Podag XXIV, 3-4 November 2005, Asheville, NC

PoDAG XXIV, 3-4 November 2005, Asheville, NC

Combination of notes taken by Walt Meier and John Moses

Attendees: Present: Richard Cullather, Walt Meier, Dorothy Hall, Axel Schweiger, Roger Barry, Thorsten Markus, Chris Shuman, Michael Steele, Bert Davis, Marilyn Kaminski, Ron Weaver, Mark Anderson (chair), John Moses

On the telecon: Son Nghiem, Jeff Key, Waleed Abdalati, Tom Painter

Ron Weaver, DAAC Overview  equipment purchases rose slightly from 04 to 05 – v0, mass storage device (MAID), etc.  average 41 FTE at DAAC 03-05, monthly fluctuations due to people leaving and other projects, FTEs determined by DAAC budget, hit target to within $20K; FTE is biggest component of budget – try to maximize this for given budget.  Bert Davis: baseline for people cost vs. total dollars – CRREL 2-to-1. Indicator of stability  Bert: 2 to one 50% is salary is sustenance (people cost vs total $$ available) Currently Ron is running at 60% (including benefits)  Bert: if salary runs too high an indication of trouble when ratio gets to 1.5  In process of hiring replacement for Melinda Marquis for GLAS and AMSR Will likely fill within, by 1 December. Also lost tech writers (e.g., Jason Wolfe); no place for them to grow isolated within University  Rich: how many ftes for science data coordination? Ron: .5 GLAS, .5 AMSRE, .6 MODIS, .4 PM.  moving toward disc storage instead of tape storage and “service oriented”, i.e., web distribution w/o media  Chris: Be prepared for new GLAS data in 2006  Davis: CLP – SAR data, do we have all of it? Also, model data coming. One more packet of data coming  Chris: Where are catastrophic backups? Date not backed up elsewhere, NSIDC has a contract to store tapes  Mike: SEARCH, ARCUS in Fairbanks getting bigger. Is NSIDC looking to work with them? Roger: UAF putting lots of resources, CU is not contributing to NSIDC  Bert: Sea ice in Google Earth – need to put in. Daughter wonders how Santa Claus lives with no ice at the North Pole.  Waleed to stay on PoDAG after leaving as NASA program manager. Replacement for Bob Thomas? Keep ice sheet representation.

Waleed Abdalati, NASA HQ View  leaving as program manager 31 December  will set things up for 2006, ICESat proposal selections, set up IPY ROSES call  ICESat NRA, panel met two weeks ago, Kim Partington ran panel because lots of Goddard involvement in proposals; rankings clear, waiting for budget availability to see how many get funded  NASA leadership now in place – mission directors are selected;  some budgetary challenges – war, hurricanes, flu; things look better than 8-9 months ago, cryosphere as good as anything else – movement on IPY, impact of Cryosat failure, news on cryosphere; no growth for awhile on earth science as a whole  earth science funds raided to fund space exploration after president’s statement. Mike Griffin has tried successfully to undo some of damage – very supportive of earth science. NASA stands on three pillars: human exploration, aeronautics, and science – all three pillars crucial.  Decadal survey: climate panel met two weeks ago. Ken Jezek and Claire Parkinson cryosphere reps – asking for input on what matters for cryosphere. Grappling with how to prioritize missions. Selected missions will serve fewer directly than it won’t serve directly – need to accept decisions after process is complete.

John Moses, Report from ESDIS  AMSR-E most used data set –L2A largest overall by far – 36%; rain data set is largest component for L3 – 20%; sea ice ~5% total  SSM/I second largest distributed  FtpPull most used distribution method, followed by FtpPush  Unique users: AMSR-E=429, MODIS Terra=348 and Aqua=129, GLAS=293, Other=1284  Dorothy: Stats need to be broken down by product status, e.g. validated products vs. less-mature products  Bert: need to have appropriate context - size of user community (e.g., meteorologists vs. glaciologist); also track changes over time – consistently applied measure over time  Davis: what about tracking publications? Difficult to do – data sets not consistently cited  Bert: do a measure of something, e.g., keyword search for “AMSR-E + snow” and track how that changes. ASMR-E snow a good choice – just out and so we have a baseline, maybe an upward trend  Chris: statistics can’t be perfect, but make sure that it’s consistent  new NetTracker system to track web usage – “snow” is most googled term, followed by blizzards, avalanches, avalanche, and ice  User survey – 153 responses; NSIDC customer support ranked as one of the highest; NSIDC overall rating, 78, same as EOSDIS average. Product search, product selection, and product quality have largest room for improvement in overall user survey. EDG scores higher in NSIDC than average; data center tools very well-liked – more satisfied than using EDG  Chris: do any other countries do something similar? If not, NASA should promote this to the international community  Roger: how do the stats compare to NOAA? A good comparison with NASA

