Warren Wiscombe

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
DAAC Project Scientist
Warren Wiscombe Image

Dr. Wiscombe began his career in the ARPA Climate Dynamics Program in 1970, where he worked on atmospheric radiation and clouds, an interest which continued until the present. He worked for a small company for 5 years, for NCAR for 6 years, for New York University for 3 years, and has been at NASA Goddard, Climate & Radiation Branch, since 1984. He has a doctorate in Applied Math from Caltech and a B.S. in Physics from MIT. With MODIS, he worked with Bo-cai Gao on the 1.37 micron cirrus retrieval algorithm in the early 1990s, and has now returned to work on sunglint. His team is planning a first-principles assault on the sunglint problem, which continues to bedevil ocean color retrievals and indeed all MODIS ocean work. The 50-year-old Cox-Munk model was a giant leap for its time but is inadequate for the kind of precision work they want to do these days, so they will use a wave tank with controlled waves (gravity and capillary) to try to develop more perfect models of sunglint that work in a wider range of circumstances than Cox-Munk.