National Newsletter for the Cooperative Programs for the Advancement of Earth System Science

IN THIS ISSUE  Hello from Hanne WCRP/WWRP International Prize for Model Development 2019 Ocean Acidification Research in Nature Improving Tsunami Modeling in Nature Silver Poster Award NOAA Spotlight for Women in Science Leadership Welcome to CPAESS Share Your Successes 2020 NOAA Explorer-In-Training Program Program Announcements Opportunities: To Teach and Learn Your Publications Who Is CPAESS?

December 2019 This is our newsletter so if you have a cool picture, a suggestion, or a question, please send it! PLEASE SEND US YOUR NEWS! We want to hear about your work and any interesting developments!

Hello from Hanne Hello Everyone! I truly enjoyed seeing and speaking with so many of you at AGU. You are an impressive lot of people who delivered a total of 28 different presentations from CPAESS in the form of town halls, posters, and oral presentations. Your excellent work is wonderful. During AGU we had two different luncheons for our postdoctoral fellowship programs – the NASA Jack Eddy “Living with a Star” fellowship in heliophysics, and the NOAA Climate and Global Change fellowship. During the NASA Jack Eddy luncheon the 2 nd Eddy Cross Disciplinary Symposium was announced. It will take place in Vail, Colorado this coming June 8-12, 2020. We also received some very exciting news from NOAA’s Dr. Wayne Higgins who let us know that the annual number of fellows for the NOAA Climate and Global Change postdoctoral program was being expanded from 4 to 8. We are delighted about these new developments.

Currently applications are being accepted for both programs. The NOAA Climate and Global Change deadline is January 10, 2020 and the NASA Jack Eddy deadline is January 17, 2020. Additionally, there is a call for applications for the NOAA Okeanos Explorer-In-Training (see more later in the newsletter) that is open until January 31, 2020. I am looking forward to seeing some of you in January at AMS. If you will be giving a presentation of any variety please be sure and list it in our spreadsheet by December 24, 2019 so we can disseminate this information. Thank you all for your terrific work all year around. Each one of you is the heart of CPAESS and I genuinely appreciate all that you do to improve science and serve our world community. I hope you all have a relaxing and peaceful holiday, and a wonderful upcoming new year!

Happy Holidays and New Year's from CPAESS in Boulder!

WCRP/WWRP International Prize for Model Development 2019

CPAESS scientist, Baoqiang Xiang, who works at NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL), has been selected for this year's WCRP/WWRP International Model Development Prize. Baoqiang is the first recipient of this award who is not originally from Europe.   “As the demand for more accurate regional weather and seasonal predictions as well as climate projections increases, the need to improve the weather and climate models that underpin those predictions and projections becomes more urgent.” The WCRP/WWRP International Prize for Model Development 2019 serves to recognize “the essential role model development plays to weather and climate science, the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) and the World Weather Research Programme (WWRP).” S ource From 2008 - 2014 UCAR’s own President, Tony Busalacchi, was the chair of WCRP and helped launch this important award. Lucas Harris, Baoqiang’s host at GFDL said, “This award is given annually to a scientist working to develop numerical weather and climate models, who is within the first ten years of gaining their terminal degree. Previous recipients have tended to be to scientists who were either working or educated in Europe. Baoqiang is the first awardee to have been born outside of Europe and only the second working in the U.S. (the first being NCAR's Peter Lauritzen). “Baoqiang has worked in GFDL's Weather and Climate Dynamics Division since 2013, a member of our FV3 Team and the CM4 Model Development Team. He has a Ph.D. in Meteorology from the University of Hawaii and has a strong background in the development of models for Seasonal-to-Subseasonal (S2S) prediction, having contributed to GFDL's CM4 and SPEAR coupled-climate models and the SHiELD weather model. He has made significant advances in S2S prediction, especially in predictions of the Madden-Julian Oscillation and in analyzing the predictability of temperature and precipitation extremes at lead times of several weeks. He is also closely involved with CMIP6 and several other Model Intercomparison Projects, leading the Global Monsoon MIP, and collaborates with many other model developers and scientists within the US and around the world.” We are very proud of your internationally recognized work Baoqiang! Congratulations!

