ARL Weekly News – June 7, 2019

HQ
The NCEP Acting Director gave final approval for the implementation of the HYSPLIT upgrade (NCEP version number 7.6) on June 12, 2019. The main features of this package are changes required to keep up with NCEP’s GFS upgrade, increases the GFS-HYSPLIT-formatted hybrid-level file horizontal resolution to quarter-degree, adds conversion of HRRR native-level output to HYSPLIT-format, and adds trajectories for hypothetical volcanic eruptions in the Washington Volcanic Ash Advisory Center’s area of responsibility. For details see the Service Change Notice at https://www.weather.gov/media/notification/scn19-38hysplit_upgrade.pdf.

Pius Lee attended the seventh annual science team meeting of the Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) satellite, which is undergoing its final phases of testing before deployment into a geostationary orbit with a stationary position over the Continental United States (CONUS). TEMPO will be our nation’s first air pollutant monitoring geostationary satellite capable of discerning tropospheric concentrations of nitrogen dioxide, formaldehyde, ozone (O3), sulfur dioxide, halogen species, and atmospheric particulate matter (PM). Pius presented on how this future instrument can potentially improve the National Air Quality Forecasting Capability’s (NAQFC) emission modeling by taking advantage of the satellite’s continual starring over the CONUS. Pius’ presentation, entitled “Process-aware emission adjustment of the NAQFC by using ground- and space-based monitoring,” illustrated how TEMPO data can be used to delineate how much each of the major emission processes considered in NAQFC contributed to surface concentration of the health criterion species of PM and O3. It is recognized that NAQFC and regional chemical consideration is a critical component of the Next Generation Global Prediction System. Accurate pollutant monitoring by means of modeling (e.g., NAQFC) and observation (e.g., by TEMPO) advance NOAA mission earth sciences.

Daniel Tong attended the Multi-Angle Imager for Aerosols (MAIA) Science Team Meeting from June 3-5, 2019 at California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA. MAIA, scheduled to be launched in 2022, is a new satellite sensor designed to characterize the sizes, composition, and quantities of particles in the air, with a primary goal to study health effects of air pollution. Daniel gave two talks titled “Example Secondary Target Area: Phoenix” at the Science Team Meeting and “Emission/forecasting and health studies in Phoenix” at the MAIA Early-Adopter User Workshop. The MAIA is considering Daniel’s proposal to include Phoenix, AZ as a Secondary Target Area, so that the mission can provide more useful information to support the Aeolian research community to study air quality and fungal infection over dryland ecosystems.

ATDD
John Kochendorfer gave a talk at the Eastern Snow Conference in Fairlee, Vermont, on June 6 titled, “The Development and Testing of WMO-SPICE Tipping Bucket Precipitation Gauge Adjustments.”