Research Experience Overview
Table of Contents
One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike – and yet it is the most precious thing we have. ― Albert Einstein
Overview: My most active field of research is the climate response to several agents on the atmosphere, either greenhouse gases or aerosols. However, my academic career started with a B.A. in Spanish from the University of Granada, where I graduated on Physics with an specialization on Theoretical Physics. Awarded with a scholarship, I obtained a M.Sc. on Condensed Matter with an dissertation about Theory of Liquids (Statistical Physics of Fluids) at the University Autónoma of Madrid, wehere also I was teacher assistant on Laboraties of Experimental Physics during two years. In the field of Atmospheric Sciences, I have a PhD on Remote Sensing and Micro-physics of Precipitation at Spain with an stage at NASA Goddard Space Center (sponsored by University of Maryland-Baltimore County). My experience as Postdoctoral research assistant includes the institutions: Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Germany), where I worked on ESA-Sentinel-5 and G3E projects (remote sensing of greenhouse gases), The University of Reading, in collaboration with Keith Shine and M. Hegglin, where I studed the radiative forcing of several agents on the atmosphere, in particular Ozone. And Laboratory for Sciences of Climate and Environment (LSCE) were I work for the CNRS on the climate modelling of Earth System with a focus on natural aerosols.
Projects
The first list refers to those open international initiatives in which I collaborate. The second block are specific projects.
- AerChemMIP: Aerosols and Chemistry Model Intercomparison Project
- AeroCOM Phase III: Aerosol Comparisons between Observations and Models
- CCMI/SPARC: Chemistry-Climate Model Initiative
- CRESCENDO: Coordinated Research on Earth Systems aand Climate: Experimentes, kNowledge, Dissemination and Outreach
- CLIMDO : CLImate relevant processing of Mineral Dust by volatile Organic compounds
- ESA : Project of Consolidation of SWIR of Sentinel-5 (related with ESA-Sentinel-5p)
- G3E : Geostationary Mission for Europe
- SMURPHS : Securing Multidisciplinary UndeRstanding and Prediction of Hiatus and Surge events
Researcher: LSCE-CNRS
The research at LSCE is close related with the CRESCENDO project, a joint project of several european universities and research insitutions to improve the Earth System Models. Related with this project I collaborate with AerChemMIP and AeroCOM beyond a collaboration about Mineral Dust with the UCLA at USA. The second part of my experience at LSCE-CNRS is related with CLIMDO project
Researcher: University of Reading
The research projects are related with estimation of radiative forcing of greenhouse gases and their role in global warming, for example in the recent slowdown. The main project is the SMURPHS project in which several universities of United Kingdom are collaborating. Other projects in which I participate are CAMS and SPARC iniciative.
Researcher: Leibniz-Gemeinschaft
My participation on Leibniz-Gemeinschaft was related with ascertain mineral dust emissions and transport based on simulated remote sensing images (in particular evaluate the role of mineralogy). In the 2015-Leipzig Mineral Dust Conference was presented an overview of the steps of this research, where the two key components are: RRTOV and COSMO-MUSCAT.
Researcher: KIT
The central goal of the project I was working is related with a consolidation of the ESA satellite Sentinel-5 requirements but also involved ESA satellite Sentinel-5p as well as the Geostationary Emission Explorer for Europe (G3E). This means a detailed study of the different error sources like instrumental, spectroscopy, forward models errors derived of an effective description of the atmosphere aerosols and cirrus. To be able to conduct this research I use state of the art retrieval algorithms (inverse problem and radiative transfer solver) with trial ensembles of geophysical scenarios. Additional aspects of the research are: evaluate the cloud cover with Meteosat datasets, integrate satellite products of MODIS and CALIPSO with datasets obtained from offline chemical transport model.
Journal Reviewer
- Climatology: Nature Geosciences (Nature), (2019-2020)
- Meteorology: Atmospheres (MPDI journal), (2018-2020)
- Remote Sensing: Remote Sensing (MPDI journal), (2014-2020).
- Remote Sensing: Sensors (MPDI journal), (2018-2020)
- Hydrology: Water (MPDI journal), (2018-2020)
- Hydrometeorology: Water Resources Research (AGU journal), (2014).
- Remote Sensing: Indian Journal of Radio and Space Physics., (2011).
PhD. Dissertation
Important Note: I would recommend check link to download a PDF file with the Dissertation. However, please note that this version (and the version I uploaded to the arXiv repository) are not equal the official filled version at my university. More specifically: I finished my PhD Dissertation on November 2011. However because it was not filled until June-2012, I included additional research that I did by myself (alone) on the filled version. But also after finish my PhD (on September-2012) still I worked on several the same topics and I have included several improvements on the PDF on the version uploaded to arXiv (and on the first pdf linked above).
First measurement of the small-scale spatial variability of the rain drop size distribution: Results from a crucial experiment and maximum entropy modeling (R Checa-Garcia) arXiv preprint arXiv:1306.5649 (2013)
Abstract: The main challenges of measuring precipitation are related to the spatio-temporal variability of the drop-size distribution, to the uncertainties that condition the modeling of that distribution, and to the instrumental errors present in the in situ estimations. This PhD dissertation proposes advances in all these questions. The relevance of the spatial variability of the drop-size distribution for remote sensing measurements and hydro-meteorology field studies is asserted by analyzing the measurement of a set of disdrometers deployed on a network of 5 squared kilometers. This study comprises the spatial variability of integral rainfall parameters, the ZR relationships, and the variations within the one moment scaling method. The modeling of the drop-size distribution is analyzed by applying the MaxEnt method and comparing it with the methods of moments and the maximum likelihood. The instrumental errors are analyzed with a compressive comparison of sampling and binning uncertainties that affect actual devices. These analysis are further extended in several appendices where an error analysis is developed and new studies are proposed. The relevance of the pre-processing of disdrometric measurements is also assessed. The data-sets evaluated comprise experimental measurements of the GPM (NASA-JAXA) ground validation satellite mission and synthetic distributions generated computationally.
M.Sc. Thesis
Intrinsic structure of liquid surface and capillary waves on the Density Functional Theory (R Checa-Garcia) arXiv preprint arXiv:1307.6199 (2013)
Abstract: Two different theories are used to understand the liquid-vapor interfaces: the Van der Waals theory and the capillary waves theory. But when comparing both frameworks come up a problem of interpretation of the interface density profiles obtained, for example, with the Density Functional Theory (DFT). As a consequence emerge the question of how the surface fluctuations are included on traditional density profiles (usually named equilibrium density profiles). Last years, new insights on the role of capillary waves were possible by analyzing X-ray reflectivity experiments and performing computer simulations of liquids with low melting temperature. In particular, the density profile exhibits a layering structure which is considered a key property to elucidate a new interpretation of those profiles as intrinsic density profiles. This dissertation aims to investigate these questions within the DFT using simple fluids with a pairwise interactions that reproduce important phase-diagram properties of liquid metals. Two generics questions were explored: the relevance of Fisher-Widom line and the role of capillary waves on the nature of interface obtained with approximations WDA and FMT. It hypothesized the existence of a density profile with strong layering properties whose structure is reduced by capillary waves. Then the effect of surface fluctuations is described by introducing an effective transversal size which imposes a limitation of the spectrum of surface fluctuations incorporated on the DFT. However, an explicit methodology to unfreeze the capillary waves over a postulated intrinsic profile exempt of surface fluctuations was proven still a challenge. As a consequence it suggested that other previous results describing the liquid surface using the equilibrium DFT may conduct to unphysical properties.