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Water Management Project Office
WATER MANAGEMENT GLOSSARY
Also of use: Climate Acronym Glossary
and Weather Glossary
- ACRIM
- Active Cavity Radiometer Irradiance Monitor Satellite
- ACWI
- Advanced Committee on Water Information, operates in conjunction with the
Water Information Coordination Program (WICP)
- AFWA
- Air Force Weather Agency
- AHPS
- Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service is a new tool under development by NOAA/NWS to better forecast
floods and other water resources.
- AIM
- Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere (AIM) is a two-year NASA mission that launched successfully
25 April 2007 to explore iridescent ice clouds that form 50 miles above the Earth's polar regions.
- AIRS
- Airborne Infrared Sounder. A NASA satellite which contains several
instruments.
- AIRS
- Alliance Icing Research Study
- AIWG
- Applications Implementation Working Group
- AMS
- American Meteorological Society
- AMSR-E
- Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer. EOS instrument.
The Aqua AMSR-E is a cooperative effort between NASA and the National Space Development Agency (JAXA)
of Japan, with the collaboration of scientific and industry organizations in both countries.
- Aqua
- (not an acronym) EOS Spacecraft:
The Aqua mission is a part of the NASA-centered international Earth Observing System (EOS).
Aqua was formerly named EOS PM, signifying its afternoon equatorial crossing time.
Aqua, which is Latin for water, is a NASA Earth Science satellite mission named for the large amount of
information that the mission is collecting about the Earth's water cycle, including evaporation from the
oceans, water vapor in the atmosphere, clouds, precipitation, soil moisture, sea ice, land ice, and
snow cover on the land and ice. Additional variables also being measured by Aqua include
radiative energy fluxes, aerosols, vegetation cover on the land, phytoplankton and dissolved organic matter
in the oceans, and air, land, and water temperatures.
- Aquarius
- (not an acronym) The Aquarius Mission is a NASA Earth System Science
Pathfinder Mission
to measure global Sea Surface Salinity (SSS).
Conventional in situ SSS sampling is too sparse to give the global view
of salinity variability that only a satellite can provide. Aquarius will resolve missing physical processes
that link the water cycle, the climate, and the ocean. Aquarius is planning to launch in 2009.
Aquarius/SAC-D is a space mission developed by
NASA and the Space Agency of Argentina (Comision Nacional de Actividades Espaciales, CONAE.)
- Army Corps Engineers
- The United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) is made up of approximately 34,600 Civilian and 650 military members.
Their mission is to provide quality, responsive engineering services to the nation including:
- Planning, designing, building and operating water resources and other civil works projects
(Navigation, Flood Control, Environmental Protection, Disaster Response, etc.)
- Designing and managing the construction of military facilities for the Army and Air Force. (Military Construction)
- Providing design and construction management support for other Defense and federal agencies.
(Interagency and International Services)
Most relevent to Water Management is the USACE
Institute for Water Resources
- ARC
- NASA's Ames Research Center
- ASCE
- American Society of Civil Engineers
- AVHRR
- Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer is a radiation-detection imager carried aboard the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration`s (NOAA) Polar Orbiting Environmental Satellite series.
The AVHRR can be used for remotely determining cloud cover and the surface temperature.
Note that the term surface can mean the surface of the Earth, the upper surfaces of clouds, or the surface of a body of water.
The Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) data set is comprised of data collected by the AVHRR sensor
and held in the archives of the
U.S. Geological Survey`s EROS Data Center.
- AWARDS
- Automated Weather Acquisition and Retrieval System DST operated by the Bureau of Reclamation
- AWRA
- American Water Resources Association
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- BALTEX
- The Baltic Sea Experiment (BALTEX) is a continental-scale experiment under GEWEX.
The study area of BALTEX is the Baltic Sea and its huge catchment region, which
constitutes a unique European water basin.
The primary reserach focus of BALTEX is the hydrological cycle and the exchange
of energy between the atmosphere and the surface of the Earth.
