated with the most intense parts of the storm. 

The center of the low pressure center was about 85 miles southeast of Nantucket, Massachusetts at 9:00 a.m. EST and had an estimated pressure of 975 millibars. The center of the storm was moving in a north-northeasterly direction.

At 10 a.m. EST, the National Weather Service noted "the powerful nor'easter that brought moderate to heavy snowfall and blizzard conditions to the Northeast on Monday will continue to affect the region on Tuesday, with heavy snow and blizzard conditions expected from eastern Long Island to Maine as the system slowly moves to the northeast. Snow and strong winds will being tapering off from south to north Tuesday night into Wednesday morning."

Later on January 27, 2015 at 17:35 UTC (12:35 p.m. EST) NOAA's Geostationary Operational Environmental or GOES-East satellite captured an image of the nor'easter over New England. The image was created by the NASA/NOAA GOES Project and showed the clouds associated with the nor'easter blanketing New England.  An occluded front extended north and eastward out of the low pressure area's center out into the Atlantic Ocean.

GOES satellites provide the kind of continuous monitoring necessary for intensive data analysis. Geostationary describes an orbit in which a satellite is always in the same position with respect to the rotating Earth. This allows GOES to hover continuously over one position on Earth's surface, appearing stationary. As a result, GOES provide a constant vigil for the atmospheric "triggers" for severe weather conditions such as tornadoes, flash floods, hail storms and hurricanes.

Source: Nasa

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Tornado strength, frequency, linked to climate change

Tornado (stock image). New research by a Florida State University geography professor shows that climate change may be playing a key role in the strength and frequency of tornadoes hitting the United States. Credit: © fotola70 / Fotolia

New research by a Florida State University geography professor shows that climate change may be playing a key role in the strength and frequency of tornadoes hitting the United States.

Published Wednesday in the journal Climate Dynamics, Professor James Elsner writes that though tornadoes are forming fewer days per year, they are forming at a greater density and strength than ever before. So, for example, instead of one or two forming on a given day in an area, there might be three or four occurring.

"We may be less threatened by tornadoes on a day-to-day basis, but when they do come, they come like there's no tomorrow," Elsner said.

Elsner, an expert in climate and weather trends, said in the past, many researchers dismissed the impact of climate change on tornadoes because there was no distinct pattern in the number of tornado days per year. In 1971, there were 187 tornado days, but in 2013 there were only 79 days with tornadoes.

But a deeper dive into the data showed more severity in the types of storms and that more were happening on a given day than in previous years.

"I think it's important for forecasters and the public to know this," Elsner said. "It's a matter of making sure the public is aware that if there is a higher risk of a storm, there may actually be multiple storms in a day."

The United States experiences more tornadoes than any other country, and despite advances in technology and warning systems, they still remain a hazard to residents in storm-prone areas. The 2011 tornado season, for example, had nearly 1,700 storms and killed more than 550 people.

So far, in 2014, there have been 189 storms with a death toll of 43, according to the NOAA/National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center.

One bright spot of news in the research, Elsner added, was that the geographic areas impacted most regularly by tornadoes do not appear to be growing.

Elsner was joined on the paper by independent researcher Thomas H. Jagger, formerly a research associate at Florida State University, and meteorologist Svetoslava Elsner.

Source: Florida State University

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Engineers to simulate, model tornado winds, their effects on buildings

Partha Sarkar designed and built the Iowa State University Tornado Simulator a decade ago. A recent grant will support new simulator studies of tornado winds and their impacts on homes and buildings. Credit: Bob Elbert

The Iowa State University Tornado Simulator kicked up a thick and slowly spinning funnel cloud over a model of a small town, overwhelming the miniature streets, buildings and homes.

Partha Sarkar turned from the laboratory vortex and announced, "That's an EF3."

Most tornadoes (about 90 percent of them) are EF3 or less in intensity. And so Sarkar advocates that homes and buildings within tornado alley across the middle of the U.S. be designed to withstand EF3 tornadoes and their top wind speeds of 165 mph.

Sarkar, an Iowa State professor of aerospace engineering, knows something about the biggest tornadoes. He walked the debris fields of Parkersburg in 2008 and Joplin, Missouri, in 2010, and has seen what the 200-plus mph winds of EF5 storms can do to cities, buildings and people.

To study the interaction of tornadoes with human-made structures, he designed and built a tornado simulator that can create and move a tornado-like vortex back and forth over a test bed. He, his coworkers and Iowa State students have worked with the simulator for a decade, studying the loads and pressures caused by laboratory storms passing over models of homes and buildings.

But, Sarkar said, there's still a lot engineers don't understand about tornado winds:

How, for example, do nearby structures and terrain affect those winds? How do building codes, building ages, structure shapes, roof types and even construction quality influence tornado damage? How do internal pressures inside buildings influence tornado damage? And, how are the wind loads distributed and shared by a building's components, such as roof sheathing, roof trusses, walls, studs and nails?

To find these answers, the National Science Foundation has awarded a pair of three-year, $250,000 collaborative research grants to Sarkar and to Texas Tech University researchers Daan Liang, an associate professor of construction engineering and engineering technology, and Xinzhong Chen, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering.

