Dr. Bill Blackwell of MIT Lincoln Laboratory

Recent technology advances in miniature microwave radiometers that can be hosted on very
small satellites have made possible a new class of constellation missions that provide very high
revisit rates of tropical cyclones and other severe weather. The Time-Resolved Observations of
Precipitation structure and storm Intensity with a Constellation of Smallsats (TROPICS) mission
was selected by NASA as part of the Earth Venture–Instrument (EVI-3) program and is now in
development with planned launch readiness in late 2019. The overarching goal for TROPICS is
to provide nearly all-weather observations of 3-D temperature and humidity, as well as cloud ice
and precipitation horizontal structure, at high temporal resolution to conduct high-value science
investigations of tropical cyclones (TCs), including: (1) relationships of rapidly evolving
precipitation and upper cloud structures to upper-level warm-core intensity and associated storm
intensity changes; (2) evolution (including diurnal variability) of precipitation structure and
storm intensification in relationship to environmental humidity fields; and (3) the impact of
rapid-update observations on numerical and statistical intensity forecasts of tropical cyclones.
TROPICS will provide rapid-refresh microwave measurements (median refresh rate better than
60 minutes for the baseline mission) over the tropics that can be used to observe the
thermodynamics of the troposphere and precipitation structure for storm systems at the
mesoscale and synoptic scale over the entire storm lifecycle. TROPICS will comprise a
constellation of six 3U CubeSats in three low-Earth orbital planes. Each CubeSat will host a high
performance scanning radiometer to provide temperature profiles using seven channels near the
118.75 GHz oxygen absorption line, water vapor profiles using three channels near the 183 GHz
water vapor absorption line, imagery in a single channel near 90 GHz for precipitation
measurements (when combined with higher resolution water vapor channels), and a single
channel at 205 GHz that is more sensitive to precipitation-sized ice particles and low-level
moisture. This observing system offers an unprecedented combination of horizontal and temporal
resolution in the microwave spectrum to measure environmental and inner-core conditions for
TCs on a nearly global scale and is a major leap forward in the temporal resolution of several key
parameters needed for assimilation into advanced data assimilation systems capable of utilizing
rapid-update radiance or retrieval data.
This presentation will provide an overview of the mission and an update on current status, with a
focus on recent performance simulations on a range of observables to be provided by the
constellation, including temperature, water vapor, rain rate, and TC intensity

Biography:

Bill Blackwell received the B.E.E. degree in electrical engineering from the Georgia
Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA, in 1994, and the S.M. and Sc.D. degrees in
electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA, USA, in 1995 and 2002, respectively. Since 2002,
he has been with the Lincoln Laboratory, MIT, where he is currently an Associate
Leader of the Applied Space Systems Group. He serves or has previously served on
the NASA Atmospheric Infrared Sounder and NPP science teams, the Joint Polar
Satellite System Sounding Operational Algorithm Team, and the National Academy
of Sciences Committee on Radio Frequencies. He was the Integrated Program Office
Sensor Scientist for the Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder on the Suomi
National Polar Partnership launched in 2011 and the Atmospheric Algorithm
Development Team Leader for the National Polar-Orbiting Environmental Satellite
System Microwave Imager/Sounder. He has served as the Principal Investigator on
the MicroMAS-1, MicroMAS-2, and MiRaTA microwave sounding CubeSat missions
and is currently PI on the NASA TROPICS Earth Venture mission (tropics.ll.mit.edu).
His current research interests include atmospheric remote sensing, including the
development and calibration of airborne and spaceborne microwave and
hyperspectral infrared sensors, retrieval of geophysical products from remote
radiance measurements, and the application of electromagnetic, signal processing,
and estimation theory. Dr. Blackwell was the recipient of the 2009 NOAA David
Johnson Award for his research in neural network retrievals and microwave
calibration and was selected as a 2012 recipient of the IEEE Region 1 Managerial
Excellence in Engineering Organization Award for “outstanding leadership of the
multidisciplinary technical teams developing innovative future microwave remote
sensing systems”.

Email:

Address:DLC - 1B70 Collaboratory, Regent, Boulder, Colorado, United States, 80309-0422