BALTEX Phase II extends the scope of the research to regional climate change, water
management and air and water quality.
- BASINS
- Better Assessment Science Integrating Point and Non-point Sources is a Decision Support Tool (DST)
developed by the Environmental Protection Agency.
The EPA's BASINS is a multi-purpose environmental analysis system that integrates
a geographical information system (GIS), national watershed data, and state-of-the-art environmental assessment
and modeling tools into one convenient package.
- BoR
- The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (BoR) is an agency of the Department of the Interior.
They are the second largest supplier of wholesale water and hydroelectric power in the American West,
and work to promote water conservation, recycling, and reuse.
- BSRN
- Baseline Surface Radiation Network (BSRN) is a project under GEWEX which is aimed at detecting
significant changes in the Earth's radiation field at the surface. These data are of vital importance
to support the validation of satellite and computer model estimates.
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- CALIPSO
- Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) is
a NASA Earth System Science Pathfinder Mission.
CALIPSO (formerly PICASSO-CENA) will fly in formation with Aqua to provide a global set of data on aerosol and cloud properties,
radiative fluxes, and atmospheric state. This will enable new assessments of the radiative effects of aerosol and clouds
that will greatly improve our ability to predict future climate change.
- CCSP
- Climate Change Science Program endeavors to integrate federal research on global change and climate change
- CEOP
- The Coordinated Enhanced Observing Period (CEOP) is a key component of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP),
an international cooperative program which also covers the GEWEX projects.
During the CEOP time period, in situ reference sites around the world collect data for comparison to satellite
observations and climate models. The CEOP website provides access to archived data and is mirrored by the websites
of research institutions around the world.
Of interest to water management are
CEOP hydrology reference sites and
CEOP precipitation time series images
- CERES
- Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System is an instrument flown on the EOS satellites TRMM, Terra, and Aqua.
- CHRS
- The Center for Hydrometeorology and Remote Sensing (CHRS) at the U. of California, Irvine,
has produced animated images of global precipitation accumulation from the archived data of the
Global PERSIANN-CSS system.
- CLM
- The Community Land Model (CLM) was developed by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)
and is tested in the LDAS program.
- CloudSAT
- A NASA Earth System Science Pathfinder Mission.
CloudSat was the first spaceborne deployment of a 94-GHz cloud profiling radar.
CloudSat uses advanced radar to "slice" through clouds to see their vertical structure, providing a completely new
observational capability from space. Earlier satellites could only image the uppermost layers of clouds.
CloudSat is among the first satellites to study clouds on a global basis.
It will look at their structure, composition and effects.
The mission is a partnership between NASA's JPL ,
Colorado State University , the Canadian Space Agency (CSA),
the US Air Force (USAF), and the US Department of Energy's Atmospheric Radiation Measurements (ARM) Program.
CloudSat measurements have applications in air quality, weather models, water management, aviation safety, and disaster management.
- CNA
- The Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) is a
federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) for the Department of the U.S. Navy.
An FFRDC is the term for a federally-funded think tank.
The Center for Naval Analyses is currently operated by the CNA Corporation and is located in Alexandria, Virginia.
- CREW/IGES
- The Center for Research on Environment and Water (CREW) is an element of the
Institute of Global Environment and Society (IGES).
CREW supports several NASA projecs and provides a portal for precipitation and water cycle data.
- CUAHSI
- The Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science (CUAHSI) is an organization representing
more than one hundred U.S. universities. CUAHSI receives support from the National Science Foundation to develop
infrastructure and services for the advancement of hydrologic science and education in the United States.
- CVS
- Concurrent Versions System is a computer repository system for
archiving versions of software source files.
CVS is distributed by the
Free Software Foundation .
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- DAAC
- NASA Distributed Active Archive Centers. A complete list is
here , these are the best known:
- DecVar.org
- DecVar.org is the Virtual Center for Decadal Climate Variability Studies.
