OMI tropospheric NO2 over Northern Europe

Hey all,

check out this beautiful thing that Iolanda created:


View Larger Map

Cool. See also explanations and more from this link.

Baci baci,
Janne

PhD defense

Hello,

I don't know what happened, but here are some photos...

Soon-to-be Dr. Janne J. Hakkarainen

Interesting...

...time to sleep.

Väitös ja kirja

Hey all,

I will have my PhD defense at Lappeenranta University of Technology on the 22nd of November, 2013, at 2 pm. Cool. Grrrr. The väitöskirja arrived via mail. Feels good.

Updates:

1. The defense got postponed and will be on the 29th of November.
2. You can download the electronic version of the dissertation from http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-265-500-4

All the best,
Janne

My dissertation on a table:

SPIE Remote Sensing 2013

Hello,

I went to Dresden to participate on SPIE Remote Sensing 2013 conference. Here's a photo of myself having a presentation on GOMOS one-step retrieval algorithm.

Me having a presentation. Thanks Anu for the photo!

The conference proceedings will be available here and the estimated publishing date is 7 November 2013. Unfortunately I missed my colleague's—Anu's (sic)—presentation, but gladly it is now available on AMTD.  For me the conference wasn't exactly what I was after, but that's life and what I've heard "usual feeling". Dresden was okey, not Deutsche Demokratische Republik in my mind. Now I'm on paternal leave, which is great!

Janne

Sää- ja ilmastomallien parametrien yksikäsitteisyyteen liittyy dilemma

Moikka,

Ilmatieteen laitos julkaisi tänään varsinaisilla nettisivuillaan tiedeuutisen mun dilemmapaperista. Uutinen on jo tosin kirjoitettu toukokuussa IL:n sisäisiä sivuja varten. Tässä linkki tiedeuutiseen:

Sää- ja ilmastomallien parametrien yksikäsitteisyyteen liittyy dilemma

Janne

P.s. otin tekstin myös tänne:

Sää- ja ilmastomallien parametrien yksikäsitteisyyteen liittyy dilemma 

Ilmatieteen laitoksen tutkijat ovat löytäneet dilemman liittyen kaoottisten mallien parametrien yksikäsitteisyyteen. Dilemma syntyy, kun ennustemalleissa käytettyjen suotimien ominaisuuksia muutetaan. 

Perinteisesti on ajateltu, että säätä ja ilmastoa ennustavien mallien parametrit täytyy uudelleen säätää vain, jos mallin olennaisia ominaisuuksia muutetaan. Tehty tutkimus kuitenkin osoittaa, että uudelleensäätö on tarpeen myös niin sanottua data-assimilaatiokomponenttia muutettaessa.
"Todellisuuksia voi olla vain yksi, mutta optimaalisia arvoja voi olla useita riippuen suotimien ominaisuuksista", tutkimusta vetänyt Janne Hakkarainen selittää. "Nyt ollaan tekemisissä mallien sisuskalujen kanssa", hän jatkaa. 

Tehty tutkimus ei ole puhtaasti akateeminen vaan sillä on myös suoria käytännön sovelluksia.
Ilmatieteen laitoksen tutkijat löysivät dilemman käyttäen standardia Lorenz95-testimallia. "Dilemma on nyt näytetty toteen pikkumallilla. Seuraavaksi on ilmastomallin vuoro", Hakkarainen kertoo. Ajot ovatkin jo käynnissä ja alustavia tuloksia on saatu. 

Tutkimus on julkaistu kansainvälisessä Tellus A-tiedelehdessä ja siihen on osallistunut tutkijoita Ilmatieteen laitokselta, Aalto-yliopistolta, Helsingin yliopistolta ja Lappeenrannan teknilliseltä yliopistolta. Tutkimus on tehty osana Suomen akatemian laskennallisten tieteiden tutkimusohjelmaan kuuluvaa NOVAC-projektia, jonka tarkoituksena on tutkia ilmastomalleihin liittyvien parametrien epävarmuutta. 

Lisätiedot:
Tutkija Janne Hakkarainen, puh. 045 124 0257, janne.hakkarainen@fmi.fi
Linkki tutkimukseen: http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/tellusa.v65i0.20147

Back in office

Hey,

back in office, but being a holiday maker for two weeks was fun :-) During the holiday I received my first invitation to be a referee for a paper. Hah, I get to criticize the work of others and get a revenge of all those wasted moments with comments. Grrr... heh. Of course I will be objective. Fun anyway.

Janne

P.s. While writing this short text, I accepted another invitation to be a referee...

