Monthly News Summary – May 1999
Environmental Policy Journal Features SSEC
by Terri Gregory, SSEC Public Information Specialist
June 1999
FAILSAFE™, June 1999, links to SSEC’s global montage in its new masthead. FAILSAFE™ is the online journal for the Forum for Environmental Law, Science, Engineering and Finance, or F.E.L.S.E.F., an “educational tool dedicated to the exchange of ideas through the development of a network of leading environmental professionals and policy makers of all backgrounds.” The online journal publishes transcripts of monthly lunch time discussions held by the Forum in downtown Washington, D.C. and other speeches by policy makers on environmental issues. Its June issue ushers in a new HTML version of the journal with the global montage in its masthead, a long article on SSEC (from our Web site) and columns by Dan Quayle, David Malmquist and Rick Murnane of Bermuda’s Risk Prediction Initiative, and President Bill Clinton. The last is the text of a press release on new initiatives to reduce automobile emissions.
According to editor Michael Frodl, “Not only will the technology behind the SSEC website be more closely explored during our 1999-2000 year-long series on ‘Environment & Information,’ thereby making it a harbinger of the new intellectual tack F.E.L.S.E.F. will take beginning in the fall, the dynamic nature of the imagery the website provides will be a reminder to all our readers on how dynamic and complex a system or system of systems the Earth and its environment really are. The Special Report on SSEC in this issue begins to throw some light on the magical workings of the SSEC composite digital imagery and introduces the SSEC to our readers.” To subscribe to the journal, e-mail the editor your name, job title, organization, work street address, work phone, work fax and e-mail address at mgfrodl@tidalwave.net. Editor Michael Frodl promises to keep the information confidential.
In the Wings
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CIMSS’ Tropical Cyclones group has provided hurricane imagery to a Discovery Channel production company. Termite Art Productions is still preparing the program, Hurricane X, expected to air on July 12.
In Print
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A CIMSS image showing total precipitable moisture over the Great Lakes states is used in a new book on the history of weather maps. Geographer Mark Monmonier also mentions CIMSS and SSEC Web sites as Internet destinations for good examples of “highly specialized maps.” Published this year, Air Apparent: How Meteorologists Learned to Map, Predict, and Dramatize Weather, tracks the development of weather maps from their invention in 1816 through maps and images used on television and on the Web. Air Apparent is published by University of Chicago Press.
NASA’s Jim Dodge presented plans for direct broadcast of Earth Observing System data to receiving stations at a meeting in Canberra in December 1998. The first EOS satellite, Terra, to be launched this summer, will broadcast only data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer. The meeting, summarized in the Earth Observer,January/February 1999, lists the four U.S. receiving sites as Hawaii, UW-Madison (at SSEC), the University of South Florida, and the Goddard Space Flight Center. SSEC’s CIMSS, along with GSFC, is developing software to analyze the first data broadcast. Full text of the meeting summary, including plans by Australia and other countries to receive and use the data, is available on the Web.
Over the Air
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WHA Radio hosted the Weather Guys on May 27, but AOS professor Jon Martin answered callers’ questions alone. Steve Ackerman appeared in spirit. Host Jim Packard noted that Steve was giving a chancellor’s presentation, a requirement for UW faculty who receive a distinguished teaching award, as Steve did this spring. Both Jon and Steve use the Internet to dramatize their class material, but as Jon noted, they both also believe that the Internet can “enhance, not replace, classroom teaching.”
On the Web
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John Mecikalski explained the weather processes that caused violent early May tornadoes in Oklahoma and other Great Plains states. In a News Brief for May 5, Discovery Online’s Jennifer Viegas quoted John saying, “a vertical wind sheer favorable to tornadoes developed over Oklahoma.” John also said, “usually there are 25 to 50 big storms each spring [in the Great Plains].” He noted that such large storms hitting highly populated areas does not happen very often. For folks at UW–Madison, this article is posted on the third floor bulletin board in the Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences Building. Discovery Online maintains only a two-week archive of News Briefs.