Marilyn Kaminski, Proposed MODIS Snow Albedo Product  produced as a data array in MODIS daily snow; unvalidated; NASA doesn’t want to fund unvalidated products; not enough time to validate before next review, so product will be dropped from Collection 5  some problems in mountain regions  Waleed: lots of data not held to same standard from altimetry, etc., look for consistency between and within data sets. Don’t see why the same approach can’t be taken – e.g. MODIS and AVHRR. Will discuss with Martha Maiden – maybe can change rules  Jeff: Direct broadcast sites setup for MODIS products, also automated validation sites (McMurdo in real-time now; Finland, Tromso, Fairbanks possible in the near future) – temperature, radiation, etc.  Dorothy: sea ice albedo product in development  John: who are users? Dorothy: modelers want it, need it on daily timescale – current 16-day global albedo not sufficient  Son: regions of focus – Greenland and Afghanistan. Afghanistan? Easier validation in, say, western U.S.? Tom: western U.S. will be used. Marilyn: Afghanistan selected for user needs, not for validation.

Roger Barry and Ron Weaver, CliC and IPY Activities  Roger on CliC panel, meeting in Denmark next week, then rotating off; Mark Serreze and Koni Steffen still involved; beginning to evolve as a mature program  NSIDC trying to facilitate data distribution – data standards, metadata – new system, NSIDC won’t house all the data

Walt Meier Passive Microwave

 Slow SSM/I reprocessing due to loss of resources (at V0 DAAC)  A year every two weeks, another 10years to go by the end of March. Doing polar stereo now why not do EASE grid now? EASE grid doesn’t need to go back to the Wentz datatapes. Will be on the MAID should be fast to map to EASE.  Mark: still giving out the old CDs with the bad data? - yes, but user’s get a note. Will hold you to March for Brightness Temperatures. Sea ice concentration will follow. Tall poll is the ops staff needs to start when chuck  Chris: Have you prep’ed the users? - not yet.  Mark: 62% wrong data, impact to my research but no impact to monthly means.  Mirror site for QuikScat sea ice extent. binary map (no backscatter).  Mike: what is the value of having another sea ice dataset?  Waleed: encouraging Mike to continue asking that question, but points out that having an active product has some value significant difference in artic ice extents (sq, km) not seen in Antarctic.  One CDR for Sea Ice combining the best from each algorithm - NASA Team time series, NIC, Hadley Centre, Bootstrap to be considered a research project.  5% is limit of sea-ice accuracy algorithm differences between F13 to F15 are less than 3% - doesn’t appear to be any bias between instruments.  Snow cover, however is quit a bit different. F13 sees snow F15 does not up to 15%. Could be the crossing time? Dry in the morning melting later.  Bert: could DOD boost orbit so that F15 should match F13 will meet with AF. Seen at all scan angles? Also need to look at individual brightness values by channel - 37 and 18.  Son scatterometer can be used to map the different kinds of ice different properties e.g., physical thickness.

6. John Bates, Climate Elements of NPOESS  2005 warmest in record, over last 150 years; UK will say it’s 2nd warmest  Stewardship elements for CDRs o NOAA CLASS, Comprehensive Large Array data Stewardship System o NOAA Scientific Data Stewardship (SDS)  New culture with NOAA taking over a leadership role on data stewardship  NRC Report on “Climate Data Records from Environmental Satellites”  Make metadata, calibration, etc. of historical records more accessible – searchable database. Chris Kummerow, etc. working on this for former instruments such as SSM/I – to update calibration history, metadata.  NOAA categorizing snow events, level 1-5, based on impact – intensity of snowfall and population density  Maturity ranking – science, preservation, societal – rankings 1-5  Ron: PoDAG could act as advocate for consistent citations of data sets in publications – in acknowledgments or references  Bert: experiment with development of automated decision trees to determine that papers like use a given data set?  NPOESS possible launch delays due to cost overruns  Climate objectives only partly recognized  METOP – joint mission with Eumetsat (AVHRR, HIRS, AMSU continuity + continuity with European satellites + scatterometer). Scheduled for launch late spring 2006. Archived at CLASS (at least all NOAA instruments, but probably European as well).  NPP likely afternoon orbit – launch delayed until 2009 due to cost overruns (VIIRS, CrIS (IR sounder), OMPS (ozone)).  CMIS issues with reflector dish stability. Won’t make NPP, but working to make sure it will be on NPOESS C1 (nominally 2010, but could slip). C2 in 2011, C3 in 2013.  Climate requirements taken off of NPOESS? Possibility?

