Planet NOAA Podcast Episode 2: To the stars and beyond

Transcript

[Planet NOAA theme music plays]

SYMONE BARKLEY (HOST): Welcome back to Planet NOAA. I’m your host, Symone Barkley. I’m the National Ocean Service Exhibits Manager and an Education Specialist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA. Today, we’re headed to the stars and beyond – with a few stops along the way at the 2024 total solar eclipse, NOAA’s Coastline Wave Pool, and more.

HOST: I’m excited to welcome back NOAA Public Affairs Specialist and Climate Scientist, Tom DiLiberto, to take us through NOAA in the News.

TOM DILIBERTO: Thanks for having me, Symone.

HOST: Thanks for being here to unpack some of our latest headlines – and how they’re impacting Americans around the nation.

HOST: Tom, we have an extremely exciting celestial event on the horizon. We’re about a month out from the total solar eclipse that is taking place on Monday, April 8. What can people expect to see during the eclipse?

DILIBERTO: When a solar eclipse takes place, the Moon is passing between the Sun and the Earth, obscuring some or all of the light of the Sun. During a total solar eclipse, the Moon blocks all of the Sun’s light for us here on Earth, casting a shadow on the planet. In April, the Moon will cross between the Sun and the Earth over North America – lucky us! As the Earth rotates, the Moon’s shadow will create a trail of darkness over different parts of North America, which is called the path of totality. Folks in the United States that are in the path of totality will experience total darkness as the Moon’s shadow crosses over them. The path of totality for this particular eclipse includes the states of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. Eclipse enthusiasts across the nation are invited to join us in Dallas, Texas for the official Sun, Moon, and You event at the Fair Park Cotton Bowl, where you’ll have access to an unparalleled view of the total solar eclipse. You can find more information about the event at nesdis.noaa.gov. If you can’t make the event, be sure to check out our official eclipse countdown at weather.gov. 

HOST: Thanks, Tom. The University of Florida recently announced that its first marine debris capture device was successfully installed thanks to funding provided by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law through NOAA. How does marine debris impact our waterways, and how can we make a difference?

DILIBERTO: Marine debris refers to items that have entered our waterways – but don’t actually belong there. Think plastic, cigarette butts, food wrappers, discarded fishing gear, abandoned vessels, and other items that are harmful to local organisms and aquatic ecosystems. When we look at plastic debris alone, a study from the American Association for the Advancement of Science estimated that as much as 23 million metric tons of plastic waste had entered aquatic ecosystems around the world by 2016. That’s 338 MILLION Tom’s. Through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the NOAA Marine Debris Program is funding projects that are removing and preventing the spread of marine debris, including Operation TRAP, which is led by the University of Florida and stands for Trash Reduction for Aquatic Preserves. Operation TRAP is intercepting litter before it enters Florida’s coastal waterways by installing catchment devices and litter booms along Florida’s Gulf Coast. The project is also placing monofilament fishing line recycling bins at public water access points like boat ramps and fishing piers and developing a toolkit that will make it easier for other communities to adopt similar practices. The good news is that you don’t have to be a scientist or an environmental specialist to help prevent the spread of marine debris in your community! By bringing reusable bottles and containers on the go, you can reduce the amount of food packaging waste that you consume. If you’re heading to the beach, keep track of your items to ensure that they don’t wash out with the tide. If you’re feeling especially motivated, you can even participate in a community trash cleanup to help prevent litter from making its way into local waters. You can visit marinedebris.noaa.gov to browse educational resources or get in touch with your local Marine Debris Program Regional Coordinator about cleanups in your area.

HOST: Tom, thanks again for joining us on Planet NOAA to unpack NOAA in the News.

DILIBERTO: Thanks, Symone! Beyond a shadow of a doubt, this has eclipsed my greatest expectations.

HOST: It’s time to test your oceanic & atmospheric trivia knowledge on “Did You NOAA?” with special guest Tara Garwood! Tara is the communications and multimedia lead for the NOAA Heritage Program, where she creates content about NOAA's more than 200-year history and artifacts.

TARA GARWOOD: Thanks, Symone! I’m happy to take another deep dive into NOAA’s history with you! And if you’re interested in learning about NOAA’s heritage, you can always visit NOAA dot gov slash heritage.