As part of this new project, "We will try to quantify the uncertainties in estimating tornado winds and the corresponding structural damage," Sarkar said.

To do that, Sarkar said his research group will use the latest advances in tornado simulation, data acquisition and computer modeling to answer engineering questions about tornado winds and their effects on buildings.

One result of this research could be refinements to the Enhanced Fujita (EF) Scale that considers storm damage to measure the strength of tornadoes. Another result could be new provisions in building codes and construction practices for tornado-resistant buildings.

"The overarching goal of this research is to enhance society's resiliency to tornadoes through innovative design and construction of building components and systems in tornado-prone regions," the Iowa State and Texas Tech researchers wrote in a project summary.

At Iowa State, Sarkar said the grant will support experiments and data collection with the tornado simulator. One experiment, for example, will study actual buildings damaged in tornadoes by creating computer and physical models of the buildings and their structural failures. The computer models will be refined and verified by running lab tornadoes over the physical models. The computational models -- called finite element models -- will help researchers understand and predict the damage caused by tornado winds.

Data from the experiments and models will also be shared with the Texas Tech construction engineers who will study building performance in tornado winds.

"In the long run," the researchers wrote in their summary, "the research is expected to contribute to methods and strategies that can be implemented for preventing tornado hazards from becoming disasters."

Source: Iowa State University

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Intensity of hurricanes: New study helps improve predictions of storm intensity

Rough sea with big waves (stock image). "The air-water interface -- whether it had significant waves or significant spray -- is a big factor in storm intensity," said Alex Soloviev, Ph.D., a professor at Nova Southeastern University's Oceanographic Center. "Hurricanes gain heat energy through the interface and they lose mechanical energy at the interface." Credit: © mimadeo / Fotolia

They are something we take very seriously in Florida -- hurricanes. The names roll off the tongue like a list of villains -- Andrew, Charlie, Frances and Wilma.

In the past 25 years or so, experts have gradually been improving prediction of the course a storm may take. This is thanks to tremendous advancements in computer and satellite technology. While we still have the "cone of uncertainty" we've become familiar with watching television weather reports, today's models are more accurate than they used to be.

The one area, however, where there is still much more to be researched and learned is in predicting just how intense a storm may be. While hurricane hunter aircraft can help determine wind speed, velocity, water temperature and other data, the fact is we often don't know why or how a storm gets stronger or weaker. There has been virtually no progress in hurricane intensity forecasting during the last quarter century.

But, thanks to new research being conducted, all that's about to change.

"The air-water interface -- whether it had significant waves or significant spray -- is a big factor in storm intensity," said Alex Soloviev, Ph.D., a professor at Nova Southeastern University's Oceanographic Center. "Hurricanes gain heat energy through the interface and they lose mechanical energy at the interface."

Soloviev is also an Adjunct Professor at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science (UM RSMAS) and a Fellow at the Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies (CIMAS.) He and his fellow researchers used a computational fluid dynamics model to simulate microstructure of the air-sea interface under hurricane force winds. In order to verify these computer-generated results, the group conducted experiments at the UM's Rosenstiel School Air-Sea Interaction Salt Water Tank (ASIST) where they simulated wind speed and ocean surface conditions found during hurricanes.

The study "The Air-Sea Interface and Surface Stress Under Tropical Cyclones" was published in the June 16, 2014 issue of the journal Nature Scientific Reports. Soloviev was the lead author of this study, which was conducted by a multi-institutional team including Roger Lukas (University of Hawaii), Mark Donelan and Brian Haus (UM RSMAS), and Isaac Ginis (University of Rhode Island.)

The researchers were surprised at what they found. Under hurricane force wind, the air-water interface was producing projectiles fragmenting into sub millimeter scale water droplets. This process is known from some engineering applications, including rocket science, as the Kelvin-Helmholtz (KH) instability. This new study then looked at how changes in microphysics of the air-sea interface can make a storm grow or weaken in intensity. With wind speed exceeding a Category 1 threshold, the ocean surface unexpectedly became more "slippery."

When the wind exceeded Category 3 hurricane force, the "slippery" effect started gradually disappearing and was completely gone at Category 5. The conclusion was that some hurricanes might rapidly intensify to Category 3 and then stay in a "comfortable" zone around Category 3 status. This finding is consistent with the global best-track tropical cyclone statistics on maximum intensity for 1982-2009. So far, these early results showed that physical conditions where the air and the ocean interact must be a vital part of any successful hurricane forecasting model and would help explain, and predict, how a storm might intensify as it moves through across the water based on the physical stress at the ocean's surface.

This work has been supported by the NOPP project "Advanced coupled atmosphere-wave-ocean modeling for improving tropical cyclone prediction models" (PIs: Isaac Ginis, URI and Shuyi Chen, UM) and by the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI) Consortium for Advanced Research on the Transport of Hydrocarbons in the Environment -- CARTHE (PI: Tamay Özgökmen, UM). GoMRI is a 10-year, $500 million independent research program established by an agreement between BP and the Gulf of Mexico Alliance.