Ocean Acidification Research in Nature

Dr. Emily Osborne collecting samples from a sediment trap in the Santa Barbara Basin, California. This was an important first step in understanding how tiny marine calcifiers, planktonic foraminifera, respond to changing ocean acidity.

CPAESS scientist, Emily Osborne, who works for NOAA’s Climate Program Office was just published in Nature for her research on the Decadal variability in twentieth-century ocean acidification in the California Current Ecosystem . “In first-of-its-kind research, NOAA scientists and academic partners used 100 years of microscopic shells to show that the coastal waters off California are acidifying twice as fast as the global ocean average — with the seafood supply in the crosshairs.   “California coastal waters contain some of our nation’s more economically valuable fisheries, including salmon, crabs and shellfish. Yet, these fisheries are also some of the most vulnerable to the potential harmful effects of ocean acidification on marine life. That increase in acidity is caused by the ocean absorbing excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.   “'By measuring the thickness of the shells, we can provide a very accurate estimate of the ocean’s acidity level when the foraminifera were alive,’ said lead author Emily Osborne, who used this novel technique to produce the longest record yet created of ocean acidification using directly measured marine species. She measured shells within cores that represented deposits dating back to 1895 ( taken from NOAA’s coverage ).”   Emily, we are delighted with your research and the extensive coverage your publication in Nature has already garnered. Congratulations on this great honor!

Improving Tsunami Modeling in Nature

CPAESS Visitor Scientist, Ali Abdolali who works at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Prediction was also published in Nature this month. His article Effect of Water Compressibility, Sea-floor Elasticity, and Field Gravitational Potential on Tsunami Phase Speed will benefit ocean circulation models for tsunami and hazard modeling. The paper’s abstract states, “Tsunamis can propagate thousands of kilometres across the ocean. Precise calculations of arrival times are essential for reliable early warning systems, determination of source and earth properties using the inverse problem, and time series modulation due to frequency dependency of phase speed. Far field observatories show a systematic discrepancy between observed and calculated arrival times. Models in present use and based on incompressible hydrodynamics and interaction with a rigid ocean floor overestimate the phase speed of tsunamis, leading to arrival time differences exceeding tens of minutes. These models neglect the simultaneous effects of the slight compressibility of water, sea-bed elasticity, and static compression of the ocean under gravity, hereinafter gravity. Here, we show that taking these effects into account results in more accurate phase speeds and travel times that agree with observations. Moreover, the semi-analytical model that we propose can be employed near real-time, which is essential for early warning inverse models and mitigation systems that rely on accurate phase speed calculations.” Nature Congratulations Ali on your important research, and its publication in such a prestigious journal!

Silver Poster Award

Eric Simon, CPAESS scientist who works at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in Monterey, California was recently awarded second place or Silver Poster at the 22 nd International TOVS Study Conference . The conference took place in Saint Sauveur, Quebec, Canada from 31 October - 6 November 2019 and there were about 120 posters in total at the conference covering a range of topics relevant to space-based weather observations. “My poster…shows work that I've done in finding and analyzing anomalies in SSMIS [Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder] 19 & 22 GHz brightness temperatures. The first part of my poster describes my use of machine learning to help separate out the anomalies I wanted to investigate from other known instrument glitches, etc.”   “The second part of my poster presents my analysis of these anomalies, specifically that they repeatedly occur at certain locations, and with a unique look angle at each location. Many are clustered around major cities (especially Europe and Africa), suggesting focused beams are being transmitted from these locations. Over the US, the anomalies are more scattered across certain regions, and further analysis of the reflection angles of these anomalies suggests they originate from three distinct geostationary orbit locations. These locations match known commercial broadband internet satellites that are authorized to transmit on/near these frequencies. At the present, this is manageable since quality control processes could anticipate when a sensor is looking directly into the reflected signal of one of these known satellites. However, SpaceX has authorization for several thousand satellites transmitting on these frequencies in low earth orbit - both the quantity and non-stationary orbit will make them extremely difficult to account for.” To put this in context, “We have satellites that measure things related to weather (that are critical to weather prediction), and occasionally some of their measurements are skewed by transmissions from other satellites (i.e. those used for TV and internet) or ground-based communications equipment. My work identified the sources of interference for a particular type of weather satellite, and this will help us develop a model to identify and ignore corrupted measurements in the future so it doesn't corrupt our weather forecasts. My work also raises the alarm that thousands of satellites that are similar to those already causing this interference are due to be launched soon, and that the interference from these future satellites will be even more difficult to identify. Hopefully this will also help in the effort to protect certain frequencies for weather sensing (which is a very relevant issue given recent international meetings concerning frequency use for 5g communications).” Congratulations on your award-winning work Eric. Thank you for taking the time to help us understand your science and its impact on our world.

