2006 SORCE Meeting
May 26, 2006
The 2006 Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) science meeting Earth’s Radiation Energy Budget Related to SORCE will be held September 20-22, 2006 in San Juan Island, Washington. There are several key questions and issues that need to be addressed in the meeting, including (1) What is the present state of knowledge of the Earth’s radiation budget from space, from within that atmosphere, and at the surface? (2) What are the key processes that control Earth’s albedo? (3) What are the key radiative forcing agents, of natural and anthropogenic origin, and how have their relative influences changed over the past three centuries? (4) What are the important feedback mechanisms for regulating Earth’s climate? (5) What is the sensitivity of climate to induced radiative forcing and over what time scales does climate respond? and (6) What is the role of the biosphere? Full Story

Review discussion forum of the IPCC Working Group I Fourth Assessment Report Second Order Draft
May 19, 2006

May 30th at 11:00 AM
Location: Bldg 33, Room F225

The Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change will release next year the fourth assessment of the state of climate research and is asking to the scientific community help in the review of the draft version of the report. The Aerocenter will hold a round table discussion of one of the chapters on May, 30th. Specifically, we will discuss Chapter 7 ("Couplings Between Changes in the Climate System and Biogeochemistry"), section 5 ("Aerosol Particles and the Climate System") and includes the following topics in 13 pages of text: Aerosol Emissions and Burdens Affected by Climatic Factors, Indirect Effects of Aerosols on Clouds and Precipitation, Effects of Aerosols/Clouds on the Solar Radiation at the Earth's Surface and Effects of Aerosols on Circulation Patterns. Full Story

New MODIS Atmosphere Team Reprocessing Effort Begins
May 17, 2006
The MODIS Atmosphere Team’s Aqua Collection 5 reprocessing effort began in early April, starting with the beginning of January 2005. Aqua forward processing also began at the same time. Production will proceed with Aqua reprocessing to the start of forward processing and then continue from first light (June 2002) through 2004. Aqua reprocessing is expected to be finished by early June 2006, at which point Terra reprocessing will begin (from first light in January 2000) as well as Terra forward processing; Terra reprocessing is expected to be finished in December 2006. Full Story

CCSP's SA1.1 assesses Lower Tropospheric Warming
May 3, 2006
The Climate Change Science Program Office has released the first of its 21 "Synthesis and Assessment Products," product 1.1 entitled "Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere: Steps for Understanding and Reconciling Differences" available
here. These CCSP reports are significant because they express a scientific process that provides input to the IPCC assessment process, and also because they are governed by the US Federal Government's "Information Quality Act" and represent in some sense the scientific basis for development of US Federal Government policy relating to the topic in question. This first product (SA1.1) includes co-authors who had been on both sides of the debate on the global warming of the lower atmosphere, with some pointing to an apparent cooling in the lower troposphere, opposite to the surface warming. The abstract of SA1.1 acknowledges that "this significant discrepancy no longer exists because errors in the satellite and radiosonde data have been identified and corrected." Full Story

European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly in Vienna, Austria
May 2, 2006
Several scientists from the Climate & Radiation Branch attended the recent European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly April 2-7, 2006, in Vienna, Austria. Dr. Thomas Bell presented an invited paper entitled "'Weekend-effect' evidence for intensification of storms by pollution over U.S." Dr. Alexander Marshak talked on "What does reflection from cloud sides tell us about vertical distribution of cloud droplets?" Full Story