Following award of his doctorate from U. Oxford in 1985 and post-doc at NOAA Aeronomy Lab, Kerridge joined RAL in 1987. He established RAL's Remote-Sensing Group which has international standing in retrieving atmospheric constituent distributions from satellite observations. Kerridge was co-leader of NCEO's Atmospheric Composition Theme from 2007-12. In parallel he helped define the operational satellite system to monitor atmospheric composition 2025-45 through memberships of advisory groups for EC, Eumetsat and ESA. Kerridge has lectured on ESA's advanced atmospheric training courses and was a member of the Science Advisory Committee for the Space Research Organisation of Netherlands (SRON) 2007-17. He has associations with several UK Universities including co-supervision or examination of PhD students (Oxford, Reading, Imperial, Leeds, Leicester, Bristol).
Research Interests
- Satellite sounding of atmospheric composition: development and application of state-of-the-art schemes to produce global data and their scientific exploitation.
Affiliations
Profile
Dr Richard Siddans joined the Remote Sensing Group (RSG) at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in 1994. He currently has the lead role in the group for development, application and exploitation of retrieval schemes for nadir sounding instruments as well as development of the advanced radiative transfer models which underpin this work. His remit includes leading-edge work on trace-gas distributions from spectrometers on Metop (GOME, IASI) as well as aerosol and cloud retrievals from multi-spectral imagers such as AATSR and SEVIRI. His work on height resolved ozone retrieval from ESA’s Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment (GOME-1) on ERS-2, delivered the first direct measurements of tropospheric ozone from space (reported in Nature). The work also formed the basis of his PhD from the University of Reading completed in 2003. He has also worked in the field of limb sounding, playing an instrumental role in several studies to develop the scientific case for the PREMIER mission, as well as supporting analysis of airborne mm-wave limb sounding observations (MARSCHALS). Dr Siddans has led a number of NERC, ESA and Eumetsat funded projects including studies related to GOME, MSG, and the new Sentinel missions. He is responsible for RAL’s contribution to ESA CCI-Ozone project and the development of the operational processors for Sentinels 5P, 4 and 5.
Affiliations
Profile
Dr Latter is responsible for the computing needs and large scale data production of the Remote Sensing Group (RSG), including developing its near-real time data system, producing ozone, methane and particulate data which can be viewed on our
vistool. Since joining the RSG in 1999, he has worked primarily on ozone profile retrievals from the UV/Visible GOME-class of sensors. The unique sensitivity, down to ground level, of the RAL world leading scheme (
Miles et al. 2014) has led to its selection as the
ESA CCI ozone nadir profile product and its inclusion in the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) ozone project and the UK
EOCIS (Earth Observation Climate Information Service). Dr Latter's work also includes collaboration within
NCEO and international colleagues to compare satellite observations with model data that help and inform the development of both. Previous work has also included calibration/validation of these instruments (e.g. GOME-2 slit function calibration, radiometric cross-calibration and co-location with the ATSR series of instruments) as well as involvement with future mission studies.
Research Interests
- Trace gas profile retrieval from Earth Observation satellites.
- Retrieval of ozone profiles from UV-vis and IR instruments (G OME, SCIAMACHY,GOME-2, IASI). See our ozone page for more information.
- New satellite instruments and measurement techniques.
- Near Real Time and Large scale data production (using the JASMIN computing infrastructure).
- Exploitation of RSG data by 3rd parties.
Affiliations
Profile
I am a research scientist with expertise in the measurement of aerosols. I have over 10 years' experience in the remote sensing of aerosol and cloud properties from satellites. My primary role in the Remote Sensing Group is the development and exploitation of algorithms to determine the properties of atmospheric aerosols from visible/infrared imaging instruments, using the ORAC retrieval scheme. I am also responsible for the production of large-scale datasets using these algorithms for climate monitoring (through the ESA Climate Change Initiative programme for example), air quality and regional environmental monitoring.
I was educated at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, and previously worked in the Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics Sub-Department at the University of Oxford.
Research Interests
- Aerosol and cloud remote sensing from visible-IR satellite imagers (eg. ESA Aerosol_cci and Cloud_cci).
- Detection and Characterisation of volcanic ash clouds from space.
- Development of advanced analysis schemes for aerosol retrieval from new sensors with high temporal sampling (Meteosat 2nd and 3rd generation) and polarisation measurements (3MI, SPEX, MSPI).
- Derivation of surface radiative fluxes for environmental primary products (Photosynthetically Active Radiation) and the solar energy sector.
Affiliations
Dr Elisa Carboni
Profile
I’m an earth observation scientist, expert on satellite remote sensing of aerosol, cloud and volcanic emission in atmosphere. I'm interested in atmospheric hazard as volcanic eruptions, dust storm, biomass burning events, and the changing in atmospheric composition.
Research Interests
- Retrievals of aerosol and cloud properties
- Validation and model comparisons of aerosol and cloud retrievals
- Aerosol optical properties in visible and thermal infrared spectra (ash, desert dust, sulphates…).
- Volcanic emission (ash, SO2, sulphate).
- Radiative transfer
- Radiation budget (top of atmosphere and surface radiative fluxes)
Dr Lucy Ventress
Profile
Within the Remote Sensing Group at RAL, my research focuses on the retrieval of atmospheric trace gases from infrared satellite instruments, such as the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI) on board the space-borne MetOp platform.
Affiliations Dr Ka Lok Chan
Profile
My research focus on retrieving trace gases including ozone, NO2, water vapour and VOCs in the atmosphere from both satellite and ground-based hyperspectral remote sensing measurements.
Research Interests
- Air pollution, air quality and atmospheric chemistry
- Atmospheric, environmental and Earth observations
- Chemistry transport and radiative transfer modelling
- Big data and machine learning applications on atmospheric sciences
- Small size and low-cost air quality sensors
Affiliations
Profile
Dr Daniel Robbins joined RAL Space in 2024 after completing his PhD at Monash University and working for the Bureau of Meteorology in Melbourne, Australia. Specialising in aerosol and cloud retrievals from geostationary passive imagers, such as AHI onboard Himawari-8 and 9, Daniel's PhD focused on improving retrievals of optically thick smoke plumes from the 2019-2020 Black Summer bushfires. Daniel has also worked on solar radiation retrievals, as well as land surface reflectance retrievals, which are used by the energy, mining and agriculture industries. Daniel's work involves developing machine learning algorithms for cloud masking and using the ORAC retrieval scheme with passive imagers for cloud and aerosol retrievals.
Research Interests
Affiliations Ioana Circu
Profile
Within the Remote Sensing Group at RAL, my work focuses on the development of the web visualisation tool, and general support of data processing, analysis and software development.
Within the Remote Sensing Group at RAL, my work focuses on the support of clouds and aerosol data processing, analysis and software development.
For more information please contact: RAL Space Enquiries
