“The measurements produced by my team and me provide information that can help guide political decisions important for the well-being of society.”

The NASA Aura satellite, launched in July 2004, is a major new resource that is providing global atmospheric measurements to the international scientific community—for issues related to stratospheric ozone stability, climate change, and global air quality.

The Earth Observing System Microwave Limb Sounder (EOS MLS) is one of the four instruments on the Aura Satellite, and is providing an unprecedented suite of measurements between approximately 8 and 80 km height. I think this paper is highly cited because of the large number of publications that have used the EOS MLS measurements.

The paper describes a new satellite instrument for global atmospheric measurements, summarizes how its data products are generated, and gives some initial results.

Global atmospheric change—through such important issues as global air quality, climate change, and future stability of the ozone layer—is of significance to everyone on Earth. Satellite instruments are required to produce the global measurements needed for progress in understanding these issues, and to provide a basis for policy decisions that often involve compromises between economic and environmental considerations.

It is important that the capabilities and limitations of the instruments providing these measurements be adequately documented in the open literature. My paper, along with others in the same issue, does this for the Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) on Aura.

I initially got into this particular area of research by having an undergraduate part-time job in the radio astronomy group at MIT, which then was just starting to apply the techniques of radio astronomy to atmospheric measurements. This area of work seemed to combine many of my interests, so I pursued it. My Ph.D. thesis—under Dave Staelin of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT—developed microwave techniques for stratospheric measurements, and I have been in this field ever since.

I feel extremely fortunate in having had superb support in an excellent environment from all the organizations for which I’ve worked (MIT, JPL, NASA). The only limitation that I’ve ever felt is my own ability to get things done.

The measurements produced by my team and me provide information that can help guide political decisions important for the well-being of society.