Out and About with the GMAO
03.09.2018
Between late January and early March 2018, GMAO members traveled to numerous locations to present results of their work, participate in discussions, and plan for future developments.
On January 18, 2018, Brent Smith (610.1/SSAI) spoke as a guest to the faculty, staff, and research students at the University of South Bohemia in Ceske Budejovice. Brent gave a synopsis of GMAO research areas as well as a brief overview of the GMAO FLUID work that he is involved with. Those in attendance were intrigued by the research performed and applications in their research areas of biology, physics, and many others. Shown below is Brent lecturing about a visualization produced by Bill Putman involving the GMAO's production analysis of the 2017 tropical storm season.
Several GMAO members participated in the Strategic Implementation Plan (SIP) Coordination Meeting for the development of NOAA's emerging Unified Forecast System (UFS), held at the NOAA Center for Weather and Climate Prediction in College Park, MD on January 31 and February 1. The GMAO participants included Arlindo da Silva, Ron Gelaro, Steven Pawson, and Bill Putman, who serve as co-chairs on several UFS working groups, as well as Dan Holdaway, whose work focuses on incorporating components of the GMAO's data assimilation system into the UFS framework. The objective of the meeting was to review the status of UFS development activities and facilitate coordination among the SIP working groups in preparation for an update of the SIP for 2019-2021. GMAO developments in modeling, data assimilation, and software engineering comprise important contributions to the UFS. The GMAO personnel at the meeting led panel discussions and provided written and verbal input to the SIP.
Lesley Ott attended the first General Assembly of the CO2 Human Emissions (CHE) Project hosted by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) in Reading, United Kingdom, February 5-8. CHE is an ambitious project which seeks to use atmospheric models and satellite CO2 observations to estimate greenhouse gas emissions in support of the Paris Climate Agreement. Coordination of modeling activities between GMAO and ECMWF will support better development of modeling infrastructure and planning for future satellite missions.
Ron Gelaro attended the Executive Retreat for the Joint Center for Satellite Data Assimilation (JCSDA), held in the historic Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, CO on February 6-8. As NASA's representative on the JCSDA Executive Team, Ron, along with Executive Team members from other partner agencies and JCSDA project leaders, reviewed the milestones and performance of the JCSDA during the past year and developed the annual operating plan for the coming year. A key element of this plan is the development of a highly flexible, community-based software infrastructure for data assimilation systems, to which the GMAO is making significant contributions.
Steven Pawson attended the “Working Group on Space-Based Lidar Winds” workshop at NOAA's David Skaggs Research Center in Boulder, CO, on February 7-8. He presented a paper “A GEOS-based OSSE for the MiSTIC-Wind Concept” and participated in discussions about wind-sensing from space and the development of Observing System Simulation Experiments (OSSEs) for such missions. Attendees at the meeting included staff from NASA Headquarters, several branches of NOAA, and experts on space-based wind measurements from numerous institutions.