The need for Decvar.org is to serve the comunity
of climate researchers studying climate variability on decadal and longer time scales.
The scope of DecVar.org, first and foremost, is to develop a Webportal to make paleoclimate, instrument-measured, and
model-generated data sets easily and freely available to the research and applications communities.
- DEVELOP
- DEVELOP is a NASA Science Mission Directorate Applied Sciences Program that fosters human capital development
to extend NASA science research to local communities.
The activities are student led, with advisors and mentors from NASA and other partner organizations.
DEVELOP projects relate directly to twelve
NASA Applications of National Priority.
- DoI
- The U.S. Department of the Interior (DoI) is a
cabinet-level U.S. agency
which encompasses several bureaus, including the Bureau of Reclamation (BoR) and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).
An important Water Management initiative is Water 2025:
Preventing Crisis and Conflict in the West
- Drought Monitor
- The Drought Monitor relies on a synthesis of multiple drought indices to detect and measure
droughts. It is a product of the
National Drought Mitigation Center which is a partnership
of federal, state, local, and academic organizations hosted at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln.
See also NIDIS.
- DSS
- Decision Support Systems are a general type of computerized information system that
supports business and organizational decision-making activities.
- DST
- Decision Support Tool is basically another way of saying Decision Support System.
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- EGU
- The European Geosciences Union (EGU), founded in 2002 as a merger of the European Geophysical Society (EGS)
and the European Union of Geosciences (EUG), is a professional society devoted to the promotion of:
- the sciences of the Earth and its environment and of planetary and space sciences;
- cooperation between scientists.
- EOS
- Earth Observing Systems series of NASA satellites. Links to missions are available from the
NASA Earth Observatory or from this
coin chart maintained by the Applied Sciences Directorate
of NASA John C. Stennis Space Center
- EPA
- The mission of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is to protect human health and the environment.
The EPA has numerous programs which apply science and technology to protect
Water Quality.
- EPRC
- The Environmental & Population Research Center seeks to
"incorporate strategic research, training, technical service, laboratory analysis,
information exchange/dissemination and networking for effective and sustainable achievements
in respective targeted development programs". It is operated from Dhaka, Bangladesh and has
on-going activities in the area of water supply and sanitation.
- ESIP
- The Federation of Earth Science Information Partners(ESIP)is a unique consortium of more than 90 organizations
that collect, interpret and develop applications for remotely sensed Earth observation information.
The ESIP network includes NASA, NOAA and USGS data centers, research universities, government research laboratories,
supercomputing facilities, education resource providers, information technology innovators, nonprofit organizations
and commercial enterprises.
- ESTO
- From instruments to data access, the NASA Earth Science Technology Office (ESTO) develops technologies that
enable a full range of scientific measurements, operational requirements, and practical applications
that benefit society at large.
- EUMETSTAT
- European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites.
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- FEA
- Federal Enterprise Architecture is the U.S. federal government's E-government initiative.
It was launched by the Office of Managment and Budget in Feb 2002. The purpose of this effort is to
simplify processes and unify work across government agencies, using a business-based founation.
An FEA practical guide (112 page pdf file)
is hosted by the General Accounting Office.
- FEMA
- Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is the agency of the US government tasked with
Disaster Mitigation, Preparedness, Response & Recovery planning.
- FY
- This is gov-speak for "Fiscal Year".
Here is NASA's current budget
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- GCM
- A Global Climate Model or General Circulation Model (GCM) aims to describe climate behavior by integrating
a variety of fluid dynamical, chemical, and sometimes biological equations.
There are both atmospheric GCMs (AGCMs) and ocean GCMs (OGCMs). An AGCM and an OGCM can be coupled together to form an AOGCM.
With the addition of other components (such as a sea ice model or a model for evapotranspiration over land), the AOGCM becomes
the basis for a full climate model. Currently, over a dozen institutions around the world run AOGCMs for climate prediction.
