Goddard Sun-Climate Working Group
February 25, 2005
The Goddard Sun-Climate Working Group was recently formed to bring together scientists from several Goddard Space Flight Center organizations to discuss regularly issues in modern Sun-Climate research, including planning and coordinating future research. Full Story

SORCE team celebrates two years of successful operation in orbit
February 25, 2005
SORCE was launched on January 25, 2003 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. According to Gary Rottman, SORCE Principal Investigator from the Laboratory for Space and Atmospheric Physics, the spacecraft, instruments, and ground systems are functioning flawlessly. SORCE instruments observe both total and spectral solar irradiance. Continuous observations of solar output energy and its spectral components are extremely valuable for Sun-Climate research. Full Story

Rain data improvements for TRMM satellite described
February 17, 2005
Two papers describing recent improvements in deriving rain-related data products from the passive microwave instruments on board the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite were submitted to the Journal of Applied Meteorology.

Besides describing improved techniques for providing more accurate rain estimates, the papers break new ground in providing quantitative estimates of atmospheric heating by rain processes and in quantifying error levels in the products. Full Story

January 2005: Remarkable Events in the Goddard Cloud Radiation Community
February 9, 2005
As part of the Laboratory for Atmospheres Distinguished Lecturer Seminar Series on January 27, 2005, Warren Wiscombe from Goddard's Climate and Radiation Branch gave a presentation "The Brouhaha over Enhanced Absorption of Sunlight by Clouds: What Went Wrong?" Photos from the presentation can be found here. Full Story

Aerosol Update
February 1, 2005
Aerosols are one of the nine cross-cutting themes of the Earth-Sun Exploration Division (others being water cycle, carbon cycle, weather, planets, longterm climate, geodynamics, atmospheric chemistry, and solar system climate). Once a year, led by Yoram Kaufman, Goddard scientists doing research in aerosols meet to update the Division on their work. The most recent update took place January 7, 2005. This year we divided the presentations into two parts. Part A consisted of 11 short presentations highlighting the most exciting papers either submitted or published in 2004. Part B presented the 10 most highly cited papers by Goddard researchers of the past 5 to 6 years. Full Story