New Surface Albedo Product Available
June 26, 2005
Our algorithm for generating spatially complete albedo products has been substantially revised to provide better trends in regions with limited temporal coverage. The algorithm has been applied to five years of MODIS collection 4 MOD43B3 data. Full Story

Solar Forcing in Climate Model
June 23, 2005
Dr. Drew Shindell from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) was invited by the Climate & Radiation Branch to present a seminar ÒThe response to solar forcing in the fully coupled chemistry GISS modelE." Dr. Shindell described how to use the climate model to examine the atmospheric response to solar variations with both a slab ocean and fixed SSTs, and with and without chemistry. He presented a comparison of the solar cycle experiments with observations, including the poleward and downward propagation of zonal wind anomalies, which is substantially improved over our previous simulations. ÒOne of the most interesting features of the responseÓ, he said, Ò is that in addition to displaying the typical ozone increase between solar minimum and maximum centered around 3 hPa, the model is also able to capture the secondary layer of ozone increases in the lowermost tropical stratosphere.Ó He also presented a change in water vapor in the upper atmosphere related to solar cycle. Full Story

Power-law dependence of variability of satellite rainfall averages on averaging area
June 13, 2005
Prasun Kundu (JCET/UMBC) and Thomas Bell of the Climate and Radiation Branch (Code 613.2) contributed a poster titled 'Scale Dependence of Spatial Statistics of TRMM PR-Derived Rainfall and a Stochastic Fractional Diffusion Model' at the special session on Remote Sensing of Precipitation held during the 2005 Joint Assembly in New Orleans, LA, May 23-27, 2005. A stochastic dynamical model describing space-time variability of precipitation previously tested with surface radar measurements was applied for the first time directly to study spatial statistics of rain derived from satellite measurements. Full Story

THOR Lidar Measurements of Optically Thick Clouds
June 6, 2005
A new approach to cloud thickness measurements was introduced by Goddard scientists in an article that appears in the June 2005 issue of the Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology. Cloud thickness of highly opaque stratus clouds that could not be penetrated by conventional narrow field-of-view lidars was determined from airborne observations by Goddard's THOR (Thickness from Offbeam Returns) lidar system that has multiple wide-angle fields-of-view. Full Story