Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)
Physics
University of Maryland Baltimore County
2000
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Faculty
Faculty
David N Whiteman
Research Scientist
Department/Office
- Graduate School
School/College
- Graduate School
Biography
Dr. David N. Whiteman received his B. A. in Physics cum laude from Williams College in 1979. Shortly thereafter, he joined NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center. In 1980, he began working with Dr. S. Harvey Melfi, one of the pioneers of atmospheric measurements using Raman lidar. Together in 1985 they demonstrated the first meteorologically useful measurements of the evolution of water vapor in the troposphere using Raman Lidar which were presented on the cover of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. In 2000, Dr. Whiteman received his PhD in physics from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County with research entitled "Investigation of cloud properties using a Raman Lidar" and was awarded the 2001 Allen Prize by the Optical Society of America for best graduate student research. While at NASA, Dr. Whiteman worked in the design, implementation, field deployment and analysis of lidar systems and other instrumentation for atmospheric measurements including the first mobile stratospheric ozone lidar system (STROZ-LITE), several versions of water vapor Raman lidars including the Scanning Raman Lidar, Raman Airborne Spectroscopic Lidar (RASL) and ALVICE (Atmospheric Laboratory for Validation, Interagency Cooperation, and Education) and ACE Multiwavelength Lidar Optical Data Simulator systems. He has successfully deployed lidar systems and various other atmospheric instruments to more than 25 field experiments in the United States and abroad. He has organized and led several atmospheric field campaigns including the AIRS Water Vapor Experiment-Ground (AWEX-G) held in 2003 at the Department of Energy/Southern Great Plains site and the series of Water Vapor Variability Satellite/Sondes (WAVES) campaigns held in 2006 – 2012 at the Howard University Research Campus in Beltsville, MD. He has developed new lidar remote sensing techniques including ones for retrieving both warm and cold cloud physical properties using Raman lidar. He has been a member of the American Meteorological Society's Committee on Laser Atmospheric Sensing, was the chairman of the first International Raman Lidar Techniques Workshop held at NASA/GSFC in 2004, served on the International Organizing Committees of four Latin American Lidar Workshops held in Ilha Bella, Brazil, Buenos Aires, Argentina, La Paz, Bolivia and Pucon, Chile, is a member of the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) Working Group on Atmospheric Reference Observations and member of the GCOS Reference Upper Air Network (GRUAN) Task Team investigating measurement needs for GRUAN. He organized and chaired the Network for the Detection of Atmospheric Composition Change (NDACC) Raman water vapor calibration workshop held in Greenbelt, MD in May, 2010. Dr. Whiteman was also involved in organizing the 2014 World Meteorological Organization (WMO)/GRUAN International Coordination Meeting held in Greenbelt, MD. Dr. Whiteman is the sole US representative on the International Steering Committee for the WMO Global Atmospheric Watch (GAW) site at Mt. Chacaltaya in Bolivia. He has received numerous NASA awards for service including the 2008 Robert H. Goddard Award for Science. Dr. Whiteman retired from NASA in 2017 and is now a senior research scientist at Howard University in Washington, DC. As a consultant, Dr. Whiteman has recently worked on two NASA contracts involving spaceborne lidar simulations and has served on a proposal preparation team responding to a NASA EVS3 opportunity. Dr. Whiteman recently was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship for research and teaching in Bolivia where he will continue a long-standing collaboration in the study of pollutants in the high Andes mountains and how they impact the measurements of the world's highest elevation Global Atmosphere Watch station at Mt. Chacaltaya. According to google scholar, Dr. David N. Whiteman is author or co-author more than 330 citable publications of which more than 100 are refereed journal articles. His publications have been cited over 7800 times and his overall h-index is 47 ranking him 5th highest among Howard University scientists according to the Alper-Doger Scientific Index.
Education & Expertise
Education
Master of Arts (M.A.)
Physics
University of Maryland Baltimore County
1998
Bachelor of Arts (B.A.)
Physics
Williams College
1979
Accomplishments
Accomplishments
Fulbright U.S. Scholar 2023-2024
Dr. Whiteman was awarded a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Fellowship for 2023-2024 for research and teaching in Bolivia relating to the influence of pollutants on Andean snowpack and glaciers.
