The five divisions of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate (SMD) represent a very broad spectrum of academic disciplines, ranging from Astronomy, to Planetary science, to Heliophysics, Earth science, Biology and Physical science with measurement scales ranging from components of atoms to the structure of the entire universe. In addition, the systems that support access to these data range from systems based on formal and broadly accepted OWL ontologies, to those based on current and historical disciplinary metadata standards, to ad-hoc or bespoke systems dating back to NASA’s very earliest missions; all generally developed to support the mission or, more recently, discipline focussed data users. Consequently the access mechanisms, data structures, vocabularies, terms in use, etc. vary widely across the divisions making cross-disciplinary research at best difficult if not impossible. Currently NASA SMD is working to improve support for cross-disciplinary/transdisciplinary research by developing a system that supports discovery across all of SMD’s data products, a model that can be extended to all forms of scientific output including software, tools, models, publications, etc. The core underpinnings of such a system is an information model being developed using the methodology developed by Dr. Peter Fox and Dr. Deborah McGuinness. Here we discuss the model (a knowledge graph), lessons learned along the way, and key findings for other systems attempting to bridge across broad disciplinary challenges.

Chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear (CBRN) releases pose significant environmental and human exposure risks, especially in urban areas with high population densities. The complex nature of a cityscape brings substantial challenges when determining pollutant dispersal within the urban canopy because wind profiles become altered and turbulence is generated in street canyons and in wake of buildings. This can affect downwind and ground level concentrations after a hazardous release. To better understand complex flow conditions, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) initiated a series of controlled field studies called Jack Rabbit II (JRII) in 2015 and 2016. Sequences of 10-20-ton releases of chlorine gas were dispersed within an array of CONEX shipping containers to mimic buildings or other roughness elements. Boundary layer wind flow characteristics were also collected using sonic anemometers, but the data have largely not been analyzed. The goal of this study is to present a preliminary analysis of the JRII wind flow dataset to inform urban adjustments in Gaussian dispersion models. Modifications to the local wind profile and turbulence terms could lead to improved boundary layer parameterizations in dispersion models, which are important for efficient and precise emergency preparation and response.

The Mercury’s magnetic fields are known to be weaker than that predicted by conventional dynamo models. In order to explain the Mercury’s weak magnetic field, several models are proposed (Stanley and Glatzmaier, 2010). One of them is the thermoelectric dynamo, which drive the dynamo via the thermoelectric force (Stevenson, 1987). The field strength is proportional to the relative Seebeck coefficient between the core and the mantle. Because the Seebeck coefficient of insulators is more than one order larger than that of metals, the Seebeck coefficient of Mercury’s mantle is the central parameter. Therefore, we investigated the Seebeck coefficient of mantle minerals from the first-principles calculations. The structure relaxation and band structure calculations were conducted by using the Quantum ESPRESSO package. The bandgap energy was calibrated by means of the quasiparticles self-consistent GW (QSGW) approximation adopted in the ecalj package. The Seebeck coefficient was calculated via the Boltzmann equation implemented in the BoltzTraP package. The results indicate that the Seebeck coefficient of forsterite with a small amount of dopant exhibit comparable to that previously thought (|S| ~ 1000 μV/K). This value may constrain the upper limit. The Mercury’s mantle may contain ~3wt% FeO (Robinson and Taylor, 2001). The Fe substitution and O vacancy act as donor, which is predicted to reduce the Seebeck coefficient, significantly. The field strength also depends on the electrical conductivity of the mangle. Recent high pressure experiments suggest that the electrical conductivity of the Earth’s mantle is ~ 10^-2 Sm. Considering the both of the Seebeck coefficient and the electrical conductivity of mantle material, the field strength is calculated to be ~ 0.1 nT, which is significantly weaker than the observed value of 300 nT. Therefore, we conclude that the thermoelectric dynamo cannot generate the Mercury’s magnetic fields.

