NOAA EPP/MSI CESSRST Scholar, Roberto Garcia Virtually Defends his Master’s Thesis and Accepts a Job Position at Radiance Technologies

Posted on August 23, 2021

NOAA EPP/MSI CESSRST Earth System Sciences and Remote Sensing graduate scholar, Roberto Garcia successfully defended his master’s thesis on July 28th, 2021. Soon after his graduation, he accepted a full-time job position at Radiance Technologies. Roberto’s NOAA mission-driven research was titled, “Downscaling of GOES-16’s Land Surface Temperature Product Using Epitomes.” He conducted the research under the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) Faculty advisor, Dr. Miguel Velez-Reyes, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Experiential Research & Training Opportunities (NERTO) mentor, Matthew Seybold, GOES-R Data Operations Manager at NOAA National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service (NESDIS). 

In his M.S. thesis defense, Roberto emphasized that Land Surface Temperature (LST) is an environmental variable derived from Thermal Infrared (TIR) Imager. Satellite platforms are a good source of TIR imagery because of their ability to provide widespread and frequent coverage of the Earth’s surface, and single satellite remote sensing platform is capable of providing good spatial and/or temporal resolution imageries but not both. He also highlighted that LST is an important parameter for studies on the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect and these studies are limited by the spatial or temporal resolution of available LST products. Further, he mentioned that the goal of his research was to estimate LST with high spatial and temporal resolution by downscaling GOES-16’s LST product to benefit UHI studies and many LST data users.

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