NOAA Spotlight for Women in Science Leadership

CPAESS’ own Emily Smith just received acknowledgment for her work advancing leadership among women scientists by NOAA this month for their Women of NOAA Spotlight. As a Program Manager for NOAA’s Ocean Observing and Monitoring Division, Emily has also worked to foster and improve leadership among women in science. During the recent OceanObs’19 she organized an international panel of women and networking event Breaking Waves, Breaking Barriers which was very well attended.  Additionally, Emily has worked with the Earth Science Women’s Network (ESWN) for a couple of years now creating Women in Sciences Leadership Workshops . This year’s event was double the size of the previous year and helped train 100 women where they assessed their leadership style, effective communication, negotiation, and networking. She is looking forward to next year’s leadership workshop in Louisiana. Emily’s efforts and hard work in this direction are certainly paving a positive path forward for women in science. Of her work she says, “Many people have thanked me for these efforts, but honestly, the only thanks I need is seeing how these women keep pushing science forward and making it easier for the next generation to follow us.” We agree that your important work is enabling progress for current and future generations of women in science. Congrats and thank you!

Welcome to CPAESS

CPAESS is pleased to welcome these new employees. We are delighted to have you on board. NASA Jack Eddy Fellow - Erika Palmerio U.S. Geological Survey - John Pitlick NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) - Alex Kaltenbaugh NOAA National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) - Hae-Cheol Kim NOAA Climate Program Office (CPO) - David Allen NOAA National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) - Marina Skumanich

Share Your Successes

Please remember to share your achievements with NCAR | UCAR as a whole by listing them on the Metrics Database. The types of efforts recorded are: Contributions to Individual Graduate Student Education; Editorships; External Awards and Honors; Fellowships; Internal Awards and Honors; K-12 Activities (excluding presentations); Mentoring; Presentations; Service on External Committees; Service on Internal Committees; Teaching in University/College Classrooms; Teaching or Training at Workshops/Tutorials/Colloquia; Advisory Panels; Diversity, Education, and Outreach Programs; Events Hosted by your Program; Facility Tours; and Field Campaigns. Go here to post your contributions to the science community. You will need to logon with your CIT password. Additionally, we ask that you list all of your publications on Open Sky. OpenSky is the open access institutional repository supporting UCAR, NCAR, and UCP, extending free and open access to our scholarship for the benefit of research and education. Please go here to submit any of your publications. Thank you so much for your wonderful work!