HOST: Tara, the last time I was in Silver Spring, Maryland, I spent a ton of time in front of the beautiful wave pool on NOAA’s campus.

GARWOOD: You and me both, Symone! If you visit the “Coastline” wave pool art installation in NOAA’s courtyard, you can definitely lose yourself in the rhythmic tidal patterns that appear to be formed by the waves.

HOST: How are these waves formed? Are they connected to real tidal patterns?

GARWOOD: Well, let’s find out! Stay tuned through the end of today’s episode to learn more about the mystery – and myths – behind the Coastline wave pool, and what famed recording artist Sting has to do with it!

HOST: Since the dawn of the Space Age, America has journeyed to the stars to generate global forecasts, understand and prepare for cosmic weather events, and grow new economies from the ground up. Today, we’re blasting off from Planet NOAA to learn about how what happens outside of our atmosphere affects life here on Earth – and vice versa. So, let’s check in with a few of our resident space experts!

HOST: Joining us is Bill Murtagh, the Program Coordinator for the Space Weather Prediction Center. As NOAA’s space weather lead, Bill helps coordinate space weather preparedness and response efforts around the world with industry leaders, emergency managers, and government officials.

BILL MURTAGH: Hello, everybody. Very glad to be here. 

HOST: We’re also joined by Pamela Sullivan, the Director of the Office of Geostationary Earth Orbit Observations. As part of the National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service, or NESDIS, Pam oversees the Office’s development, integration, and launching of the Western Hemisphere’s most advanced weather-observing and environmental-monitoring satellites.

PAMELA SULLIVAN: Hello Planet NOAA Podcasters!

HOST: I’m also excited to welcome Richard DalBello, the Director of the Office of Space Commerce. Richard is responsible for managing the Department of Commerce’s efforts to establish a space traffic control system to ensure safe space operations for commercial and international civil space ventures. 

RICHARD DALBELLO: Thanks, Symone. It’s great to be here and I look forward to our conversation. 

HOST: Let’s start with you, Bill. Coming from the Space Weather Prediction Center, what exactly is a space weather event, and how do space weather events impact life on Earth?

MURTAGH: Yeah, so, space weather essentially describes variations in the space environment between the Sun and the Earth, and more specifically, it describes the phenomena that can impact technology systems, both on the ground here on Earth, in orbit, and, in fact, in deep space. The Sun is essentially that focal point that produces all space weather. We see these eruptions that occur on the sun, and sometimes these eruptions are coming right towards Earth. We see a solar flare, an extraordinary explosion on the sun; it starts affecting technology here on Earth. And associated with that, we get a big blast called a coronal mass ejection, which is a billion tons of plasmic gas and a magnetic field. Gets shot out from the sun, sometimes right towards Earth. So what’s happened is the Sun just shot a magnet out into space. That magnet’s sometimes coming right towards Earth, which of course is a magnet as well. Two magnets are gonna come together – that’s going to be a big disturbance on our magnetic field here on Earth. And there are many, many technologies that could be impacted by space weather. Satellites; all satellite companies around the world need to get space weather information to mitigate the effects of space weather. Our astronauts in space can be affected as well; they need to get the warning so we can protect them from the harmful radiation. And closer to the surface of the Earth, we see impacts to aviation. Airlines flying especially in high latitudes need to get this information; they’ll actually reroute flights during big space weather events to ensure safety of passengers and crew. And GPS. Space weather can affect GPS systems so lots of folks that rely on the GPS need to get this information. And perhaps most important of all is the electric power grid. We rely so much on electricity for everything we do. Should it be gone out of our life for any length of time, we know that is significant, that is harmful, that is hurtful. So any impact on any potential loss of the grid, we do our best to mitigate because indeed a geomagnetic storm, space weather-related storm, can knock out the power grid. 

HOST: So, if the power grid were to be impacted, is there really a way for people to plan ahead? Basically, do we know ahead of time if big space weather events are going to happen? 

