ALBERT

Description: The important role of the high latitudes in the functioning of global processes is becoming well established. The size and remoteness of arctic and boreal ecosystems, however, pose a challenge to quantification of both terrestrial ecosystem processes and their feedbacks to regional and global climate conditions. Boreal and arctic regions form a complex land cover mosaic where vegetation structure, condition and distribution are strongly regulated by environmental factors such as moisture availability, permafrost, growing season length, disturbance and soil nutrients.

Description: Calibration of the 5 EOS ASTER instrument emission bands (90 m pixels at surface) is being checked during the operational life of the mission using field measurements simultaneous with the image acquisition.

Description: Since 1998, a ground based tropospheric ozone lidar has been running at Reunion Island and has been involved with a daily measurement campaign that was performed in the latter part of the biomass burning season, during November-December 1999. The averaged ozone profile obtained during November-December 1 999 agrees well with averaged ozone profile obtained from ozonesondes launch at Reunion during November-December (1992- 2001). Comparing weekly sonde launches (part of the Southern Hemisphere Additional Ozonesondes: SHADOZ program) with the daily ground-based lidar observations shows that some striking features of the day to day variability profiles are not observed in the sonde measurements. Ozone profiles respond to the nature of disturbances which vary from the one day to the next. The vertical ozone distribution at Reunion is examined as a function of prevailing atmospheric circulation. Backtrajectories show that most of the enhanced ozone crossed over biomass burning and convectively active regions in Madagascar and the southern African continent. The analyses of the meteorological data show that ozone stratification profiles are in agreement with the movement of the synoptical situations in November-December 1999. Three different sequences of transport are explained using wind fields. The first sequence from 23 to 25 November is characterized by Northerly transport, the second sequence from 26 to 30 November, the air masses are influenced by meridional transport. The third sequence from 2 to 6 December is characterized by westerly transport associated with the subtropical jet stream. The large standard deviations of lidar profiles in the middle and upper troposphere are in agreement with the upper wind variabilities which evidence passing ridge and trough disturbances. During the transition period between the dry season and the wet season, multiple ozone sources including stratosphere-troposphere exchanges, convection and biomass burning contribute to tropospheric ozone at Reunion Island through sporadic events characterized by a large spatial and temporal variability.

Description: We present an analysis of 2.5 years of weekly ozone soundings conducted at a new monitoring station in Paramaribo, Surinam (6 deg N,55 deg W). This is currently one of only three ozone sounding stations in the northern hemisphere (NH) tropics, and the only one in the equatorial Atlantic region. Paramaribo is part of the Southern Hemisphere ADditional Ozone Sounding program (SHADOZ). Due to its position close to the equator, the Inter Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) passes over Paramaribo twice per year, which results in a semi-annual seasonality of many parameters including relative humidity and ozone. The dataset from Paramaribo is used to: (1) evaluate ozone variability relative to precipitation, atmospheric circulation patterns and biomass burning; (2) contrast ozone at the NH equatorial Atlantic with that at nearby southern hemisphere (SH) stations Natal (6 deg S,35 deg W) and Ascension (8 deg S,14 deg W); (3) compare the seasonality of tropospheric ozone with a satellite-derived ozone product: Tropical Tropospheric Ozone Columns from the Modified Residual method (MR-TTOC). We find that Paramaribo is a distinctly Atlantic station. Despite its position north of the equator, it resembles nearby SH stations during most of the year. Transport patterns in the lower and middle troposphere during February and March differ from SH stations, which leads to a seasonality of ozone with two maxima. MR-TTOC over Paramaribo does not match the observed seasonality of ozone due to the use of a SH ozone sonde climatology in the MR method. The Paramaribo ozone record is used to suggest an improvement for northern hemisphere MR-TTOC retrievals. We conclude that station Paramaribo shows unique features in the region, and clearly adds new information to the existing SHADOZ record.

