Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies

Description

The NOAA National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) invites applications for a Cooperative Institute (CI) that will focus on satellite studies related to weather and environmental analysis. The CI will focus on the following themes: (1) Satellite Research and Applications; (2) Satellite Sensors and Techniques; (3) Environmental Models and Satellite Data Assimilation; and (4) Outreach and Education. The new CI will be established at a research institution having an outstanding graduate degree program in NOAA-related sciences and will also be expected to work closely with federal employees in the NESDIS Center for Satellite Applications and Research (STAR) Advanced Satellite Products Branch currently located in Madison, WI. The CI will provide significant coordination of resources among any non-governmental partners and will promote the involvement of students and post-doctoral scientists in NOAA-funded research. If the CI is comprised of multiple member institutions, NOAA will issue only one award to the lead institution that applied for the award and where the CI will be established. The research at the new CI will emphasize satellite meteorology, specifically the use of satellite observations to retrieve geophysical variables -- such as temperature, moisture, precipitation, aerosols and clouds, trace gases, snow, ice, volcanic ash, fires, smoke, and winds -- in support of weather and environmental analysis. Activities will include calibration of satellite measurements, development of new algorithms and products, validation of derived products, evaluation of new techniques that merge satellite data and in situ observations, generation of satellite-derived climate data records, and assimilation of satellite data in weather and Earth System models. Working with users to enhance applications of satellite products in operational environments such as numerical weather and air quality prediction, ice analysis, volcanic and severe weather detection are critical to the overall success of the CI. The new CI will explore and develop new methods for data stewardship for data sets developed and maintained by NOAA, including storage, access and dissemination of experimental and demonstration data sets to the community. Significantly more environmental data, both satellite and in situ, are expected in the next decade. To fully realize the benefit of these data and use them to advance NOAA’s mission, improved systems for data quality, management, processing, analysis, assimilation, modeling and availability will be required. This includes pursuing and implementing scientific advances in areas such as cloud computing, machine learning, and computational intelligence to exploit “big data.” The CI should therefore have the facilities and expertise to perform research in technological fields, such as information technology and systems engineering.

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