MURTAGH: We rely on observing sunspots; that is the condition that we must see. It’s almost like a meteorologist looking for a low pressure center. That’s where the weather’s going to be. The space weather forecast is looking for these sunspot clusters, because what they are, are localized, stressed magnetic fields on the sun, and when they’re stressed enough and large enough, they eventually erupt, producing these big coronal mass ejections. Now these sunspots can be anywhere from ten times the size of the Earth. So very, very large magnetic structures on the sun. So to the forecasting piece, we don’t know a week in advance or days in advance when one of those sunspots is going to emerge. So, that’s a great limitation. However, once we do see that sunspot grow, we can measure its size, measure its magnetic complexity. Then we start forecasting. Then we start saying, “Okay, based on what I’m seeing right now, there’s an 80% chance of a big flare in the next 24 hours.” So we’ll get that information out to people across the country and indeed around the world, and when the explosion does occur, we have to determine, is that material, that blast, that coronal mass ejection I mentioned – is it coming towards Earth? If it is coming towards Earth, when is it going to get here? And when it gets here, how hard is it going to hit the Earth’s magnetic field? So these are all the key pieces now in our prediction capability. Mostly hours to a few days in advance, but obviously can make all the difference in protecting that critical infrastructure that we rely on for everything we do today. 

HOST: I’m kind of fascinated to hear you talk about this – this is definitely really important work! While we’re on the topic of the sun, I’d love to switch gears just a little bit to talk about the solar cycle – can you break it down for us and how might it be related to these space weather events?

MURTAGH: Sure; the Sun is like the Earth in one way. It’s got – it’s like a big magnet. It’s got a north pole and a south pole, so a negative and positive polarity. It’s a big magnet. But the Sun does something a little quirky. Every eleven years, it does a reversal of the magnetic field. So, when we have the magnetic fields established – north-south, south-north, whatever the case may be – things are quiet on the sun. And then that reversal process takes place. It begins and in the very middle of that reversal process, when the magnetic b-lines are all twisted and distorted, that’s when we see these sunspots appear on the sun. So those sunspots are just that visible manifestation of this transition that’s taking place between the magnetic poles. So, all of the sudden, we see all sorts of sunspots in the middle of that eleven year period, and we refer to that as solar maximum. That is the period when we see most sunspots, and in turn, most space weather activity. And then it starts quieting down as the poles get re-established, then they’re established again, and we call that solar minimum. Things are very quiet, and we can go through a couple of years with very little sunspot activity. So in some ways, it’s kind of like the hurricane season. We know as a nation that we do not see much in the way of hurricanes in January, February, March – we have a hurricane season. Well on the sun, we have a season too, and it’s that average eleven year solar cycle with a solar maximum and a solar minimum. And we are approaching the solar maximum right now. We are in the maximum years. This year and next year are going to be the peak of the solar cycle, so we’re seeing lots of these coronal mass ejections. In fact, I just took a look – in the last two weeks alone, we had 48 coronal mass ejections. Many of them going in different directions, not right towards Earth, so we’ve been quite lucky. It’s a big part of the business in space weather. If the sunspots are facing Earth, it’s going to impact Earth. A lot of times, obviously they are not and the big eruptions occur and go in one direction or the other so we get lucky. 

HOST: Well, here’s hoping we stay lucky! Do any of these interactions happening with the solar cycle relate to the upcoming eclipse in April? I know we’ve been getting really excited for it here at NOAA.

MURTAGH: Right, so it’s going to occur on the 8th of April, and we’re going to get this fantastic full total eclipse from Texas all the way to New England with over 4 minutes of totality. It’s going to be very interesting and all of us space weather types are going to head out and make sure we’re under that path of totality to watch this because we, in the Forecast Center, we create an eclipse every day, 24 hours a day, with instruments where we block out the Sun so we can see the corona. So we do that with these instruments. But it allows us to see what’s happening on the corona. So, with the upcoming eclipse, if we get lucky – it is solar maximum so it’s the best time – we should be able to see what we call prominence. And Helmut streamers, where the Sun is so active that we should be able to see in the corona right at that point of totality, these streaks and Helmut streamers extending out. And if we’re lucky, absolutely lucky, we could even see a coronal mass ejection. As I mentioned, we’ve had over 48 in the last couple of weeks. If one was occurring at just the right time during that eclipse, you can in fact see it with the naked eye, where we’d see that big bubble, that billion tons of plasmic gas, lifting off from the sun. So it’s an exciting time, and I say take advantage of it. Why? Because we won’t see another one here in the United States until August of 2044. 

