About Thomas Blackmore

Thomas works in Satellite Applications

Areas of expertise:

• Satellite imagery processing and analysis.

• Total column water vapour from satellite instruments.

• Radiative transfer. 

Publications by Thomas

Current activities

Thomas is a scientist working in several different areas of satellite imagery analysis and assimilation.

His current work includes:

• Developing and maintaining a verification tool which can produce simulated geostationary satellite imagery from NWP model fields. This tool uses a fast radiative transfer model (RTTOV) to simulate top of atmosphere radiances. These simulated images have several uses: scientists working on changes to the Met Office Unified Model can assess the impact that their changes have on cloud and moisture fields by comparing images produced with and without the changes and forecasters can use the images to help choose the best member from an ensemble forecast.
• Monitoring satellite radiance biases from a variety of different satellite instruments by simulating satellite radiances using a fast radiative transfer model (RTTOV) from Unified Model fields and comparing these with the observed satellite radiances. The biases for different satellite instruments can then be compared.
• Assimilating Total Column Water Vapour (TCWV) data from satellites into the Unified Model  in order to improve our NWP performance. Initial work is focusing on data from the MERIS satellite instrument. At present no satellite TCWV data over land are used in the Unified Model . Thomas's work aims to find if assimilating this data has a positive impact on the NWP performance, and if so to assimilate the data operationally.

Career background

Thomas has been a member of the Satellite Applications group since starting at the Met Office in 2005.

His previous research in satellite imagery applications has involved work on long-term satellite seas surface temperature data sets. This has included using data from the ATSR series of instruments to build up a climate quality record of satellite sea surface temperatures from 1991 to present and correction of AVHRR Pathfinder sea surface temperature data for volcanic aerosol effects using ATSR data and satellite aerosol optical depth.
 

He has been involved in research on estimating rainfall accumulations over Africa using data from MSG geostationary satellites correlated with rainfall radar measurements. This work was carried out in collaboration with the University of Reading.

Prior to joining the Met Office, Thomas received a BSc degree in Meteorology from the University of Reading.