Integrating NASA Satellite Data Into VIEWS/TSS (NASA ROSES 2007)

Project Details:

Title:	Improving an Air Quality Decision Support System through the Integration of Satellite Data with Ground-based, Modeled, and Emissions Data
URL:	( URL pending )
Status:	Currently active through 2012, extension being discussed

Sponsors:

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Team:
	Onsite (CIRA)
	Shawn McClure (Co-I/Institutional PI, CIRA)
	John Huddleston (Senior Developer, CIRA)
	Duli Chand (Scientist, CIRA)
	Tom Moore (Collaborator, WGA/WRAP)
	Bret Schichtel (Collaborator, NPS)

Team:
	Offsite
	Uma Shankar (Principal Investigator, UNC)
	Saravanan Arunachalam (Co-I, UNC)
	Francis Binkowski (Co-I, UNC)
	Eric Bucsela (Co-I, UMBC)
	Qun He (Co-I, UNC)
	Andrew Holland (Co-I, UNC)
	William Vizuete (Co-I, UNC)
	Alexis Zubrow (Co-I, UNC)
	Raymond Hoff (Collaborator, UMBC)
	Don McKenzie (Collaborator, PWFS)
	Omar Torres (Collaborator, UMBC)
	Tom Pace (Collaborator, EPA)

To further enhance the value of VIEWS for the purposes of air quality decision support, the team collaborated in 2007 with the Institute for the Environment at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill to submit a NASA ROSES proposal to incorporate satellite data into VIEWS/TSS. The proposal was awarded, and work began at CIRA in mid-2008 to seamlessly integrate a wide variety of NASA satellite data into VIEWS.

The specific goals for this project are:

Improve methods for identifying pollutant sources and their respective contributions to visibility impairment in Federal Class I Areas
Improve fire emissions data used for current and future-year air quality assessments through calibration of a stochastic fire prediction model
Facilitate interpretative analyses of ground-based, modeled, and emissions data by providing requirements for advanced analysis tools integrated in the DSS
Demonstrate the augmented system capabilities to end users via observations, emissions data, and outputs from the Community Multiscale Air Quality model from historic and future-year applications

It is hoped that the satellite data, through their extensive temporal frequency and geographic coverage, will yield important insights into the temporal evolution and the three-dimensional distribution of atmospheric aerosols. In addition, air quality modeling specialists at UNC are using the satellite data to enhance the inputs and boundary conditions of the Community Multi-scale Air Quality Modeling System (CMAQ). Once the model has been appropriately augmented with the satellite data, the results will be added to the raw data already in VIEWS to provide a unique comparison between the original model results and those that have been augmented with the satellite data, an effort that is expected to improve the predictive capabilities of the air quality models and significantly increase understanding of both the observed and simulated systems as changes in anthropogenic and natural emissions occur over time. The availability of both the raw and model-integrated satellite data will complement the existing inventory of ground-based, modeled, and emissions data in VIEWS to provide end users with a uniquely comprehensive collection of air quality data that can be visualized and compared using an integrated set of tools.

Files: