Lovely fall - this time, from across the country

Hello and happy fall, from Maryland.

It has been a month surrounded by greenness, fall colors, small towns, and Bruno Mars :) The blue sky and the beaches ; small towns and the crab cakes ; museums and the history; it has been an adventurous swing into the fall!

I love masquerade balls. I always thought it's a place where you can hide a little from the familiar world and perhaps introduce yourself as Princess Consuela of your own castle. For me, past two months has been a similar exotic experience in Maryland with a new castle, scenary, people, and a dream job. While finding a new castle can be exciting, it was also terrifying to move across the country and go far away from the cacti world :) However, after two months, I'm slowly starting to love this place. I now have my go-to places here. The waterfront in the Georgetown, the National mall with the Washington Monument standing tall and surrounded by a rich and immense expanse of museums, small towns like Greenbelt, Frederick, and Bowie that are joyous vibrant hotspots where it's holiday season every weekend. 

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center - To talk satellites everyday and see images from even the distant parts of the universe in NASA's hyperwall (23 ft wide and 10 ft high LCD screen that displays images/movies of varying themes every day. Last I checked, it was methane ice on Pluto captured by New Horizons mission ), it has been the most humbling experience of my life. I work at the Earth sciences division with the Goddard Modeling and Assimilation Office. I study the hurricanes using satellites and numerical models. Changing gears and working on hurricanes after spending my Ph.D in the aerosol world also makes me appreciate the beauty of data density from satellites for weather and availability of information at different altitudes (for those who don't work on aerosols - the information on particles is very limited when compared to weather data products and very few observations hold clues to what kind of particles exist at different altitudes). 

What if someone told me 6 years back, "move across the country and all your dreams are just waiting to come true"  - ah ! 

A picture from a beautiful small town in Maryland - Carroll creek park, Frederick. 

More later !

AEROSOLS : What Do They Have to Do With The Indian Heat Wave 2015? - PART 2

“Jet streams and Jet meandering can be linked to extreme events like heat waves”, remarked one of the seminar speakers at Atmo. It struck me, “What could be the causes of the extreme heat wave in India in summer 2015? Is there a link between  jet stream patterns n stuffs n heat waves?”, raced my mind…But, no really, I’m not an expert in general circulation or dynamics. I work on Air pollution. I was wondering, what the current data from satellites can tell me about Indian heat wave and its link to Aerosols. Ah , I hear you, if you had read my previous post, you should go, ‘Duh! Aerosols, do have an impact on local weather’.

I started delving into the details… (in my advisor’s terminology, ‘extracting science from the vast varieties of ugly data’). 

The major heat wave struck the southern India in the latter half of May 2015. You can see the impact of heat wave from the outgoing IR radiation picture below (More the emitted IR radiation, hotter the place). I picked a small region (red boxed) in the southern India near Andhra pradesh.

Outgoing longwave radiation from TERRA satellite(NASA Earth observatory : http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=85986)

Red boxed region in the Image is the study area in India. This is in the state called 'Andhra Pradesh'. I made some quick analyses of this event and how aerosols can be linked to heat wave below: 

Some initial interesting results :

1. NCEP NCAR reanalysis (Ok, to put it simpler, these are gridded data that combine information from weather models and ground/satellite observations and produce pretty maps J) maps near Andhra Pradesh show cooler anomalies every two years. Here is a snapshot of May month average anomaly maps from 2010 – 2015. The anomalies in the intermittent years are really high and 2015 is one of them.

2010 NCEP NCAR surface temperature anomaly for May 

2011 May anomaly 

2012 May anomaly 

2013 May anomaly

2014 May anomaly 

2015 May anomaly 

2. When the sensor AIRS on board Aqua satellite flew over India, it watched the heat wave temperatures. Here, we are looking at the time averaged surface temperature for the month of May in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015. The biennial pattern (“HOT YEAR-HOT YEAR-COLD YEAR; HOT-HOT-COLD”) shown by NCEP NCAR reanalysis data is also reflected in in the regions extending between 16N-18N and 77E – 84E. Look at the red boxed region shown in the first image. 