Ambient noise surface wave tomography is an environmentally friendly and cost-effective seismic technique for subsurface imaging. However, noise sources acting from preferential azimuths may introduce bias in the Green’s function reconstruction and in the resultant velocity models. This study, focused at the deposit scale, investigates how to correctly merge the different phase velocity measurements at various frequencies, in order to fill the gap between natural and anthropogenic noise sources while adjusting the bias caused by changes in the azimuth of the source. The target is the Marathon PGE-Cu deposit (Ontario, Canada), an alkaline intrusion containing gabbros and syenites (ø = 25 km). Mineralisation is hosted by gabbros close to the inward-dipping footwall of the intrusion. The country rocks are Archaean volcanic breccias. 1024 vertical-component receivers were deployed for 30 days in two overlapping grids: a 200 m x 6040 m dense array with node spacing of 50 m, and a 4000 m x 2500 m sparse array with node spacing of 150 m. Beamforming analysis of the recorded data indicates variations in the distribution of noise. Below 5 Hz, the Lake Superior (SSW) is the dominant source of noise, while above 12 Hz, noise from the Canadian Pacific Railway and Trans-Canada highway (SW) is prominent. In the 5 - 12 Hz frequency band, surface-wave energy is dominant, and it comes from the Lake Superior and vehicle traffic. Between 12 Hz and 20 Hz, the signal is characterized by body-wave energy combined with less energetic surface waves, while above 20 Hz the imprint of body waves is dominant. We retrieved the fundamental mode of Rayleigh wave propagation from the recorded data set. The signal was down-sampled to 50 Hz, divided into segments of 30 minutes, cross-correlated and stacked. Surface wave dispersion curves were extracted from 2-km-long arrays. Besides, various phase velocity measurements were applied. Phase-velocities were inverted to S-wave velocity structures using different probabilistic approaches. The overall results show a high-velocity shallow anomaly, probably related to the gabbro intrusion hosting the mineralization, as well as other structures consistent with the geological model inferred from surface mapping and drill logs.

This summer, The GLOBE Program brought 56 students from 13 different countries to Howell Nature Center near Detroit, Michigan for a camp-like experience. The majority of the students in attendance had been chosen to attend and received funding for receiving top scores from local US and international virtual science symposia and presented their research at a poster session prior to attending the nature center experience. Between campfire s’mores and nature walks, the students were asked to collect data and create research projects. Having little more instruction than “use the equipment provided and stay within sight,” the students self-selected mixed age (10-19), gender, and nationality groups; formulated their own research questions to examine the local environment (a small lake, the surrounding trees, and contaminated tap water); and created high quality presentations using the data they collected over two days. The diversity of the questions that the students researched reflected the diversity of the groups themselves and explored topics surrounding water health, land use, and human health. The success of this experience lends itself to make a great case study for allowing students the creative freedom and control to create their research projects, especially in non-classroom settings such as summer camps and outdoor education centers. By combining data collection with recreational activities, in this case kayaks and canoes, removing the structure of a traditional classroom setting, and giving the students complete control over their projects, the students had fun and engaged in their research in a more memorable way.

The deeper subsurface layers beyond the lunar regolith are not well-constrained. Using in-situ lunar penetrating radar data (d) from Change’E-3 Yutu rover, we invert for its subsurface relative dielectric permittivity (εr) model. We use a hybrid physics informed convolutional neural network based deep learning architecture to simultaneously regress the relationship between εr – d; and using radar forward modeling to reconstruct radargrams to match the field data d. This dual pronged inversion approach will ensure predicted radargrams to closely match the field data and providing reasonable εr estimates. Our training dataset will incorporate a priori knowledge of existing εr ranges [1-10] from previous lunar regolith studies. We expect to predict accurate εr profiles of the lunar subsurface (~200 meters) and generating predicted data that closely matches the field data.

