Gail Skofronick Jackson

JSTARS: The Most Gender Balanced Editorial Board in IEEE's History? [Women in GRS]

Reports on the editorial board for the IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing, a publication of the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society.

Women in GRSS and Awards [Women in GRS]

Discusses the state of the IEEE GRSS and the nomination and presentation of awards for its women members.

Women in GRS

As the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society (GRSS) embarks on publishing the new GRS Magazine in 2013, the Society has also inaugurated an initiative to focus on women in the geoscience and remote sensing fields. In future issues this regular magazine column will explore such topics as promoting networking among women, recruiting a diverse workforce, work-life balance, diversity, professional development and gender/diversity statistics for IEEE as a whole, our Society, our publications and our annual symposium, IGARSS. We will also occasionally publish feature articles on female leaders, trailblazers, and up-andcoming scientists and engineers within our society. We hope and expect the topics of this column to be of interest to both women and men. In this issue we report on our initial activities during 2012. These consist mainly of a new LinkedIn group, the first-ever Women in Geoscience and Remote Sensing Luncheon at IGARSS and GRSS participation with a Society liaison to the IEEE Women in Engineering (WIE) Committee.

Observational data set in support of falling snow retrieval algorithm development

The Canadian CloudSat/CALIPSO Validation Program (C3VP) was a field campaign held during the winter of 2006-2007. The C3VP provided an opportunity for the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission team to participate in cold-season northern latitude data collection activities in advance of GPMs launch. The GPM team collaborated by providing instrumentation and scientists in order to advance the development of falling snow detection and snow rate retrieval algorithms. This paper will describe the field campaign, present some observations, and provide early analysis from the resulting measurements.

Passive millimeter-wave signatures of ice particles in Hurricane Erin

Observations of Hurricane Erin (2001) taken during the Fourth Convection and Moisture Experiment (CAMEX-Q) are used to elucidate relationships between measurements and models. Measurements include active and passive microwave sensors, and dropsondes. Models used in the analysis include radiative transfer (RT) models, mesoscale models (MM5), and particle parameterizations. Various combinations of the models and observational constraints are used in the RT model to provide calculated brightness temperatures to compare to the passive observations. In order to match the wide frequency range 10 to 183+/-10 GHg model modifications were needed. The 55.5 GHz channel provided insight to the tropospheric temperature profile, while the 10 GHz channel provided knowledge of (near) ocean surface conditions. The channels less than approx.90 GHz are mostly responsive to liquid in the cloud, while higher frequencies respond to ice particles in the cloud. Keywords-ice clouds, precipitation, millimeter-wave, retrievals.

Brightness temperature sensitivity to variations in solid precipitation cloud profiles

In the past few years, solid precipitation detection and retrievals have been developed and shown to be applicable for snowing clouds and blizzards. All of the algorithms require the use of millimeter-wave radiometer observations. This investigation probes the sensitivity of computed brightness temperatures resulting from variations in solid precipitation cloud profiles. Variations include: (1) changing the snowfall rates from heavy to medium to low, (2) solid precipitation melting just before landfall, and (3) evaporation (virga) prior to landfall. The results show that the 89 and 150 GHz channel are primarily sensitive to low altitude changes, such as melting or evaporation near the land surface. Some of the the 183 GHz channels are sensitive to the amount of the snow and to the water vapor in the cloud profile, with the 183/spl plusmn/1 GHz sensing only the upper portions of the cloud, while the 183/spl plusmn/7 GHz channel probes deeper into the snow cloud.

Passive Remote Sensing of Cloud Ice Particles

Hurricanes, blizzards and other weather events are important to understand not only for disaster preparation, but also to track the global energy balance and to improve weather and climate forecasts. For several decades, passive radiometers and active radars on aircraft and satellites have been employed to remotely sense rain rates and the properties of liquid particles. In the past few years the relationships between frozen particles and millimeter-wave observations have become understood well enough to estimate the properties of ice in clouds. In this paper, a brief background of passive remote sensing of precipitation will be presented followed by a focused discussion of recent research at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center estimating the properties of frozen particles in clouds. The retrievals are for (1) ice that will eventually melt into rain, (2) for solid precipitation falling in northern climates, and (3) cirrus ice clouds. The electromagnetic absorption and scattering properties and differences of liquid rain versus frozen particles will be summarized for frequencies from 6 to 340+ GHz. Challenges of this work including surface emissivity variability, non-linear and under-constrained relationships, and frozen particle unknowns will be discussed. Retrieved cloud particle contents and size distributions for ice above the melting layer in hurricanes, retrieved snowfall rates for a blizzard, and cirrus ice estimates will be presented. Future directions of this work will also be described.