Miguel A. Lopez-Valverde,    Staff Scientist of CSIC Atmospheric Infra-Red Emissions (AIRE) Group Departamento Sistema Solar (DSS) Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (IAA) Apdo. 3004, 18080 Granada, Spain Tel: (+34) 958 121 311 Fax: (+34) 958 814 530

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A BRIEF ABOUT MYSELF

• My career in science started when I graduated in Physics by the University of Granada (Spain), in 1986.

• That year I was accepted as a student in the Group of Planetary Atmospheres (the now called Solar System Department) of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia, (IAA), under the supervision of Manuel Lopez-Puertas, who guided the work on radiative transfer in conditions out of local thermodynamic equilibrium (LTE) that lead to my thesis work.

• I got my D. Phil. degree in Physical Sciences by the same University in 1990, with a dissertation titled "Infrared Emissions in the Atmosphere of Mars".

• Then I spent more than two years of postdoctoral research in the Dept. of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics (Oxford Univ., England). There I enrolled in the enthusiastic group of atmospheric remote sensing from space, lead by Clive D. Rodgers, in a particularly vigorous moment, when a wealth of very high quality data on the middle atmosphere, taken by the ISAMS instrument (Improved Stratospheric and Mesospheric Sounder), started to arrive.

• In 1993 I got a permanent position as Researcher of the CSIC (Spanish Council of Scientific Research), and I am based at the IAA, where I continue learning in all those directions and trying to apply my experience through my envolvement in several on-going space projects.

• In 1997 I enjoyed a half-year sabbatical at the Space Science Division, of the NASA - Ames Research Center, where I worked with Bob Haberle and the excellent Mars GCM Group. We studied the Pathfinder entry temperature profile and the effects on non-LTE on the solar heating with their Martian GCM. That work is described in more detail here, and our results are published in a number of papers.

CURRENT LINES OF RESEARCH

• radiative transfer problems in planetary atmospheres,
• infrared energy balance of the terrestrial planets' upper atmospheres
• modelling non-Local Thermodynamic Equilibrium (non-LTE) conditions in the upper atmosphere
• effects and parameterizations of non-LTE for Global Circulation Models and line-by-line radiation codes
• simulation of atmospheric emerging radiances and satellite remote measurements
• remote sensing (retrieval theory and validation) of atmospheric constituents from space.

• Non-LTE Modelling of IR Emissions in Mars' Atmosphere
  
  Several publications describe the theoretical model developed for the study of the IR emissions of the upper atmosphere of Mars, a study performed for my Ph.Degree and for the project PMIRR, in colaboration with Oxford University and the JPL. Unfortunately the instrument was on board the two malograted NASA missions to Mars: the Mars Observer and the Mars Climate Orbiter ... so ... the predictions are still to be confirmed !

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• Parameterization of Non-LTE Effects for GCMs
  
  A very important application of our time-consuming and elaborated non-LTE models is the possibility to apply them to large Global Circulation Models (GCM). The models are being used to create fast schemes or parameterizations to allow for non-LTE effects to be incorporated into the GCMs. I did some work at NASA-Ames for the solar heating term, and now I am devoted to the thermal cooling term, within an ongoing ESA project for a Mars Climate Database.

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• Retrieval of Middle Atmosphere CO in Polar Regions
  
  I have been working for several years in the difficult validation of the retrievals of CO from the ISAMS measurements at 4.7 um, affected by non-LTE and with not a large SNR in the mesosphere. The effort was well worthy and the best dataset of CO in the middle atmosphere is now available from the ISAMS archive. The data show very interesting information about dynamics of the middle atmosphere, and will possibly keep many modellers busy for a long time trying to understand all that.

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• CO2 Abundances in the Upper Atmosphere
  
  At last we could complete some analysis of the wideband radiances measured by the instrument ISAMS in 1991-1992. The data taken in its channel 00W was not designed for this purpose but we have applied our non-LTE models and detailed line-by-line calculations in order to extract all the information we can about the interesting problem of the CO2 abundances in the MLT region (upper mesosphere and the lower thermosphere). In particular we wanted to study the possible time and spatial variability, and the difficult comparison with theoretical predictions so far ... We are still working on this topic!

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• Non-LTE in the atmosphere of Venus
  
  A similar exercise to the non-LTE studies for the Martian atmosphere but now for Venus. This is a recent work carried out for the Ph. Degree of Cristina Roldan, here at the I.A.A., which tries to apply our experience and models to Venus, more than a decade after the last studies of this kind were done in that planet by Stephen Bougher and his coworkers, at the University of Arizona.

  More information ... available soon

• Radiative properties of CO2 Atmospheres
  
  Our insight into the non-LTE behaviour of the CO2 emissions in Mars and Venus, the thermal cooling and solar heating by the vibrationa-rotational CO2 transitions in the upper atmosphere, and their radiative lifetimes and damping rates, allow us to compare between those two planetary atmospheres and try to understand their similarities and differences.

  More information ... available soon

• Implementation of non-LTE on line-by-line radiation codes
  
  Our long collaboration with David Edwards improved from his sabbatical in Granada in 1993, in the A.I.R.E. group, where we all worked on incorporating non-LTE proceses in the line-by-line code GENLN2. This work has permitted a number of interesting analysis of satellite data, as presented in some of our publications.

  More information ... available soon

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Last update: 15-July-1997