A recent trend in GCMs is to extend them to become Earth system models, that include such things as submodels for atmospheric chemistry
or a carbon cycle model to better predict changes in carbon dioxide concentrations resulting from changes in emissions.
- GEO
- The intergovernmental Group on Earth Observations (GEO) is leading a worldwide effort to build a
Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) over the next 10 years.
GEOSS will work with and build upon existing national, regional, and international systems to provide comprehensive,
coordinated Earth observations from thousands of instruments worldwide, transforming the data they collect into
vital information for society.
- GES
- Geospatial Extension Service is a general term for a whole category of efforts to incorporate GIS software
(see below) in the DSTs used by federal, state, and educational institutions.
- GEWEX
- Global Energy and Water cycle EXperiment is a program initiated by the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP)
to observe, understand and model the hydrological cycle and energy fluxes in the atmosphere, at land surface
and in the upper oceans. GEWEX is the core project in WCRP concerned with studying the dynamics and thermodynamics
of the atmosphere and interactions with the Earth's surface.
- GFDL
- Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory is a collaboration of NOAA and Princeton University.
The mission of GFDLs to be a world leader in the production of timely and reliable knowledge and
assessments on natural climate variability and anthropogenic changes and in the development
of the required earth system models.
- GIS
- A Geographic Information System is a computer system designed to allow users to collect, manage, and analyze
large volumes of spatially referenced and associated attribute data. The major components of a GIS are:
a user interface; system/database management capabilities; database creation/data entry capacity;
spatial data manipulation and analysis packages; and display/product generation functions.
In the broadest sense, a GIS is any integrated system of information that includes a geographic component.
(Reference: Glossary of GIS Development )
- GISS
- NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies is a collaboration of the Earth Sciences Division of NASA's
Goddard Space Flight Center and Columbia University in New York City.
- GMAO
- Global Modeling and Assimilation Office is a branch within NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC)
that develops global climate models and assimilation systems.
- GMES
- Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) is an initiative of the European Space Agency
which is very simliar to the NASA Applied Sciences goal of "Science Serving Society".
The goal of GMES is to support the implementation of public policies at European or national level that deal with,
for example, agriculture, environment, fisheries, or regional development, external relations, security.
The services provided by GMES can be classified in three major categories:
mapping, support for emergency management and forecasting.
- GPCP
- Global Precipitation Climatoloy Project (GPCP) is a project of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP)
to quanitfy the distribution of precipitation around the globe over many years.
See also the global precipitation data from TRMM.
- GPM
- Global Precipitation Measurement mission is a NASA mission in the "formulation phase"
- GRACE
- Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment,
a NASA Earth System Science Pathfinder Mission.
The primary goal of the GRACE mission
is to accurately map variations in the Earth's gravity field over its 5-year lifetime. The GRACE mission has
two identical spacecrafts flying about 220 kilometers apart in a polar orbit 500 kilometers above the earth.
- GrADS
- Grid Analysis and Display System is an interactive desktop tool
that is used for visualization and manipulation of earth science data.
GrADS uses a 4-Dimensional data environment:
longitude, latitude, vertical level, and time.
GrADS can run under a variety of operating systems, and can handle
the data formats binary, GRIB, NetCDF, or HDF-SDS (Scientific Data Sets).
GrADS is freeware maintained by the Institute of Global Environment
and Society (IGES).
- GSFC
- NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC).
- GWSP
- Global Water Systems Project is a program of Earth System Science Partnership
( ESSP ), which itself is a partnership the
four international global environmental change research programmes:
DIVERSITAS ,
IGBP ,
IHDP , and
WCRP
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- HDF
- Hierarchical Data Format is a data format developed at the National Center for Supercomputing
Applications ( NCSA )
for both gridded and non-gridded data.
The software package IDL
is developing routines compatible with HDF4 and HDF5.
