2014 STAR Seminars

The goals of the talk are to explain the approach taken at University of Reading to creating a climate data record (CDR) for sea surface temperature (SST), and how our products are geared towards the needs of climate science. The talks are focused around issues of independence, stability, uncertainty, harmonisation, diurnal cycle effects and compatibility with the longer-term historical record for SST. In each case, the choices we have made are oriented for CDR development, and so are a bit different to many other SST datasets. The progress to date of the project (sponsored under ESA's climate change initiative) will be presented.

Coral bleaching, the expulsion of symbiotic dinoflagellates from corals during stress, threatens tropical coral reef ecosystems. The scientific consensus is that recent large-scale coral bleaching events (over the past three decades) are the result of elevated ocean temperature, frequently in combination with high irradiance. Together these factors cause photosynthetic dysfunction in the dinoflagellates within corals, leading to an inability to process excess incoming light energy and a subsequent build-up of photoinduced toxins in both symbiotic partners. Real-time prediction methods for coral bleaching have utilized sea surface temperatures detected by satellite-mounted radiometers, but until recently have not incorporated irradiance. In addition, the thresholds used by real-time bleaching prediction algorithms are based on correlations of thermal events with field-observed bleaching patterns rather than on physiological experimentation. In this talk I will present experimental work to quantify the relationships between light, temperature, bleaching severity and the timing of bleaching onset in three species of corals from the Great Barrier Reef. I will discuss how these data, and physiological experiments broadly, can be used to inform the development of remote sensing algorithms for the prediction of coral bleaching.

Monitoring oil spills with remote sensing is a well established task. Recently, by combining hyperspectral and microwave satellite images, we have learned that features associated with oil emulsions can be detected with synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and optical- infrared sensors. This is of great importance because during oil spill events thick patches of hydrocarbons are the most toxic for the marine environment, and it is these patches of thick oil that can be most effectively recovered or treated during response operations by burning, skimming, or use of aerial dispersants. In this talk, we present our ongoing work and our latest results, including the development of an algorithm that delineates thick oil signatures in satellite imagery. This technique is validated in a recent field campaign where oil samples were collected. The chemical and spectral properties of oil samples recovered in the field are used to fingerprint their signatures in the satellite imagery. Our results have proven once again the importance of remote sensing support for detecting oil spills and the potential use of SAR imagery to detect floating thick oil.

One of NASA's three strategic goals is to 'Advance understanding of Earth and develop technologies to improve the quality of life on our home planet.' Earth observation and science are fundamental to achieving this goal. Collecting the data from Earth observing missions, deriving information from them, preserving and providing the data and information to all users are Core components. Core components provide the basic operational capabilities to process, archive, manage and distribute data from NASA missions. Community components provide a path for peer-reviewed research in Earth Science Informatics to feed into the evolution of the core components. The earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) is a core component consisting of twelve Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) and eight Science Investigator-led Processing Systems spread across the U.S. EOSDIS manages a growing archive of over 10 Petabytes, with more than 22 Terabytes of data being distributed each day to a diverse user community. The presentation will provide an overview of EOSDIS and its evolution.

Isabel F. Trigo received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in Geophysical Sciences from the University of Lisbon in 1993 and 1997, respectively. She received her PhD degree in Climatology in 2000 from the University of East Anglia, UK. Isabel Trigo initiated her research in the area of climate variability, studying synoptic climatology in mid-latitudes. Later she joined the team of the EUMETSAT Satellite Applications Facility on Land Surface Analysis (LSA SAF) at the Portuguese Meteorological Service (now Instituto Portugues do Mar e da Atmosfera, IPMA) to work on retrievals and applications of satellite based Land Surface Temperature. She became the LSA SAF scientific coordinator in 2007 and project manager in 2012.