HOST: Wow, August of 2044…that’s a long time to wait until we see something like this again! I, for one, am excited. Thanks again, Bill. Pam, I’d love to turn it over to you. Could you tell us a bit about your work at the Office of Geostationary Earth Orbit Observations? What makes a satellite geostationary, and what do NOAA’s geostationary satellites tell us?

SULLIVAN: Yeah, our office is in charge of developing NOAA’s geostationary satellites. And these are the satellites that are in an orbit that is approximately 22,000 miles above the Earth. That’s an important orbit to be in because from there, the satellites circle the Earth at the same rate that the Earth is rotating, and that means that the satellite is constantly viewing the same area on Earth. And, of course, that’s really important if you want to forecast weather. You know, the NOAA geostationary satellites you can think of as really the “eye in the sky” that are providing continuous coverage of weather and dangerous environmental conditions across the Western Hemisphere. They’re constantly watching and sending imagery about clouds, storms, lightning, floods, fire, snow…the geostationary satellites are also looking out for space weather. They provide a constant view of the Sun and they’re measuring the space environmental conditions around the satellite, and that’s important for space weather forecasting.

HOST: Great to see that connection to space weather. I can tell that we’re getting a lot of crucial data from these geostationary satellites – but how does NOAA actually translate that data into actionable information?

SULLIVAN: You know, the satellites themselves, when they’re looking at Earth, they’re really looking at and measuring reflected light from the Earth, or heat that’s coming off the Earth. The satellites have infrared cameras that are translating those signals into electronic signals that come to the ground. And once they’re in our ground system, there’s algorithms that actually translate that data into very specific parameters about the Earth. So they can tell a lot of very detailed things about the Earth and the atmosphere. Our office usually works with the National Weather Service or even your local weather forecaster, and gives them information about winds and rain rates. And then typically, the local forecaster is the one that is communicating that out to the public, that is warning them about a particular storm or a particular flood event that might be coming.

HOST: Pam, I appreciate you outlining that process. It definitely makes me think more about how my morning weather forecasts are being created. Now, Pam – I’ve heard a lot of buzz lately about NOAA’s new GeoXO satellite program. How will these new satellites improve weather forecasting and disaster preparation?

SULLIVAN: GeoXO is NOAA’s next-generation geostationary satellite program. We’ve really just started building that system, and we’re planning to launch it in about eight years, so it really takes a long time to design these very intricate cameras that we use. And when GeoXO launches, they’re actually going to have some new cameras with some new capabilities. These include special sensors that are designed to measure air quality in real time, and also look at ocean color; to look at water quality and water hazards. The water quality data – it’s actually a really interesting sensor because it has a lot of applications. Things like tracking harmful algal blooms. It’ll be able to predict, you know, where people shouldn’t be swimming or shouldn’t be fishing. It’ll also be helpful in case of an oil spill; it’ll be able to track something like that. It’ll also be looking at water clarity; you know, basically how far you can see in the ocean. And we’ve learned from talking to the U.S. Navy that this is very important for them; they’ve got, you know, obviously a lot of divers that are doing things underwater, and it’s important for them to know how far they’re going to be able to see and be able to do certain operations safely. And another big user community for our ocean color center will be NOAA’s Fisheries. Being able to look at where the phytoplankton and the chlorophyll is in the water, that helps them understand the kinds of fish that are going to come feed on those plants, and what kind of fish stocks are likely to be in the future. So a lot of very different applications with the ocean color instrument. And then another new capability that GeoXO will have is an atmospheric sounder, and that will provide very intricate details about the atmosphere that will be used to help numerical weather prediction models. And also perform “now-casting,” giving forecasters a lot more information about the dangerous conditions that would be facing people across the Western Hemisphere. 

HOST: Pam, that gets me really excited, especially as an ocean scientist. It’s really interesting to think about how for some aquatic conditions we can actually tell more about them from all the way up in space than from right down here in our oceans. Looking ahead to the nearer future, NOAA’s GOES-U satellite just made its way to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida before its launch. Tell us a bit about the upcoming GOES-U mission, and the role it will play as part of NOAA’s (GOES) R-Series of satellites.