The software package MatLab
has full support for HDF and HDF-EOS.
- HDF-COARDS:
HDF files implementing the COARDS conventions are directly readable by GrADS.
- HDF-EOS:
HDF files implementing the NASA-EOS conventions are not directly readable by GrADS.
HDF-EOS, developed at GSFC, is the primary data standard for NASA's Earth Science data. The
HDF-EOS
website contains a software library, including tutorials.
- HELP
- Hydrology for Environment, Life, and Policy (HELP) is a joint initiative of the
United Nations Educational Scientific Organization (UNESCO) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
- HEPEX
- The Hydrologic Ensemble Prediction EXperiment (HEPEX) is an international effort that brings together
hydrological and meteorological communities from around the globe to build a research project focused on
advancing probabilistic hydrologic forecast techniques.
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- IBPD
- The Integrated Budget and Performance Document (IBPD) is a metric used by NASA HQ to evaluate the compliance of
Research and Development (R&D) Programs with requirements set forth by the federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
- ICTS
- The Inter-Continental Transferability Study is a part of GEWEX and CEOP.
ICTS takes regional atmospheric models from their home continent and applies them to other continents with
new initialization and forcing.
- IFPRI
- The mission of the International Food Policy Research Institute FPRI's is a world free of hunger and malnutrition.
IFPRI is one of 15 food and environmental research organizations supported by the
Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIA).
- IGARSS
- The International Geoscience Remote Sensing Society is a professional society which sponsors a journal and symposium series.
- IGOS
- Integrated Global Observing Strategy is a partnership which brings together the efforts of a number of international bodies
concerned with the observational component of global environmental issues, both from a research and a long-term operational programme perspective.
Water is a theme.
- IGWCO
- Integrated Global Water Cycle Observations is a theme under GEWEX.
- IHP
- The International Hydrological Programme (IHP) is a UNESCO program on freshwater.
The US National Committee participating in IHP is organized under USGS.
- IMPACT
- Interactive Modeling Project for Atmospheric Chemistry and Transport is a research project in which scientists at
NASA Langley Research Center generate forecasts of air quality on demand.
Their computer system is called RAQMS for Real-time Air Quality Modeling System.
- IPCC
- The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shared the
2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore.
(IPCC press release )
- ITC
- Based in The Netherlands, ITC stands for
International Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observations.
- IWGEO
- The Interagency Working Group on Earth Observations was an ad hoc organization formed to develop a 10-year plan
for implementing the United States' components of an integrated Earth Observation System.
It was replaced in March 2005 by the United States Group on Earth Observations (US GEO), which is a standing subcommittee
of the National Science and Technology Council Committee on Environment and Natural Resources.
- IWRA
- The International Water Resources Association is an international non-governmental, non-political, non-profit,
educational association comprising individuals that advocate for advancing the understanding and management of
water resources worldwide since its establishment in 1972.
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- JCSDA
- The Joint Center for Satellite Data Assimilation is a branch within NOAA
that develops global climate models and assimilation systems.
- JPIP
- JPEG2000 Internet Protocol is a wavelet-based image compression standard.
It was created by the Joint Photographic Experts Group committee with the intention of superseding
their original JPEG standard based on discrete cosine transforms. Common filename extensions for JPEG2000 images include .jp2 and .j2c.
JPEG 2000 can operate at higher compression ratios without generating artifacts and allows for more progressive downloads.
Part of JPEG 2000 has been published as an ISO standard, ISO/IEC 15444-1:2000. As of 2006, JPEG 2000 is not widely supported
in web browsers, and hence is not generally used on the World Wide Web.
- JPL
- NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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- La Plata
- The Rio La Plata Basin (LPB) in South America has been selected as a region of interest by
CLIVAR/VAMOS and GEWEX. The
La Plata Basin Regional Hydroclimate Project
endeavors to predict the climate hydrology in advance. Here are additional
documents and links.
