From showing how old forests stock carbon to enhancing satellite snowfall measurements and checking out the environment effects of Arctic sea ice decrease, the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center(ESSIC) at the University of Maryland is a crucial manufacturer of research study into the world’s complex physical environment and how human beings engage with it.
The center today revealed a brand-new five-year, $95 million cooperative arrangement with NASA. Developed in 1999, ESSIC is a joint center with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center that supports research study, mentor and profession training in Earth system science.
” We are happy to be working together with Goddard Space Flight Center on Earth systems science research study that is dealing with the pushing difficulties of worldwide sustainability,” stated Ellen Williams, director of ESSIC and a Distinguished University Professor of Physics at UMD who acts as the cooperative arrangement’s primary detective. “In the next 5 years, we will collectively take on the difficulties of bringing numerous research study streams together to make it possible to anticipate environment modification influence on our neighborhoods, farming and wilderness locations, and economy.”
The award will allow UMD to broaden its close cooperation with NASA Goddard, constructing on more than twenty years of research study in meteorology, oceanography, terrestrial physics, hydrology, climatic chemistry, environment science and satellite Earth observations. The broad objective of ESSIC is to comprehend the relationships in between Earth’s environment, oceans, land masses and biosphere, with an eye to the impact of human activities in the world’s paired systems.
” We have actually valued and valued our clinical engagement for many years and anticipate brand-new chances and cooperation moving forward,” stated Dalia Kirschbaum, director of NASA Goddard’s Earth Sciences Division.
ESSIC links research study efforts at UMD’s Departments of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science, Geology and Geographical Sciences with the Earth Sciences Division at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight. ESSIC likewise has a cooperative arrangement with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to support satellite research study concentrated on weather condition and water forecasting designs and forecasts. By cultivating close combination within the university neighborhood and amongst federal government partners in NASA and NOAA, ESSIC serves a special function as a partnership center within the nationwide Earth system science research study neighborhood.
” The University of Maryland handles humankind’s grand difficulties, and I can consider no higher recognition of ESSIC’s efforts to deal with the grand difficulty of environment modification than getting this renewal from NASA,” stated UMD President Darryll J. Pines. “The future health and well-being of our world are carefully connected to this essential work by ESSIC researchers.”
ESSIC will continue to focus on jobs within 6 significant research study styles:
- Atmospheric structure and procedures (aerosol/cloud physics)
- Atmospheric chemistry/carbon cycle
- The cryosphere
- Hydrometeorology/precipitation retrieval
- Hydrology/land surface area procedures
- Numerical modeling/data assimilation
” This cooperation in between NASA and the University of Maryland acknowledges and constructs on almost a quarter century of conducting research study at ESSIC,” stated Amitabh Varshney, dean of UMD’s College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences, which administers ESSIC. “ESSIC scientists have actually provided us extraordinary insights into the international and local connections in between land, oceans, environment and human activity. We can’t await the discoveries that will stream from this brand-new cooperative contract.”
ESSIC’s 88 researchers and trainees moneyed by the present NASA cooperative arrangement sent 168 documents for publication in 2021 alone.
” These clinical outcomes straight notify essential choices that we, as a society, are dealing with in attending to environment modification and worldwide sustainability,” Williams stated. “The renewal of this award is a testimony to the quality of the work done by our University of Maryland professors in their cooperation with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center researchers.”