2010 May mean surface temperature 

2011 May surf_temp

2012 May surf_temp

2013 May surf_temp

2014 May surf_temp

2015 May surf_temp

3. Zooming in on 2015 and comparing it against one of the relatively cold summer, 2011 (I mean, less warmer….ooosh, it’s tropics!), we can see that the latter half of May 2015 was much hotter and 13 days showed temperatures more than 50⁰C. The mean of May 15-30 , 2015 is higher than 2011.

2011 May, Timeseries of daytime surface temperature from AIRS sensor  for the boxed region

2015 May (heat wave year), Timeseries of daytime surface temperature from AIRS sensor for the boxed region

 4. Let’s see how this is linked to aerosols or suspended particles in the atmosphere. In this context, satellites look down on Earth and see how much turbid the atmosphere is or how thick is the layer of aerosols in the atmospheric column extending from surface (caveat!) until the top of the atmosphere. Here, I show aerosol loadings seen from a UV sensor (OMI) onboard the Aqua. The spatial maps of UV aerosol index (representing mostly dust and smoke) are shown below for May 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015 (once again, focus on the boxed region that was pointed above in the initial figure in red). 

If you look closer on the monthly average aerosol loading for May from OMI, starting from 2010 until 2015, voila! Does the pattern seem familiar? We see the distinct biennial pattern here as well! (High aerosol loading – high aerosol loading – cold. 2010 is high, 2011 cold, 2012, 2013, high, 2014, cold, 2015 is high).

To me, it looks like a promising link - Biennial patterns in increase in surface temperature patterns (hot hot cold) and aerosol loadings (high loading, high, low). What are the probable aerosols that could impact the intensity of heat waves, if the results here, hold good? See you in my next blog..

Thanks for reading! 

AEROSOLS : What Do They Have to Do With The Indian Heat Wave 2015?

That was a tense Indian summer which intense heat waves smashing the country. What makes it “record breaking”?

Delhi roads melting due to intense heat waves (abc7news.com)

See this? Petrified? So was I…The intense episode of 2015 Indian heat wave hit the list of top 5 deadliest heat waves! This is not new though. So, you ask, why are we talking about this now if this has been a tradition in India, every summer?

Guess what?? “Recent increase in the frequency, persistency, and spatial coverage of heat waves when compared to 1970s”, quote a few articles. This could be a close resemblance to more intense heat waves in future.

In general, heat waves are affected by numerous factors ranging from large scale meteorological patterns and local aerosol effects. What intrigued me was the effect of aerosols on these heat waves in Indian megacities like Delhi and Hyderabad.

You ask, who cares about the small particles that exist less than a week?…Now, walk outside, lift your eyes, watch the beautiful sky if you are lucky… most likely , if you are like most of us, living in megacities, you might be looking out on veil of smoggy particles or coarse dust and pollen.. And that’s what I’m talking about – AEROSOLS ! 

Aerosol sources (Image courtesy : caice.ucsd.edu)

That got me thinking about some specific questions and hypothetical reasoning regarding the heat waves in Delhi and Hyderabad.

a) ‘How local effects of pollutants, especially, aerosols (e.g. dust, black carbon particles) alter the intensity of heat waves?

Hypothesis: Well, this is a familiar one. Aerosols like Black Carbon (BC : in simple terms, the smoke you see in a burning candle and the black smoke you see out of a vehicle hold BC particles.) absorb radiation from the atmosphere and re-emit that radiation and transfer the heat back to the atmosphere. This can act like a SELF AMPLIFYING EFFECT to the heat waves, therefore increasing their intensities.

b) Now, let’s take a step back and turn the question around. Imagine this sweltering heat and lower wind speeds which is usually the case during heat waves, what happens to aerosols in that region? They accumulate due to lower wind speeds. If they are absorbing aerosols like BC, they have a feedback to the heat waves, THUS CAUSING THE SELF AMPLIFYING EFFECT.  

Delhi, being a megacity, the effects of increased urbanization can cause wind stagnation and low horizontal transport of pollutants.

C) What is the probability of a year experiencing a heat wave in the study area given the local effects of aerosols?

