Pollution Causes Most Lightning Strikes Midweek
November 26, 2008
Michael Reilly of Discovery Channel News published on Nov. 26 a news item based on an interview with branch member Tom Bell about recent research results showing a pronounced increase in summertime lightning activity in the southeast U.S. during the middle of the work week. The results support satellite observations showing similar midweek increases in storms in the region. Bell's research with Danny Rosenfeld of Hebrew University will be reported at the American Geophysical Union meeting next month. Full Story

Branch Member Attends Meetings in Africa
November 14, 2008
Dr. Charles Ichoku undertook a two-week trip to West Africa from October 25 to November 8, 2008. During the first week of the trip, he attended the 7th International Conference of the African Association for Remote Sensing of the Environment (AARSE)-2008 held in Accra, Ghana, at which he delivered an oral presentation entitled “Satellite-based assessment of fire impacts on ecosystem changes in West Africa”. The Conference, whose theme was “Earth Observation and Geo-information for Governance in Africa”, was attended by over 550 delegates. Full Story

VOCALS-Rex Field Campaign
November 7, 2008
Jose Vanderlei Martins (UMBC/JCET), Roberto Fernandez-Borda (Catholic University), and Eric Wilcox (NASA) are participating in the VOCALS-Rex field campaign (Variability of the American Monsoon System - Ocean-atmosphere-land Study) from October 15 to November 15, 2008 in Iquique, Chile. Full Story

New Position for Branch Member
November 6, 2008
Dr. Lazaros Oraiopoulos has been hired as a Research Physical Scientist with the Climate & Radiation Branch. He will be the Working Group Team Leader of the International Intercomparison of 3-D Radiation Codes (I3RC) and the Continuous Intercomparison of Radiation Codes (CIRC) effort for the branch and for the International Radiation Commission (IRC), coordinating with SSED research scientists and the Earth science community, both domestic and international. Full Story