The plan is for the team to continue their research and experiments at UM's Alfred C. 

Glassell, Jr. SUSTAIN facility, which has recently been designed by one of the Nature article co-authors, Brian Haus (UM). It's the unique lab facility where they can recreate the conditions found in a Category 5 storm.

"We've got more work to do, but this is a great first step," Soloviev said. "But remember, no matter how good we get in predicting a storm's intensity, people in the path need to prepare accordingly regardless of what Category it is -- that's most important."

Source: Nova Southeastern University

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NASA HS3 instrument views two dimensions of clouds

The second Cloud Physics Lidar built to fly on NASA's unmanned Global Hawk aircraft. In this summer's Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel or HS3 mission, the CPL is studying the changing profile of the atmosphere in detail to learn more about how hurricanes form and strengthen. Credit: NASA

Looking out the window of a commercial plane during takeoff is like taking the nickel tour of the profile of the atmosphere. As the plane ascends, what may start as a gloomy day on the ground, can turn into rain streaking across the window as you pass through the white-gray cloud, and then sunny skies above once the plane reaches cruising altitude.

NASA's Cloud Physics Lidar (CPL) instrument, flying aboard an unmanned Global Hawk aircraft in this summer's Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel, or HS3, mission, is studying the changing profile of the atmosphere in detail to learn more about how hurricanes form and strengthen.

"CPL profiles the atmosphere to get a two-dimensional picture of cloud and aerosols, from the top down," said Matt McGill of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who led the instrument team that designed and built the CPL. Its data, presented as if it were a curtain hanging from the sky, shows what's in the atmosphere's different layers.

From about 60,000 feet on the Global Hawk, twice the altitude of a commercial plane, 94 percent of the atmosphere lies below the instrument. The lidar works by sending rapid pulses of light that, like a radar beam, bounce and scatter off any particles they encounter, such as cloud droplets or dust particles. Some of the scattered light returns to the instrument where it records how long it took for the photons to leave and return -- giving the altitude of the particles.

CPL sends out 5,000 pulses of light per second in three different wavelengths, allowing the science team to discriminate between different types of particles, McGill said. "Is it a cloud made of water? Is it a cloud made of ice or mixed [water and ice]? And we can say something about what type of airborne particle we are seeing. Is it dust or smoke or pollution?"
For the scientists studying hurricanes, those distinctions are important. One of the major areas of study is how Saharan dust off of Africa travels across the Atlantic and affects hurricane formation and intensification. CPL data have been used to verify model projections of Saharan dust in the tropics. The CPL data showed dust layers had a vertical distribution different than models predicted. Instead dust layers occupied narrower altitude ranges. The finding led to an improvement in the dust models, which then feed into hurricane models.

Situated in the nose of the Global Hawk flying over the storm environment, CPL also has a role in on-the-fly mission planning. While in flight, the CPL sends its data back to the team on the ground. "The mission scientists involved in the flight planning can sit there and watch the data with us in real time and say, 'Oh, we're not getting what we want.' Then they can go work with the flight planners and pilots to reroute the aircraft into different areas," said McGill. "They love that."

The airborne science community takes full advantage of the quick look capability, as well as the 24-hour turn around for the final data products. CPL is one of the most flown instruments in NASA's Earth science fleet. "It's a workhorse for the field campaigns," said McGill.

The original CPL was built in 1999 and took its first flight on the ER-2 high altitude research aircraft in 2000. Over the years CPL has been used as a satellite simulator for ground validation efforts, a cloud spotter for other instruments needing a clear view of the ground, as well as the main data collector for scientists studying atmospheric composition and Earth's energy budget where thin clouds and aerosols are major players. The lidar was also part of the proof of concept flights for the A-Train, a series of satellites flying in the same orbit making near-simultaneous measurements of the Earth system using many different instruments. That proof of concept airborne campaign showed scientists the power of combining multiple Earth observing data sets.

In 2007, when talk began of using Global Hawks for Earth science, CPL was among the first sensors considered; its size is perfect for the instrument compartment. Worries about the untested Global Hawk led to a second nearly identical instrument being built for use on the unmanned aircraft. It flew on NASA's maiden Global Hawk Pacific campaign in 2009. Since then, the Global Hawk CPL has flown in two multi-year campaigns, alternating between the Airborne Tropical Tropopause Experiment (ATTREX) and HS3.

Compact and fully autonomous, the CPL lidar design pioneered photon-counting technology that has led to the development of two instruments that will fly in space, the Cloud-Aerosol Transport System (CATS), which launches to the International Space Station this December, and the Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System (ATLAS), which will fly on the Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) scheduled to launch in 2017.

The solid design of the instrument has borne up surprisingly well over the years, said McGill, who uses CPL as a learning tool for interns and young scientists getting their hands dirty in the field. Together, the twin CPL instruments have flown 26 missions. HS3 will mark the 27th overall and the seventh for the Global Hawk CPL.

"It's still going strong," McGill said.