If we consider this aerosol heat wave feedback into the system, will the heat wave intensity significantly increase in future years, if we increase the load of aerosols?

Well, in terms of global warming, these are much familiar questions. We know human induced pollution has a huge impact on surface temperature changes across the globe. But, what appears as a tangential question is, “how do these short lived pollutants affect the intensity of episodic heat waves that last only for a couple of weeks?”

I’ll let you guess the details until a later post how these hypotheses can be tied to the Indian heat wave case study in Delhi.

A poet's pen in a scientist's hand

Last semester of coursework, and I was writing my final exam for one of the courses. It was just not yet another exam. It was different! It was unfolding something interesting and had its own style. I will tell you how.

How often we end up reading a question in an exam and smiling to ourselves ? How often we see something like , " Pick a topic from the course and write a poem" and feel a poet's pen in a scientist's hand?  I got reminded of those days when I used to blog poems. I carefully wheeled through a list of topics in mind and settled down for "RuBisCO - An enzyme responsible for photosynthesis".

RuBisCO

" Dancing and wandering in the wind,
          There fell a lone leaf,
   Resilient in its nature,
           Poignant in its form,
   Little does it know about its heart,
          That yearns to bind with CO2 and O2.


Converting every energy wave to sugar,
       Binding every molecule into Calvin cycle,
For oft, little does the lone leaf know its soul,
      Thy name is Rubisco. " 

My 24th birthday

It was a spur of the moment , I decided to pack my bags and go on a solitary vacation for my 24th birthday. Aish was going to live the most adventurous and spectacular moments of her life! I frantically searched for places. Deepa (my roomie) pointed 'Palm Springs'. Humongous peaks, beautiful palm trees, rustic desert landscape, strolling in the valley, mild 24/7 massage spa accelerated my propensity towards this place.

It was 12 July 2014, about 5:00 am in the morning. Aish was really excited about travelling and especially checking things off her bucket list. The take off from Tucson runways are always exciting! Massive mountains , conspicuous cacti - I lost myself gazing the beauty of Tucson. That was not the first time I was flying from Tucson. But, every time I did, it was special and spectacular!

As we approached Palm Springs, I saw the massive desert city sheltered by San Bernardino, Santa Rosa and San Jacinto mountains. A thought flashed and Sky Diving made its debut! The plan was simple - I'm going to get crazy and seize the moment for next three days in my life and Sky diving seemed to be a perfect addition.

View from the Top 

As I was delving into my thoughts, the pilot announced that we will be on ground in a few minutes. As the plane descended, I could see the bright desert landscape. We landed and my Day 1 begins here:

Day 1 : I reached Palm Springs mountain resort which was close to the downtown. I unpacked and was all set to ride the world's largest rotating tram (http://www.pstramway.com/).  Everytime the tram rotated and inched the slope, there was a wave of excitement. We were all strangers, but we joined hands to happily feel the adventure! The valley was breathtaking and at the end of our 10 minute ride, I was at the second highest point in Southern California, San Jacinto mountains.

The tram cables

The Tram!

Day 2 : That was one moment! Skydiving @ Perris Valley. The airplane, 'Shark' was ready to ascend. I humbly agree, it was not a fearless moment. But, the excitement surpassed the fear! We reached 12,500 feet and it was our turn to jump. My brain paused; My heart mellifluously spoke; Life was happening right there! I moved with wind , just like a bird. The aerodynamic lift, thrust from the parachute, and the gorgeous view of the valley from the mid air  invoked the puerile memories of watching Disney movies. Indeed, my 24th birthday was a fairy tale. 

Tandem Jump @ Perris

A sense of accomplishment and confidence sprung in my heart. The city had much more to delight me. As we drove back to Palm Springs from Perris, I could vividly see the LA smog. The smog thickened as we approached Loma Linda. I could see for myself why chemists loved California smog! I was charmed too!

Day 3 : Nothing beats a refreshing spa massage after two days of adventures! It was a hard moment to bid adieu to the city which stood with a mighty valor , yet humbled before its audience with its mesmerizing beauty!

Blogging and graduate school - Are you kidding?