During the last 15 years, Isabel Trigo has worked on the use of remote sensing data to derive land surface temperature, radiation fluxes, and respective applications focusing in particular EUMETSAT satellites. She has contributed to several European / ESA projects, acting as Project Officer at IPMA; she is currently involved in the implementation of Copernicus Services, the Programme for the establishment of a European capacity for Earth Observation (http://www.copernicus.eu/) at IPMA.

The operational satellites are designed primarily to provide the measurements for short-term weather and environmental predictions. Since the calibrations of most operational instruments in NOAA platforms lack traceability to International Standards (SI) units, sensors and onboard calibration sources degrade in orbit, simply stitching together a series of overlapping satellite observations with orbital drift can introduce many artifacts into the satellite time series. This study presents a series of efforts conducted in our research laboratory to reduce inter-satellite measurement biases and other uncertainties in satellite microwave sounding data sets. The level 1B measurements from MSU, AMSU and ATMS are spatially re-sampled and collocated through simultaneous nadir over-passing (SNO) algorithms. The resulted climate data records at the radiance space after cross calibration display continuity and a reasonable trend. We further investigate how the emission and scattering of clouds and precipitation modulate the brightness temperature trends. It is found that the global mean temperature in the low and middle troposphere has a larger warming rate (about 20-30% higher) when the cloud-affected radiances are removed from AMSU-A data. From the MSU atmospheric temperature profile time series retrieved from 1dvar, it is shown that the atmospheric temperature in the upper troposphere warms up much faster than that in the low troposphere.

The Peninsula Valdés (PV) region of Argentina is an important calving ground for southern right whales (Eubalaena australis). Mothers give birth and raise their calves in its two gulfs, Golfo San José (GSJ) and Golfo Nuevo (GN) annually from May through December and sporadically feed on spring zooplankton patches in September and October. Since 2005 there has been a significant increase in right whale mortality at PV, with most of the deaths (89%) being calves less than 3 months old [Rowntree et al., 2013a]. In 2010 the International Whaling Commission proposed three hypothetical causes to investigate these deaths: (1) a decrease in food abundance (2) biotoxins from harmful algal blooms (HABs) and (3) infectious disease. Here we investigate the biotoxin hypothesis by examining a variety of datasets: the timing of the right whale deaths (1971-2012), abundances of potentially harmful algae Pseudo-nitzchia and Alexandrium tamarense (2000-2012), shellfish closure dates (2004-2012), availability of whale prey at PV (2004, 2005, 2010), biotoxin data in tissue samples from dead whales (2004-2009) and satellite chlorophyll data (1997-2012). Evidence of the whales' exposure to HAB toxins include their presence in the PV region during closures of the shellfish industry due to high STX levels, periods with high levels of Pseudo-nitzchia and Alexandrium tamarense, trace levels of saxitoxin and domoic acid in tissue samples collected from dead whales, and fragments of Pseudo-nitzschia in the feces collected from living at PV. However, no definitive statement can be made about the role of these toxins in the deaths of the whales. In 2004 PV began to experience unusually large chlorophyll blooms in the later part of the calving season, coincident with the rise in whale deaths.

The GOES-14 imager has been operated in a number of special scan modes. This includes data both during the GOES-14 Post-Launch Test (PLT) in 2009/10 and data during the summers of 2012 and 2013 when GOES-14 Imager was operated by NOAA in an experimental super rapid scan mode to emulate the high temporal resolution sampling of the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) on the next generation GOES-R series. Imagery with a refresh rate of 1-minute of many phenomena were acquired during parts of 2012 and 2013, including clouds, convection, fires, smoke, and hurricanes. NOAA had never before operated a GOES in nearly continuous 1-minute mode for such an extended period of time, thereby making this a unique dataset to explore the future capabilities possible with GOES-R. The ABI will be able to routinely scan mesoscale (1,000 km x 1,000 km) images every 30 seconds (or two separate locations every minute). These high time-resolution images from the GOES-14 Imager are being used to better prepare for the GOES-R era and its advanced imager.