Robert Jackson
Atmospheric Scientist
Biography
Education
- B.S. in Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2009
- M.S. Atmospheric Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2011
- Ph.D. Atmospheric Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2015
Research
My work involves using active remote sensing to create a better picture of Earth’s climate. I specialize in using precipitation radars and Doppler lidars to explore the kinematics and precipitation occurring in our atmosphere.
As a part of the ARM Translator group at Argonne, I develop quality-controlled rainfall products from ARM Precipitation radars that are used to evaluate model simulations and explore rainfall and snowfall patterns over various regions of the Earth including Darwin, Australia, and the Upper Colorado River Basin. In addition, I am involved in the Community Research on Climate and Urban Science (CROCUS) project as a remote sensing specialist for the Micro Rain Radar. My research also explores the characteristics of offshore winds for the Wind Energy Technology Office’s 3rd Wind Forecast Improvement Project using Doppler Lidar and developing techniques for automated scan strategies for sampling the evolution of low level jets. Finally, I am the lead developer of a Multi-Doppler radar package PyDDA. PyDDA retrieved winds from radar networks that are currently being used for the Office of Electricity’s Equitable, Affordable & Resilient Nationwide Energy System Transition (EARNEST) project that assesses impacts of Derechos, or long lived lines of thunderstorms that cause extensive wind damage, on the electric grid.
Selected Publications
Jackson, R. C., and Coauthors, 2023: ARMing the Edge: Designing Edge Computing–Capable Machine Learning Algorithms to Target ARM Doppler Lidar Processing. Artif. Intell. Earth Syst., 2, 220062, https://doi.org/10.1175/AIES-D-22-0062.1.
Jackson, R., Collis, S., Louf, V., Protat, A., Wang, D., Giangrande, S., Thompson, E. J., Dolan, B., and Powell, S. W., 2021: The development of rainfall retrievals from radar at Darwin, Atmos. Meas. Tech., 14, 53–69, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-14-53-2021.
Jackson, R., S. Collis, T. Lang, C. Potvin, and T. Munson, 2020: PyDDA: A Pythonic Direct Data Assimilation Framework for Wind Retrievals. Journal of Open Research Software, 8, 20, https://doi.org/10.5334/jors.264
Jackson, R. C., S.M. Collis, V. Louf, A. Protat, and L. Majewski, L, 2018: A 17 year climatology of the macrophysical properties of convection in Darwin, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 18, 17687–17704, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-17687-2018.