Rachael Kroodsma Profile

Narration:

Transcript:

[plane sounds] My name is Rachael Kroodsma, I'm with the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and I am instrument scientist for CoSMIR. CoSMIR has very similar frequencies to what GMI, the microwave radiometer on GPM has. And so by flying CoSMIR on the DC-8 and especially doing underflights with GPM passes over us, we'll be able to relate the measurements we see from CoSMIR with GMI, and by that way we can validate the measurements. What a radiometer does is that it measures the radiation that's naturally emitted from the Earth. In this case we're measuring the rain and snow, so there's radiation that's naturally emitted from the rain and the snow in the microwave spectrum, and so this is a microwave radiometer and it's measuring that radiation. My expertise is with microwave radiometer calibration. And so I do a lot of data analysis, checking out calibration of microwave radiometers. [laughs] I just think it's pretty cool to be part of the instruments and to be out in the field and just see how everything works and how it all comes together and be a part of that.