Are you a PhD student/ a researcher, busy to breathe, and busy to get excited kind? Have you transformed into a grad student who has placed the blog on the back burner? Hold on, I felt the same way. Perhaps, blogging could be a game changer!

It was a Sunday evening , when I was frantically piecing together a bunch of scientific figures for my talk. That's really what drove me to blog again. I realized ,I missed the art of scientific storytelling very much. This was indeed a game changer! Here I am, happy to jump start my blog to help you connect with my research. If you buzz around , this is the sort of interesting information you will learn about my research. 

1. What makes the cultural capitals of India appear hazy during the winter months and what makes the summer skies vigorously turn brown in the southwestern United States? - Are emissions the only culprit?

Desert dust storms

Rashtrapathi Bhavan, Delhi : Morning haze



2. How can we combine data from different platforms and sources to optimize the data analysis - yup, you got me! I'm not a data assimilation expert. But, that's where I'm heading!

An example of Ozone data assimilation system (Lahoz et al., 2010

3. How can we design more efficient satellite missions and instruments to tackle major air pollution issues?

While you wait for my other blogs , stay hungry, stay foolish! Looking forward to your comments and creativity!

Blissful Bayesian....

That was a pleasant Friday evening. I was counting the papers that will go into my pile for the weekend. I needed some form of blissful optimism and a sheer motivation.

I started flipping through the pages of this ebook " The theory that would not die: Bayes' Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, and Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy" by McGrayne.

So, tell me, what comes to your mind when I say 'Bayes' theorem'? Questions on red urns and white balls from the high school math book? But, when i started reading the book, I was surprised. I realized how powerful this tool is. I wondered why I never learnt Bayes' was all about updating our initial beliefs based on the new evidences. Well, this is what we do in every walk of our life. Face recognition, separation of spam emails in our inbox, weather forecast, and the million dollar question of climate change, everything revolves around this idea of updating our prior belief. Wow, that was amazing to realize! If you had watched the TV show 'fringes' most forensic discussions in this show involve Bayes' in some form or the other.

It inspired my thoughts and made my evening. I was aspired and I said 'Come on , break the leg' and carried the pile. As I walked , I resolved I would atleast take them out of my bag this weekend.

Stay online. Back as a blogger to share new experiences as a Ph.D. student. Let's see how these stories strengthens my prior belief on 'life as a scientist'.

Message from a haboob city!

I haven't posted for a long while. To break the lull, lets do some brainstorming !

"Haboobs/Dust storms/Sand storms" - If you were to listen to these phrases, What would immediately strike your imagination? - MIP3 and Tom Cruise being chased by a towering wall of dust? Remote martian deserts with twirling dust devils? Climax from most of the sci-fi 'end of the world' movies? In a time where we proclaim about global warming, drought periods and climate change, it might not be wildly imaginative to say that they we no more need a movie to show such extreme behemoth events, we have them all happening right in our pale blue dot! Well, that's exciting! Oops! Dangerous! well, this is how I typically reacted when I initially heard about the July 5,2011 haboob in one of my graduate classes.

"A hundred year event - A mile high , 100 mile wide dust storm roared through Phoenix bringing the visibility levels to zero", quoted a reputed news report. People of Phoenix freaked out saying they have never seen such a massive dust event in their lifetime. That was the giant Phoenix "HABOOB" (July 5,2011) and this is what my research delves into.

HABOOBS

We all know about dust storms and the fact that dust particles lofted during these events are harmful to human health. But,why would there be coined a sophisticated term to describe them and why should we talk care when we have ample science questions in the queue? I had similar questions too.
The answer would become apparent if you sneak a peek in to this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vQMuwRjI6s. This was the tumbling giant Phoenix haboob (July 5, 2011).

WHAT ARE WE INDEED WITNESSING DURING A HABOOB?

If you were to picture blowing dust from all directions and a beautiful dust cloud , probably you are getting only half of the story. I hear your question - why, when and how does this start if this is not a quotidian blowing dust event?

