Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere

About Me:

Curtis Seaman received his BS in Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (2001) and his MS in Atmospheric Science (2003) and PhD in Atmospheric Science (2009) from Colorado State University. He is currently a post doctoral researcher at CIRA. Both his masters and PhD research have been under the advisement of Dr. Tom Vonder Haar, former director of CIRA, and he has worked closely with many CIRA researchers during his graduate education. He has been extensively involved with the DoD-CG/AR funded CLEX (Cloud Layer EXperiment) field campaign using aircraft, surface and satellite data to study altocumulus and altostratus clouds. He was a member of the 9th and 10th CLEX field campaigns.

He was previously a part of the DoD-CG/AR modeling/data assimilation and cloud/aerosol impacts research theme areas at CIRA, where he was working on validation of CloudSat and CALIPSO retrievals of mixed-phase altocumulus and altostratus clouds. He also investigated the assimilation of GOES Imager and Sounder (geostationary IR satellite) data into the RAMS mesoscale model to improve forecasting of altocumulus and altostratus clouds.

In January 2012, he joined the RAMMB team as a post-doctoral researcher and is currently a member of the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) Imagery/Visualization team and the JPSS Cloud CAL/VAL team. As a member of the VIIRS imagery team, he is involved with analyzing and validating VIIRS imagery and the outreach of VIIRS imagery products. He maintains content on the new VIIRS Imagery team blog at http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/projects/npp/blog/. As a member of the Cloud CAL/VAL team, he is heavily involved in the validation of the VIIRS cloud base height retrieval algorithm using CloudSat and CALIPSO products.

His primary research interests include cloud microphysics/dynamics, cloud forecasting/modeling, assimilation of satellite data, atmospheric radiative transfer, satellite cloud detection/cloud property retrievals, and cloud climatology. He has also developed software within the DPEAS (Data Processing and Error Analysis System) framework for the processing of GOES Sounder data files received at CIRA’s Earthstation.