- lats4D LATS for Dummies
- The original
LATS is a library of software routines to output gridded data
developed by the Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison
( PCMDI ). The
lats4D is a "minimum fuss"
GrADS script
for writing NetCDF, HDF-SDS or GRIB files from GrADS
using the PCMDI LATS interface.
This script can serve as a general purpose file conversion and subsetting
utility. Any GrADS readable file (GrADS IEEE, GSFC Phoenix, GRIB, NetCDF
or HDF-SDS) can be subset and converted to GRIB, NetCDF, HDF-SDS or flat
binary (direct access) using a single command line.
For additional details print the manual page with the command line "lats4d -h"
- LaRC
- NASA's Langley Research Center
- LDAS
- Land Data Assimilation Systems are used to improve Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP).
The land surface component of the hydrological cycle is critical to improve our understanding
of land surface-atmosphere interaction and the impact of land surface processes on climate extremes.
Because the accurate knowledge of these processes and their variability is important for climate predictions, most
Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) centers have incorporated land surface schemes in their models.
However, errors accumulate in the NWP forcing and drifts have been fixed with ad hoc corrections.
A methodology under development at GSFC is to implement a Land Data Assimilation System (LDAS), which
consists of uncoupled models forced with observations, and is therefore not affected by NWP forcing biases.
This research is being implemented in near real time using multiple land models.
- LIS
- Land Information Center (LIS) is a high performance land surface modeling and data assimilation system,
based on NASA Goddard's Land Data Assimilation Systems (LDAS).
This site provides LIS source codes and sample data to registered users.
- LIS
- Lightning Imaging Sensor, a science instrument onboard TRMM
- LSM
- Land Surface Model, see the discussion under LDAS for its application.
- LMS
- The Lightning Mapper Sensor is a proposed instrument, capable of continuously mapping lightning discharges
during both day and night, which would be placed into a geostationary orbit onboard a GOES-NEXT satellite.
- LP
- Land Processes (LP) are a very general term for any of the surface physics that influence a climate model.
For example, Land Data Assimilation Systems test the impact
of various Land Processes. There is an LP DAAC hosted by USGS
which is entirely dedicated to serving surface data products from the NASA Earth Observing System.
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- MAHASRI
- Monsoon Asian Hydro-Atmosphere Scientific Research and prediction Initiative.
- MAIRS
- Monsoon Asia Integrated Regional Study is an international research program.
In southeast Asia, the monsoon rainfall is the primary water resource, but the high variability
of the monsoon climate leads to a high frequency of climate related disasters. This region of the world
has the highest population density and currently the most rapid development.
- MIT
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- MM5
- The "MM5" community Mesoscale Model is a limited-area, nonhydrostatic, terrain-following sigma-coordinate model
designed to simulate or predict mesoscale atmospheric circulation.
The modeling software has been developed via a partnership of Penn State and NCAR and is freely available.
- MODIS
- MOderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer
- MOU
- Acronym for Memorandum of Understanding
- MSFC
- NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center
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- NARCCAP
- North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program
- NARR
- North American Regional Reanalysis
- NASA
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
A list of NASA centers:
Some useful NASA departments:
- NCAR
- National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) is operated by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
- NEESPI
- Northern Eurasia Earth Science Partnership Initiative launched a
data portal hosted by NASA in April 2007.
- NESDIS
- NOAA's National Environmental Satellite Data Information Service (NESDIS) is dedicated to providing
timely access to global environmental data from satellites and other sources to promote, protect, and enhance
the nation's economy, security, environment, and quality of life.
- NEWS
- NASA Energy- and Water- cycle Study is a funding program designed to transition research findings and new capabilities
to academic/public education and to practical applications, through partnerships with the academic community-at-large,
federal agencies that oversee environmental protection and operational applications, and eventually
private sector operators.
There is also a website for the
NASA Earth Science Enterprise Water Water and Energy Cycle
- NIP
- The NASA New Investigator Program provides opportunities in Earth system science research and education
for scientists and engineers at the early stage of their professional careers.
