The GMAO supports the CR-AVE Campaign

The GMAO, in close collaboration with GSFC's Atmospheric Chemistry and Dynamics Branch, is supporting the Costa Rica Aura Validation Experiment (CR-AVE) from the first days of January through the second week of February. CR-AVE is a mission designed to explore the tropical upper troposphere and lower stratosphere (UTLS) and to provide information for comparison to satellite observations.  The GMAO will be providing twice daily environmental forecasts to CR-AVE flight planners and scientists.  These forecasts help ensure that mission goals are achieved by increasing opportunities of obtaining data-rich observations. These forecasts are products of our GEOS-4 near realtime First Look system at 0 and 12 GMT, along with CO, CO 2 and aerosol forecasts driven by realtime estimates of biomass burning derived from MODIS.

Mission Support Given to Livermore for MASRAD

For the month of July 2005, the GMAO will provide DAS output products to the Atmospheric Science Division of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in their efforts to support the Marine Stratus Radiation Aerosol and Drizzle (MASRAD) study. NOAA, NASA, DOE, university and other scientists will participate in this ground-based and aircraft sampling near Point Reyes, California . MASRAD is the study of the first and second indirect aerosol effects in marine stratus and stratocumulus clouds to be undertaken by both the DOE Atmospheric Radiation Measurements (ARM) program and the DOE Atmospheric Science Program (ASP).

GMAO SUPPORTS PACIFIC HURRICANE GENESIS MISSION

Also for the month of July 2005, the GMAO will provide model output products in conjunction with MAP05's SIVO and Project Hurricane to support of The Tropical Cloud Systems and Processes (TCSP) mission. TCSP is a field research investigation sponsored by the Science Mission Directorate of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The field experiment is tentat ively scheduled for July 1-28, 2005 and is based out of San Jose, Costa Rica. TCSP builds on the success of previous Convection and Moisture Experiment (CAMEX) missions.

GMAO Support of the AVE Mission in Houston , Texas : June 2005

The June 2005 Aura Validation Experiment (AVE) mission involves flights of NASA's WB-57 aircraft, which will be based at Ellington Field near Houston, TX . The emphasis of the mission is on tropospheric composition, including aerosol and CO pollutants. In the mission, there should be opportunities to observe emissions from North America and Mexico, with biomass and anthropogenic sources, as well as remotely emitted pollutants transported from Africa (Saharan dust), Asia and Europe.

For this mission, GMAO will provide near-real time meteorological products, as well as customized constituent forecasts. The "GOCART+CO" constituent package implemented in GEOS-4 includes the GOCART aerosol modules and the linearized CO chemistry modules adapted from the Intex-NA mission in summer 2004. The GOCART+CO constituent package comprises sulfate, black carbon, organic carbon, dust and sea salt aerosols, alongside the CO; alongside global CO, six additional tracers are carried, designed to distinguish between different source regions. This is the first time that GMAO has run the GOCART aerosol modules have been run on-line in a mission, although GMAO meteorological analyses and forecasts have been used to drive the stand-along GOCART model. Emissions of CO and aerosols include climatological components for all fields, except that biomass-burning sources to sulfate aerosols, black and organic carbon aerosols, and CO, are estimated from most-recent fire-count data from NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instruments, using accepted assumptions about emission intensities.

The "GOCART+CO" configuration of GEOS-4 is being run in parallel to the operational GEOS-4 meteorological data assimilation system, constrained by the first-look meteorological analyses. The system produces five-day forecasts, initiated twice daily at 00Z and 12Z. Plots summarizing the forecasts are generated and provided to the mission science team through the web.

MAP05 Project

GMAO is participating in the MAP05 project on Columbia at NASA/ARC/NAS. The GEOS-5 AGCM is being used for real-time global 1/4-degree 5-day forecasts. As a member of the MAP'05 project team, the GMAO is responsible for performing GEOS global 5-day forecast operations. The MAP05 project operates three distinct GEOS forecast systems. The first two are the GEOS-4 and GEOS-5 forecast models, initialized with the NOAA/NCEP analysis, called G4NCEP and G5NCEP, respectively. An additional GEOS-5 forecast system, initialized with the analysis from the data assimilation mode of the GEOS-5 Data Assimilation System (DAS), is an early test of the GEOS-5 DAS. All three systems produce forecasts at 1/4 degree horizontal resolution. Five-day forecast output includes storm vortex track and intensity data, which is sent to Florida State University (FSU) and the National Hurricane Center (NHC). The forecasts are run on a dedicated Altix 512 processor high performance computer, a component of the Columbia project at NASA Ames Research Center (ARC) in California.

Near real-time operational status can be found at GMAO MAP'05 processing status.

Some Results: Comparison of Hurricane Katrina forecasts with 1 degree, 1/2 degree and 1/4 degree models, initialized with the NCEP analysis.

Comparison of Hurricane Katrina Forecasts 1 degree, 1/2 degree and 1/4 degree resolution of GEOS5, initialized with the 12Z NOAA/NCEP analysis on 27 August 2005.

Outgoing Longwave Radiation ( Java | animated gif )
Precipitation (Java | animated gif )