Howard University Scientist Ranking
Dr. Whiteman is ranked 5th among all Howard University scientists in 2024 based on the H-Index of publications.
Robert H. Goddard Award for Science 2008
Dr. Whiteman was awarded the NASA Robert H. Goddard Award for Science in 2008 for his research in the use of laser remote sensing for satellite validation.
Optical Society of America Allen Prize 2001
Dr. Whiteman was awarded the 2001 Allen prize by the Optical Society of America for his work in the use of laser remote sensing in cloud characterization.
Publications and Presentations
Publications and Presentations
Breakdown of a Nocturnal Inversion Measured with a Low-Cost Tethersonde System
For the past 4 years, four different cohorts of students from the Science and Technology program at Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Greenbelt, Maryland, have performed their senior research projects at the Howard University Beltsville Research Campus in Beltsville, Maryland. The projects have focused generally on the testing and correction of low-cost sensors and development of instrumentation for use in profiling the lower atmosphere. Specifically, we have developed a low-cost tethersonde system and used it to carry aloft a low-cost instrument that measures particulate matter (PM) as well as a standard radiosonde measuring temperature, pressure, and relative humidity. The low-cost PM sensor was found to provide artificially high values of PM under conditions of elevated relative humidity, likely due to the presence of hygroscopic aerosols.
Statistical Analysis of Simulated Spaceborne Thermodynamics Lidar Measurements in the Planetary Boundary Layer
The performance of a spaceborne Raman lidar offering measurements of water vapor, temperature, aerosol backscatter and extinction is assessed statistically by use of a lidar simulator and a global model to provide inputs for simulation. The candidate thermodynamics lidar system is envisioned to make use of a sun-synchronous, dawn/dusk orbit. Cloud-free atmospheric profiles simulated by the NASA/GSFC GEOS model for the orbit of the CALIPSO satellite on 15 July 2009 were used as input to a previously validated lidar simulator where GEOS profiles that satisfy the solar zenith angle restrictions of the dawn/dusk orbit, and are located within the Planetary Boundary Layer as defined by the GEOS model, were selected for the statistical analysis. To assess the performance of the simulated thermodynamics lidar system, measurement goals were established by considering the WMO Observing Systems Capability Analysis and Review (OSCAR) requirements for Numerical Weather Prediction.
Retrievals of aerosol microphysics from simulations of spaceborne multiwavelength lidar measurements
Retrievals of aerosol microphysics from simulations of spaceborne multiwavelength lidar measurements
In support of the Aerosol, Clouds, Ecosystems mission, simulations of a spaceborne multiwavelength lidar are performed based on global model simulations of the atmosphere along a satellite orbit track. The yield for aerosol microphysical inversions is quantified and comparisons are made between the aerosol microphysics inherent in the global model and those inverted from both the model's optical data and the simulated three backscatter and two extinction lidar measurements, which are based on the model's optical data.
Correction technique for Raman water vapor lidar signal-dependent bias
The MOHAVE-2009 campaign brought together diverse instrumentation for measuring atmospheric water vapor. We report on the participation of the ALVICE (Atmospheric Laboratory for Validation, Interagency Collaboration and Education) mobile laboratory in the MOHAVE-2009 campaign. In appendices we also report on the performance of the corrected Vaisala RS92 radiosonde measurements during the campaign, on a new radiosonde based calibration algorithm that reduces the influence of atmospheric variability on the derived calibration constant, and on other results of the ALVICE deployment. The MOHAVE-2009 campaign permitted the Raman lidar systems participating to discover and address measurement biases in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere.
The relative importance of random error and observation frequency in detecting trends in upper tropospheric water vapor
Recent published work assessed the amount of time to detect trends in atmospheric water vapor over the coming century. We address the same question and conclude that under the most optimistic scenarios and assuming perfect data (i.e., observations with no measurement uncertainty) the time to detect trends will be at least 12 years at approximately 200 hPa in the upper troposphere. Our times to detect trends are therefore shorter than those recently reported and this difference is affected by data sources used, method of processing the data, geographic location and pressure level in the atmosphere where the analyses were performed. We then consider the question of how instrumental uncertainty plays into the assessment of time to detect trends.