- NOAA
- National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is a federal agency under the U.S. Department of Commerce
which is focused on the condition of the oceans and the atmosphere.
- NOAH
- NOAH is a "community" Land Surface Model tested in the LDAS program.
NOAH takes its initials from
- N: National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP),
- O: Oregon State University (Dept of Atmospheric Sciences),
- A: Air Force (both AFWA and AFRL - formerly AFGL, PL), and
- H: Hydrologic Research Lab - NWS (now Office of Hydrologic Dev - OHD).
- NPOESS
- National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System.
The NPOESS is managed by the Integrated Program Office (IPO) ,
a tri-agency collaboration of the US Dept. of Commerce (DoC), US Dept. of Defense (DoD), and NASA.
- NPP
- NPOESS Preparatory Project. The NPP mission is a joint project of NASA, DoD, and NOAA
designed to measure the atmospheric and sea surface temperature, humidity sounding, land and ocean
biological productivity, and cloud and aerosol properties.
- NRA
- NASA Research Announcements, also known as NASA Research Opportunities, are used to solicit research proposals.
- NRCS
- The Natural Resources Conservation Service is a division within USDA
that is specifically tasked to lead the development and transfer of water and climate information and technology
which support natural resource conservation.
"Harmony between people and the land."
Their National Water and Climate Center offer numerous GIS products
on the state scale, including the SCAN Soil Climate Analysis Network.
- NSF
- National Science Foundation is a federal agency that advances scientific progress in the United States by competitively
awarding grants and cooperative agreements for research and education in the sciences, mathematics, and engineering.
- NSTC
- National Science and Technology Council: see Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP)
- NWS
- National Weather Service is a division of NOAA.
The Office of Hydrologic Development (OHD) is a NOAA program to enhance
National Weather Service (NWS) products.
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- OAR
- Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research is the research department of NOAA.
- OMB
- U.S. Office of Management and Budget is a federal agency.
- OSSE
- Observing System Simulation Experiment is a term that has broad applications but here refers to the context of climate models.
- OSTP
- Office of Science and Technology Policy is an Executive Office of the President of the United States.
Under them is the Cabinet-level National Science and Technology Council (NSTC), which has a
Subcommittee on Water Availability and Quality (SWAQ). Here is the
Nov. 2004 SWAQ report
(32 page pdf file) on fresh water availability.
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- PART
- The Program Assessment Rating Tool is an evaluation tool used by the OMB.
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- RAMS
- Regional Atmospheric Modeling System is a model developed by scientists at Colorado State University.
- REASoN
- Research, Education, and Applications Solutions Network is a NASA funding program which supports a wide variety of projects.
- RiverWare
- A Decision Support Tool (DST) which is a cooperative effort between the
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation(US BoR) and the University of Colorado's Center for Advanced Decision Support
for Water and Environmental Systems (CADSWES)
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- SeaLevel
- NASA portal of information about Ocean Surface Topography
- SERVIR
- SERVIR is the MesoAmerican Regional Visualization and Monitoring System, in both English and Espanol.
"Your one stop shop" for regional data, dynamic maps, decision support, and interactive visualizations.
- SPoRT
- The NASA Short-term Prediction Research and Transition (SPoRT) Center seeks to accelerate the infusion of NASA
Earth Science Enterprise (ESE) observations, data assimilation and modeling research into NWS forecast operations
and decision-making at the regional and local level. The principal focus of experimental products will be on the
regional scale and emphasize forecast improvements on a time scale of 0-24 hours.
- SSC
- NASA's Stennis Space Center
- SWAT
- Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) is a public domain model actively supported by the USDA Agricultural Research
Service at the Grassland, Soil and Water Research Laboratory in Temple, Texas, USA.
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- TC4
- The NASA Mission to study Tropical Composition, Cloud, and Climate Coupling (TC4)
will rely on aircraft data acquired over Costa Rica in July 2007.
