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Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research
1315 East-West Highway
Silver Spring, MD 20910
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NOAA Strategic Goal: Crosscutting

NOAA’s Cooperative Remote Sensing Science and Technology (CREST) Center, is led by the City College of the City University of New York, in partnership with Lehman College and Bronx Community College (also of the City University of New York), Hampton University, University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez, Bowie State University, University of Maryland Baltimore County, and Columbia University. The Center is one of four cooperative science centers that are part of NOAA’s Educational Partnership Program with Minority Serving Institutions. The Center’s research and training focuses on all aspects of remote sensing including: sensor development, satellite remote sensing, ground-based field measurements, data processing and analysis, modeling, and forecasting. The goals of the Center are to: conduct research consistent with NOAA’s missions of environmental assessment, prediction and environmental stewardship; and create a framework to recruit and train undergraduate and graduate students from underrepresented minorities for professional opportunities within NOAA. For more information, visit: http://icerd.engr.ccny.cuny.edu/noaa/

NOAA Strategic Goal: Climate Variability and Change

One of NOAA’s Atmospheric Integrated Research Monitoring Network (AIRMoN) sites is located in Tompkins County, NY. AIRMoN provides a research-based foundation for the routine operations of the nation’s deposition monitoring networks. Major ion data (sulfate, nitrate, pH, ammonium, sodium, chloride, and soil cations) are routinely in demand by scientists addressing process oriented studies concerned with the study of atmospheric fate and transport of various chemicals as well as numerous ecosystem issues. Other process studies of more limited duration address issues related to the maintenance of air quality, and the interaction of air pollution with the terrestrial, aquatic, and biospheric environments. Both monitoring and shorter term projects are relevant to climate, which is one driver of long-term variability and change in environmental quality. For more information and data access, please see http://nadp.sws.uiuc.edu/AIRMoN.

NOAA is installing the U.S. Climate Reference Network across the country, to measure weather and climate. About 110 stations are envisioned for the network and more than 80 stations are presently operating in 40 states, including New York. The network is intended to operate for many decades, providing highly accurate and well-documented measurements of key variables such as air temperature and precipitation. Data is used operationally to put climate anomalies into historical perspective and to detect climate change. The effort is supported by the NOAA Research Climate Observation and Services Program and the Air Resources Laboratory, which designed the stations and has been assembling, calibrating, deploying, and maintaining the network sites in collaboration with NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite and Data Information Service. A list of the operational sites and links to their data are available at this URL: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/crn/hourly.

To carry out NOAA’s mission to provide climate forecasts and products, the Climate Program Office supports research projects across the nation conducted by investigators outside the federal government, within the federal government, and in NOAA Cooperative Institutes. This research is accomplished through the strong support of the academic and private sectors, as well as NOAA and other federal laboratories. The research contributes to improved predictions and assessments of the effects of climate variability over a range of time scales from season to season, year to year, and over the course of a decade and beyond. Grants Recipients: Research Foundation of Suny, Columbia University, Research Foundation of State University of New York, Cornell University, Bard College

CICAR is a cooperative institute between NOAA and the Columbia University Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. CICAR research themes include modeling, understanding, prediction and assessment of climate variability and change; development, collection, analysis and archiving of instrumental and paleoclimate data; and development of the application of climate variability and change prediction and assessment to provide information for decision makers and assess risk to water resources, agriculture, health, and policy. For more information about CICAR, please visit www.earthinstitute.columbia.edu

NOAA Strategic Goal: Weather and Air Quality

The NOAA Air Resources Laboratory is collaborating with the Departments of Homeland Security and Defense, several laboratories and universities, and a few private companies in an extensive study of transport and dispersion of airborne materials within New York City. This effort builds on an earlier collaboration in Oklahoma City. The goal is to provide better understanding and predictions of the path and concentrations of airborne contaminants released within the complex confines of a large coastal city, to assist emergency responders, evacuation planning, health impacts assessments, and decision makers. NOAA scientists are providing expertise in wind and turbulence measurements, atmospheric tracer technologies, and wind tunnel modeling to the Urban Dispersion Program. Experiments were performed in Manhattan during March and August of 2005.

