GHRC News

Dr. Ramachandran Elected as Chair of IEEE GRSS DAD TC

Rahul Ramachandran presenting at a recent ESIP Federation meeting

Dr. Rahul Ramachandran has been elected to serve as the chair of the IEEE Geosciences & Remote Sensing Society's (GRSS) Data Archiving and Distribution Technical Committee (DAD TC) for a two-year term. This committee provides recommendations and responses to issues related to the archiving and distribution of remotely sensed geospatial and geotemporal data. More information is available at the committee’s web site [http://www.grss-ieee.org/community/technical-committees/data-archival-distribution/]. Hampapuram Ramapriyan of NASA ESDIS is the outgoing DAD TC Chair. Dr. Ramachandran is a senior research scientist with the University of Alabama in Huntsville’s Information Technology and Systems Center (ITSC) and the Global Hydrology Resource Center, a NASA data center jointly operated by Marshall Space Flight Center and ITSC.

MC3E Chill and Pawnee Radar Dataset Documentation Complete

GHRC has completed documentation for the MC3E GPM Ground Validation Chill and Pawnee Radar datasets. These radar were located at the CSU-CHILL location were collected to support the NASA ER-2 instrumentation for the Midlatitude Continental Convective Clouds Experiment (MC3E), a GPM Ground Validation field campaign.

GHRC Represented at Data Discovery Technical Interchange Meeting

Helen Conover and Rahul Ramachandran attended a Browse Imagery, Visualization, Data Discovery Technical Interchange Meeting in Hampton, VA, sponsored by NASA's Earth Science Data and Information Systems project. The meeting was hosted by the NASA Langley Atmospheric Science Data Center, and involved several Earth science data centers including the Global Hydrology Resource Center, a partnership between NASA MSFC and UAH ITSC. Ms. Conover presented systems currently in operation at GHRC, while Dr. Ramachandran showed current ITSC research slated to be adopted at GHRC in the future. Discussions with the other DAACs and the GIBS team explored possibilities for future collaboration.

Web Server Upgrade to IPv6

The GHRC has completed the MSFC-mandated upgrade of all web servers to Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6). IPv6 was developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to deal with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion.

Four GPM Satellite Simulated Orbit Datasets Published

GHRC has published 4 satellite simulated orbit datasets for GPM Ground Validation research as part of the Global Precipitation Measurement mission. The GPM Ground Validation Satellite Simulator Orbits Database datasets are available for several campaigns: Light Precipitation Evaluation Experiment (LPVEX), Midlatitude Continental Convective Clouds Experiment (MC3E) , Canadian Cloudsat/Calipso Validation Project (C3VP), and Tropical Warm Pool - International Cloud Experiment (TWP-ICE). This orbital database takes account for the atmospheric profiles, the cloud/rain profiles, and the detailed surface/terrain information from the Cloud-Resolving Model (CRM) database. Unique geometry and antenna gain patters of each sensor (GMI imager, GMI sounder, DPR Ku, DPR Ka_MA, DPR Ka_HS) are considered. The Orbital database consists of satellite orbit parameters, geolocation of IFOV/EFOV and satellite location, and simulated L1B/L2-like parameters in satellite orbital grid. Orbital data covers a portion of sampling right over the Cloud-resolving model (CRM) domain. All orbital data format is NetCDF3, and contains dimensions, parameter descriptions, and parameter units. Each project's data is distributed as a separate dataset. MC3E occurred in Oklahoma, USA in 2011; LPVEX took place in Finland in 2010; C3VP experiment was held in Canada in 2007; and TWP-ICE took place in Australia in 2006.

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