2020 NOAA Explorer-In-Training Program

CPAESS is delighted to announce that we are accepting applications for NOAA’s Office of Ocean Exploration and Research (OER) Explorer-In-Training program. This program hosts undergraduate and graduate students, as well as individuals who have recently graduated from a higher education program, in the Okeanos Explorer-in-Training program. Participants gain valuable experience in deepwater mapping and exploration using the latest tools and technology.  NOAA’s OER is the only federal program dedicated to exploring our deep ocean, closing the prominent gap in our basic understanding of U.S. deep waters and seafloor, and delivering the ocean information needed to strengthen the economy, health, and security of our nation. OER explores previously unknown areas of our deep ocean, making discoveries of scientific, economic, and cultural value. The NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer is the nation’s only federal vessel dedicated to ocean exploration. The ship is equipped with advanced tools that support systematic exploration of unknown ocean regions. High-resolution sonars, deep-water remotely operated vehicles, and telepresence technology are used to collect baseline information in unexplored areas. CPAESS is currently seeking Mapping trainees to participate in the Okeanos Explorer Explorer-in-Training (EiT) program for the 2020 field season. The EiT program will provide the opportunity to gain experience using an advanced multibeam bathymetric sonar mapping system, while contributing in a significant way to the Okeanos Explorer. Of the program CPAESS Director, Hanne Mauriello states "We are proud to be a partner with NOAA OER in advancing the Okeanos program and providing opportunities for the next generation to become excited about ocean exploration and this important science." Okeanos Explorer exploration for 2020 will focus on the Atlantic Ocean, including the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone near Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, and New England; the Mid Atlantic Ridge, and Atlantic Maritime Canada. There are five 20-30 day cruises in April through September. The time at sea for this session begins April 5, 2020 and runs through September 12, 2020. Current undergraduate and graduate students, and recent graduates from higher education institutions in these regions are encouraged to apply. Students traditionally underrepresented in the sciences are encouraged to apply. The application deadline for the 2020 Okeanos Explorer-in-Training Program is January 31, 2020. Learn more about the NOAA Okeanos Explorer-In-Training program. Undergraduate, Graduate, and Recently Graduated Students may apply here .

Program Announcements

US CLIVAR Congratulations to our nine  Early Career Scientist Leadership Award  winners: Alice Barthel, Andrea Fassbender, Michael Jacox, Flavio Lehner, Molly Mitchell, Ángel Muñoz, Chris Piecuch, Paul Staten, and Elizabeth Thompson. US CLIVAR recognizes their outstanding contributions to leading community activities to advance science on the role of the ocean in climate variability and predictability. Awards include a certificate and $1,000 travel allowance for a 2020 science meeting of the recipient’s choice. U.S. Carbon Cycle Science Program Funding from NASA has just come through for the 7th North American Carbon Program (NACP) Open Science Meeting: The Future is Here: North American Carbon Cycle Science for a Changing Climate. This meeting will take place from March 23–26, 2020 at the Hilton McLean Tysons Corner in McLean, VA. This meeting is open to all interested scientists, practitioners, managers and stakeholders are welcome to join this international meeting. There is currently a call for abstracts. Find out more at the meeting website and please notes these deadlines: Talk Abstract Submission: 13 Jan 2020, Poster Abstract Submission: 19 Feb 2020, and Special Hotel Rate: 21 Feb 2020. For more information contact Dr. Gyami Shrestha .

Educational Opportunities: To Teach and Learn

You may have noticed that NCAR/UCAR provides opportunities to share your research through broadcast lectures. Several of you have taken advantage of this opportunity through currently established seminar series. If you will be traveling to Boulder for any other purpose, please consider giving a talk about your research while you are here. Please contact us as soon as you can about your trip and we will set everything up! Spread the word - this is a great opportunity for you to network with other UCAR/NCAR scientists and have them understand your special slice of the science pie. In the meantime here is the UCAR schedule for you to see upcoming talks.

Your Publications

Part of your employment expectations is listing your publications in OpenSky on the UCAR/NCAR website. The purpose of this digital archive is to provide free and open access to the scientific output and other intellectual resources created at NCAR/UCAR for the advancement of the atmospheric and related sciences. In the Acknowledgements section scientists note the agency and grant number that supported their research. Please contact us and we'll happily send you the language and grant number for any of your publications. Thanks very much!