SULLIVAN: The GOES-U is the fourth and last of the GOES-R family of satellites, so we’ve already launched the R, the S, the T…and GOES-U is the youngest sibling of that family. But it’s an important one. When we launch it, it’s got a new camera called a compact coronagraph that is designed to look at the Sun and look for coronal mass ejections that are coming off the sun, and to look really for whether or not these mass ejections might be headed towards the Earth where they might cause dangerous space weather conditions for us here. So that’s a brand new capability that NOAA’s making operational starting with the GOES-U satellite. 

HOST: That’s great to hear, Pam. Thanks again. Richard, let’s turn it over to you and the Office of Space Commerce. Can you break down space commerce for us? What is it exactly?

DALBELLO: [laughs] Certainly. At the beginning of the Space Age, people assumed that the only way to get to space would be through a government program. This is very simply because the cost and the complexity of missions were so large that people felt only governments could conduct these missions. But no one at the time assumed that the commercial sector could replicate that. Over the decades that have passed, as we’ve had tremendous advances in computing power, in microelectronics, the size of satellites, and the size of the sensors that provide the information, and the basic tools of space have gotten dramatically smaller and dramatically cheaper. This has created an opportunity for more and more private investment in space. So for example, communications is still probably the largest commercial space enterprise, where if you launch a satellite, a company can build and launch their own satellite, and launch it into space, and allow people on the ground to communicate through this satellite. So, communications is a big marketplace. Launch – we have a number of commercial companies who are now making launch vehicles and selling the opportunity to put satellites in space. The difference is that as the scope and the complexity and the cost of these ventures have come down, we can actually have a commercial marketplace, a market where commercial launch vehicles are selling rides to commercial satellites. And that’s what we refer to as the commercial space economy, and that’s an economy where the government is no longer a major actor – the government is a purchaser. 

HOST: You broke that down, Richard – I appreciate that! I see your point that quite a bit has changed since the beginning of the Space Age. So, you just mentioned that we’ve now seen thousands of new commercial rockets and satellites launched into orbit. Talk to us a bit about the meaning of space situational awareness as Earth’s orbits are seeing heavier traffic.

DALBELLO: I think the best analogy for space situational awareness is the air traffic control network here on Planet Earth. So we have a very complicated network of networks where you can fly anywhere in the globe. You are being monitored by an air traffic control system that’s put in place to know where the objects are in the air at any time, and allow those objects to take off, land, and operate in a safe manner. Extending that analogy to space, what space situational awareness refers to is a type of space traffic control. As the demand for all of the space activity has grown, more and more people are launching objects into space. Today we have – we are tracking live objects in space and debris objects. Unlike the air or the ocean, when a satellite fails or falls apart, it doesn’t fall to the bottom of the sea or crash into the land. A satellite that has escaped Earth’s gravity is traveling at about 18,000 miles an hour, and it will continue in space for decades and decades. So you have all these active and defunct pieces of debris flying around space, and so what we're trying to do is have a greater understanding of where those objects are at any one time. And what we can do if we see two objects that could potentially collide with each other. A small piece of debris, say, a bolt, or if an astronaut were to drop a wrench, a small piece of debris flying at 18,000 miles an hour has a greater impact than a cannonball. So if it were to hit another satellite or, heaven forbid, it were such a piece of debris to hit one of the space stations, it could cause tremendous damage. So we're trying to get more sophisticated about, first of all, tracking things. Again, a lot of these pieces are very small and they're going very fast. So we're trying to get better at tracking and we're trying to get better at predicting when two things might hit each other.

HOST: Wow, I can definitely see why that’s important. I think when a lot of folks picture Earth’s orbits experiencing more traffic, they might picture scenes out of a show like The Jetsons – not so much why this control network might be necessary. So we appreciate the work that the Office of Space Commerce is doing to keep both astronauts and folks on the ground safe. The United States is certainly not the only nation with a presence among the stars. So how is NOAA advancing U.S. leadership in the global space industry?

