Current activities

2018.02 – now: European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), Darmstadt, Germany

Remote Sensing Scientist – Atmospheric Composition Expert within the Cloud & Aerosol Competence Area (CLA CA), and the Remote Sensing and Products Division (RSP).

In collaboration with EUMETSAT and worldwide scientists and engineers, and the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Services (CAMS):

Scientific lead of the EUMETSAT atmospheric near-real time (NRT) processing from the Copernicus Sentinel-3 (S3) multi-spectral imagery sensors: i.e. Ocean and Land Colour Instrument (OLCI) & Sea and Land Surface Temperature dual-view Radiometer (SLSTR).
Coordination of scientific algorithm specifications, prototype developments, validations, long-term quality monitoring and evolutions for S3 Level 2 (L2) retrieval processors:
- Atmospheric dedicated: multi-spectral Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) from OLCI and SLSTR separately, water vapour (H₂O) from OLCI NIR, Cloud Top Pressure (CTP) from OLCI O₂-A, active fire detection & fire radiative power (FRP) from SLSTR infrared.
- Atmospheric correction (aerosol and gas) for ocean colour retrieval from OLCI.
- OLCI/SLSTR synergy for cloud, aerosol obstruction and clear-sky detection in support of all S3 land, marine and atmospheric applications.
Coordination with S3 Level 1 (L1) scientists for continuous impact evaluation on L2 products.
Support to integration of operational processing chains in the EUMETSAT S3 Payload Data Ground Segment (PDGS) through specification, quality assessment, routine operations, product generation and dissemination aspects to users, in coordination with system engineers, and the S3 operators, quality assurance, and mission managers.
Contributions to similar atmospheric developments for other EUMETSAT missions: e.g. FRP from the Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) Flexible Combined Imager (FCI), aerosol from the European Second Generation (EPS SG) Multi-spectral Multi-polarisation Multi-viewing Instrument (3MI).

Additional tasks:

Increased awareness promotion of the EUMETSAT atmospheric products from S3 and other missions through various European and international conferences and workshops.
Regular interactions with users and cooperation with independent experts and international organisations for ensuring long-term quality and continuous improvements of processors.
Reporting to S3 SLSTR & OLCI Quality Working Groups (QWG), SLSTR & OLCI Expert Science Laboratories (ESL), Operational Coordination Working Group (OCWG) CAMS, and EUMETSAT Scientific & Technical Group – Science Working Group (STG-SWG).
Co-chairman of the S3 Validation Team (S3VT) Atmospheric sub-group (EUMETSAT, ESA).
Regular member of Tender Evaluation Boards (TEB) for external studies on diverse topics (g. CO₂, cloud mask).
Initiator and/or technical officer of 5 external EUMETSAT scientific studies:
- Statement of Work writing, requirement specifications & TEB organisation.
- Review of all deliverables (documents, data) w.r.t. the requirements.
- Regular coordination with the prime contractors.
- Example of studies (prime contractors in italic): SARP (SLSTR Aerosol Retrieval Performance – 2019, FMI), SACSO (Spectral matching Atmospheric Correction for Sentinel Ocean colour measurements – 2019-2020, HYGEOS), OCTPO2 (OLCI Cloud Top Pressure from O₂ – 2019-2020, Spectral Earth), S3 Synergy Cloud Mask (2019-2020, Brockmann Consult), OLCI AOD retrieval performance (2019, Catalysts).
Student internship supervision.
Reviewer of peer-review manuscripts for scientific journals and independent research proposals.

More information?

EUMETSAT, the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites here
Copernicus, the European Union’s Earth Observation Programme here
The Sentinel-3 satellite mission here
EUMETSAT CODA, the EUMETSAT Copernicus Online Data Access here