1. SeaWiFS Highlights November 2002 SeaWiFS Views Aerosols from Santa Ana Winds On Monday, November 25, 2002, SeaWiFS flew over the US West Coast and collected the data used to make these two images. The left-hand image is a quasi-true-color rendering of the information. Not much detail is visible in the water, but several other features can be made out. Dust and haze partly obscure southern California. (These aerosols were lofted by Santa Ana winds that were reported to top 75 miles per hour in places on Monday.) Several long smoke plumes drift westward across the Sacramento Valley from fires in the Sierra Nevada mountains. The mountain tops themselves are highlighted white with snow. Farther north, individual volcanoes are made visible by their snow caps. By applying atmospheric corrections and other algorithms to the SeaWiFS data, one can bring out a wealth of detail in the chlorophyll distributions in the surface waters of the Pacific Ocean. In this pseudo-color depiction, purples and blues represent lower concentrations; cyan and green— moderate concentrations; and yellow, orange, and red—high concentrations. Note that the dust from southern California is thick enough in places that current algorithms are unable to determine chlorophyll concentrations in the water below. POC: 970.2/Gene Feldman gene@seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov

2. SeaWiFS Views Aerosols from Santa Ana Winds Sydney Italy November 25, 2002 Quasi-true-colorPseudo-color

3. ARCTIC SEA-ICE DRIFT FROM AMSR AND QUIKSCAT IMAGES This is the first comparison of sea-ice drift maps derived by wavelet analysis using AMSR-E and QuikSCAT data since Aqua's launch on May 4, 2002. For better ice feature tracking, AMSR-E 89GHz data with 6.25km resolution are used in this study. The big gyre in the Chukchi/Beaufort/East Siberia Seas can be clearly identified in both results. The ice motion maps from QuikSCAT and AMSR-E agree each other pretty well. It looks like the ice motion map from AMSR-E data has more vectors in the area between north pole and greenland sea on this day which maybe becaused of higher resolution. Using this new high- resolution data set, more testing and calibration for different parameters in wavelet transform is underway. Since both results are comparable and complement to each other, merge of AMSR-E with QuikSCAT results by some data fusion techniques will definitely improve the sea-ice motion map with more complete coverage. AMSR and SeaWinds on- board of ADEOS-II is currently scheduled to be launched on December 14, 2002. We will be able to use and merge all AMSR-E, AMSR, SSM/I, QuikScat, and SeaWinds data by next spring for sea-ice motion and deformation study. Processing daily sea-ice motion maps and delivery of data products in a near-real time schedule for sea-ice community (e.g. NIC and CIS) has been proposed in a joint pathfinder project. POC: Code 971/Antony Liu Antony.A.Liu@nasa.gov

4. ARCTIC SEA-ICE DRIFT FROM AMSR AND QUIKSCAT IMAGES Antony Liu and Yunhe Zhao NASA Goddard Space Flight Center AMSRQuikSCAT

5. Airborne Lidar Beach Mapping Science Problem/Objective: Understanding coastline change as a result of major storm events. Method: NASA/Wallops ATM Lidar sensor on NOAA’s Twin Otter with joint analysis with USGS. Highlights: The Airborne Topographic Mapper (ATM) group at Wallops Flight Facility for the last five years has participated in a robust program in collaboration with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Center for Coastal Geology in St. Petersburg, FL, to maintain reasonably current digital shoreline surveys of much of the coast of the continental U.S. During this time the entire coast from Portland, ME to Corpus Christi, TX has been surveyed except for the coastal Everglades and portions of the Mississippi Delta. All but ~100 km of the Pacific Coast has been surveyed. Most of these coastal areas have been surveyed two or more times. The preceding figure shows our most recent work, which has been used by the State of Louisiana for resource planning, as well as the USGS for storm modeling analysis. The upper figure displays color-coded elevation change. The lower figure is a mosaic of digital photos collected during our “pre” storm survey. Earth Science Focus: Natural Hazards POC: Bill Krabill William.B.Krabill@nasa.gov

6. Recent Coastline Changes For Raccoon Island, LA Documented by NASA/GSFC ATM Lidar in Collaboration with USGS

7. POC: Code 971/Robert Bindschadler Robert.A.Bindschadler@nasa.gov A Review Article from Scientific American on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet

8. Review article in December 2002 issue of Scientific American on the research, dynamics and possible future of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (R. Bindschadler)