NASA Cryospheric Sciences Program
NASA is going through a transformation (not a re-organization), with a mandate from the President to go to the Moon and Mars. This has budgetary implications. Waleed got his budget on Feb. 17 and it looks like Cryospheric Sciences is taking about a 15% hit. Waleed will continue to honor existing commitments. The budget reduction will result in fewer funded Oceans & Ice projects.
The omnibus NASA research announcement (ROSES) came out at the end of January. There is no explicit cryospheric sciences element, but there is an opportunity to propose to work with ICESat and CryoSat data. The next NRA will come out in about nine months. It will have a cryospheric sciences element and language about IPY.
"Strategic roadmapping" at NASA involves 5 national goals,
3 presidential directives, 15 strategic objectives, and
13 agency roadmaps to implement the objectives.
The fifth national goal is to study the Earth system from space.
This goal, which goes beyond the four in the Aldridge report,
is encouraging because it recognizes Earth science as a valuable
and important pursuit not directly tied to planetary exploration.
The ninth agency roadmap is to advance scientific knowledge of
the Earth system. There are committees accepting input on this,
and the next public meeting is March 16-17 at the University
of Maryland. Waleed says, "It is crucial that people be heard".
Action for Waleed: Send us the appropriate contact information
and some background on the roadmaps (e.g. a web site).
Action for the rest of us: Send input to the committee(s)
identified by Waleed.
RGPS Status
Ron reviewed the history of RADARSAT-1 and RGPS. We now have 8 years of near-continuous SAR coverage of the Arctic. RADARSAT-1 is still operational. The Memorandum of Understanting (MOU) between NASA and CSA expires in November 2005. Waleed is working to extend the MOU.
There is room within the U.S. RADARSAT-1 allocation for special acquisitions, such as the high temporal frequency data collected to study sub-daily ice motion and deformation; data in support of the ICEX camp; and data coincident with ICESat.
Ron reviewed RGPS processing and results. ASF processes winter data; JPL processes summer, Fram Strait, and other passages through the Canadian islands. RGPS products are available for 4 years: 1996-1997 through 1999-2000. It takes about a year to process one year of data.
The complete set of AIDJEX Bulletins (40 volumes) is available on CD-ROM. Ask Ron for your free copy. He has also created an updated PDF version of the graphical RGPS products showing sea ice deformation fields over three-day intervals for the winters of 1996-1997, 1997-1998, and summer 1998. Ask Ron for a copy.
There were 19 science talks -- see the agenda.
Current Issues
There will be a near-real time demo of RGPS ice tracking in the Ross Sea using ENVISAT ASAR data (hence EGPS?), with 2-4 day turnaround time, starting March 1. Pablo suggested also testing the near-real time capabilities in the Arctic using RADARSAT data, since the quicklook RADARSAT processing is already well established.
Ron has arranged for a special section in JGR/Oceans on RGPS. Papers are due August 31, to be published in August 2006. Send your title and author list to Ron. In order to reach a wider group of potential contributors, the special section will be announced through the ArcticInfo mailing list (action for Ron) and in the ASF newsletter (action for Don).
Ron has also arranged an RGPS session at the fall AGU meeting in San Francisco (5-9 December, 2005).
Special products available:
John Yackel reports that 437 RADARSAT images were acquired in support of the CASES program. Could RGPS products be created from these that would be useful for the CASES investigators? John and Ron to discuss.
Tromso data are apparently still being collected.
Will they be (are they) included in RGPS processing?
The sampling intervals are 6 to 15 days, and the
ice is hard to track.
Suggestion: Post the processing chart on the RGPS web site,
showing what has been processed from the eastern and western Arctic.
Suggestion: Collect the presentations made at this meeting and make them available to everyone. Ron volunteered to do this.
Attendance
Waleed Abdalati NASA/GSFC waleed@icesat2.gsfc.nasa.gov Don Atwood ASF datwood@asf.alaska.edu Pablo Clemente-Colon NIC Pablo.Clemente-Colon@natice.noaa.gov Max Coon NWRA max@nwra.com Joerg Haarpaintner j.haarpaintner@web.de John Heinrichs FHSU jheinric@fhsu.edu Bill Hibler IARC billh@gi.alaska.edu Ben Holt JPL ben@pacific.jpl.nasa.gov Mark Hopkins CRREL hopkins@crrel.usace.army.mil Jenny Hutchings IARC jenny@iarc.uaf.edu Ron Kwok JPL ron.kwok@jpl.nasa.gov Seymour Laxon CPOM/UCL swl@cpom.ucl.ac.uk Gad Levy NWRA gad@nwra.com Ron Lindsay APL/UW lindsay@apl.washington.edu Seelye Martin UW seelye@ocean.washington.edu Wieslaw Maslowski NPS maslowsk@ucar.edu Miles McPhee McPhee Research mmcphee@starband.net Matthew Pruis NWRA matt@nwra.com Drew Rothrock APL/UW rothrock@apl.washington.edu Erland Schulson Dartmouth erland.m.schulson@dartmouth.edu Frank-Martin Seifert ESRIN/ESA Frank.Martin.Seifert@esa.int Harry Stern APL/UW harry@apl.washington.edu Towanda Street NIC tstreet@natice.noaa.gov Deborah Sulsky UNM sulsky@math.unm.edu John Yackel U Calgary yackel@ucalgary.ca Yanling Yu APL/UW yy8@u.washington.edu Jinlun Zhang APL/UW zhang@apl.washington.edu Jay Zwally GSFC zwally@icesat2.gsfc.nasa.gov