DALBELLO: In this issue of space traffic coordination, we are promoting a global vision that aligns sustainability with the effective use for commercial activities. So we're very concerned that the space environment be available for generations to come. So one of the things we're talking to our friends and allies about around the planet is, how do we build a sustainable set of space activities so that our children and our children's children will still be able to use the orbits around our planet; at the surface of the Moon. And as we move out further, the areas on and around the Moon and on to Mars.

HOST: Thank you, Richard To close it out, I’d love to hear any final thoughts or takeaways you may have from our conversation today.

DALBELLO: For over 40 years, the Office of Space Commerce at the Department of Commerce has been an advocate for the development, growth and sustainment of the U.S. commercial space industry. And so I think this remarkable set of activities centered in the Department of Commerce have contributed greatly to the citizens of the U.S. and to the U.S. economy. 

SULLIVAN: So NOAA's been flying weather satellites since almost the beginning of the Space Age. And really since the very beginning, they've been looking at both Earth weather and space weather. So whether the public knows it or not, the NOAA satellites are looking out for them before, during and after disasters to help keep them safe.

MURTAGH: At the Space Weather Prediction Center, we rely on observations; observations to inform the models that help us predict space weather. We work closely with our colleagues at NESDIS to ensure we have those observations available continuously in real time with backup as much as we can so that we can provide the 24/7-type services that the nation needs. We work with our colleagues at the Office of Space Commerce…Richard talked about the importance of space situational awareness and space weather plays into that. The effect of the space weather on satellites can be significant. It can cause anomalies with spacecraft. It could increase the atmosphere that causes density changes that can affect our ability to track these spacecraft. So it's such an important partnership across NOAA, working together, us with NOAA, with the Office of Space Commerce, ensuring those critical assets in space are protected.

HOST: Thank you all for taking the time to be with us today and for sharing your insights on NOAA’s presence in space.

HOST: We’re rejoined by Tara Garwood to unravel the lore behind the NOAA Coastline wave pool. Tara, Did You NOAA that artist Jim Sandborn created the “Coastline” art installation in the early 1990s?

GARWOOD: Yes! Recently, Sandborn shared with us that he was inspired by a wave pool he once saw in Mexico City. As he workshopped his design, he wanted to emulate waves crashing against a rocky shoreline, visiting various coastlines throughout the process to accurately capture them on NOAA’s campus. 

HOST: Now, here’s where the mystery comes in. Many people believe the “Coastline” wave patterns reflect the actual waves being monitored at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts. Tara, is this true?

GARWOOD: You can find out at the end of today’s episode – and pop on Sting’s classic song “Love is the Seventh Wave” in the meantime!

HOST: Let’s take a trip to the Leadership Corner, where we’ll be speaking with Dr. Michael C. Morgan, the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Environmental Observation and Prediction. With over 25 years of scientific leadership, Dr. Morgan is responsible for providing agency-wide direction on weather, water, climate, and ocean observations, and the process of converting observations to predictions for environmental threats. Thank you for joining us!

DR. MICHAEL MORGAN: Thank you. Thank you Symone, I'm really delighted to be here.

HOST: Dr. Morgan, can you tell us a bit about your scientific background? How did you come to NOAA?

MORGAN: My background is in the study of – it’s called synoptic and dynamical meteorology. I focus on understanding the analysis, diagnosis and prediction, as well as the predictability of both mid-latitude and tropical weather systems. I arrived at NOAA from – I'm a lead from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where I'm a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences in that department. My interest in meteorology and atmospheric science stems from the big snowstorms we had back in the late 1970s and early eighties. I grew up in the East Coast, in the Baltimore area, and seeing those big storms made me wonder, “Gee, how much are we going to get? How do they forecast that? And will schools be closed?” But ultimately, it went from the prediction of those events to really understanding how do they work, trying to understand, get insights from how the weather systems develop, how they intensify, and ultimately how well we can predict them at different time ranges.

HOST: Thanks, Dr. Morgan. It’s great to be chatting with a fellow Baltimore native. So, we’re looking ahead to World Meteorological Day later this month on March 23. As NOAA continues to collect up-to-date climate and weather data for communities across the nation, how is the agency advancing earth system prediction capabilities from space?

