SYMPOSIUM HONORS LIFE, WORK OF NOAA SCIENTIST JIM ANGELL

As climate science advanced, so did the career of James K. Angell, a research meteorologist at NOAA’s Air Resources Laboratory (ARL) in Silver Spring, Md. His contributions to that body of knowledge will be featured by some of the nation’s top climate scientists during a symposium honoring Angell, Nov. 4, at the NOAA Science Center in Silver Spring, Md. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is an agency of the U.S. Commerce Department.

“The work being done in climate today rests on the early efforts of scientists such as Jim,” said Richard D. Rosen, NOAA assistant administrator for oceanic and atmospheric research.

Angell, who will celebrate his 80th birthday on Nov. 2, retired from NOAA in 2000. Angell has been with NOAA’s Air Resources Laboratory (ARL) since 1956. He worked at ARL’s forerunner, the Special Projects Branch of the then Weather Bureau, now National Weather Service. Now a contractor at ARL, he has been with NOAA since its inception in 1970.

Climate scientists from Harvard, Rutgers, the Frie University of Berlin, the University of Maryland, and NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, are among the speakers for the daylong symposium, which will highlight Angell’s work.

Topics include global temperature monitoring and research, air quality and boundary layer research, and volcanic and solar signals in climate.

Angell was a pioneer in the use of data from instruments carried aloft by balloons into the upper atmosphere to study processes ranging from the transport and dispersion of air pollution to long-term climate change to stratospheric ozone depletion.

An overview of Angell’s career will be presented by Jerry Mahlman, former director of NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL).

A workshop, “Understanding Seasonal Temperature Trends in the Stratosphere,” sponsored by the Stratospheric Processes and Their Role in Climate (SPARC) program, will take place Nov. 5, at the NOAA Science Center, located at 1305 East West Highway, Silver Spring, MD. SPARC is part of the World Climate Research Programme.

“Many of the details of the Workshop trace their origin to Jim's pioneering sonde analyses right from the early days beginning in the late 1950s,” said V. Ramaswamy of NOAA’s GFDL. He noted that the Workshop is seeking to establish a bridge to the future of detection-attribution of stratospheric climate change, building upon the research and assessments performed over the past decade.

NOAA’s Air Resources Laboratory conducts research on air quality and climate, concentrating on the transport, dispersion, transformation, and removal of trace gases and aerosols, climatic and ecological influences, and exchange between the atmosphere and biological and non-biological surfaces.

ARL provides scientific and technical advice to elements of NOAA and other government agencies on atmospheric science, environmental problems, emergency assistance, and climate change.

The Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research is dedicated to enhancing economic security and national safety through research to better understand weather and climate-related events and to manage wisely our nation's coastal and marine resources.

On the Web:

NOAA at: http://www.noaa.gov

Symposium and Workshop, visit:
http://www.arl.noaa.gov/ss/climate/AngellSymposium.html