Computer systems developed by the NOAA Research Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) are in operation at all NOAA National Weather Service (NWS) field offices, five of which are located in New York. ESRL has been the prime developer of the data ingest and display components of the NWS weather display and text generation system known as AWIPS (Advanced Weather Information Processing System). This system integrates meteorological, hydrological, satellite, and radar data. ESRL also developed the Interactive Forecast Preparation System Graphical Forecast Editor, a system that allows forecasters to display and manipulate forecast depictions of sensible weather (temperature, wind, precipitation, etc.), and use these to generate text and graphical forecasts for the public and other customers. NWS field offices are using this system to produce gridded forecast products, which allows forecasters to convey more information to the customers than they did in the past.

The NOAA Profiler Network (NPN) consists of 35 unmanned Doppler Radar sites located in 18 U.S. states. One NPN site is in New York. The NPN provides critical upper-air wind and temperature data to the National Weather Service, other NOAA entities, the military, universities, researchers and forecasters in the private sector. The NPN has been fully operational since 1992. Data from the NPN are directly associated with improved weather forecasting, which saves lives and helps protect property. The NPN is particularly important in forecasting tornadoes and NPN data is also used to route aircraft for increased safety and fuel economy. The NPN's continuous wind measurements are used by the U.S. Departments of Defense, Energy, and Homeland Security. For more information, please visit www.profiler.noaa.gov.

NOAA Strategic Goal: Ecosystems

NOAA’s National Sea Grant College Program is a federal-university partnership that integrates research, education, and outreach (extension and communications). Sea Grant forms a network of 32 programs in all U.S. coastal and Great Lakes states, Puerto Rico and Guam. New York Sea Grant is a statewide network of integrated research, education, and extension services that works to promote the wise use and protection of marine and Great Lakes resources. A cooperative program of the State University of New York and Cornell University, New York Sea Grant addresses important problems and opportunities related to coastal-dependent businesses, fisheries, seafood products, coastal hazards and processes, coastal water quality, coastal habitats, and aquatic nuisance species. Current research topics include the origin of botulism in Lake Erie fish; mortality in Lake Ontario sportfish; a brown tide research initiative; hard clam research; Long Island Sound lobster research; projects on coastal flooding, sea level rise response, and the impacts of barrier island breaches to Long Island's estuaries; ecological and geological changes and their effects on shellfish; and aspects of a critically important parasitic disease in hard clams. The public, industry and policy makers are kept informed on those issues and others through extension and communications (including the newsletter "Coastlines") efforts in the Great Lakes, Lake Champlain and marine districts. For more information see http://www.seagrant.sunysb.edu.

NOAA's Undersea Research Program (NURP) is a unique national service that provides undersea scientists with tools and expertise that they need to work in the undersea environment, from the shoreline to the deep sea. Each year, the program supports 200 or more undersea research projects related to NOAA's mission as steward of oceanic resources and environments, including research to support NOAA's management responsibilities in fisheries (stock assessment validation, understanding essential fish habitat), corals, and other coastal resources. NURP is comprised of a network of six regional centers and a national technology institute. NOAA's Undersea Research Center for the Mid-Atlantic Bight (MAB), one of the six NURP regional centers, supports undersea research along the mid-Atlantic states, from south of Long Island to Virginia, including Chesapeake Bay. The MAB Center is administered by Rutgers University in New Jersey, and Stony Brook University in New York. The MAB Center provides advanced undersea research platforms such as a REMUS Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) and LEO-15, the Long-term Ecosystem Observatory located at 15 m depth offshore of New Jersey. LEO-15 is able to collect data on various ocean parameters over long time periods, which may be used to distinguish between changes in the marine environment induced by natural versus anthropogenic events. LEO-15 serves as the core element of a shelf-wide ocean observation network that will increase understanding of episodic events such as storms, upwelling and hypoxia, that are poorly studied by conventional methods. For more information see http://www.nurp.noaa.gov/midatlan.html.

NOAA’s Office of Ocean Exploration (OE) supports activities that search and investigate the oceans for the purpose of discovery. In 2005-2006, OE is funding the State University of New York to explore the marine archaeology of the Hudson River in their search for historically-known shipwrecks and defensive structures from the Revolutionary War. To strengthen public education and awareness of ocean issues, OE aided Finger Lakes Productions International in the production of an "Our Ocean World," 90-second daily radio series that reaches listeners in the United States via more than 150 radio stations and listeners in more than 100 countries.

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Updated June 8, 2006