Biographies

Bryan Baum
Senior Scientist, Space Science and Engineering Center, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Contact Information:
Phone: 608-263-3898
Email:

Biography:
Dr. Baum is an associate scientist at the Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Previously, he was a senior scientist at the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, VA. He received his Ph.D. in Atmospheric Sciences from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1989. He has published approximately 80 refereed journal articles and book chapters related to satellite, aircraft, and surface-based remote sensing of cloud properties from multispectral and hyperspectral data. Other projects have included global fire and smoke detection and analysis of atmospheric aerosol properties. Dr. Baum has served on three panels for the American Meteorological Society: cloud physics, atmospheric radiation, and artificial intelligence applications to environmental sciences. He now serves as an editor for the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, a publication of the American Meteorological Society.

Research Area:
As a MODIS Science Team member, Bryan's work pertains to the study of global daytime/nighttime cloud properties including cloud top pressure, cloud thermodynamic phase, and cloud emissivity. He is collaborating with other colleagues (Drs. Paul Menzel, Don Wylie, and others) to build a satellite-based cloud climatology based on more than 20 years of High resolution Infrared Sounder (HIRS) data as well as more recent data from the MODIS Aqua and Terra imagers. The HIRS sounders are flown on the NOAA operational polar orbiters, and have the 15-micron CO2 bands that provide the heritage to MODIS. He is also quite interested in multilayered clouds, and more specifically on the case where cirrus overlies lower-level water clouds. In separate but related research, he is collaborating with Dr. Ping Yang (Texas A&M University) and Dr. Andy Heymsfield (NCAR) to develop improved ice cloud bulk scattering models for use with MODIS and other imagers and interferometers.