No rest for a PhD student

Hey guys,

it is already July and I'm still not headed for vacations... poor me. That is because I'm writing the introductory part of my PhD thesis. It is coming together great and the title will be

On state and parameter estimation in chaotic systems

Neat. I like the title. In addition, I have promised to write a proceedings paper about GOMOS onestep algorithm for SPIE Remote sensing conference. You can read the abstract here.

So, quite a busy summer for me. And no time for actual research. Huh.

Gladly, I have booked a trip to Italy with Iolanda and Masa. That will be right after Ferragosto. In October-November I will be have a six-week paternal month at home with Masa. I'm looking forward of it.

That all for now. Have a nice summer!

Cheers,

Janne

Modeling key processes causing climate change and variability

Hey,

check out Svante's PhD thesis "Modeling key processes causing climate change and variability" from http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-951-697-784-6

Two of my publications got cited. Yeah :-)

Janne

Superstorm Sandy - OpenIFS WS

Hey,

in the practical session of the OpenIFS user meeting, as an case study we had the "Superstorm Sandy". Here is "our" simulation of Sandy hitting New York.

Janne

OpenIFS

Hey,

this week I will spent studying the OpenIFS model in "OpenIFS user workshop". OpenIFS is a stripped version, e.g. no data assimilation, of the ECMWF's IFS forecast model. I am not an expert yet, but maybe I will learn more in the practical sessions. Here you can find a little presentation of the model from EGU 2013 meeting: http://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU2013/orals/12394

See also the presentation "A novel approach for tuning ensemble prediction systems" put together by Antti Solonen and Heikki Järvinen.

Janne

Paranormal distribution

Hey,

I found a funny picture today...

Janne

A dilemma of the uniqueness of weather and climate model closure parameters

Our latest paper "A dilemma of the uniqueness of weather and climate model closure parameters" just got published online. It's a little continuation of our previous paper: "On closure parameter estimation in chaotic systems".

Unfortunately, I don't have time to blog more about this right now, but I will get back to this after my spring holiday...

Ciao,

Janne

The Code: "prediction"

Hey all,

I saw an interesting BBC document from Finnish TV today or actually part III of it. If you are located in Finland you can see it from Yle areena until 4.5.2013. Here is its Wikipedia page.

The document popularizes mathematics. Among other things, it deals with chaotic systems related to, e.g., numerical weather prediction.

The document features Marcus du Sautoy who is also the author of the marvelous book The Music of the Primes. Here's a little preview:

Janne

Masa & Nasa

Hey all,

This is my son "Masa":

Thanks Mrs. Andersson!

Janne

Giovanni

Hey,

did you know that besides an Italian name Giovanni is also a handy tool for visualizing the satellite data. Here are two example plots that I managed to do with a couple of mouse clicks.

Figure illustrates global NO2 field as seen by Dutch-Finnish OMI satellite instrument. See different features in emissions.

This animation illustrates the so-called aerosol boomerang, from Australian bushfires in December 2006.

So Giovanni it is. Try it out, it's easy to use! You can find it here: http://disc.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/giovanni

Janne

Hypnotized, but that's alright...

Hola guys,

Hypnotized, but that's alright...

Source: This is so cool. - Imgur

Janne

Lux Helsinki 2013

I went to see Lux Helsinki with Iolanda and now I am testing if I can add a video to the weblog. Yes, it's easy :-)

See also Iolanda's post with more videos, photos and text.

Janne

MCMC toolbox for Matlab

Happy New Year 2013!

I would like to start the year by advertising a very nice toolbox put together by my colleague Marko Laine.

The toolbox is really handy and I've used it in all my recent works. You can download the toolbox from Marko's webite:

http://helios.fmi.fi/~lainema/mcmc/

If you don't yet know what MCMC is, I recommend starting with the following Wikipedia articles:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markov_chain_Monte_Carlo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolis%E2%80%93Hastings_algorithm

Janne

Earth Observation Program Award 2012

Yei,

just got our Earth Observation Unit's Program Award. Feels good. It's because I work with good people. Thanks!

Janne

One picture tells more than a thousands words...

Hey, related to the previous post. Today, NASA's Earth Observatory website published a very powerful image acquired by VIIRS/Suomi NPP.

By looking the difference between North and South Korea you can tell the difference between the Republic and the Democratic People's Republic. Or as the Earth Observatory puts it

City lights at night are a fairly reliable indicator of where people live. But this isn’t always the case, and the Korean Peninsula shows why. As of July 2012, South Korea’s population was estimated at roughly 49 million people, and North Korea’s population was estimated at about half that number. But where South Korea is gleaming with city lights, North Korea has hardly any lights at all—just a faint glimmer around Pyongyang.

