News

Landsat Reveals Continued Tree Dieback in the Sierra Nevada...

Scientists in Code SGE are generating new maps of the 2013-2015 drought impacts on all forests of the Sierra Nevaga range based on yearly changes in t...

View PDF of Figures
Page from Scientific American

NEX credited in September issue of Scientific American

A 4-page article in Scientific American (Sept, 2016) used the NEX-GDDP dataset as a basis for a global map highlighting current and future impacts of ...

Scientific American
Team of small satellites

Sreeja Nag Highlighted in MIT News

Sreeja Nag was highlighted on the cover of MIT news: “A team of small, shoebox-sized satellites, flying in formation around the Earth, could estimat...

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ORACLES flowchart of mission activities

ORACLES press release on nasa.gov

A new NASA airborne field experiment planned for this summer will make key airborne measurements of clouds and smoke particles over the southeastern A...

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NASA Ames' Science Director delivers 2015 State of the...

Dr. Michael D. Bicay, Director of the Science Directorate at NASA Ames Research Center held an all-hands meeting for Code S employees at the Syverston...

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New NASA global data set to forecast future global temperature chages

NASA Releases Detailed Global Climate Change Projections

NASA Chief Scientist Ellen Stofan made an announcement Tuesday, about the work that the NEX team has done in partnership w/ the NAS (NASA Advanced Sup...

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Areas of disturbed forest and woodland cover in Santa Clara County.

Major changes in Forest and woodland vegetation cover in Santa...

A new study published in the journal "Current Urban Studies" by NASA Ames scientist Christopher Potter has documented major changes in forest and woo...

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Earth Science at Ames

Who We Are & What We Do

Highlights for the week of 22nd September 2016

Key Meetings/Event and Attendees

  • Robert Dahlgren gave an invited talk at the ASPRS ‘UAS Mapping 2016’ conference in Palm Springs on 13 September 2016 on modular drones and frankencraft. The presentation was co-authored with Matt Fladeland and Juan Alonso, and entitled “Progress on Modular Unmanned Airborne Technology.” The modular UAS project is funded by ARMD in collaboration with Stanford University and the Open Source Robotics Foundation.
  • The Earth Venture Suborbital (EVS-2) ObseRvations of Aerosols above CLouds and their intEractionS (ORACLES)mission has conducted to-date from Walvis Bay, Namibia 10 P-3B flights (30Aug, 31Aug, 2Sep, 4Sep, 6Sep, 8Sep, 10Sep, 12Sep, 14Sep, 18Sep) and 5 ER-2 flights (10Sep, 12Sep, 14Sep, 16Sep, 18Sep). Many of these flights are coordinated to maximize the scientific return. For example screen shot from the Mission Tools Suite (MTS) of the 18Sep2016 flight.

    An ambitious schedule is planned from now till Sep. 27, the current last flight date for the 2016 mission. SGGers continue to be active participants of ORACLES here Leonhard Pfister, Lead Forecaster, in action.
  • The Alpha Jet Atmospheric eXperiment (AJAX) achieved a momentous milestone in its short 6-year history by conducting its 200th science flight on 14Sep2016, a flight over the Soberanes Fire in Big Sur, CA. The fire has been burning since Jul. 22, 2016 with 117,656 acres burned and 67% contained. AJAX has sampled this fire many times to investigate the emissions through different phases of burning.

    Ozone concentration along the flight track.
  • Laura Iraci is at NASA HQ this week to discuss ARC Team research progress with the Climate Adaptation Science Investigation Group. She is also planning to give a brown bag talk about the Alpha Jet Atmospheric eXperiment (AJAX) to Headquarters audience.

High Level Visits: On Wednesday, September 2, the European Commissioner Elzbieta Bienkowska will visit Ames on a fact-finding trip.  Similarly to a U.S. cabinet level department head, Commissioner Bienkowska has innovation, public private partnerships, and earth science in her portfolio.  Since the ESA/EU Copernicus mission falls in her area, the NASA Earth Exchange (NEX) project will brief her and her accompanying staff on the NEX processing and application of Sentinel satellite data (both Sentinel-1 radar and Sentinel-2 optical data), which are being used in improve the temporal frequency of Landsat observations.
 
Publications:
Ganguly, S. and C.J. Tucker were the editors of a special issue of Remote Sensing entitled "Remote Sensing of Vegetation Structure and Dynamics" (2016) http://www.mdpi.com/journal/remotesensing/special_issues/vegetation_structure%26dynamics
 
Upcoming meetings:
Robert Chatfield and Hanwant Singh will participate at the International Global Atmospheric Chemistry (IGAC) 2016 Science Conference, Breckenridge, CO, Sep. 26-30, 2016.
Robert Chatfield, “Satellite maps and relevant compositional properties of PM2.5 in difficult winter situations and comparisons to DISCOVER-AQ airborne sampling”
 

For additional highlights, click here