Anne Thompson NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Winner of the 2018 Nordberg Award

 
"Variability in Ozone Structure: Insights from Strategic Ozonesonde Networks"
  

We are all familiar with satellite images of total ozone but fewer know details of the vertical structure of “good” (stratospheric) and “bad” (tropospheric) ozone. Ozonesonde instruments, launched on standard weather balloons and recording ozone at 100m resolution up to 30 km, allow us to characterize ozone variability throughout the atmosphere and on days-years time-scales. We have been examining ozonesonde data since the 1992 TRACE-A (Transport and Atmospheric Chemistry near the Equator-Atlantic) and SAFARI-92 field campaigns in the southern Atlantic region. Since 1998, more than 10,000 ozone profiles from five strategically designed ozonesonde networks, the North American IONS (Intensive Ozonesonde Network Study) series and the tropical SHADOZ (Southern Hemisphere Additional Ozonesondes; https://tropo.gsfc.nasa.gov/shadoz), have been archived at Goddard’s Atmospheric Chemistry and Dynamics Lab. This talk will give examples of how sonde data are used, e.g., studying human impacts on ozone, stratosphere-troposphere coupling, climate oscillations (QBO, ENSO). Goddard’s recent leadership in re-processing and quality assurance, designed to satisfy the ozone community’s need for greater precision in satellite validation and trends detection, will be featured.

About the Speaker

Currently the Senior Scientist for Atmospheric Chemistry at NASA Goddard, Dr. Thompson’s 1980s studies were among the first to link chemical changes (methane, ozone increases) and climate forcings. Since 1990, she has focused on the interaction of human impacts and natural variability on atmospheric composition, using data from satellites, aircraft, ship and ground-based experiments. Dr. Thompson is Principal Investigator for the tropical SHADOZ network and author of 250-plus publications including contributions to IPCC and UNEP/WMO Ozone Assessments. Her awards include the William Nordberg Medal of COSPAR, the American Meteorological Society’s Verner Suomi Award and AGU’s Roger Revelle Medal. Thompson is a Corresponding member of the Academy of Athens. She is Adjunct Faculty at the University of Maryland-College Park and Penn State University, where she was a Professor of Meteorology, 2005-2013, directing 14 graduate students. In 2010-2011, Dr. Thompson was a Fulbright Scholar in South Africa, studying regional pollution from urbanization and fires.

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