The HS3 mission is funded by NASA Headquarters and overseen by NASA's Earth System Science Pathfinder Program at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, and is one of five large field campaigns operating under the Earth Venture program. The HS3 mission also involves collaborations with partners including the National Centers for Environmental Prediction, Naval Postgraduate School, Naval Research Laboratory, NOAA's Hurricane Research Division and Earth System Research Laboratory, Northrop Grumman Space Technology, National Center for Atmospheric Research, State University of New York at Albany, University of Maryland -- Baltimore County, University of Wisconsin and University of Utah. The HS3 mission is managed by the Earth Science Project Office at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. The aircraft are maintained and based at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California.

Source: NASA

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Lightning expected to increase by 50 percent with global warming

Today's climate models predict a 50 percent increase in lightning strikes across the United States during this century as a result of warming temperatures associated with climate change. Credit: © Sondem / Fotolia

Today's climate models predict a 50 percent increase in lightning strikes across the United States during this century as a result of warming temperatures associated with climate change.

Reporting in the Nov. 14 issue of the journal Science, University of California, Berkeley, climate scientist David Romps and his colleagues look at predictions of precipitation and cloud buoyancy in 11 different climate models and conclude that their combined effect will generate more frequent electrical discharges to the ground.

"With warming, thunderstorms become more explosive," said Romps, an assistant professor of earth and planetary science and a faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "This has to do with water vapor, which is the fuel for explosive deep convection in the atmosphere. Warming causes there to be more water vapor in the atmosphere, and if you have more fuel lying around, when you get ignition, it can go big time."

More lightning strikes mean more human injuries; estimates of people struck each year range from the hundreds to nearly a thousand, with scores of deaths. But another significant impact of increased lightning strikes would be more wildfires, since half of all fires -- and often the hardest to fight -- are ignited by lightning, Romps said. More lightning also would likely generate more nitrogen oxides in the atmosphere, which exert a strong control on atmospheric chemistry.

While some studies have shown changes in lightning associated with seasonal or year-to-year variations in temperature, there have been no reliable analyses to indicate what the future may hold. Romps and graduate student Jacob Seeley hypothesized that two atmospheric properties -- precipitation and cloud buoyancy -- together might be a predictor of lightning, and looked at observations during 2011 to see if there was a correlation.

"Lightning is caused by charge separation within clouds, and to maximize charge separation, you have to loft more water vapor and heavy ice particles into the atmosphere," he said. "We already know that the faster the updrafts, the more lightning, and the more precipitation, the more lightning."

Precipitation -- the total amount of water hitting the ground in the form of rain, snow, hail or other forms -- is basically a measure of how convective the atmosphere is, he said, and convection generates lightning. The ascent speeds of those convective clouds are determined by a factor called CAPE -- convective available potential energy -- which is measured by balloon-borne instruments, called radiosondes, released around the U.S. twice a day.

"CAPE is a measure of how potentially explosive the atmosphere is, that is, how buoyant a parcel of air would be if you got it convecting, if you got it to punch through overlying air into the free troposphere," Romps said. "We hypothesized that the product of precipitation and CAPE would predict lightning."

Using U.S. Weather Service data on precipitation, radiosonde measurements of CAPE and lightning- strike counts from the National Lightning Detection Network at the University of Albany, State University of New York (UAlbany), they concluded that 77 percent of the variations in lightning strikes could be predicted from knowing just these two parameters.

'Blown away'

"We were blown away by how incredibly well that worked to predict lightning strikes," he said.

They then looked at 11 different climate models that predict precipitation and CAPE through this century and are archived in the most recent Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). CMIP was established as a resource for climate modelers, providing a standard protocol for studying the output of coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation models so that these models can be compared and validated.

"With CMIP5, we now have for the first time the CAPE and precipitation data to calculate these time series," Romps said.

On average, the models predicted an 11 percent increase in CAPE in the U.S. per degree Celsius rise in global average temperature by the end of the 21st century. Because the models predict little average precipitation increase nationwide over this period, the product of CAPE and precipitation gives about a 12 percent rise in cloud-to-ground lightning strikes per degree in the contiguous U.S., or a roughly 50 percent increase by 2100 if Earth sees the expected 4-degree Celsius increase (7 degrees Fahrenheit) in temperature. This assumes carbon dioxide emissions keep rising consistent with business as usual.

Exactly why CAPE increases as the climate warms is still an area of active research, Romps said, though it is clear that it has to do with the fundamental physics of water. Warm air typically contains more water vapor than cold air; in fact, the amount of water vapor that air can "hold" increases exponentially with temperature. Since water vapor is the fuel for thunderstorms, lightning rates can depend very sensitively on temperature.

In the future, Romps plans to look at the distribution of lightning-strike increases around the U.S. and also explore what lightning data can tell climatologists about atmospheric convection.

Romps' co-authors are Jacob Seeley, also of the Department of Earth and Planetary Science at UC Berkeley, and David Vollaro and John Molinari of the Department of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences at UAlbany.

The work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research and Office of Biological and Environmental Research, and the National Science Foundation.

