B.S.(Physics), 1969, Lamar University
Ph.D. (Physics), 1974, University of Kentucky
Battelle Memorial Institute Postdoctoral Fellow,
1974-1976, Pacific Northwest Laboratory
Research Interests:
Solar radiation measurement, remote sensing of aerosol and trace gas
species, solar energy applications. Optical radiation instrumentation
development.
Climate change has attracted major interest from the scientific, as well as, the public sector. Our research is primarily concerned with the accurate measurement of solar radiation. Changes in the radiation patterns resulting from changes in cloud and aerosol patterns could either signal climate change or initiate it. Some of these patterns are likely to be subtle, therefore, it will require the utmost confidence in our measurements to guarantee that we are detecting real change. Our goal has been to calibrate and to characterize commercial instruments to understand their performance, and where their performance falls short, to develop our own instrumentation.
With regard to the latter, we have developed the rotating shadowband radiometer and two spectral variants of it, one filter and one spectrometer version, for widespread measurement of direct solar beam and scattered solar irradiance.
This improvement in radiation instrumentation and characterization has enabled us to improve radiation measurements for practical applications. It has led to significant progress in the widespread and accurate measurement of aerosol extinction as a function of wavelength. Our immediate goals are to make further progress on using the spectral measurements to characterize aerosol size distributions, atmospheric column water vapor and ozone. As the data records become longer we will examine them for climate change signals.
Selected Publications
Michalsky, J. J., L. C. Harrison, and W.E. Berkheiser III. Cosine Response Characteristics of Some Radiometric and Photometric Sensors. Solar Energy, 54, 397-402 (1995).
Zhou, C., J. J. Michalsky, and L. C. Harrison. Comparison of Irradiance Measurements Made with the Multi-Filter Rotating Shadowband Radiometer and First-Class Thermopile Radiometers. Solar Energy, 55, 487-491 (1995).
Michalsky, J. J., J. C. Liljegren, and L. C. Harrison. A Comparison of Sun Photometer Derivations of Total Column Water Vapor and Ozone to Standard Measures of Same at the Southern Great Plains Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Site. Journal of Geophysical Review-Atmospheres, 100, 25,995-26,003 (1995).