Remembering Arthur Hou

Narration:

Transcript:

Arthur always had just this very nice way of listenting to what your points were. He really knew how to connect with people in a really gracious kind of way. Arthur should be remembered as passionate about the mission. He was very passionate about everything we were going to do. He could view things from the broadest scale, all the way down to the fine details of the mission. His attitude was just infectious of the people around him. Everybody just wanted to solve the problem, wanted to work with him. I actually knew Arthur's work before I knew Arthur the person. I actually was quite familiar with his seminal theoretical work on how the Hadley circulation responds to latent heating in the equatorial regions. And that paper actually formed the basis of many of the world in current IPCC modeling world in interpreting how latent heating can change the atmospheric circulation, and it actually formed the basis a lot of the theoretical work for work on GPM and TRMM, including my own. And we were actually looking for a person to replace and to step up and be the GPM project scientist. And at that time, my boss, Franco, and I were really looking for someone. For me, there's no question, the person I have in mind is Arthur Hou because I knew him as a scientist, his technical competence, his interpersonal skill, all are the hallmarks of a great future project scientist. In many ways think he really saved GPM. Not to say anything negative about what was going on prior to that when he took over the program was in a bit of trouble. And he really came in and with experience that was really geared toward the modeling side of things, and he really learned everything about GPM that needed to be learned and really built an effective team, great collaborations, not only throughout the U.S. but internationally. Arthur's most important contribution I think were building all the partnerships for the constellation so that we can have the truly global dataset of precipitation data. He was also very passionate about getting all of the GMI channels so that we can measure all of the different types of precipitation, from drizzles to downpours, from rain to snow, and be able to calibrate the data from the GPM Core with all of the partner datasets. I like to say Arthur had a way with words, and he always, always was just so precise with his words. And I think that that made a big difference with the GPM materials for how we advocated for the mission. And it was really important to say things just the right way because otherwise they could be misconstrued or they just made us look less credible. So I really appreciated the fact that he took the time to make the things that he was saying and the things that went in the written materials were as precise and as careful as they could be. I think overall in GPM it's still going to be the focus he brought to the entire enterprise again, the science and the applications, the global coverage both data-wise but also involving people from around the globe and organizations around the globe. I think those are going to be his major accomplishments. One thing I really remember is his hearty laughter at anything, or even something that was probably questionable in his mind, his reaction would be just this hearty laughter. And then he come up with a very positive response to anything. One of my favorite stories is from when Arthur and I traveled to Brazil for a science team meeting He fit everything into a carry-on duffel bag. And he had a collection of khaki pants and blue Oxford shirts, and he would accessorize. So for the meetings he would wear a blue blazer with those, but then one night after the meeting we went out on a cruise, and he accessorized with a white towel around his neck with his blue Oxford shirt and khaki pants. So Arthur and I would end up on foreign travel together or at the same time--obviously often times with lots of other people--and one of the things I found is that going around with Arthur you attended, number one, eat in the very good restaurants because he would know where to go. I remember going opal shopping for our wives together in Melbourne, Australia. That was a lot of fun. I really hope that Arthur is remembered every time a piece of data from GPM helps to further our understanding of precipitation helps to predict the direction of the next hurricane, flood prediction, landslide, every time we save a life I hope that some scientist out there remembers Arthur and that his legacy for this mission lives on. We've suffered a great loss here in losing Arthur at a young age, but I hope the mission is successful and certainly I hope the community a few years from now still remembers his contribution. On the day that Arthur died, the very same day that he died, the GPM spacecraft with all of its instruments that he'd worked so hard to put together and improve the science for, on that very day he died was the day that the spacecraft left NASA Goddard on its way to Japan for a launch in early 2014. So he took the spacecraft as far as he could and maybe he let go at that point and said "It's not in my hands anymore. It will get launched. It will take great data."