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Source: University of California - Berkeley

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Birds Sensed severe storms and fled before tornado outbreak

This golden-winged warbler spends the breeding season in the Cumberland Mountains of Tennessee. Credit: Henry Streby and Gunnar Kramer

Golden-winged warblers apparently knew in advance that a storm that would spawn 84 confirmed tornadoes and kill at least 35 people last spring was coming, according to a report in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on December 18. The birds left the scene well before devastating supercell storms blew in.

The discovery was made quite by accident while researchers were testing whether the warblers, which weigh "less than two nickels," could carry geolocators on their backs. It turns out they can, and much more. With a big storm brewing, the birds took off from their breeding ground in the Cumberland Mountains of eastern Tennessee, where they had only just arrived, for an unplanned migratory event. All told, the warblers travelled 1,500 kilometers in 5 days to avoid the historic tornado-producing storms.

"The most curious finding is that the birds left long before the storm arrived," says Henry Streby of the University of California, Berkeley. "At the same time that meteorologists on The Weather Channel were telling us this storm was headed in our direction, the birds were apparently already packing their bags and evacuating the area."

The birds fled from their breeding territories more than 24 hours before the arrival of the storm, Streby and his colleagues report. The researchers suspect that the birds did it by listening to infrasound associated with the severe weather, at a level well below the range of human hearing.

"Meteorologists and physicists have known for decades that tornadic storms make very strong infrasound that can travel thousands of kilometers from the storm," Streby explains. While the birds might pick up on some other cue, he adds, the infrasound from severe storms travels at exactly the same frequency the birds are most sensitive to hearing.

The findings show that birds that follow annual migratory routes can also take off on unplanned trips at other times of the year when conditions require it. That's probably good news for birds, as climate change is expected to produce storms that are both stronger and more frequent. But there surely must be a downside as well, the researchers say.

"Our observation suggests [that] birds aren't just going to sit there and take it with regards to climate change, and maybe they will fare better than some have predicted," Streby says. "On the other hand, this behavior presumably costs the birds some serious energy and time they should be spending on reproducing." The birds' energy-draining journey is just one more pressure human activities are putting on migratory songbirds.

In the coming year, Streby's team will deploy hundreds of geolocators on the golden-winged warblers and related species across their entire breeding range to find out where they spend the winter and how they get there and back.

"I can't say I'm hoping for another severe tornado outbreak," Streby says, "but I am eager to see what unpredictable things happen this time."

Source: Cell Press

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California's drought is the worst in 1,200 years, evidence suggests

The 2012-2014 California drought, unusual in the context of the last 1,200 years, greatly diminished water reserves in Lake Nacimiento of the upper Salinas Valley. Credit: Photo by Daniel Griffin

As California finally experiences the arrival of a rain-bearing Pineapple Express this week, two climate scientists from the University of Minnesota and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution have shown that the drought of 2012-2014 has been the worst in 1,200 years.

Daniel Griffin, an assistant professor in the Department of Geography, Environment and Society at the University of Minnesota, and Kevin Anchukaitis, an assistant scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, asked the question, "How unusual is the ongoing California drought?" Watching the severity of the California drought intensify since last autumn, they wondered how it would eventually compare to other extreme droughts throughout the state's history.

To answer those questions, Griffin and Anchukaitis collected new tree-ring samples from blue oak trees in southern and central California. "California's old blue oaks are as close to nature's rain gauges as we get," says Griffin. "They thrive in some of California's driest environments." These trees are particularly sensitive to moisture changes and their tree rings display moisture fluctuations vividly.

As soon as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released climate data for the summer of 2014, the two scientists sprang into action. Using their blue oak data, they reconstructed rainfall back to the 13th century. They also calculated the severity of the drought by combining NOAA's estimates of the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI), an index of soil moisture variability, with the existing North American Drought Atlas, a spatial tree-ring based reconstruction of drought developed by scientists at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. These resources together provided complementary data on rainfall and soil moisture over the past millennium. Griffin and Anchukaitis found that while the current period of low precipitation is not unusual in California's history, these rainfall deficits combined with sustained record high temperatures created the current multiyear severe water shortages. "While it is precipitation that sets the rhythm of California drought, temperature weighs in on the pitch," says Anchukaitis.

"We were genuinely surprised at the result," says Griffin, a NOAA Climate & Global Change Fellow and former WHOI postdoctoral scholar. "This is California--drought happens. Time and again, the most common result in tree-ring studies is that drought episodes in the past were more extreme than those of more recent eras. This time, however, the result was different." While there is good evidence of past sustained, multi-decadal droughts or so-called "megadroughts"' in California, the authors say those past episodes were probably punctuated by occasional wet years, even if the cumulative effect over decades was one of overall drying. The current short-term drought appears to be worse than any previous span of consecutive years of drought without reprieve.

Tree rings are a valuable data source when tracking historical climate, weather and natural disaster trends. Floods, fires, drought and other elements that can affect growing conditions are reflected in the development of tree rings, and since each ring represents one year the samples collected from centuries-old trees are a virtual timeline that extend beyond the historical record in North America.