John Jenson  Surface Energy Budget Network  Proposed to add US CRN Network 114 (FY2008) 66 installed at end of FY05 44 by end of FY08  Calibrate with Satellites Skin temperature, Surface albedo, + other parameters (no snow, or soil moisture). Canada and Japan have new in-situ snow depth sensors.  Looking for benefits to society.  Asking for moral support.

Pavel Groisman  Northern Eurasia Earth Science Partnership Initiative Neespi.org  UCAR Project at NCDC  IPY partnership form Northern Eurasia 80% sponsored by NASA, also sponsored by NOAA and NSF  Most PI scientists from US and Russia  6 regional research focus centers one is at ASF  IPY endorsement as core project (but no $$)  Seasonal corrections (bias adjustments) to snow depth too deep in winter (fence hold snow) too slight in summer. Also, add bias as a function on wind, etc. (scale factor) for annual precipitation in high latitudes not just in Eurasia, also including Fairbanks. Reported climate change in precipitation was actually a result of a change in measurement method.

John Bates, Integrated Climate Data Records and Scientific Data Stewardship  Four tiers of priority based on legacy and NOAA responsibility  Tier 1 – NOAA critical, Tier 2 – High priority, continuity from NASA and NOAA, Tier 3 – Lower priority dependent on CDR provider, Tier 4 – Lowest priority  Tiers paired with maturity level (Level 1-5).  Maturity level 1, initial research – little validation, 50% confidence; Level 2, defined development – reasonable validation, interannual variability at 70% confidence, Level 3, validated – interannual variability to 90% confidence, Level 4, certified validated – decadal variability to 95%; Level 5, benchmark – decadal variability to 99%, NIST calibration standard (nothing is at 5)  Based on GCOS variables  NOAA hopes that NASA has variables to Level 2, NOAA will leverage Level 1-2 to get to Level 3  Need to change NOAA culture to make long-term investment in climate variables. Previously only concerned with weather. Leverage with NASA resources to ramp up towards high level CDRs  Sea ice listed as Tier 3, but should be Tier 2 - strategy/concept more than final decisions, so tier values just preliminary/placeholder  Budget constraints on what can be done when – priorities for data products. Can’t do everything right away, must do some first and others later.

Marilyn Kaminski, Proposed Data User Workshop  NSIDC-only sponsorship or co-sponsorship with someone else? Need support of NSIDC scientists to help plan, invite speakers, etc.  Chris: Bring in media, education – invite press contacts, educators for an afternoon or evening  Themes: data fusion, CDRs, data and models  Mark: Products or instruments focus? Last was a “products”, should do the same.  Mark: One goal could be to discuss sea ice CDR development – one session to come out with a plan to have a CDR, e.g., maturity of data sets, etc.  Son: Data calibration, cross-calibration, data quality for a session. Thorsten: data side needs to work data quality, error estimates, for data assimilation  Son: Timing for fall – how about tying into IGARSS in Denver. Roger: IGS in Cambridge in late August. Might be too much – people will get burned out  Mark: Next PoDAG would be around Sep-Oct. Maybe do PoDAG and workshop together. Could invite another DAAC (e.g., JPL) for joint meeting and then tie in to the workshop.  Charge a registration fee to cover incidentals – coffee, etc.: Chris: plusses and minuses. John: students? – maybe exempt students from fee  Ron: bringing in more new people, young scientists, etc.  Chris: suggests considering a hotel complex closer to airport. Roger: but airport hotel is isolated, plus Boulder has NOAA ETL, IPY, etc.  Tom: have all DAACs co-host – e.g., can look at all data sources. Marilyn: but NSIDC is small – may get swamped? Keep focus on snow and ice products, other DAACs with snow or ice related products should be invited. Ron: an all-DAAC meeting is a good idea, but should be discussed independently at higher levels.  Ron: bring in John to get NOAA users to come and present how they use data. Also, tie into data assimilation going on at NOAA.  Mark: need to move quickly to get things rolling – e.g., by AGU

Discussion on web pages  Mark: Web page? Hasn’t been discussed. What about Arctic meteorology? Not much regarding atmosphere  Rich: Search engine? Searched for “albedo” to get to MODIS data, but only came up with albedo info pages.  Mark: Need to do more than just re-organize. Make sure there is good stuff.

