Local News
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GRACE/GRACE-FO and NLDAS Data Make News
2025.05.27
An article in The Washington Post, entitled “The Colorado River is running low. The picture looks even worse underground, study says” concerned a paper published in Geophysical Research Letters, entitled, “Declining Freshwater Availability in the Colorado River Basin Threatens Sustainability of Its Critical Groundwater Supplies.” This paper used Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and the Follow-On mission (GRACE-FO) data and North American Land Data Assimilation System (NLDAS) data. This paper received coverage in several media articles.
Hoy Discusses Arctic Research at UAF
2025.05.20
Liz Hoy (618/GST) was quoted in an article from The Sun Star about the University of Alaska Fairbanks Arctic Research Open House. Hoy was showcasing NASA science in the Arctic, including information on the Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE).
Wildflower Research in the News
2025.05.14
NASA's imaging spectrometer research is revealing there’s more to flowers than meets the human eye. Stories about NASA's unique perspective were featured by the GLOBE Program, Maryland Today, and KQED.
AVUELO Makes News
2025.04.22
The AVUELO (Airborne Validation Unified Experiment: Land to Ocean) campaign was featured in recent articles by the Smithsonian and Forbes Centroamérica.
Notes from the Field: A Colorful Scientific Homecoming
2025.02.27
The last time I saw the small promontory off Herradura Bay in the Gulf of Nicoya, it was 31 years ago aboard the German research vessel Victor Hensen, named after the pioneer 19th-century German marine scientist who devised some of the earliest tools to investigate the biology of the smallest oceanic organisms, the plankton.
Notes from the Field: Waiting for Better Weather
2025.02.19
AVUELO has encountered one of the wettest and cloudiest dry seasons in memory. After a series of great acquisitions over core and important areas, our airborne science has stood down for several days with heavy cloud cover.
Notes from the Field: So Long, and Thanks for All the Leaves
2025.02.18
It’s really hard to believe, but I will already be departing Panama tomorrow. When I arrived a week ago, on February 5, I had a hunch but didn’t fully appreciate just how busy our AVUELO ground and airborne teams would be keeping up with our ambitious sampling and data collection plans and schedule.
Notes from the Field: Day One - AVUELO’S First Tropical Survey
2025.02.11
On February 6, 2025, after years of preparation and four months of intense planning, an aircraft with an advanced NASA instrument took off for the AVUELO campaign’s first survey in the tropics, while teams on the ground spread out to collect ground-truth data. The Airborne Validation Unified Experiment: Land to Ocean (AVUELO) is a partnership between NASA, the Smithsonian Institution’s Tropical Research Institute, and the Costa Rican Fisheries Federation, as well as universities and institutes in the United States and Panama.
PACE-PAX: A Day in the Life of a NASA Field Campaign
2024.12.17
It’s a flight day for one of NASA’s most expansive and complex field campaigns.
The goal: to check the data collected from orbit by NASA’s PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem) mission. To do that, members of the PACE-PAX (PACE Postlaunch Airborne eXperiment) field campaign deployed two aircraft and a research ship from multiple locations in California over the duration of September 2024.
2024 Clarivate (Web of Science) Highly Cited Researchers
2024.11.19
Benjamin Cook (611), Joanna Joiner (614), Alexei Lyapustin (613), Doug Morton (618), Nima Pahlevan (619), and Ben Poulter (618) were selected as 2024 Highly Cited Researchers by Clarivate (Web of Science). Recipients are recognized for their exceptional research influence, demonstrated by the production of multiple highly cited papers that rank in the top 1% by citations for field and year.
Petrov Explains Polar Nights
2024.11.18
Leonid Petrov (61A) was interviewed by Time magazine and was asked to explain why polar nights happen, how long they last, and why polar night duration depends on location.
SCOAPE-II Completes Successful Campaign
2024.11.01
Aircraft measurements of the air pollutant nitrogen dioxide (NO2) were collected for the Satellite Coastal and Oceanic Atmospheric Pollutant Experiment 2 (SCOAPE-II Ryan Stauffer, 614) with the GeoCAPE Airborne Simulator instrument (GCAS PI Scott Janz, 614) on the NASA/LaRC B200 aircraft. SCOAPE-II is a NASA/Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) campaign to measure emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases from oil and gas infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico. The six flights conducted October 7–13, 2024, were supported by forecasts from Debra Kollonige (614/SSAI) and Niko Fedkin (614/NPP), GCAS operation by Zane McBride (618/SSAI), and coordination by Laura Judd (NASA/LaRC). GCAS measured dozens of NO2 plumes emitted from oil and gas platforms and support vessels, including while category 5 hurricane Milton was moving through the southern Gulf of Mexico.
Dr. Richard Ray Named Recipient of 2025 William Nordberg Memorial Award for Earth Science
2024.10.03
We are thrilled to announce the selection of Dr. Richard Ray as the 2025 William Nordberg Memorial Award for Earth Science recipient.
Dr. Ray is being recognized for his foundational advances in sea surface change, Earth’s rotation, oceanic and atmospheric tides, and securing Goddard leadership in satellite geodesy.