Recent Publications Abdolali, Ali, Usama Kadri, James T. Kirby, 2019:  Effect of water compressibility, sea-floor elasticity, and field gravitational potential on tsunami phase speed .  Scientific Reports ,  OpenSky Claar, Danielle C., Kim M. Cobb, Julia K. Baum, 2019:  In situ and remotely sensed temperature comparisons on a Central Pacific atoll .  Coral Reefs ,  OpenSky Abdolali, Ali, Usama Kadri, James T. Kirby, 2019:  Effect of water compressibility, sea-floor elasticity, and field gravitational potential on tsunami phase speed .  Scientific Reports ,  OpenSky Vecchi, Gabriel A., Thomas L. Delworth, Hiroyuki Murakami, Seth D. Underwood, Andrew T. Wittenberg, Fanrong Zeng, Wei Zhang, Jane W. Baldwin, Kieran T. Bhatia, William Cooke, Jie He, Sarah B. Kapnick, Thomas R. Knutson, Gabriele Villarini, Karin van der Wiel, Whit Anderson, V. Balaji, Jan–Huey Chen, Keith W. Dixon, Rich Gudgel, Lucas M. Harris, Liwei Jia, Nathaniel C. Johnson, Shian-Jiann Lin, Maofeng Liu, Ching Ho Justin Ng, Anthony Rosati, James A. Smith, Xiaosong Yang, 2019:  Tropical cyclone sensitivities to CO2 doubling: Roles of atmospheric resolution, synoptic variability and background climate changes .  Climate Dynamics ,  OpenSky Frey, Harald U., Desheng Han, Ryuho Kataoka, Marc R. Lessard, Stephen E. Milan, Yukitoshi Nishimura, Robert J. Strangeway, Ying Zou, 2019:  Dayside Aurora .  Space Science Reviews ,  OpenSky   Naud, Catherine M., James F. Booth, Jeyavinoth Jeyaratnam, Leo J. Donner, Charles J. Seman, Ming Zhao, Huan Guo, Yi Ming, 2019:  Extratropical cyclone clouds in the GFDL Climate Model: Diagnosing biases and the associated causes .  Journal of Climate ,  OpenSky Bushuk, Mitchell, Xiaosong Yang, Michael Winton, Rym Msadek, Matthew Harrison, Anthony Rosati, Rich Gudgel, 2019:  The value of sustained ocean observations for sea ice predictions in the Barents Sea .  Journal of Climate ,  OpenSky Ding, Liudan, Tim Li, Baoqiang Xiang, Melinda Peng, 2019:  On the westward turning of Hurricane Sandy (2012): Effect of atmospheric intraseasonal oscillations .  Journal of Climate ,  OpenSky Adcroft, Alistair, Whit Anderson, V. Balaji, Chris Blanton, Mitchell Bushuk, Carolina O. Dufour, John P. Dunne, Stephen M. Griffies, Robert Hallberg, Matthew J. Harrison, Isaac M. Held, Malte F. Jansen, Jasmin G. John, John P. Krasting, Amy R. Langenhorst, Sonya Legg, Zhi Liang, Colleen McHugh, Aparna Radhakrishnan, Brandon G. Reichl, Tony Rosati, Bonita L. Samuels, Andrew Shao, Ronald Stouffer, Michael Winton, Andrew T. Wittenberg, Baoqiang Xiang, Niki Zadeh, Rong Zhang, 2019:  The GFDL Global Ocean and Sea Ice Model OM4.0: Model description and simulation features .  Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems ,  OpenSky Chen, Jan-Huey, Shian-Jiann Lin, Linjiong Zhou, Xi Chen, Shannon Rees, Morris Bender, Matthew Morin, 2019:  Evaluation of Tropical Cyclone Forecasts in the Next Generation Global Prediction System .  Monthly Weather Review ,  OpenSky

Who Is CPAESS?

Even people employed by CPAESS ask about the breadth and depth of the programs and opportunities we provide. Here is a super brief primer. CPAESS is a part of the UCAR/NCAR family. Specifically, we are within UCAR’s Community Programs (UCP). CPAESS is the largest of UCAR's Community Programs. CPAESS’ provides early career opportunities including employment at federal labs across the nation. We also host multi-agency programs and have partnerships with federal agencies –take a peek to get an idea of some of them listed here . CPAESS provides postdoctoral and educational programs. Lastly, we convene scientific communities to help promulgate scientific information and foster collaboration across the earth system science community. Here is a list of our upcoming events . CPAESS has approximately 125 employees, over 100 of which are spread across the United States as seen on the map below. If you go here you can click on a location and you'll see staff grouped by program work. Many of our co-workers are in federal labs. Our staff's skill sets are impressively diverse. We appreciate you and your talents being a part of the CPAESS family.

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