An external view of the Met Office building at night.

Dr Yaswant Pradhan

Yaswant's research is aimed at improving satellite image data processing, interpretation and assimilation capabilities at the Met Office.

Areas of expertise

  • Satellite imagery.

  • Dust and aerosol.

  • Ocean colour.

Publications by Yaswant

Current activities

Yaswant's work aims to enhance the use of existing and new satellite dust and aerosol observations in the weather forecasting process, via the development of value-added products from satellite image data, and also by the assimilation of these data into the Unified Model in order to improve our NWP performance.
 
A key aspect of Yaswant's work is to develop methods to retrieve aerosol optical depth (AOD) using remote-sensing satellite data, primarily from the SEVIRI instrument on-board MSG, and to assimilate these data into the Met Office Numerical Weather Prediction models.
 

Career background

Yaswant started working in the Met Office's Satellite Applications group in 2008, primarily carrying out research using MSG and MODIS data.
 
Before this, he spent four years at the University of Plymouth as a post-doctoral research fellow. There, he worked primarily on marine bio-optical algorithm development, based on satellite remote-sensing and in situ data, and contributed towards the design justification plan for ESA's GlobColour project.

Yaswant obtained a PhD from ISRO/Berhampur University (India), using remote-sensing satellite data to study the seasonal circulation and sediment dispersal patterns in the Bay of Bengal. He received an undergraduate degree in Physics and a post-graduate degree in Marine Sciences from Utkal University (India) and Berhampur University, respectively.