MORGAN: Well, to advance that Earth system prediction, that involves not knowing just the state of the atmosphere, but it's also about understanding elements of the cryosphere. So that ice portion of the Earth, looking at the observations from the ocean, not just at the ocean surface, but at depth. And these observations are really critical for our ability to predict and understand trends from the past as we keep a record of those observations, but also for us to predict into the future on timescales from several days and weeks out to seasonal timescales. So the rich observational portfolio that NOAA has, which includes our GEO satellites, our LEO – low Earth orbit satellites – are really critical observations that we have, as well as the observations and sensors that are used to predict and to anticipate space weather phenomena. The observations – hopefully we’ll get a chance to talk a little bit more about this from our polar orbiting satellites – gives us information that allows us to improve our 3 to 7 day weather forecast as well as look at our longer timescales. It turns out that for the JPSS satellites, this is the Joint Polar Satellite System. It's a constellation of these satellites. The data from those satellites actually ends up or constitutes about 80% of the data that gets in some of our numerical weather prediction models. We don't just rely on NOAA observations exclusively. We work in partnership with other countries around the world, and other consortiums of countries like the European Union, or EUMETSAT, that also have similar satellite systems. And collectively we share this data and it helps benefit our overall ability to forecast and understand the environment.

HOST: Dr. Morgan, that’s great to hear. Speaking of the Joint Polar Satellite System, we got some exciting news at the end of last year when the NOAA-21 satellite was declared operational. Tell us a bit more about NOAA-21’s mission as the newest addition to JPSS.

MORGAN: Right. Well, one thing I'd like to say, I was really excited back in November of 2022; I got to see one of my first launches of a satellite. And it was called JPSS-2, now NOAA-21. Saw that launch. And it took about a year for everything to be sort of checked out and it was declared operational back last November. And NOAA-21 really helps us generate improved, reliable forecasts that can save lives, protect property, and provide communities with the critical time needed to prepare for these dangerous weather events. It also gives NOAA three spacecraft operating the most sophisticated technology the agency has ever flown in polar orbit, capturing precise observations of the world as they circle the globe, crossing the equator about 14 times a day. Some of the high resolution imagery from the satellites – the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite, also known as VIIRS, enables NOAA-21 to detect fog, Arctic sea ice, volcanic eruptions and wildfires. There are other sensors on that satellite that are also really critical for understanding the structure of the atmosphere in terms of both moisture and temperature that comes from our Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder, or ATMS, and also the CrIS Infrared Sounder, which gives us really highly detailed, accurate temperature and moisture observations for both weather and climate observations. And I would be remiss to not also point out the OMPS Probe which is on there, which is the Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite that allows us to look at the health of the Earth's ozone layer and also measures the concentration of ozone and other aerosols that are – play a role in air pollution in the Earth's atmosphere.

HOST: Cool to hear how these satellites are contributing to our weather and climate data. How does your work in the realm of environmental observation and prediction overlap with the agency’s overall goal to build a Climate-Ready Nation?

MORGAN: Okay. Well, thank you for that question. So understanding how my work translates into supporting and building a climate-ready nation. If I were answering this question about just a year ago, I would have probably expressed the importance of a procedure that we call data assimilation. And what that basically is, is how we take those fundamental observations from satellites, from ground based sensors, from buoys, from other observing platforms, and we combine them so that we can have information to put into our forecast models. And while I find data assimilation is still at the heart of our necessary improvements for both weather and climate prediction, I now acknowledge the great progress made both in the private sector, in other arenas of the weather enterprise, in terms of data driven weather prediction, and that's the process of training A.I. models to predict future atmospheric states. But as this work relates to a climate-ready nation, I view a climate-ready nation, the notion of it being realized, that individuals, communities and businesses have access to relevant, accurate, authoritative and importantly, timely information that they need to make the decisions they have to to adapt to mitigate the effects of our changing climate. So my work is focused on that value chain that extends from the fundamental observations analytics to the outputs that we produce from our models and the post-processing of that output for decision makers. I focus on ensuring that we have a robust observational profile, that we make the best use of those observations, that we continue to improve our predictive models. Further, and this is really important for a climate-ready nation, is that we want to ensure that the access and delivery of our data products and services are done in an equitable fashion.