It has been four decades since Apollo 16 returned the first wide-field UV imagery of the Earth and revealed the vast extent of exospheric hydrogen (H) atoms around the planet. Since that time, appreciation has grown regarding the significance of this outermost atmospheric layer, whose charge exchange interaction with ambient ions dissipates magnetospheric energy, generates the energetic neutral atoms (ENAs) widely used for remote sensing of the ring current dynamics during geomagnetic storms, and accelerates gravitational escape and thus permanent atmospheric evolution. Despite the importance of Earth’s H exosphere to the solar-terrestrial system, however, current understanding of its global structure and dynamical evolution is insufficient, such that the origin of persistent discrepancies between measurements and models remains unresolved. Remote sensing of UV emission from geocoronal H atoms, generated through resonant scattering of solar radiation at 121.6 nm (Lyman-alpha) is the only empirical means available to investigate the terrestrial exosphere. In this work, we present robust tomographic-based techniques we have developed in recent years to estimate the 3-D, global and time-dependent H-density distributions during quiet and storm-time from observations of its optically thin emission at Lyman-α acquired from the Lyman-alpha detectors onboard the NASA TWINS satellites. Several examples of recent 2D and 3D data analyses will be used to demonstrate the current state-of-the-art, reveal surprising exospheric phenomenon, and motivate future work.

Quantification of sulfur dioxide (SO2) emission flux is a fundamental task in volcanology to have insights of the composition and the spatial evolution of volcanic plumes. The ground based InfraRed hyperspectral imager HyperCam, from Telops Company, was deployed during IMAGETNA campaign in 2015 and provided high spatial and spectral resolution images of Mt Etna plume. The spectral range of the hyperspectral imager is [7.7 - 11.8 µm] and the measured images contained 320 x 64 pixels with a spectral resolution of 2 cm-1. To process hyperspectral images in quasi real-time, a fast and reliable radiative transfer retrieval model is required. The LATMOS Atmospheric Retrieval Algorithm (LARA), used to retrieve the slant column densities of SO2, includes an accurate line-by-line radiative transfer model and an efficient minimization algorithm of the Levenberg-Marquardt type. But the calculation time remains too high to infer near real time (NRT) estimation of SO2 fluxes. As first, to reach NRT target, a classification methodology of the brightness temperature spectra was developed and then applied on each measured sequence to significantly decrease the processing time. One image previously took a week of calculation to be retrieved. The classification of the spectra, which takes a couple of hours, allows the retrieval of a complete measurement sequence of the field campaign (~400 images) in only two days. The accuracy of the methodology was confirmed, by comparing the SO2 slant column density images obtained after classification with the one obtained by the accurate and time expensive pixel by pixel retrieval processing. The LARA model, the spectra classification methodology and a comparison of the results will be presented.

One of the largest sources of uncertainty in climate models comes from convective cloudssystems parametrizations, which are necessary at current horizontal resolutions, of about 25km.In order to fully resolve the effects of such systems, horizontal resolutions need to reach the 1-3km range, which entail a huge increase in computational costs. In recent years, the performance of the world largest supercomputers has steadilyimproved, to the point that we can now think of running a climate modelat cloud resolving resolution, with a Simulated Years Per Day (SYPD) throughputthat is suitable for decade or century long simulations.However, the architectures of the newest supercomputers are becoming more andmore heterogeneous, which makes the task of keeping a performant code base moreand more challenging. Here, we present our effort to upgrade the new non-hydrostatic atmosphere dycore ofE3SM to a version that is highly performant on a variety of architectures, includingGPUs, conventional CPUs, and many-core CPUs. When using GPUs, our implementation isone of the fastest, achieving 0.97 SYPD on the NGPPS benchmark, when running on the full Summit supercomputer.

