Award Data

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are primary drivers of global climate change. Hence there is a crucial need to quantify their sources and sinks. A powerful method to constrain source and sink strengths is the analysis of the relative proportions of isotopic variants of GHG’s in atmospheric samples like those collected globally by NOAA’s Cooperative Air Sampling Network. Measurements that are ca ...

There are currently no inexpensive, expendable air-deployed monitoring systems (Dropsondes) that measure atmospheric data and oceanographic as a function of depth. These are important data in predicting the intensity and path of hurricanes. Boston Engineering proposes to provide NOAA with a solution to this challenge with the Multi-Purpose Above Surface/Below Surface Expendable Dropsonde (MASED) p ...

During the harmful algal blooms (HAB), marine algal toxins reach concentrations high enough to cause various neurological and gastrointestinal disorders through inhalation of the toxin or consumption of contaminated shellfish. Brevetoxins, produced by dinoflagellate Karenia brevis, are known to disrupt neurological processes to cause an illness called neurotoxic shellfish poisoning. The timely rec ...

Public and commercial application of NOAA developed products such as climate observations, weather products, and datasets are underutilized by public decision makers, infrastructure asset owners, or the public. Communities realize the risk posed by increases in storm intensity, flooding, and heat waves. However, communities lack understandable models targets to stakeholder questions that are affor ...

A central part of NOAA’s mission is to develop and distribute scientific data, including large-scale climate, weather, marine, and coastal information for regional and national analysis. NOAA has also developed local data gathering tools on an as-needed basis. While these approaches demonstrate the power of local data collection, no existing tool meets the broad needs of environmental community ...

Recent theoretical studies of eddy flux correlation have suggested that the commonly used assumption of dry air having no net flux is erroneous and can lead to significant errors in reported observations. Presently, dry air density is calculated indirectly from measured temperature, pressure and relative humidity, all of which contribute to increased uncertainties in the result. If instead the den ...

A variety of organic and inorganic contaminants originating from municipal, agricultural, and industrial wastewater sources are being found at increasing frequency in the Nation’s natural and drinking water supplies. These “emerging contaminants” include pharmaceuticals, antibiotics, steroids/hormones, flame retardants, perfluorinated compounds, personal care products, and herbicides/pestici ...

The overall goal of this Project is to develop an innovative inexpensive optical technology and rugged and portable instrumentation for highly sensitive, selective, continuous measurement of atmospheric ammonia for air pollution monitoring. Environmental studies have proven that ammonia presents a significant environmental hazard; therefore, accurate monitoring and control of NH3 concentration is ...

TIAX proposes to demonstrate the feasibility of a textile treatment to create an omniphobic stain- resistant coating on textiles, without the use of fluorocarbon materials. This coating will be a hydrophobic, self-assembled mesoporous structure that is environmentally benign and will be applied using industry standard coating techniques, maintaining competitive production costs relative to other s ...

Continuous emission monitoring (CEM) systems to record the discharge ofpollutants have become an integral part of utility power and industrial processplant operations. The 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments (CAAA) require that specificsources install and operate CEMs to provide an accurate measurement of SO2, NOx,CO2, and opacity. Emission data is used to insure compliance with current acidrain regul ...