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Environmental Technology Laboratory
Developing and applying remote-sensing methods to observe
and understand our atmosphere and oceans
What does the Environmental Technology Laboratory do for the nation?
In medical science, there are many technologies for looking inside the
human body. Most of us have visited the doctor for X-rays to diagnose
a sprained ankle or broken arm. An expectant mother has the
opportunity to see her unborn child at several stages of development
through the use of ultrasonic imaging. These remote sensing
methods provide doctors with a means for looking inside the human
body in a noninvasive manner.
Similarly, NOAA's Environmental Technology Laboratory (ETL) has
developed remote sensing instrumentation that now allows its
meteorologists and oceanographers to peer inside the earth's atmosphere
to diagnose its behavior and study its interaction with land,
water, and ice surfaces. ETL's engineering and scientific expertise
help NOAA as it seeks to better monitor, observe, understand and
describe the atmosphere so as to provide improved forecasts of
its future state.
Recent Accomplishments
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With the goal of accelerating the transfer of scientific and
technological advances into operations, ETL has embraced and implemented
an observational testbed concept. An initial effort has built off ETL's
past, west coast winter storms program in developing a
hydrometeorological testbed to improve forecasts of precipitation and
runoff in mountainous coastal watersheds. New technology demonstrated
in the winter of 2002-2003 included implementation of an automatic snow
level detection algorithm for wind profilers and testing of a
high-resolution gap-filling weather radar. Previously, during 2001,
we carried out the first tests of a buoy-mounted wind profiler to
improve offshore observations of approaching weather systems.
Payoffs: Short-term forecasts in coastal areas still lag those
over the continental U.S. because of limited offshore observations
and the blocking of conventional weather radar beams by mountains.
ETL's focus on testing new observing capabilities in regional
testbeds and diagnosing coastal weather phenomena will translate
into improvements in NOAA's observing system and forecasts.
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In partnership with NOAA's Health of the Atmosphere program and with
the implementation of a regional observing network over New England
in the summer of 2002, ETL deployed, for the first time, an ozone and
aerosol lidar on the NOAA Ship R/V Brown, in combination with its
sea-going radar wind profiler, to study over-the-ocean transport of
air pollution.
Payoffs: Transport of air pollution over the coastal ocean will be
one of the major challenges for future air quality forecast models.
ETL's unique remote sensing and analysis capability will help evaluate
numerical model performance and improve the science contained within
the model.
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Quantifying the exchange of heat, momentum, moisture, and trace gases
between the atmosphere and ocean has been a major challenge for weather
and climate models. ETL in collaboration with university and
international research communities has continued to develop and update
the NOAA/COARE (Coupled Ocean Atmosphere Response Experiment) bulk flux
algorithm that has attained the status of a global standard for
weather, climate, and research applications. In addition, ETL has now
extended its applicability to estimating CO2 fluxes over the ocean.
Payoffs: Improving the parameterizations of surface exchange in
climate models will reduce one element of uncertainty in future
climate predictions.
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ETL is the first to have demonstrated two-dimensional mapping of the
near-surface ocean wind field using passive polarimetric radiometry
from an aircraft.
Payoffs: The ETL effort directly supports the NPOESS Integrated
Program Office in development of radiometric instruments that are
scheduled for use on board the first NPOESS satellite in 2009.
What's next for ETL?
Major emphases for ETL over the next five years include:
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Further development of the observing and modeling testbed concept as
a means of accelerating the transfer of science and technology to
the operational side of NOAA. The initial foci are on hydrometeorology
and air quality.
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Increasing our ability to observe and model the planetary boundary layer,
as the interface between the atmosphere and the Earth, continues to be
a major challenge scientifically and a focus of the National Weather
Service Science and Technology Infusion Plan. Our regional observational
programs will emphasize testing and improving of numerical model physics,
particularly in areas of cloud-radiation-surface feedbacks,
situationally sensitive areas such as coastal and ocean interfaces,
urban areas, and over the Arctic.
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Increasing our activities in linking weather and climate time scales.
For time scales from a few weeks to a month or more, numerical weather
prediction has marginal skill while climate prediction models are
designed for much longer time scale. Thus, the weather-climate connection
time scale is one that requires new observational and diagnostic methods
as well as a focused research effort. This is an area where ETL's
observational and analysis capabilities complement the climate
diagnostic effort of its primary partner in this effort, namely the
NOAA Research Climate Diagnostic Center.
Research Partnerships
ETL's major external research partner is the Cooperative Institute
for Research in the Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the
University of Colorado where we co-lead the Regional Processes
and Advanced Observing and Modeling Research Themes. Internally
we are developing stronger internal relationships with other OAR
Laboratories and NOAA Line Offices. We also maintain long-term
relationships with other federal agencies, universities, state agencies,
and international collaborators.
Budget and Staff
The FY 2003 enacted budget for the ETL budget lines totaled $7.5M, and
its request for FY 2004 totaled $8.1M. ETL has 56 federal employees,
23 contractors, and 31 Joint Institute employees.
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