On November 4, 2013, residents near a quarry in the western suburbs of Chicago felt shaking from a rare, small earthquake. The USGS reported a magnitude of 3.2 and Dr. Robert Herrmann reported a dip-slip source mechanism from analyzing surface wave amplitudes recorded by USArray stations. With the goal of detecting potential aftershocks in this region of low seismicity and possibly gaining more insight into the source mechanism, a broadband seismic station was installed in the source region by researchers of Northwestern University. Due to the station’s suburban setting and proximity to various transportation arteries, industrial operations, and city infrastructure including a deep tunnel and reservoir, detecting and discriminating small earthquakes from urban noise events poses a serious challenge. Average daily noise levels can be 50 dB above typical noise levels for broadband seismometers in Illinois in pertinent frequency bands, so aftershock signals can be buried deep within the noise, rendering typical STA/LTA detection methods relatively ineffective. A preliminary analysis of several months of waveform data identified seismic signals from ~1000 events. None of these events occurred on a Sunday or at night, implying an anthropogenic origin and further illustrating the challenge. Recorded signals from these events span a wide range of waveforms, rendering popular detection methods like template matching less effective than in other settings. We aim to define and engineer a set of waveform features to aid with seismic event detection using data from a single broadband station in a noisy, urban environment. To identify useful spectral parameters, we first computed power spectral density (PSD) estimates using segments ranging from the hour-scale to the second-scale. Week-long spectrograms of the PSD estimates revealed characteristic frequencies that are likely associated with routine quarry operations. Select features were then tested for their ability to detect regional and local seismic events for one month of data. We will present the results of this analysis, including the performance of several features and discuss their respective benefits and limitations for seismic event detection in an urban environment.

Field reversals are some of the most prominent and commonly known temporal variations of the geomagnetic field. Polarity changes have been observed in seafloor magnetisation patterns, volcanic records, sediment sequences, speleothem records, and have been reported in geodynamo simulations. However, open questions remain concerning the phenomenology and underlying causes of this process. In particular, there is currently no consensus about the temporal scales over which geomagnetic reversals occur. Numerical simulations aimed at understanding Earth’s million-year evolution have predicted a time scale on the order of thousands of years. On the other hand, analysis of a lacustrine sequence in the central Italian Apennines suggests that the most recent geomagnetic reversal (the Matuyama-Brunhes) took place in as short as 13 years, requiring VGP latitudinal changes of the order of 10 degrees/yr [Sagnotti, L. et al. (2015). GJI, 204(2), 798-812]. This extremely short decadal time scale challenges our current understanding of the geodynamo and present-day numerical models. Here we derive fluid flows at the top of Earth’s outer core that optimise either the rate of dipole decay or directional changes local to the Italian Apennines, subject to a minimal number of physical ingredients. Specifically, we neglect the internal dynamics and prescribe a total flow kinetic energy that is consistent with observational bounds. Our optimal flows can drive an instantaneous VGP latitudinal change of at most 5 degrees/yr during the Matuyama-Brunhes transition. Extending the methodology to account for the spatio-temporal evolution of the magnetic field, we find that this solution does not drive a global reversal, but only changes that are highly localised around the Mediterranean and West-African regions. Solutions that optimise the rate of dipole decay suggest that full reversal would take at least 380 years.

I present a game for teaching plate tectonics in the secondary school. The subject of the game is the interactions of plates and phenomena connected to it. The game is composed by cards that represent oceanic or continental lithospheres and a dice that indicated the type of boundary: convergent, divergent or transform. Students, generally in groups, collect “Events Cards”, for example “Earthquake” or “Volcano” or “Oceanic Trench” if they are able to identify the correct event associated to the boundary. The winner is who collects all “Events Cards”. The game is a cognitive model for involving students in a stimulating activity and for applying knowledge acquired in the process of problem-solving. Working in groups is an opportunity of peer to peer learning, where the content transmission occurs ‘horizontally’ with the teacher who acts as facilitator. The sharing of common rules within the class groups has also positive effects on group cohesion, also in contexts outside the school, implying teaching and educational values on social scale.

