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NASA JPL Honors AIRS Team with Achievement Award

photo: Dr. Charles Elachi, Dr. Bob Atlas and Edward Weiler

Dr. Bob Atlas (center) poses with Drs. Charles Elachi (left), Director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Edward Weiler (right), Associate Administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate

15 June 2010 - The NOAA AIRS Team, comprised of scientists from the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, NESDIS, and National Weather Service, was honored by NASA on June 15th at an awards ceremony held at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The AIRS team was recognized for its outstanding contributions to improving weather forecasting using data from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS), an instrument aboard the NASA Aqua satellite, and for production of its key climate data products.

AOML Director Dr. Bob Atlas, who was nominated for being the first to demonstrate the beneficial impact of AIRS temperature retrievals on numerical weather prediction, accepted the Group Achievement Award on behalf of the AIRS team. Pictured above, Dr. Bob Atlas (center) poses with Drs. Charles Elachi (left), Director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Edward Weiler (right), Associate Administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate.

NOAA AIRS Team Members:

  • Bob Atlas
  • Chris Barnet
  • Zhaohui Cheng
  • John Derber
  • Murty Divakarla
  • Jason Dunion
  • Antonia Gambacorta
  • Mitch Goldberg
  • Mary Kicza
  • Thomas King
  • Xingpin Liu
  • Steve Lord
  • Eric Maddy
  • Larry McMillin
  • Nicholas Nalli
  • Al Powell
  • M.K. Rama Varma Raja
  • Yi Song
  • Fengying Sun
  • Haibing Sun
  • Louis Uccellini
  • Jennifer Wei
  • Walter Wolf
  • Xiaozhen Xiong
  • James Yoe
  • Lihang Zhou
  • Sisong Zhou
 

STAR participants' names in blue & bolded.

The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) is the first high spectral resolution infrared sounder data to be routinely distributed to Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) Centers in near real-time; generally within 3 hours from observation time. AIRS is a cooled grating array spectrometer. Spectral coverage 3.7 to 15.4 microns in 17 arrays with 2378 spectral channels. Spectral resolution n/Dn=1200, 15 km FOV from 725km orbit. AQUA was launched May 4, 2002.


Special thanks to the NOAA Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory newsletter for their notes on this award.