Chaojiao has been having fun with MOM4, the state-of-the-art OGCM developed by GFDL. Hopefully, soon she will run assimilation experiments with it. Chaojiao has a new paper to be published soon: she compared the ocean analyses from the GFDL and GMAO ocean data assimilation systems with independent data for 1993--2001 and showed that both analyses do a good job estimating the temperature, salinity and current structure in the tropical Pacific. The GMAO analysis also assimilates synthetic salinity from Levitus climatology. Results show it is able to correct salinity bias in the model effectively. Sensitivity studies utilizing different forcing datasets and salinity treatments show that the ocean state near the surface is mainly influenced by forcing; the specific salinity treatment becomes important below the thermocline.

Chaojiao continues to be involved with the TCD group at UCLA via a "NASA - Modeling, Analysis and Prediction (MAP)" project on "Estimating Earth's Climate by Assimilating Satellite Observations of the Ocean and Atmosphere with a Coupled Earth System Model." This project involves JPL, UCLA, GSFC, as well as GFDL and Princeton.

Chaojiao's family has grown: Baby Justin came to the world on July 7, 2005. Look how big he is at one year old! Daniel enjoys being a big brother. The family lives in Laurel, Maryland. See the family picture here.

New publications:

·  Sun, C., M. M. Rienecker, A. Rosati, M. Harrison, A. Wittenberg, C L. Keppenne, J. P. Jacob, and R. M. Kovach (2006): Comparison and sensitivity of ODASI ocean analyses in the tropical Pacific. Mon. Wea. Rev., in revision.
·  Dong, J., J. P. Walker, P. R. Houser and C. Sun (2006): Scanning Multichannel Microwave Radiometer Snow Water Equivalent Assimilation. Remote Sensing of Environment, in revision.
·  Foster, J., C. Sun, J. Walker, R. Kelly, A. Chang, J. Dong, H. Powell (2005): Quantifying the uncertainty in passive microwave snow water equivalent observations. Remote Sensing of Environment, 94, 187-203.