- Terra
- (not an acronym) EOS spacecraft:
The Terra mission is the flagship of the NASA-centered international Earth Observing System (EOS).
Terra was formerly named EOS AM, signifying its afternoon equatorial crossing time.
Terra, which is Latin for land, is a multi-national, multi-disciplinary mission involving partnerships
with the aerospace agencies of Canada and Japan. Managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, the
mission also receives key contributions from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Langley Research Center.
- TMDL
- A Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) is a calculation of the maximum amount of a pollutant that a waterbody
can receive and still meet water quality standards, and an allocation of that amount to the pollutant's sources.
The EPA provides TMDL Reports for regions and states.
- TRMM
- The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission is jointly sponsored by NASA and the
Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)
designed to monitor and study tropical rainfall.
NASA Goddard has developed a website, precip.gsfc.nasa.gov ,
which provides a portal to global precipitation data from TRMM.
The TRMM precipitation algorithm 3B42
and its known features are explained on-line.
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- UAV
- Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
- UCAR
- University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) operates the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).
- UCOWR
- Universities Council On Water Resources organization consists of over 90 member universities and organizations
throughout the world.
- UMUC
- University of Maryland University College
- UNESCO
- The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) was founded in 1945.
Today, UNESCO functions as a laboratory of ideas and a standard-setter to forge universal agreements
on emerging ethical issues.
UNESCO has a water portal devoted to UNESCO programmes on freshwater.
One of these is the International Hydrological Programme,
IHP or
IHP .
Another is the World Water Assessment Programme, WWAP
- USDA
- U.S. Department of Agriculture is a cabinet-level U.S. agency
which provides leadership on food, agriculture, natural resources, and related issues based on sound public policy,
the best available science, and efficient management.
The Natural Resources Conservation Service USDA NRCS within USDA
is specifically tasked to lead the development and transfer of water and climate information and technology
which support natural resource conservation. "Harmony between people and the land."
- US GEO
- The United States Group on Earth Observations (US GEO) replaces the ad hoc IWGEO and reports to the
National Science and Technology Council's Committee on Environment and Natural Resources on the implementation of
an integrated Earth Observation System.
- USGS
- United States Geological Survey:
The USGS water resources mission is to provide water information
that benefits the Nation's citizens: Publications, data, maps, and applications software.
Examples are the Ground-Water Resources Program and
WaterWatch.
USGS Water-Resources offices are located in every State, and the
Hydro21 task committee seeks new technologies and methods
to improve the USGS streamgaging program.
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- VAMOS
- The VAMNOS support center coordinates data on the Variability of the American Monsoon Systems,
an international collaboration between CLIVAR, NOAA, WCRP, CPPA, and NCAR.
- VIC
- Variable Infiltration Capacity (Macroscale Hydrologic Model) is a Land Surface Model tested in the LDAS program.
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- Water HM
- Water And Terrestrial Elevation Recovery Hydrophere Mapper is a satellite mission in the planning stages.
- WCIP
- Water Information Coordination Program, operates in conjunction with the
Advanced Committee on Water Information (ACWI)
- WCRP
- The World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) is an international collaoboration which supports many programs,
including:
the Baltic Sea Experiment (BALTEX),
the Coordinated Enhanced Observing Period (CEOP),
the Climate and Cryosphere (CIiC) Project,
the Climate Variability and Predictablity (CLIVAR) Project, and
the Stratospheric Processes and their Role in Climate (SPARC) Project.
- WGA or WestGov
- The Western Governors' Assocation (WGA) represents the Governors of 19 states and 3 US-Flag Pacific Islands.
They are pushing for the creation of a National Integrated Drought Information System,
NIDIS.
- WISE
- Worldwide Integrated Study of Extremes (WISE) is a coordinated research activity under GEWEX.
It contains a page of links concerning climate extremes.