Finally, a little joke for the readers who can understand Finnish

Täällä Radio Jerevan. Kysykää meiltä mitä te haluatte, me vastaamme teille mitä me haluamme.

• Meiltä kysytään:

Mitä eroa on demokratialla ja kansandemokratialla?

• Me vastaamme:

Sama kuin paidalla ja pakkopaidalla.

Janne

Powerful images

Yesterday I heard an interesting talk by TROPOMI PI Pepijn Veefkind. During the talk he shared his emotions about the firsts TOMS total ozone images of Antarctic ozone depletion, that were published when he was 16 years old. The images of the ozone hole revealed quit accurately what was going on and you didn't need to be a scientist to understand them. Similarly, he pointed out, that the OMI NO₂ images reveal the "true" pollution situation, e.g., in Europe, China and Eastern United States. And, even if governments don't like the fact, satellites  provide quite objective view about it.

That got me thinking how the Earth observation from space has changed the view we see our planet. One could ask, what was our picture about the Earth before satellites. And how did the first "blue marble" images of Earth changed it? How have the night-time images changed our knowledge? And what else have we learned from the satellite images?

I know, that illustrating the data is not always objective. And often the data are illustrated so that it supports the story. Often this is justified, sometimes maybe not. Anyway, to see more powerful images I recommend NASA's Earth Observatory site. Especially, its "Image of the day"-section.

A powerful image can be found anywhere. Do yourself a favor and go find the originals.

Janne

FLDART

Hey,

submitted a paper today. It has a fancy title

A dilemma of the uniqueness of weather and climate model closure parameters

 Janne

Smoke rings from volcanos

Hey,

today I learned something cool. Under some special circumstances volcanos can do smoke  rings. Apparently it's very rare and still a mystery to the volcanologists. Here's a figure from Eyjafjallajökull volcanic eruption:

And here's a figure from Etna:

Link: http://news.discovery.com/earth/iceland-volcano-smoke-ring.html
Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/696953.stm

Janne

P.s. I can do the same thing with my mouth...

Ozone day 2012 – part 2

Hey,

today I read an interesting article from NASA's Earth Observatory website that I would like to share with you:

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=79198

The article includes a nice animation of ozone

http://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/79000/79198/ozone_daily_1979-2011_web.h264.mov

See also the "further reading" section, especially the interview with P. K. Bhartia

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/bhartia-qa.html

Like two snowflakes, two ozone holes are never alike – P. K. Bhartia

And here is yet another link for ozone monitoring:

http://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/index.html


No more links...

Janne

Ozone day 2012 – 25 years from the Montreal protocol

Did you know that...

September 16 was designated by the United Nations General Assembly as the International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer. This designation was made on December 19, 1994, in commemoration of the date, in 1987, on which nations signed the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer.

Source: Wikipedia

Here's a little animation of this year's ozone:

Some links:

• http://www.temis.nl/protocols/o3hole/
• http://www.theozonehole.com/

Nighttime view of fires -- how cool is that!?

See this article from NASA's Earth Observatory website.

The Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite (S-NPP) carries an instrument so sensitive to low light levels that it can detect wildfires in the middle of the night.

The images look really cool!

Janne

Variational ensemble Kalman filtering using limited memory BFGS

Hey,

Antti's paper "Variational ensemble Kalman filtering using limited memory BFGS" got published!

Check it out!

http://etna.ricam.oeaw.ac.at/volumes/2011-2020/vol39/abstract.php?vol=39&pages=271-285

Janne

Summer's ending... Final version of the NO3 paper

Hey,

I think this summer must be ending, since I have to go back to the office next Monday. And it reminds me that I did not post anything about the summer school. Well, that's alright, I guess...

Anyway, I decided to make this post to advertise the final version of the GOMOS - SAGE III - NO3 paper. You can find it here: http://www.atmos-meas-tech.net/5/1841/2012/amt-5-1841-2012.html

Ciao,
Janne

CSC summer school

Hey,

it is summer now :-) At least, last weekend it was midsummer festival and now I am summer schooling in Nuuksio.

Maybe I should try to blog something about the summer school and what I've learned (so hopefully something about high-performance computing...)

If not...

Have a nice summer!

Janne

Goodbye GOMOS and Envisat

ESA declares end of mission for Envisat 

Just weeks after celebrating its tenth year in orbit, communication with the Envisat satellite was suddenly lost on 8 April. Following rigorous attempts to re-establish contact and the investigation of failure scenarios, the end of the mission is being declared.

http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEM1SXSWT1H_index_0.html