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Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research
1315 East-West Highway
Silver Spring, MD 20910
301-713-2458

NOAA Strategic Goal: Crosscutting

This division supports the Department of Energy programs at Oak Ridge. Programs include accidental releases of pollutants into the atmosphere; acidic dry deposition monitoring technology and measurements; and exchange of particles and gases between the atmosphere and vegetation. For further information on the Atmospheric Turbulence and Diffusion Division, please contact: http://www.atdd.noaa.gov/

NOAA Strategic Goal: Climate Variability and Change

NOAA has several observational sites that support the World Climate Research Programme’s Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment (GEWEX). Two of NOAA’s GEWEX sites are located near Oak Ridge, Tennessee. GEWEX sites were established to provide detailed measurements and information about the physical and biological processes that occur at the land/surface interface. Observations from these sites are being used to test and improve the current generation of land surface models that are used for both regional and global climate prediction. Key observations from these sites include the turbulent fluxes of heat, water vapor, momentum, carbon dioxide, air temperature, and relative humidity. Support for this Air Resources Laboratory effort comes from the GEWEX Americas Prediction Project, which is jointly administered by the NOAA Climate Program Office and NASA. See www.ceop.net for details.

NOAA is conducting research into quantifying the amount of atmospheric carbon taken up annually by forested ecosystems. Data is currently being collected at two forest research sites on the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Reservation. One tower, located within the Walker Branch Watershed, has been collecting data since the mid-1990s. A second tower, the Chestnut Ridge tower, was recently erected to conduct similar research. Data from these sites will be used to test and refine both carbon and land surface models for inclusion into parameterizations that will be useful for global climate models. Both sites enjoy extensive collaborations with scientists from Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Environmental Sciences Division.

One of NOAA’s Atmospheric Integrated Research Monitoring Network (AIRMoN) sites is located in Anderson County, TN. 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.

The Earth System Research Laboratory operates nine stations as part of its integrated surface irradiance study (ISIS). The stations perform long-term, accurate measurements of the down welling broadband solar and ultraviolet-B radiation. Solar radiation is the driving energy for geophysical and biological processes that control weather and affect planetary life. One of these stations is located near Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Information about these stations can be found at http://www.srrb.noaa.gov/

NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) makes measurements of the column amounts of ozone between the earth's surface and the top of the atmosphere at a number of locations around the United States, including Nashville, TN. The observations are obtained with ground-based spectrometers that measure the attenuation by ozone of ultraviolet light. This integrated ozone amount is critical in determining the amount of ultraviolet radiation reaching the earth's surface. Excess ultraviolet radiation is responsible for human skin cancer and is also harmful to other biogenic organisms. Column ozone measurements monitor changes in the stratospheric ozone layer resulting from human-produced chlorine and bromine compounds that destroy ozone. With controls now in place on the manufacture and use of these ozone destroying compounds, it will be important to monitor the ozone layer for the expected recovery and determine whether other factors such as long-term climate change are influencing this recovery.

NOAA Strategic Goal: Weather and Air Quality

Computer systems developed by the NOAA Research Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) are in operation at all NOAA National Weather Service (NWS) field offices, three of which are located in Tennessee. 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.

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Updated June 8, 2006