Haboob is a common term in Africa and middle east Asia during the summer time monsoon . But this was less common in US, until the day when NWS folks, weather agencies and NASA itself turned their eyes to look at something so massive overtaking the western United States. The story begins on a hot summer day when a line of thunderstorms form over a region. When the meteorological conditions are right, they collapse creating what is called as a 'downburst' (cold parcel of precipitation outflowing from the thunderstorms and reaching the surface).

Such down bursts create strong winds and the thunderstorm outflow or the cooler air mass that reached the surface moves towards the region of lower elevation. As they progress, they pick up everything in their way and act as a self fueling engine. They trigger storms , cause air to rise up and descend and thereby creating a line of thunderstorms.

Haboobs = thunderstorm+downburst+strong winds + dust - so, this is indeed complex !

STORY OF PHOENIX

Unfortunately, Phoenix happens to be a valley at the lowest elevation when compared to its neighboring areas. So, the outflows from Tucson thunderstorms and those from the north typically move towards Phoenix. Also, the potential dust source regions extending from Tucson to Phoenix fuel the event. As it approaches Phoenix, dust walls from several pathways (typically, from north west of Phoenix, from Yuma and from Tucson) converge leading to such an incredible amount of moving dust. Dust storms occurring from these meteorological processes are called 'haboobs'.

It is highly rapid and spontaneous. Hence, this appears as a challenge for forecasters. My research uses a weather/chemistry model, satellite observations and ground truth to predict such massive dust storms and analyse the fate of dust from the haboobs.

If you are interested to learn more about my research and modeling and prediction of such massive dust storms , please stop by the abstracts and talks posted in my website : https://sites.google.com/site/spaceaish/graduate-conferences/agu-2012

A Radiant evening under starry skies

Every night as I walk back from my office, I gaze up and wonder what is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a Universe which is inexplicably beautiful and enormously awesome! It was yet another amazing night at a ‘Star-Party’ organised by UoA Astronomy Club.

In the shadow of the super-jumbo, its soaring flares and dazzling Planets:

For the first time, I saw the stupendous Sun with H-Alpha filter. The filter can turn off all the wavelengths other than red. H-alpha is a grossly expensive filter used for solar flares and sun sport viewing. As we approched dusk, we set our telescopes for catching some of the dramatic objects of Tucson’s night sky. Saturn with continually shrouded thick clouds was the forerunner to signal the splendid arrivals. 30 degree zenith from Taurus, Saturn appeared with its dusty rings and gravitated satellites – Rhea, Enceladus and Titan.

Every night I crossed the Bio-5 dept in UoA, I saw an object at 50 azimuths from Taurus. I always thought that was Mars. For all my surprise, I found today that was Antaris (rival of Mars). (Antaris is a look-alike of Mars). The best visible, familiar Mars made the final entry with its beautiful Mie-scattering effects (May be Martian aerosols are the best ones to place the bet when it comes to Planetary Aerosol Science. You can probably imagine the entire chemical cycle cooking up in the heart of dust storms almost every Martian day).

When the world went Kepler crazy!

From the flurry of results gleaned from Kepler and other orbiting satellites, we are taking tender steps into the fabulous discoveries of Planets in this Universe. When Kepler discovered Gliese 581 planet series in Goldlilock (habitable) zone outside the Solar system, the world went crazy! Peer reviewed papers, endless analyses, fuzzy engineering and geeky insights soared to prove microbial or intelligent life elsewhere in the ‘waiting to be unravelled’ category. But the debate continued – is it worth investing in such scientific expts? Why hitch hike on Gliese when we have not yet solved the Arctic-Antarctic ozone puzzle on Earth? (Wondering why Arctic? Take a look – Nature 478,469–475 (27 October 2011 doi: 10.1038 /nature10556).

As we get closer and closer to cornering the unifying theory of Universe on one side, we cannot single out Earth and justify science on the other side. They must occur simulatenously. To put it in perspective, ‘Comparative planetology’ is the need of the hour! Scouting through a couple of examples might convince you on this concept. I was in Aspen for a conference on Exoplanets last January (Exoclimes - http://www.astro.ex.ac.uk/exoclimes/). Some breathtaking points I learnt from the conference:

Mirror Mirror ….