Dr. Ray’s research includes studies of sea surface change, Earth rotation, and ocean and atmospheric tides. His innovative work has led to numerous advancements in the understanding of these important geophysical processes and has been instrumental to the scientific achievements of some of NASA’s leading Earth science missions, including TOPEX/Poseidon, Jason-1, Jason-2, Jason-3, SWOT, GRACE, and GRACE-FO. Of seminal importance to Goddard and NASA satellite geodesy, and to the world of physical oceanography, is Richard’s development of the Goddard Ocean Tide model. First published in 1999, he has continued to enhance its accuracy and resolution, and maintain its international status as a state-of-the-art global tide model. In addition, Richard’s extensive contributions to understanding the Earth system include: quantifying variations in the Earth’s rotation rate induced by oceanic tides, quantifying tidal energy dissipation in the solid earth and deep ocean, detection of internal tides in the deep ocean, and the first global mapping of the third-degree ocean tide. His research contributions have been critical to the successes of the Ocean Surface Topography Science Team, the NASA Sea Level Science Team, GRACE & GRACE-FO Science Teams, and the SWOT Science Team.
Dr. Ray became a civil servant in the Planetary Geodynamics Laboratory in 1998 and has been part of the Geodesy and Geophysics Laboratory since its inception in 2016. His outstanding work has previously been recognized with his selection as the American Geophysical Union Bowie Lecturer (2006), a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society (2007), the recipient of the American Meteorological Society Suomi Award (2007), a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (2009), and a two-time recipient of the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal (2018 and 2022). He was also awarded an honorary doctorate by Hamburg University in 2008 in recognition of his distinguished scientific contributions.
Notes from the Field: Tundra and Peatland Fires in the Northwest Territories
2024.10.02
After our adventures in Quebec and Greenland, it was now time for our last stop in this intense season of fieldwork. This time we were heading to the Canadian Northwest Territories (NWT).
Notes from the Field: Twenty-one Hours a Day on 30-Foot Floating Science Lab
2024.09.24
Off the coast of southern California, a research team sails for science on the Research Vessel Blissfully. https://earthobserv
PACE Blog: NASA Pilots Use Specialty Suits to Validate Data
2024.09.24
Welcome to NASA’s Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem Postlaunch Airborne eXperiment (PACE-PAX). PACE-PAX uses the unique vantage point of the ER-2 aircraft to gather data on small particles in the atmosphere and ultimately help verify the data gathered by the satellite in orbit.
Notes from the Field: Sailing Away for PACE
2024.09.13
Hello from sunny Santa Barbara, California, where the ship operations for the PACE-PAX campaign are underway!
PACE Blog: Stephen Broccardo - A ‘STAR’ in PACE Data Collection
2024.08.27
Stephen Broccardo, research scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, is the principal investigator for the Sea-going Sky-Scanning Sun-tracking Atmospheric Research Radiometer (SeaSTAR). The ship-based instrument is one of many in a campaign set out to gather data around the world to check the information that NASA’s PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem) satellite is collecting in orbit. Broccardo will use SeaSTAR for the first time in an upcoming PACE validation campaign.
PACE Blog: The Great Campaign of the Great Lakes
2024.08.20
Brice Grunert, assistant professor at Cleveland State University in Ohio, is a member of NASA’s PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem) validation science team. The team, called PACE Radiometry and IOPs for Novel Great Lakes Science (PRINGLS) is one of many groups participating in a campaign set out to gather data around the world to validate the accuracy of information from the PACE satellite up in orbit. He and his team recently took to the Great Lakes for one of many segments of the campaign to study light optical properties in the lake water.
Open House in Yellowknife
2024.08.16
Peter Griffith (SSAI/618/SSAI), Chip Miller (JPL) and the crew of NASA802 (AFRC) hosted an open house in Yellowknife Canada highlighting the flights over Northwest Territories, acquiring L-band SAR imagery of the areas of boreal forest that burned in 2014, 2022, and 2023. An estimated 200 Yellowknifers came to see the plane and talk with the crew and scientists. The event was co-hosted by the Department of Environment and Climate Change of the Government of Northwest Territories, and covered by local media Cabin Radio (1, 2) and the CBC.
PACE Blog: Joaquim Goes - Gathering Data in the Bay of Bengal
2024.08.13
Joaquim Goes, a professor of remote sensing research at Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University Climate School, is a member of the PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem) Northern Indian Ocean Validation group. The group is one of many in a campaign set out to gather data around the world to validate the information that the PACE satellite is collecting up in orbit. In June, Goes, along with team members from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland; Space Applications Center (SAC); ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization); and the Indian National Center Ocean Information Systems, embarked on a research vessel to the Bay of Bengal. They gathered data on phytoplankton communities and ocean color pigments.
Notes from the Field: Day-in-the-Life of a PACE-PAX Mission Flight
2024.08.12
We are in the field supporting PACE-PAX (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem Postlaunch Airborne eXperiment), a multi-disciplinary mission that involves two aircraft—the NASA ER-2 and CIRPAS Twin Otter—and several mobile ocean assets, all helping to validate observations and data products from NASA’s new satellite observation platform, PACE.
Spinning Iceberg A23A
2024.08.12
Christopher Shuman (615/UMBC) contributed to The Washington Post article on Iceberg A23A's surprising spin.
PACE Blog: Fernanda Henderikx-Freitas - Scanning the Hawaiian Seas
2024.08.06
Fernanda Henderikx-Freitas, assistant professor at University of Hawaii, is the lead principal investigator of the PACE validation team called short for the Hawaii Ocean Time-series program for validation of the PACE Mission in oligotrophic waters (HOT-PACE). The group is one of many in a campaign set out to gather data around the world to check the accuracy of information from NASA’s PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem) satellite up in orbit. She and her team recently took to the seas for the first segment of a three-year campaign to study the phytoplankton in the ocean surrounding Hawaii.
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