So what are the implications? The research indicates that natural climate system variability is compounded by human-caused climate change and that "hot" droughts such as the current one are likely to occur again in the future. California is the world's 8th largest economy and the source of a substantial amount of U.S. produce. Surface water supply shortages there have impacts well beyond the state's borders.

With an exceptionally wet winter, parts of California might emerge from the drought this year. "But there is no doubt," cautions Anchukaitis, "that we are entering a new era where human-wrought changes to the climate system will become important for determining the severity of droughts and their consequences for coupled human and natural systems."

Source:  Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

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New insights into predicting future droughts in California: Natural cycles, sea surface temperatures found to be main drivers in ongoing event

Folsom Lake. Top photo taken in 2011, bottom taken in 2014.
Credit: CA Dept. of Water Resources

According to a new NOAA-sponsored study, natural oceanic and atmospheric patterns are the primary drivers behind California's ongoing drought. A high pressure ridge off the West Coast (typical of historic droughts) prevailed for three winters, blocking important wet season storms, with ocean surface temperature patterns making such a ridge much more likely. Typically, the winter season in California provides the state with a majority of its annual snow and rainfall that replenish water supplies for communities and ecosystems.

Further studies on these oceanic conditions and their effect on California's climate may lead to advances in drought early warning that can help water managers and major industries better prepare for lengthy dry spells in the future.

"It's important to note that California's drought, while extreme, is not an uncommon occurrence for the state. In fact, multi-year droughts appear regularly in the state's climate record, and it's a safe bet that a similar event will happen again. Thus, preparedness is key," said Richard Seager, report lead author and professor with Columbia University's Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory.

This report builds on earlier studies, published in September in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, which found no conclusive evidence linking human-caused climate change and the California drought. The current study notes that the atmospheric ridge over the North Pacific, which has resulted in decreased rain and snowfall since 2011, is almost opposite to what models project to result from human-induced climate change. The report illustrates that mid-winter precipitation is actually projected to increase due to human-induced climate change over most of the state, though warming temperatures may sap much of those benefits for water resources overall, while only spring precipitation is projected to decrease.

The report makes clear that to provide improved drought forecasts for California, scientists will need to fully understand the links between sea surface temperature variations and winter precipitation over the state, discover how these ocean variations are generated, and better characterize their predictability.

This report contributes to a growing field of science-climate attribution-where teams of scientists aim to identify the sources of observed climate and weather patterns.

"There is immense value in examining the causes of this drought from multiple scientific viewpoints," said Marty Hoerling, report co-author and researcher with NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory. "It's paramount that we use our collective ability to provide communities and businesses with the environmental intelligence they need to make decisions concerning water resources, which are becoming increasingly strained."

To view the report, visit: http://cpo.noaa.gov/MAPP/californiadroughtreport.

Source: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

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NASA's Fermi Mission brings deeper focus to thunderstorm gamma rays

New research merging Fermi data with information from ground-based radar and lightning networks shows that terrestrial gamma-ray flashes arise from an unexpected diversity of storms and may be more common than currently thought. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

Each day, thunderstorms around the world produce about a thousand quick bursts of gamma rays, some of the highest-energy light naturally found on Earth. By merging records of events seen by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope with data from ground-based radar and lightning detectors, scientists have completed the most detailed analysis to date of the types of thunderstorms involved.

"Remarkably, we have found that any thunderstorm can produce gamma rays, even those that appear to be so weak a meteorologist wouldn't look twice at them," said Themis Chronis, who led the research at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH).

The outbursts, called terrestrial gamma-ray flashes (TGFs), were discovered in 1992 by NASA's Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory, which operated until 2000. TGFs occur unpredictably and fleetingly, with durations less than a thousandth of a second, and remain poorly understood.
In late 2012, Fermi scientists employed new techniques that effectively upgraded the satellite's Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM), making it 10 times more sensitive to TGFs and allowing it to record weak events that were overlooked before.

"As a result of our enhanced discovery rate, we were able to show that most TGFs also generate strong bursts of radio waves like those produced by lightning," said Michael Briggs, assistant director of the Center for Space Plasma and Aeronomic Research at UAH and a member of the GBM team.
Previously, TGF positions could be roughly estimated based on Fermi's location at the time of the event. The GBM can detect flashes within about 500 miles (800 kilometers), but this is too imprecise to definitively associate a TGF with a specific storm.

Ground-based lightning networks use radio data to pin down strike locations. The discovery of similar signals from TGFs meant that scientists could use the networks to determine which storms produce gamma-ray flashes, opening the door to a deeper understanding of the meteorology powering these extreme events.

Chronis, Briggs and their colleagues sifted through 2,279 TGFs detected by Fermi's GBM to derive a sample of nearly 900 events accurately located by the Total Lightning Network operated by Earth Networks in Germantown, Maryland, and the World Wide Lightning Location Network, a research collaboration run by the University of Washington in Seattle. These systems can pinpoint the location of lightning discharges -- and the corresponding signals from TGFs -- to within 6 miles (10 km) anywhere on the globe.

