Jan-Peter Muller - Application for Participation in NASA MISR, WindCam and MSPI Science Teams
A major challenge for climate modelling is to include the role of aerosols and clouds more explicitly. MISR has allowed the acquisition of global multi-angle imagery including 2D aerosol retrievals, cloud-top height and wind fields. WindCam and MSPI are two advanced concepts which provide information on height resolved cloud-motion winds (WindCam) and aerosol/cloud microphysical properties (MSPI). The aim is to work on algorithm development for improving MISR cloud and aerosol products and to work on developing the more advanced instrument concepts.
Paul Bates - SWOT Science Team Membership Support
The Surface Water Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission is designed to provide the first global high resolution, wide-swath, altimetric measurements of surface water dynamics over the land and oceans. The two primary objectives are its application in oceanography and land hydrology, but the measurements will also impact flood forecasting, floodplain topography mapping, and sea ice/ice sheet measurements. These applications have relevance to a number of areas in the NCEO programme including Climate, Hazardous Weather and Flooding.
Chris Kidd - NASA's Precipitation Measurement Missions (PMM) Science Team
NASA's PMM Science Team encompasses a range of funded missions relating to the observation, monitoring and measurement of precipitation, including the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission and the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM). The PMM Science Team continues to focus on 3 areas: validation of precipitation products, improved estimation of light/mixed-phase precipitation, and the development of new targeted ground validation campaigns.
Shubha Sathyendranath - Geostationary Ocean Colour Imager of Korea: Travel Support for Post-Launch Science Mission Participation
The Geostationary Ocean Colour Imager (GOCI) is the world's first geostationary satellite mission for observing the ocean ecosystem. The improved spatial and temporal resolution makes it perfectly adapted for coastal studies where there is a major need for EO to assist in C-cycle studies and resource management. Observations provide important information on the loss rate and dynamics of phytoplankton which is important for C-cycle research and ecosystem-based marine resources management.
Jamie Shutler - Open Ocean and Coastal CO2 Fluxes from Sentinel 3 - Visit to ESA
The aim of this project is to use ENVISAT data to extend current methods of determining air-sea fluxes from EO data. Most current methods concentrate on the use of altimetry data; however these instruments are unable to capture coastal data. By combining flux estimates determined from altimeter and radiometer data (open ocean) with SAR and radiometer data (coastal), the uncertainties in current EO derived CO2 flux estimates can be investigated. These methods will then be extended to Sentinel-3 sensors.
Peter Challenor - Participation in CEOS EGCV Microwave Sensors Subgroup
The calibration of sensors is becoming increasingly important, particularly for microwave instruments where it is often not possible to make direct comparisons of the parameter being measured with in situ data. Due to these requirements, the CEOS Working Group on calibration and validation has set up a sub-group to look at the problem of calibrating and validating microwave sensors.
Robert Gurney - Algorithm Development for NASA Soil Moisture Active/Passive Mission Science Definition Team
Soil moisture and its changes in space and time are critical for a range of environmental predictions. The ESA SMOS satellite is the first effort to make large scale soil moisture measurements globally. The current mission measures the emission of the Earth's surface in the microwave wavelength using a passive radiometer. However, in 2013, NASA plans to combine the passive radiometer with an active radar instrument, improving the spatial resolution by more than an order of magnitude. Considerable complexity is incorporated at this improved resolution and understanding how this variability affects the measurements is vital to developing the algorithms to obtain soil moisture estimates. This project will help UK experts contribute to this exciting mission.
Nicholas Hardman-Mountford - Post-Launch Support to Evaluate OCM-2 data for Ocean C-cycle Research within NCEO
This project will investigate oceanic and shelf region data from Ocean Colour Monitor 2 (OCM-2) to evaluate the sensor with regard to radiometric performance and biogeochemical applications. The project will also adapt the current PML inherent optical property model for exploitation of the data and evaluation of the applicability of OCM-2 to current and future EO research.
