Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

The Canadian Government has recently announced an over $200M commitment to provide the High altitude Aerosol Water vapour and Clouds (HAWC) satellite based system as a contribution to the much larger NASA funded Atmosphere Observing System (AOS). The three HAWC instruments, the Aerosol Limb Imager (ALI), the Spatial Heterodyne Observations of Water (SHOW) and TICFIRE will make measurements for the first five years of the next decade that contribute to our understanding of our changing climate and the extreme weather events that result from these changes. This Discovery Grant application details student led projects that are designed to increase the quality of the ALI, SHOW and TICFIRE data records and therefore provide more value to Canadians from their investment in HAWC. Enhancements to the SASKTRAN radiative transfer model developed at the University of Saskatchewan over the past thirty years is the focus of this application. SASKTRAN is a sophisticated software model that allows researchers to simulate the expected signals measured by optical instruments like ALI, SHOW and TICFIRE. These signals contain absorption and scattering signatures associated with the species the measured light has interacted with on its path from its source, often the sun, through the earth's atmosphere to instruments onboard satellite platforms. These signatures are measured, and when modelled exactly, allow researchers to infer the properties and amounts of the species that interacted with the observed light. The more accurate and computationally efficient the SASKTRAN model, the more accurate the inferred aerosol and water vapour distributions retrieved from the ALI and SHOW measurements. The students involved in the proposed projects will be at the forefront of a variety of research fields. They will be responsible for understanding the complicated physics that governs the interaction of light, from ultraviolet wavelengths through to thermal infrared wavelengths, with molecules and larger particles like ice, smoke and sulphate aerosols within the regions of the atmosphere that are important to our changing climate. They will design, write, validate and document sophisticated computer software to model these interactions building on the thirty years of heritage that exists at the University of Saskatchewan. Finally, they will be learning these skills and implementing their results within a program that contains a diverse group of international scientists and engineers where this exposure will provide a solid base for successful careers. The HAWC mission will launch around 2030 but like many satellite based missions its successes will be felt for decades afterward. The projects proposed within this application are designed to ensure the success of the HAWC instruments.