From this group, the team identified 24 TGFs that occurred within areas covered by Next Generation Weather Radar (NEXRAD) sites in Florida, Louisiana, Texas, Puerto Rico and Guam. For eight of these storms, the researchers obtained additional information about atmospheric conditions through sensor data collected by the Department of Atmospheric Science at the University of Wyoming in Laramie.

"All told, this study is our best look yet at TGF-producing storms, and it shows convincingly that storm intensity is not the key," said Chronis, who will present the findings Wed., Dec. 17, in an invited talk at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco. A paper describing the research has been submitted to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

Scientists suspect that TGFs arise from strong electric fields near the tops of thunderstorms. Updrafts and downdrafts within the storms force rain, snow and ice to collide and acquire electrical charge. Usually, positive charge accumulates in the upper part of the storm and negative charge accumulates below. When the storm's electrical field becomes so strong it breaks down the insulating properties of air, a lightning discharge occurs.

Under the right conditions, the upper part of an intracloud lightning bolt disrupts the storm's electric field in such a way that an avalanche of electrons surges upward at high speed. When these fast-moving electrons are deflected by air molecules, they emit gamma rays and create a TGF.
About 75 percent of lightning stays within the storm, and about 2,000 of these intracloud discharges occur for each TGF Fermi detects.

The new study confirms previous findings indicating that TGFs tend to occur near the highest parts of a thunderstorm, between about 7 and 9 miles (11 to 14 kilometers) high. "We suspect this isn't the full story," explained Briggs. "Lightning often occurs at lower altitudes and TGFs probably do too, but traveling the greater depth of air weakens the gamma rays so much the GBM can't detect them."
Based on current Fermi statistics, scientists estimate that some 1,100 TGFs occur each day, but the number may be much higher if low-altitude flashes are being missed.

While it is too early to draw conclusions, Chronis notes, there are a few hints that gamma-ray flashes may prefer storm areas where updrafts have weakened and the aging storm has become less organized. "Part of our ongoing research is to track these storms with NEXRAD radar to determine if we can relate TGFs to the thunderstorm life cycle," he said.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgK4Ds_Sj6Q#t=66

Source: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

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NASA data underscore severity of California drought

Trends in total water storage in California, Nevada and bordering states from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite mission, September 2011 to September 2014. NASA scientists use these images to better quantify drought and its impact on water availability. Two-thirds of the measured losses were a result of groundwater depletion in California's Central Valley. Credit: NASA JPL/Caltech

It will take about 11 trillion gallons of water (42 cubic kilometers) -- around 1.5 times the maximum volume of the largest U.S. reservoir -- to recover from California's continuing drought, according to a new analysis of NASA satellite data.

The finding was part of a sobering update on the state's drought made possible by space and airborne measurements and presented by NASA scientists Dec. 16 at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco. Such data are giving scientists an unprecedented ability to identify key features of droughts, and can be used to inform water management decisions.

A team of scientists led by Jay Famiglietti of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, used data from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites to develop the first-ever calculation of this kind -- the volume of water required to end an episode of drought.

Earlier this year, at the peak of California's current three-year drought, the team found that water storage in the state's Sacramento and San Joaquin river basins was 11 trillion gallons below normal seasonal levels. Data collected since the launch of GRACE in 2002 show this deficit has increased steadily.

"Spaceborne and airborne measurements of Earth's changing shape, surface height and gravity field now allow us to measure and analyze key features of droughts better than ever before, including determining precisely when they begin and end and what their magnitude is at any moment in time," Famiglietti said. "That's an incredible advance and something that would be impossible using only ground-based observations."

GRACE data reveal that, since 2011, the Sacramento and San Joaquin river basins decreased in volume by four trillion gallons of water each year (15 cubic kilometers). That's more water than California's 38 million residents use each year for domestic and municipal purposes. About two-thirds of the loss is due to depletion of groundwater beneath California's Central Valley.

In related results, early 2014 data from NASA's Airborne Snow Observatory indicate that snowpack in California's Sierra Nevada range was only half of previous estimates. The observatory is providing the first-ever high-resolution observations of the water volume of snow in the Tuolumne River, Merced, Kings and Lakes basins of the Sierra Nevada and the Uncompahgre watershed in the Upper Colorado River Basin.

To develop these calculations, the observatory measures how much water is in the snowpack and how much sunlight the snow absorbs, which influences how fast the snow melts. These data enable accurate estimates of how much water will flow out of a basin when the snow melts, which helps guide decisions about reservoir filling and water allocation.

"The 2014 snowpack was one of the three lowest on record and the worst since 1977, when California's population was half what it is now," said Airborne Snow Observatory Principal Investigator Tom Painter of JPL. "Besides resulting in less snow water, the dramatic reduction in snow extent contributes to warming our climate by allowing the ground to absorb more sunlight. This reduces soil moisture, which makes it harder to get water from the snow into reservoirs once it does start snowing again."

New drought maps show groundwater levels across the U.S. Southwest are in the lowest 2 to 10 percent since 1949. The maps, developed at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, combine GRACE data with other satellite observations.

