Seminar Announcement

Why we need huge datasets of space-based Earth observations, examples of what we do with them for studying airborne dust, smoke, and pollution, and how an involved statistician might help out

Ralph Kahn

NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

Johnson Center G19 - Gold Room

4400 University Drive, Fairfax, VA 22030

Time: 11:00 A.M. - 12:00 P.M.

Date: Friday, Feb 22, 2013 

From a human perspective, Earth is a huge planet, and environmental conditions are enormously diverse. Yet we care very much about even small-scale and short-lived phenomena, as they affect climate and determine habitability.  As such, satellite-borne instruments that can make frequent, global observations are central to our study of current conditions, and are indispensable for efforts to predict future change.  As a window into the nature of massive Earth science data sets, I will use space-based measurements of aerosols: desert dust, volcanic ash, wildfire smoke, and pollution particles.  The environmental context for these measurements, general data set attributes, key questions these data are intended to address, and the need for coupling such observations with climate and air quality numerical models, will be covered.  The final aspect of the seminar, how statisticians might help out, will be explored during discussion at the end of the presentation.