Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology

In the new issue of JCET News, faculty research Dr. K. Fred Huemmrich explains why he likes fieldwork and describes just how the fieldwork assists in his use of satellites to understand an aspect of the carbon cycle. To download your copy of this newsletter, check out the media area of the JCET web site.

Posted by Glen Engel-Cox at April 16, 2008 |

Congratulations to JCET and GEST Director, Dr. Raymond Hoff, on being recently named a fellow of the American Meteorological Society! Dr. Hoff was among five UMBC faculty members who received recent honors.

Posted by Glen Engel-Cox at January 8, 2008 |

JCET is now accepting applications from undergraduate students interested in participating in the 2008 JCET Summer Program. All areas of Earth sciences are eligible to become a project, including hydrology; global climate analysis and modeling; remote sensing of Earth or other planetary atmospheres; volcanic hazards and climate impacts; and tropical precipitation and storm systems, among many others.

Posted by Glen Engel-Cox at December 18, 2007 |

The 12th annual report describing the scientific accomplishments and status of the Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology (JCET), covering the period from Oct 1, 2006 through Sept 30, 2007, is now available. You can request a copy on hardcopy or CD by using the contact information to the left or you can download the 8Mb Adobe PDF document from the Media section here on this web site.

Posted by Glen Engel-Cox at October 15, 2007 |

Scientists working with JCET have just published a new report on the use of satellites to watch one of the components of air pollution. Increasingly over the last 5 years, scientists and air pollution experts have been using satellites to monitor day-to-day air quality, especially fine particles. Fine particles come from a variety of sources, such as power plants, cars and trucks, and fires, and have serious health effects for people with lung or heart disease. In this paper, JCET scientists show how satellites can reveal the location and intensity of fine particle air pollution in the U.S. When combined with a lidar (a laser system which can detect particles remotely through the atmosphere), such as one located at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, they can determine the height at which these particles are moving. For example, smoke from distant forest fires may be transported hundreds or thousands of miles at levels high in the atmosphere before mixing down to the ground level where people live and breathe. Using the instruments and methods presented in this paper, state and Federal government officials can better determine whether pollution is generated locally or is coming from more distant sources. This allows for improvements in the warning systems of when and where pollution levels are high and also allow for more informed policy decisions to reduce the creation of fine particle pollution.

Continue reading "Using Satellites to Spot Small Particles in the Air" »

Posted by Glen Engel-Cox at August 20, 2007 |

Dr. Marco Tedesco of JCET has documented increasing snowmelt across Greenland in the last thirty years. In this summary of his research, he illustrates how he was able to make this discovery as well as explaining why this could be vitally important to the Earth's climate systems and to us.

Continue reading "Is Greenland Melting?" »

Posted by Glen Engel-Cox at May 8, 2007 |

JCET is proud to announce a number of new graduates among our mentored students. These include:

• Kamonayi Mubenga, a student in the Marine Estuarine and Environmental Science (MEES) program, advised by Dr. Raymond Hoff, who successfully defended her Master's thesis entitled "GASP and MODIS surface reflectance comparison for the Baltimore MD / Washington DC area (2004-2005)" on February 27, 2007.
• Glynn Hulley, a student in the Physics department, advised by Dr. Erricos Pavlis, whose research was on "Improved Refraction Corrections for Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR) by Ray Tracing through Meteorological Data." Dr. Hulley passed his final examination on April 3, 2007.
• Ravi Siddani, a student in the Mathematics and Statistics department, advised by Dr. Prasun Kundu, who successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled "Spatio-Temporal Modeling of Rain Rates" on March 30, 2007.

We wish these three the best in their future research and look forward to future collaboration with them and their own mentored students some day!

Posted by Glen Engel-Cox at April 13, 2007 |