We investigate 85 129 MODIS satellite active fire events from 2007 to 2015 in the Niger Delta of Nigeria. The region is the oil base for Nigerian economy and the hub of oil exploration where oil facilities (i.e. flowlines, flow stations, trunklines, oil wells and oil fields) are domiciled, and from where crude oil and refined products are transported to different Nigerian locations through a network of pipeline systems. Pipeline and other oil facilities are consistently susceptible to oil leaks due to operational or maintenance error, and by acts of deliberate sabotage of the pipeline equipment which often result in explosions and fire outbreaks. We used ground oil spill reports obtained from the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) database (see www.oilspillmonitor.ng) to validate MODIS satellite data. NOSDRA database shows an estimate of 10 000 spill events from 2007 - 2015. The spill events were filtered to include largest spills by volume and events occurring only in the Niger Delta (i.e. 386 spills). By projecting both MODIS fire and spill as ‘input vector’ layers with ‘Points’ geometry, and the Nigerian pipeline networks as ‘from vector’ layers with ‘LineString’ geometry in a geographical information system, we extracted the nearest MODIS events (i.e. 2192) closed to the pipelines by 1000m distance in spatial vector analysis. The extraction process that defined the nearest distance to the pipelines is based on the global practices of the Right of Way (ROW) in pipeline management that earmarked 30m strip of land to the pipeline. The KML files of the extracted fires in a Google map validated their source origin to be from oil facilities. Land cover mapping confirmed fire anomalies. The aim of the study is to propose a near-real-time monitoring of spill events along pipeline routes using 250 m spatial resolution of MODIS active fire detection sensor when such spills are accompanied by fire events in the study location.

In the present work, we consider four dipolarization front (DF) events detected byMMS spacecraft in the Earth’s magnetotail during a substorm on 23rd of July 2017between 16:05 and 17:19 UT. From their ion scale properties, we show that thesefour DF events embedded in fast Earthward plasma flows have classical signatureswith increases of Bz, velocity and temperature and a decrease of density across theDF. We compute and compare current densities obtained from magnetic and particlemeasurements and analyse the Ohm’s law. We investigate the energy conversionprocesses in the spacecraft frame via J.E calculations averaged over the 4 spacecraft(s/c). We found both positive (loading) and negative (generator) values +0.023nW/m3 at DF crossing, -0.043 nW/m3 after DF respectively. In ion and electronframes, the energy conversion given by (J.(E+vexB)) or (J.(E+vixB)) values indicatesthat 4 s/c average values are mostly negative whereas individual s/c values can bepositive or negative. It suggests that the energy conversion is not homogeneous atthe scale of the tetrahedron (electron scale). Finally we discuss the origin of the nonhomogeneity of the energy conversion process by computing the standard deviation(SD) of E and J (obtained from particle measurement) normalized by their error bars.Larger SD for E than for J suggest that the non homogeneity comes from the electricfield fluctuations at the electron scale.

The lateral size of sea ice floes is receiving increasing attention as an important variable for the polar climate system. We have developed a model for prognostic evolution of the floe size distribution, which emerges due to five key physical processes: new ice formation, welding of floes in freezing conditions, lateral growth and melt, and fracture of floes by ocean surface waves. As a result of the model’s foundation in the governing physics, free parameters occurring in the equations can be directly constrained by observations. Initial model experiments provided insight into the relative importance of various processes, showing floe freezing processes were particularly important for simulation of the floe size distribution. Previously, physical descriptions of lateral growth and welding together of floes had not been constrained by observations. This motivated an analysis of images obtained by drifting wave buoys (SWIFTs) deployed in the autumn Arctic Ocean to quantify these processes in-situ for the first time. We separated floe area growth due to welding from that due to lateral expansion, and compared observations to our physical descriptions of the individual processes. We also found a strong limitation on floe sizes imposed by the wave field. These results have been used to inform new physical descriptions of processes important for the sea ice floe size distribution.

