Steven Platnick NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Winner of the 2023 Nordberg Award

 
"Cloudy with a Chance of Retrievals: Remote Sensing Cloud Radiative Properties from Space"
  

The interaction of solar and infrared radiation with clouds is a critical regulating factor in establishing Earth's climate. Clouds are also a source of significant uncertainty in predicting the climate response to increasing greenhouse gases and aerosol perturbations. Multispectral imager retrievals for understanding cloud radiation have a long history that was significantly advanced from space over 20 years ago with the launch of the NASA Earth Observing System MODIS imagers on the Terra and Aqua platforms, which became a pathfinder for imagers on later operational and research satellites. The use of multidecadal cloud datasets for climate analysis requires instrument stability and algorithm continuity to distinguish interannual variability from secular trends. An added challenge is in merging afternoon sun-synchronous orbit cloud data records across the Aqua MODIS and the operational VIIRS era given the spectral channel differences between the two sensors. I will summarize the history of imager cloud retrievals, retrieval challenges, and lessons-learned in the pursuit of data record continuity that are common to other geophysical datasets intended for climate studies.

About the Speaker


Steve Platnick's research focuses on satellite and aircraft cloud remote sensing. He became a civil servant in the Goddard Earth Sciences Division (ESD) in 2002 and is currently the head of the EOS Project Science Office (since 2008) and the ESD Deputy Director for Atmospheres (2015). Prior to becoming a civil servant, Platnick was a research associate professor in JCET at UMBC. He previously held a postdoctoral position at the NASA Ames Research Center and was a microwave instrument engineer at Hewlett-Packard. He is a long-time member of the NASA MODIS and VIIRS Atmosphere Science Teams and serves as the MODIS Atmosphere Team Lead. Platnick has B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from Duke University and the University of California, Berkeley, respectively, and a Ph.D. in atmospheric sciences from the University of Arizona.



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