Dustin is a Meteorology major with minors in GIS, Emergency Management and
Mathematics. A junior at California University of Pennsylvania, his research
interests include all aspects of Atmospheric Sciences, weather-related
phenomena and how their processes work in the atmosphere.
The Special Sensor Microwave/Imager (SSM/I) is a conically scanning window
channel microwave radiometer that was first launched aboard the DMSP F08
satellite in June of 1987 and collected brightness temperature data that are
now being used for a variety of climate applications. This was the only window
channel radiometer in space collecting this data from 1987 until the launch of
F10 in December of 1990, although it continued operating until its demise at the
end of 1991. The utility of these data for many climate applications has been
limited due to errors in the brightness temperatures data resulting from
problems associated with data transmission, geolocation, and timing issues.
The goal of this project was to identify and eliminate the erroneous data while
keeping as much of the original data as possible and specifically avoiding the
elimination of data associated with extreme weather phenomena. A quality control
procedure was developed that uses a moving data window comparing the observed
brightness temperature data with climatological values. This approach involved
three adjustable coefficients including the number of pixels in a scan that were
more than three sigma from the climatological mean, the number of scans in the
data window exceeding this threshold, and the width of the data window.
Through
an analysis of multiple cases of both bad data and good data containing extreme
weather events, coefficients were selected to meet the specified criteria and
applied to the entire data four and a half year data record.
Dustin's summer research poster,
Error Analysis of SSM/I F08 Antenna Temperatures to Produce an Extended Record of Observations for Climate Applications, may be found here (7MB).
Dustin plays ice hockey, roller hockey, ultimate frisbee and golf. He also
coaches hokey as a USA Hockey Certified Youth Hockey Coach.
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