- Success Stories
- Satellite Science & Environmental Intelligence
Supporting the Development and Refinement of Advanced Atmospheric Sounding Products
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Unique Combined Atmospheric Processing System (NUCAPS) provides critical information on temperature, moisture, ozone, and other variables that help forecasters and climate experts understand conditions throughout the atmosphere. CSS Employee Owners are key contributors to the team, supporting the development and refinement of advanced atmospheric sounding products.
The work of CSS centers on improving the algorithm behind Outgoing Longwave Radiation, the key indicator of Earth’s energy balance and climate system. CSS supports NOAA’s Amazon Web Service cloud‑based mission‑long reprocessing efforts, ensuring continuous, accurate data records using up‑to‑date algorithms. These long‑term datasets are essential for monitoring Earth’s changing climate and supporting sustainability planning.
In addition, CSS contributes to Aerosols and Ocean Science Expedition campaigns, which include dedicated radiosonde launches over tropical oceans to validate NUCAPS temperature and humidity profiles. These observations strengthen NOAA’s ability to produce more reliable weather and climate insights.
Through this work, CSS contributions support NOAA’s mission to maintain healthy ecosystems, communities, and economies that are resilient to change, which is critical as natural disaster costs continue to climb into the tens and hundreds of billions of dollars each year. The expertise of CSS Employee Owners helps provide the foundational science behind forecasts, warnings, and climate assessments used by scientists, policymakers, and emergency managers.
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Securing and Modernizing NOAA’s Climate Data Records
NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information is currently migrating their monumental archives from physical data centers onto the secure Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud, a massive undertaking to ensure these critical records remain secure. NOAA selected a CSS employee owner and program manager for Climate Data Records as a division representative for the high-stakes Data Ingest and Migration team to coordinate directly with technical experts. As part of this role, the CSS representative is also serving…
An Approach to Assessing Laboratory Space
CSS employee owners were part of a team of scientists at the National Institutes of Health who developed an approach to evaluating new laboratory space to determine if the space will fit operational needs. This concept, titled The BaseLINE Approach, combines traditional safety processes with additional safety and environmental factors to assess before operations begin.…
Engaging in New and Emergent Satellite Technologies
CSS employee owners (formerly Riverside employees) support the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service’s (NESDIS) Center for Satellite Applications and Research (STAR). STAR is the science arm of NESDIS, which acquires and manages the nation’s environmental satellites for NOAA. Satellite observations are critical to informing situational awareness and…