HOST: Thanks, Dr. Morgan. Glad to hear about that focus on equity. As we keep developing predictive tools and technologies, including the AI capabilities that you mentioned, what do you hope to see NOAA do this year?

MORGAN: My hope this year is that NOAA will be able to roll out its own sort of internally developed and trained models, data-driven models, using our observational platforms and the tools and the talents that we have distributed across the agency. We're moving in that direction. We have a vision for developing a global model that will do this machine learning as well as a very high resolution model over the United States that would help support our prediction of hazardous weather like severe convective storms, landfalling tropical cyclones, as well as atmospheric rivers that we've heard about in the news this winter. So I think one of the things I'm really hoping to see emerge this year as an accomplishment is NOAA rolling out its own data-driven predictive models. NOAA is an enabler of artificial intelligence work across the weather, water and climate enterprise. And one of the key assets is our NOAA Center for Artificial Intelligence, which is doing a couple of different things. One, it's helping to develop an advanced and AI-ready data standard. So that allows and ensures that NOAA's datasets, as we put them out and makes them publicly available, that they are analysis-ready. This allows researchers to dig deeply and rapidly into our datasets without having to take the time and significant effort. I come from the academic community, as you mentioned earlier, and when you get datasets, you have to go through and look at, you know, organize the data in a certain fashion so you can do the analysis. We're trying to promote analysis-ready datasets that are available to the broad community, be able to get that data and begin to work with it immediately. So that's one aspect of it. We're also adopting and figuring out from the lessons that we've learned and accessing our dataset to the interesting science that's accomplished by also putting out what we call learning journeys, which are effectively for those in the computer science world, are like Jupyter notebooks. They are, in fact, Jupyter notebooks, which have the code that's used to access the data and some examples of important problems that have been solved using those datasets. And we're putting those out so that there are resources to what we hope is a growing community of researchers, practitioners. This is the academic community. This is folks in the private sector that want to get involved in using NOAA data effectively and understanding how to access it. And some of the interesting work that we're doing. So AI is going to become an important component. It's already an important component, but it's going to be an ever more important component to the types of work that we do here at NOAA. And I think NOAA's Center for Artificial Intelligence is doing a great job in rolling out some of these activities. The website, if you want to get to the NOAA Center for Artificial Intelligence, or NCAI, is just noaa.gov/ai. 

HOST: Dr. Morgan, it’s been a pleasure. Thank you for taking the time to join us today.

MORGAN: This was really fun and I'm really excited about the work we're doing here at NOAA, and I hope to spark some interest in all who listen to the podcast.

HOST: Welcome back, Tara – let’s plunge into the mystery of the wave pool.

GARWOOD: You got it, Symone. Sadly, it’s only a myth that the Coastline wave pool reflects the waves being measured at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. The installation is actually run by a pneumatic system housed underneath the NOAA courtyard in Silver Spring.

HOST: Tara, this is one myth I wish you hadn’t busted! If that’s the case, how do these tidal patterns appear in the wave pool?

GARWOOD: Sorry to burst your bubble, Symone! So, the wave pool’s pneumatic system can control the timing, pressure, and height of the waves, which can be set to break as high as twelve feet into the air. Artist Jim Sandborn programmed the wave generator so the waves form in the patterns that you see. This is where a second myth related to “Coastline” comes in.

HOST: Please tell me that this is how Sting gets involved. 

GARWOOD: Well, as the man says, love is the seventh wave! We know that ocean waves come in sets, and as popularized by the classic Sting song, it’s a commonly held belief that every seventh wave is the largest of the set. However, it’s not quite that simple. As waves collect in groups, they ramp up to a crescendo and then subside into smaller waves. The number of waves in a group can vary from just a few to a dozen or more, with the larger waves collecting in the middle of these groups. 

HOST: So Sting may not have his finger on the pulse of the ocean, but he’s definitely got the romance down.

GARWOOD: Eh, I’m more into Peter Gabriel.

HOST: Thanks for joining us, Tara. You can visit noaa.gov/heritage to learn more! 

HOST: Thanks for joining us on Planet NOAA. Don’t forget to tune in next month to go behind NOAA headlines, get up close with cool science, and stream one-on-one conversations with our resident experts!