“Sorry I was an early bird, but please do include me now” - Oxygen warming- this happened in the early history of Earth and is now seen in Exoplanets.

Hot Jupiters out there - “I’m a hot jupiter too. Study me to understand Ur own Jupiter! I have oceans, I’m tidally locked just like Ur Earth’s moon and I have atmosphere!”Many such Jupiter sized Planets exist outside our solar system. Infact, one of the authors had used MODIS images and algorithms to model exoplanets. I went speechless!

The dusty ferric mass – “I have more mighty dust storms! Look how powerful I’m! I completely inactivated the little rover you sent to spy on my surface when you tear Ur brains to tease out the chemistry and physics of Haboobs and Dust devils in your south west and Sahara, I have enough. Also, when you are mulling over better GPS systems for future, you can push your technology and creativity forward by experimenting with Pseudolites in my surface. Why not use my foot prints to better understand your home planet? By the way, if you still wonder, who I am- I’m Mars, the pretty red dot! “

Spilling the beans!

Everytime Astronomers say “star”, they’re probably looking for a way to say “life” because Life, star and Planets are inter connected. To satisty the great expectations on Earth and to solve the mysteries here, studying Earth just within Earth is not sufficient. Confluencing datasets from Earth and other planets is the ultimate decider of the veracity of our results.

The starry and magnificient star party left me with the thought that someday, we might scout the serendipitous moments with the computer touch screens taking less than a minute to whirl us from one planet to another from one marvel to another - Mercury’s frightening thermal inertia, Earth’s rewarding monsoons, mighty Martian dust devils, titan’s methane lakes and light curves from Exoplanets will be featured all in one room in a way similar to images from different satellites and different landscapes of Earth which we have today!!!

.mat to .avi conversion bugs

Animations and Modelling are the order of the day for Earth Atmospheric Scientists. Matlab movies although visually pleasing sometimes end up being a trouble maker. It is not difficult to create a movie out of 50 images in Matlab. But what makes it challenging is to retain the same fps(frames per second) after we convert .mat to .avi or .mp4 file. When i did this, my fps spec in Matlab had no impact on the .avi file i had created. 2 frames per sec or 10 frames per sec appeared the same when the .avi file (created in Matlab) was played in media player. Neither did media player allowed me to change the fps. If you are thinking to regenerate them using any other movie format, forget it! Decoders can go wrong anywhere ! So, buckle up! Here we go heading towards the solution! Microsoft GIF animator. Import your file, select all images in the left, change to animation tab , specify the repeat mode-->switch to image tab--> wow! there it is-! change the number of frames per second, width, height and you are done! Insert into MS-PPT- as sweet as a nut! I'm not sure if this is a Matlab bug. Any other suggestions from readers are most welcome! Thanks in advance! Enjoy Modelling!

Speaking of DNA science ....

What would it require to think like Einstein or be a charismatic pioneer like Steve Jobs or solve the half length puzzle left by Leonardo da vinci? In other words, how would it be to inherit a glorious life of our ancestors (some hundreds of years back) who were once stalwarts in different fields? Before you read ahead, pause... and ponder... 'Is it plausible to argue from modern bio sciences perspective that we can bring back the genetic cognitive skills and unique potential of the ancestors in their present generation'?

I was perfunctorily flipping through a you tube clipping on the movie '7am Arivu' on a busy monday night. I took a break to see if there is something interesting happening in Kollywood. As I was watching this movie, I mulled over the above question for a while and my answer was No. I said to myself, such strategies can turn true just for a two hour science fiction movie.

A day after, I realized I was wrong. It was so surprising to hear about a pionering research field in stem cells and life sciences that actually focus on DNA activation to reshape an individual's cognitive skills and personalities such that he can retrieve any unique feature which his/her ancestors had in the past. Also, these stem cells are capable of re-activating a part like Brain cells which usually dont show signs of growth unlike other parts in the body. These techniques are being researched to solve medical questions on Brain-death, Coma etc. Isn't that amazing? Thanks to Navneetha for an interesting chat on this technology. Good to see a film conveying a scientific message in Kollywood after a long time.