Description: As part of the Southeast United States-based Studies of Emissions and Atmospheric Composition, Clouds and Climate Coupling by Regional Surveys (SEAC4RS), and collinear with part of the Southeast Atmosphere Study, the University of Wisconsin High Spectral Resolution Lidar system was deployed to the University of Alabama from 19 June to 4 November 2013. With a collocated Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) sun photometer, a nearby Chemical Speciation Network (PM2.5) measurement station, and near daily ozonesonde releases for the August-September SEAC4RS campaign, the site allowed the regions first comprehensive diurnal monitoring of aerosol particle vertical structure. A 532nm lidar ratio of 55 sr provided good closure between aerosol backscatter and AERONET (aerosol optical thickness, AOT). A principle component analysis was performed to identify key modes of variability in aerosol backscatter. ''Fair weather'' days exhibited classic planetary boundary layer structure of a mixed layer accounting for approx. 50% of AOT and an entrainment zone providing another 25%. An additional 5-15% of variance is gained from the lower free troposphere from either convective detrainment or frequent intrusions of western United States biomass burning smoke. Generally, aerosol particles were contained below the 0 C level, a common level of stability in convective regimes. However, occasional strong injections of smoke to the upper troposphere were also observed, accounting for the remaining 10-15% variability in AOT. Examples of these common modes of variability in frontal and convective regimes are presented, demonstrating why AOT often has only a weak relationship to surface PM2.5 concentration.

Description: Characterizing the spatial variability of nutrients facilitates precision soil sampling. Questions exist regarding the best technique for directed soil sampling based on a priori knowledge of soil and crop patterns. The objective of this study was to evaluate zone delineation techniques for Alabama grain fields to determine which method best minimized the soil test variability. Site one (25.8 ha) and site three (20.0 ha) were located in the Tennessee Valley region, and site two (24.2 ha) was located in the Coastal Plain region of Alabama. Tennessee Valley soils ranged from well drained Rhodic and Typic Paleudults to somewhat poorly drained Aquic Paleudults and Fluventic Dystrudepts. Coastal Plain s o i l s ranged from coarse-loamy Rhodic Kandiudults to loamy Arenic Kandiudults. Soils were sampled by grid soil sampling methods (grid sizes of 0.40 ha and 1 ha) consisting of: 1) twenty composited cores collected randomly throughout each grid (grid-cell sampling) and, 2) six composited cores collected randomly from a -3x3 m area at the center of each grid (grid-point sampling). Zones were established from 1) an Order 1 Soil Survey, 2) corn (Zea mays L.) yield maps, and 3) airborne remote sensing images. All soil properties were moderately to strongly spatially dependent as per semivariogram analyses. Differences in grid-point and grid-cell soil test values suggested grid-point sampling does not accurately represent grid values. Zones created by soil survey, yield data, and remote sensing images displayed lower coefficient of variations (8CV) for soil test values than overall field values, suggesting these techniques group soil test variability. However, few differences were observed between the three zone delineation techniques. Results suggest directed sampling using zone delineation techniques outlined in this paper would result in more efficient soil sampling for these Alabama grain fields.

Description: The Hyperspectral Microwave Atmospheric Sounder (HyMAS) is being developed at Lincoln Laboratories and accommodated by the Goddard Space Flight Center for a flight opportunity on a NASA research aircraft. The term hyperspectral microwave is used to indicate an all-weather sounding instrument that performs equivalent to hyperspectral infrared sounders in clear air with vertical resolution of approximately 1 km. Deploying the HyMAS equipped scanhead with the existing Conical Scanning Microwave Imaging Radiometer (CoSMIR) shortens the path to a flight demonstration. Hyperspectral microwave is achieved through the use of independent RF antennas that sample the volume of the Earths atmosphere through various levels of frequencies, thereby producing a set of dense, spaced vertical weighting functions.

Description: No abstract available

Description: Spaceflight and planetary exploration place severe constraints on the available bandwidth for downlinking large hyperspectral images. In addition, communications with spacecraft often occur intermittently, so mission-relevant hyperspectral data must wait for analysis on the ground before it can inform spacecraft activity planning. Onboard endmember detection can help alleviate these problems. It enables novelty detection and target identification for scheduling follow-up activities such as additional observation by narrow field of view instruments. Additionally, endmember analysis can facilitate data summary for downlink. This work describes a planned experiment of selective downlink by the EO-1 autonomous spacecraft. Here an efficient superpixel endmember detection algorithm keeps to the limited computational constraints of the flight processor. Tests suggest the procedure could enable significant improvements in downlink efficiency.