Blog

Sea level changes are a matter of serious concern for coastal communities, effecting recurrent flooding, beach erosion, saltwater intrusion, and wetland loss. Therefore, understanding the causes of past sea level changes, in order to more confidently predict sea level changes in the future, has been a major goal in climate science.

A revolution in geosynchronous meteorological satellite (GEO MetSat) capability is just beginning. 2015 saw the transition to operations of the Japanese Himawari H8 satellite, hosting as a primary instrument the Advanced Himawari Imager (AHI). Soon to follow are US satellites in the GOES-R series with a very similar instrument, the Advanced Baseline Imager – launches beginning in late 2016. And after that MetSats will be launched hosting instruments with similar capabilities from Korea (GEO-KOMPSAT) and Europe (EUMETSAT’s Meteosat Third Generation series).

AER scientist Chris Little led the development of an innovative, broadly applicable methodology for analyzing future coastal floods. The research was published today in Nature Climate Change. "The newly developed technique is a significant contribution because it provides a more comprehensive view of the future coastal flood hazard, in which changes are summarized using a fully probabilistic flood index. The combines approaches to quantify both changes in storminess and increases in the baseline sea level."

I recently returned from the 2015 NOAA Satellite Conference, a widely attended international conference sponsored by NOAA's National Satellite and Information Service (NESDIS). It was exciting to spend a full week interacting with an internationally diverse set of environmental satellite data users, scientists and algorithm/software developers, all interested in current and future NOAA programs and products.

Scientists who research thermal radiation in the Earth’s atmosphere are confident that we have a very detailed and accurate understanding of the nature of the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide (CO2), including the impact of rising CO2 levels. Recently I participated in a study that provided the first direct observation at the surface of the Earth’s increased greenhouse effect due to rising CO2 levels. This represents an important milestone in the detection of the increased greenhouse effect due to fossil fuel emissions.

Scientists from AER's greenhouse gas (GHG) research team participated in a Harvard-led study ("Methane emissions from natural gas infrastructure and use in the urban region of Boston, Massachusetts") just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

We look forward to seeing colleagues at both the AGU Fall Meeting and the AMS Annual Meeting and hope you'll take a few moments to stop by some of AER's technical presentations. As always, scientists and software engineers from Atmospheric and Environmental Research (AER) are contributing significantly to the meetings, giving 43 oral and/or poster presentations over the course of these two scientific conferences. In all, 38 AER authors contributed to this research. American Geophysical Union, December 15-19

We created a new animation that shows the observed evolution of temperature anomalies throughout the Northern Hemisphere landmasses based on snow cover alone. We composited daily temperatures (using a five day filter) of years with observed high Eurasian October snow cover minus low Eurasian October snow cover. The animation runs from September 1 through February 28. You can view it on the Arctic Oscillation blog toward the bottom of the page.

Drs.

Research performed by AER scientists Dr. Daniel Gombos and Dr. Ross Hoffman is featured on the NSF Science, Engineering, and Education (SEE) innovation website.