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UPCOMING: IMPACTS Data Workshop

IMPACTS logoThe Investigation of Microphysics and Precipitation for Atlantic Coast-Threatening Snowstorms (IMPACTS) is a NASA EVS-3 mission that flies a complementary suite of remote-sensing and in-situ instruments in three deployments on the NASA ER-2 and P-3 aircraft to provide observations critical to understanding the mechanisms of snowband formation, organization, and evolution. Each deployment covers six weeks in January and February 2020-2023, with a target of 10-12 research flights per deployment. The P-3, deployed from Wallops Flight Facility (WFF), carries a suite of microphysical probes, flight-level meteorological data, and a dropsonde system. The ER-2 (based out of the Southeast US) has a suite of radars (Ka-band, Ku-band, W-Band, X-Band), microwave radiometers (frequencies flown on space-borne radiometers), and a lidar (355, 532, 1064 nm). The 2020 and 2022 deployments concluded with over 20 science flight sampling events in the Northeast, Midwest, and Southeast U.S. More general information about the project can be found at https://espo.nasa.gov/impacts , and more details of the events sampled in 2022 and quick look images can be found at http://catalog.eol.ucar.edu/impacts_2022.

Given IMPACTS measurements will be helpful for AOS science algorithm development, sub-orbital planning, and developing applications end users, we invite you to use the IMPACTS data products for your scientific research and mission development work. IMPACTS is committed to fully and openly sharing scientific data obtained during field campaigns with all users as soon as such data becomes available. Following our post-deployment checkout period (~6 months), all data products are made available to the user community through NASA’s Global Hydrology Resource Center (GHRC) Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC) at this web address. To this end, we are currently planning our third IMPACTS Data User Workshop that will be held virtually on 26-27 October 2022 from 12:00-2:30 ET. These open data workshops enable our IMPACTS team to present important information to you (our potential IMPACTS data users) to help with your analysis of the data. If you are interested in attending, please register here by 10/25/22.

The agenda and calendar invite will be sent out closer to the workshop date to anyone that registers. Please direct any questions or comments about the mailing list or the IMPACTS Data User Workshop to our Deputy PI for Data, John Yorks (john.e.yorks@nasa.gov).

Lightning Dashboard
a) The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission Lightning Imaging Sensor flash density for June 2013 (left) and January 2013 (right). These correspond to the summer of the northern hemisphere (left) and southern hemisphere (right). b) The full Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission Lightning Imaging Sensor climatology display with lightning hotspot locations overlaid. The hotspot shown is the most active on Earth; Lake Maracaibo, Venezuela.

Lightning data is a key component of GHRC’s holdings and lightning datasets make up the majority of the top ten datasets downloaded from GHRC. This makes lightning data a top candidate for GHRC’s science enabling efforts. GHRC received funding to create a minimum viable product for a lightning dashboard by the end of fiscal year 2022. The project leverages our open source and cloud-based expertise from the Field Campaign Explorer. To accomplish this, GHRC has focused on two of our most popular lightning datasets: the high resolution lightning climatologies from the Lighting Imaging Sensor (LIS) and Optical Transient Detector (OTD). These provide a full period of record climatology as well as seasonal, monthly, and daily climatologies. Future efforts will add the ground-based lightning mapping array data as well as the soon to be archived data from the Geostationary Lightning Mapper. Additionally, the science team envisions the lightning dashboard as the next step for the visualization and analysis of NASA lightning data.

Steady Progress for the Field Campaign eXplorer (FCX)
 
The Field Campaign eXplorer (FCX) has continued steady progress throughout fiscal year 2022. FCX is designed to enable the data exploration of multiple, three dimensional datasets concurrently. It is able to visualize satellite-, airborne-, and ground-based datasets. In addition to visualizing these data, FCX allows users to easily access available documentation and DOI links to download the data. 
One of the top priorities for this year has been to expand the FCX capabilities beyond the initial demonstration using the GOES-R Post Launch Test (PLT) field campaign. In anticipation of this, a new FCX landing page (https://ghrc.earthdata.nasa.gov/fcx/index.html) was launched that lists the field campaigns in GHRC’s holdings and their status of data in FCX. The first new campaign to be added was the Investigation of Microphysics and Precipitation in Atlantic-Coast Threatening Snowstorms (IMPACTS).
New Field Campaign Introduced

The GHRC DAAC Scientist is a PI with a team of researchers and were awarded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) a first of its kind field campaign to study lake effect electrification over and to the east of Lake Ontario. The campaign, named Lake Effect Electrification (LEE), aims to better understand lightning activity in lake effect snow events, which could serve to enable a broader understanding of the microphysics and charging in winter and mixed-phase (i.e., both liquid water and ice) clouds. Additionally, the LEE campaign has potential ties to the upcoming Investigation of Microphysics and Precipitation for Atlantic Coast-Threatening Snowstorms (IMPACTS) and could make a flight or two over the domain if the situation warrants. Project LEE will start on September 1, 2022 with initial instrument setup and the main campaign occurring from November 1, 2022 through March 2023.

GHRC Webinar: Shifting the Paradigm: Discover, Access, and Process Data With Cloud-Based Services

The GHRC DAAC presented its annual Earthdata webinar titled, “Shifting the Paradigm: Discover, Access, and Process Data using Cloud-Based Services.” This year’s presentation focused on how GHRC is leveraging its cloud expertise for user services. This focused on two specific approaches. The first was enterprise-level services that would support all DAACs. This included Earthdata Pub (a collaboration between GHRC and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory DAAC) and Bulk Downloader. The second was on GHRC beginning to focus on creating a science enabling center with its extensive lightning holdings. This part of the presentation focused on the in-development Lightning Dashboard and the Field Campaign Explorer.

The presentation was recorded and available at: https://youtu.be/tqikIJm3rbI.

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