Tom Painter, UWG Questionnaire  desire for fused, bundled, data sets, seamless data products  graphics and/or tables showing timeseries of available products, e.g., time on x- axis, data products on y-axis  John: survey through web page (voluntary), focus on specific questions to get better response. Marilyn: done for MODIS, but no response. Chris: do a survey at workshop, so that people can focus on it  Website: Mike: look for “sea ice concentration” as ignorant grad student who’s not specialist in sea. Ends up at confusing list of many products.  Tom: summary is that NSIDC needs to start migrating toward bundling data sets. Chris Shuman, ICESat update  each laser requires special handling because pointing accuracy is different. Reason why not all data is at NSIDC yet.  Laser 3 running colder, lasting longer. Chance to get 6 more 33-day operating periods – through 2007  evaluate ICESat quality via repeat tracks and cross-over tracks over 55-day operation period. Snowfall, blowing, drifting effects values. 3-sigma editing to filter out bad values, but may also remove real differences. Bad values over Ross ice shelf due to bad tide model  SD=14 cm for Antarctica overall, for closest times=10 cm for low slope regions. Errors increase for higher slope. Mean=-0.097 cm. Not many cross-overs near coast. Repeat tracks provide a lot more data.  From repeat tracks, variability is 2-5 cm, quite consistent  ICESat has lower coverage near the coast, but gets more of the interior than radar altimeter and much better resolution of high slope regions.

Open discussion  next PoDAG meeting in fall, with EOS workshop – a little long for PoDAG, but could have telecon before if necessary.  Waleed: some sort of outbrief on results from data review panel.  Tom: status of ICESat2? Waleed: one of concepts proposed to NRC decadal survey. Many issues to resolve. Concepts investigated, but no mission on the books for the foreseeable future.  Mark: feedback on albedo product? Marilyn: if we’re not keeping as official product, does PoDAG want NSIDC to do an alternate production method. Tom: implications on processing?

Debrief of Executive Session:  defensible stats on metrics – simple, easy to understand. Look at from point of product review. Follow metrics through time to look at trends. John’s slides were good, just do through time.  continue on web site, some good things, but still things to improve on.  Survey: some things ranked low – organization, links to other data; improve on these things  SSM/I: F11, F13, F15, etc. – scientific issues in different data streams. Making Tbs available from different satellites. Another cost analysis of keeping Tbs from F13, F15, etc. o Mark, Walt, Thorsten – discuss overlap F11-15 comparison, new regression equations for summer/winter. Possible proposal. Have for workshop? NSIDC should have the documentation on these differences. Chris: also include SMMR, F08, F11 transitions  NPP, NPOESS: old issues, +maturity metrics, CDRs, etc. Stay involved with NOAA. NSIDC doesn’t necessarily do everything, but should coordinate.  Product Review: o Ron: at high level, some kind of process to do logical, reasoned analysis of the products at a DAAC, to get a sense of prioritization, remove things that are obvious to be removed if budget gets trimmed. Decision space: scientific merit, popularity, historical value, cost. o NSIDC needs to pull together information quickly. Input during AGU? What are important datasets, who’s using them? User survey? Metrics? o Waleed: More emphasis on algorithm producers than on the data center. Still counting on January  Roadmaps: replaced by “decadal survey” – stay involved  Booths: instead of just pure advertising, use to get feedback, e.g., quick feedback at AGU for product review. Have USO ask people that come up. Ron: CIRES survey show NSIDC did a good job of keeping people at booth longer.  Planning for next contract: make sure it’s 5 years and not 2 years.  Workshop: PoDAG supports. Find out benefit from last workshop? Have “set topics” NSIDC is prepared to present. Walt: one output was an Eos journal article summarizing results  Membership: on hold. Waleed should stay on as a member. Roger: Dorothy should be replaced with another female? Mark: will ask other members to suggest possibilities and Tom to update matrix. Ron: John Bates as candidate for NOAA slot; Roger: John Calder?, someone at NIC (Pablo Clemente-Colon?)  Future meeting: tie-in with workshop. Invite another DAAC or DAACs to sit in on PoDAG.  Albedo products: no action by PoDAG at this time, Waleed will look into  Ron: PARCA, Kansas Technology Center issues? Ron will look into – talk to Kansas about data management issues and look to work with NSIDC for data management. Resources needed.  Decadal survey: keep in touch, keep awareness up  Cryosphere animation: good thing, appreciate job. Pursue similar opportunities as they become available. Ron will give PoDAG copies of DVD when NSIDC gets them.  Roger: Interest in IPY data and info services meeting at BAS? Date in late Feb, not specifically set yet. Roger should let PoDAG know when dates are set.