"Integrating GRACE data with other satellite measurements provides a more holistic view of the impact of drought on water availability, including on groundwater resources, which are typically ignored in standard drought indices," said Matt Rodell, chief of the Hydrological Sciences Laboratory at Goddard.

The scientists cautioned that while the recent California storms have been helpful in replenishing water resources, they aren't nearly enough to end the multi-year drought.

"It takes years to get into a drought of this severity, and it will likely take many more big storms, and years, to crawl out of it," said Famiglietti.

NASA monitors Earth's vital signs from land, air and space with a fleet of satellites and ambitious airborne and ground-based observation campaigns. The agency develops new ways to observe and study Earth's interconnected natural systems with long-term data records and computer analysis tools to better see how our planet is changing. The agency shares this unique knowledge with the global community and works with institutions in the United States and around the world that contribute to understanding and protecting our home planet.

For more information on GRACE, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/grace and http://www.csr.utexas.edu/grace

For more on the Airborne Snow Observatory, visit: http://aso.jpl.nasa.gov/

For more information about NASA's Earth science activities, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/earthrightnow

Source: NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory

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Physicist presents new observational solar weather model

An observation-based model presented in China by physicist Dr. S.T. Wu makes it possible to predict solar weather. Credit: Michael Mercier / UAH

Scientists now have an observational framework to help predict solar weather and how it will affect Earth.

"Now it's possible that we can have a space weather model that's like Earth's meteorology," says physicist Dr. S.T. Wu, distinguished professor emeritus of The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.

That's thanks to the observation-based model that predicts the occurrence and timing of solar mass ejections recently presented by Dr. Wu at the Scientific Committee on Solar-Terrestrial Physics' (SCOSTEP's) 13th Quadrennial Solar-Terrestrial Physics Symposium in Xi'An, China.

Being able to predict such events is important because a powerful direct hit by a coronal mass ejection (CME) is like a huge space hurricane that can deform Earth's magnetic field and fry the circuits of orbiting satellites, spacecraft and delicate terrestrial electronics.

In a large-scale storm, cell service would stop, air traffic control would lose its eyes and ears, and everything could be affected from traffic light control to the automated heating and cooling of buildings to the critical systems that control nuclear armaments. Earth would become largely dark as power grids blink offline.

The solar radiation could directly affect the health of humans, too, Dr. Wu says.

"If you travel to the Pacific, the airlines like to fly you there over the North Pole," he says. "That is the most direct route. But during a coronal event, the solar radiation can affect people, so the airlines try to avoid it by flying below the polar route."

Diverting around the polar route is necessary but costs extra time and money, Dr. Wu says, which is why the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration meets with airlines annually about possible upcoming events. Better predictions would help airlines.

The new predictive model is the culmination of decades of work by Dr. Wu, the founder and first director of UAH's Center for Space Plasma and Aeronomic Research (CSPAR). He wrote his first research paper on the subject of CME modeling in 1978.

The new model advances previous CME work by Dr. Wu and a global research group that includes his former students and post-doctoral students. Working with Dr. Wu are Dr. Chaowei Jiang of CSPAR and Dr. Xueshang Feng, Dr. Yufen Zhou and Dr. Qiang Hu of China's State Key Laboratory of Space Weather, Solar-Interplanetary-GeoMAgnetic Weather Group (SIGMA Weather Group).

In the previous work, Dr. Wu's team devised a model for the development of CMEs that was tested and proven against CMEs observed in the past. The scientists also modeled the conditions that are present in solar magnetic shear -- a sigmoidal twisting of the sun's magnetic field, flux emergence, null formation, torus instability, reconnection and free energy that can cause a CME. Their mathematical model of developing coronal mass ejections was shown to be accurate by comparison with actual observed phenomena from spacecraft tracking events on the sun's surface.

The researchers successfully performed a data-driven magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulation of a realistic CME initiation process, a step that helped lead to the predictive model and to better understanding the precursors to these solar storms. "Last time, we only modeled a coronal mass ejection," Dr. Wu says. "Now, we have put that eruption result into our propagation model. We have integrated what we did before into a global propagation model."

The predictive model can foresee the development and impacts of a CME from its genesis on the sun through its journey in the interplanetary medium and to its interaction with Earth.

The presentation was well received by the scientists at the conference because "I didn't use any theoretical inputs," says Dr. Wu.

"Others are doing this work, but they are still using theoretical models, but our work is observational, and that is the difference," he says. "It is more realistic because we start out from the sun and what you can see there, and then we work our way out."

The model provides important information to other scientists working on solar storm prediction.

"I've got the fram

ework that says it can be done, so now everybody can do it," says Dr. Wu. Further development of an accurate solar weather prediction system will take supercomputers and the efforts of many researchers and universities, he says. "Now, everybody can jump in with their own research."

Arriving at the working model caps took 36 years of research for Dr. Wu, a period of time he puts in perspective by talking about the development of meteorology.

"It took 60 years to develop accurate meteorology on Earth," he says. "Everybody knows we needed to do this, but finally we got a result. I feel really good about that I can get a handle on it."

Source:  University of Alabama Huntsville

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