Summary
Ocean Color satellite instruments have given us a global view of phytoplankton abundance and many other constituents in the water. But to make accurate products, post-launch calibration of the satellite sensor is required through vicarious calibration. Vicarious calibration requires accurate surface measurements of the water leaving radiance. Prof. Voss will describe the Marin Optical BuoY (MOBY), the system that has provided this data for the last 25+ years and what the future holds for satellite ocean color vicariuos calibration.
Brief biography
Dr. Kenneth Voss is a Emeritus Professor in the Physics Department at the University of Miami. His specialty is experimental environmental optics, in particular Ocean and Atmospheric Optics. He received his Ph. D. in Physics at Texas A&M University (1984), where he built an instrument to measure the polarized light scattering in seawater with Dr. Ed Fry. His post-doctoral experience was at Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO), with Mr. Ros Austin at the Visibility Laboratory. Here he worked at developing instrumentation to measure different aspects of the in-water light field. After the post-doctoral experience he continued at the Visibility Laboratory and the Institute of Marine Resources at SIO until moving to a faculty position at the University of Miami (1989). Since arriving at Miami he has been involved with remote sensing, through the SeaWiFS and MODIS projects, along with in-water and atmospheric optics and instrumentation. In 2003 he was elected Fellow to the Optical Society of America. He has been PI of the MOBY Project for over 10 years. Professor Voss' research involves experimental ocean and atmospheric optics. This consists in building novel instrumentation to measure the light field in the ocean and atmosphere. This instrumentation is then used on ships, during oceanographic cruises and at different locations in Miami, Bermuda and worldwide. The applications of this research extend from understanding imaging and light transmission processes in the ocean to understanding the optical affects of aerosols (small particles) in the atmosphere, and their impact on energy transmission in the atmosphere.