Barrovian-grade pelites in the Greater Himalayan Crystallines and Lesser Himalayan Formations exposed in the Himalayan core are separated by the Main Central Thrust (MCT). This fault system accommodated a significant amount of India-Asia convergence and is the focus of several models that explore ideas about the development of the range and collisional belts in general. Units separated by the MCT provide critical information regarding the mechanisms of heat transfer within collisional belts. Garnets collected across the MCT record their growth history through changes in chemistry. These chemical changes can be extracted and modeled using a variety of thermodynamic approaches. Here we describe and apply particular thermobarometric techniques to decipher the metamorphic history of several garnet-bearing rocks collected across the MCT in central Nepal, the Sikkim region, and NW India. Comparisons are made between the results of previously-reported conventional rim P-T conditions and P-T paths extracted using the Gibb’s method to isopleth thermobarometry and high-resolution P-T path modeling using the same data and assemblages. Regardless of calibrations used, the P-T conditions and paths, along with previously-reported timing constraints, are consistent with an imbrication model that suggest the MCT shear zone developed as rock packages within the LHF were progressively transferred. In this model, samples within the LHF travel along the MCT at a 5 km/Ma speed rate from 25 to 18 Ma. The hanging wall speed rate is 10 km/Ma, and topography progressively accumulates until a maximum height of 3.5 km. Once the topography is achieved at 18 Ma, a period of cessation is applied to the MCT between 18 and 15 Ma, and topography is reduced at a rate of 1.5 km/Ma. The model returns to activity within the MCT shear zone with the activation of the MCT footwall slivers from 8 to 2 Ma. P‐T changes recorded by the footwall garnets result from thermal advection combined with alterations in topography. For most MCT footwall samples, the P-T paths match the model predictions remarkably well. The P-T paths for some samples in central Nepal are also consistent high exhumation rates (>12mm/year) within the MCT shear zone since the Pliocene, a scenario predicted by this imbrication model.

In this study, we have developed a hyper-resolution land-surface forcing dataset (temperature, pressure, humidity, wind speed, incident longwave and shortwave radiation) from coarse resolution products using a physically-based downscaling approach. These downscaling techniques rely on correlations with landscape variables, such as topography, temperature lapse rate corrections, surface roughness and land cover. A proof-of-concept has been implemented over the Oklahoma domain, where high-resolution observations are available for validation purposes. The hourly NLDAS (North America Land Data Assimilation System) forcing data at 0.125° have been downscaled to 500m resolution over the study area during 2015. Results show that correlation coefficients between the downscaled forcing dataset and ground observations are consistently higher and biases are lower than the ones between the NLDAS forcing dataset at their native resolution and ground observations. Results are therefore encouraging as they demonstrate that the 500m forcing dataset has a good agreement with the ground information and can be adopted to force the land surface model for land state estimation. The Noah-MP land surface model is then forced with both the native resolution NLDAS dataset and the downscaled one to simulate surface and root zone soil moisture. Model outputs are compared with in situ soil moisture observations and SMAP (Soil Moisture Active Passive Mission) products at different spatial resolutions. This work will result in a radical improvement over the current state-of-the-art forcing data and will move into the era of hyper-resolution land modeling.

The seismic low-velocity zone (LVZ) of the upper mantle is generally associated with a low-viscosity asthenosphere that has a key role in decoupling tectonic plates from the mantle. However, the origin of the LVZ remains unclear. Some studies attribute its low seismic velocities to a small amount of partial melt of minerals in the mantle, whereas others attribute them to solid-state mechanisms near the solidus, or the effect of its volatile contents. Observations of shear attenuation provide additional constraints on the origin of the LVZ. On the basis of the interpretation of global three-dimensional shear attenuation and velocity models, here we report partial melt occurring within the LVZ. We observe that partial melting down to 150–200 kilometres beneath mid-ocean ridges, major hotspots and back-arc regions feeds the asthenosphere. A small part of this melt (less than 0.30 per cent) remains trapped within the oceanic LVZ. Melt is mostly absent under continental regions. The amount of melt increases with plate velocity, increasing substantially for plate velocities of between 3 centimetres per year and 5 centimetres per year. This finding is consistent with previous observations of mantle crystal alignment underneath tectonic plates. Our observations suggest that by reducing viscosity, melt facilitates plate motion and large-scale crystal alignment in the asthenosphere.