NASA Postdoctoral Program - An Innovative In Situ Sensor for Accurate Measurements of Extinction Coefficients and Lidar Ratios of Aerosols and Clouds

The NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) offers unique research opportunities to highly-talented scientists to engage in ongoing NASA research projects at a NASA Center, NASA Headquarters, or at a NASA-affiliated research institute. These one- to three-year fellowships are competitive and are designed to advance NASA's missions in space science, Earth science, aeronautics, space operations, exploration systems, and astrobiology. This specific opportunity seeks candidates to characterize a new in situ instrument developed to demonstrate accurate measurements of extinction coefficients and lidar ratios of aerosols and clouds. The instrument utilizes state-of-the-art optical instrumentation from the quantum optics community to provide highly accurate in situ measurements of optical properties. Projects focus on using the new instrument to investigate lidar ratios of different aerosol types in an environmental chamber. The spectral lidar ratios provide important physical properties of clouds and aerosols such as size, shape, and chemical compositions, which are needed for interpretation of space-based lidar measurements from missions like CALIPSO and ICESat-2.