Conrado Badenas
I started research in 1991 by analysing the numerical relationship between radiance and temperature for some usual thermal-infrared wavebands (Badenas and Caselles, 1992a; Badenas and Caselles, 1992b), under the supervision of Dr. Vicente Caselles.
During the years 1992-1994 I participated in field measurements, data treatment and interpretation of basic results for some projects financed by the Commission of the European Communities:
In May 1996 I started a new research program on my own about reviewing basic questions in thermal-infrared remote sensing: Kirchhoff's law in thermodynamic non-equilibrium (Badenas, 1997a), SST retrieval by using split-window equations obtained from radiative transfer models (Badenas, 1997b), and radiometric properties of heterogeneous cavities (Badenas, 1998). And then, Dr. Caselles expelled me from his research unit in July 1997 when he discovered that I had written a comment for JGR-Atmospheres (Badenas, b) where I proved that his last research had some important failures.
Before the expelling, I made some collaborations out of my research program: in the mathematical modelling of radiance transfer inside an emissivity measurement box (Rubio et al., 1997), and in the improvement of geometric correction of NOAA-AVHRR images to superpose them accurately to Landsat-TM images when topographic effects are important (Artigao et al., 1997).
In February 1998 my two doctoral directors (Drs. Caselles and Millán) formally resigned when I needed them to request a 5-year moratorium to write the Thesis. In order to save my Proficiency at Research, I had to find another one but the Board of the Department of Thermodynamics refused to admit the only doctor within the department that accepted to be my director: Dr. Juan Onrubia. After negotiations with some elders of the department, the Board accepted my candidate at the expense of beginning my Doctoral Research anew, which implied to write another doctoral proposition (with another project of thesis) and to obtain certification from CEAM that the new project of thesis included no research of interest for CEAM. Finally, the new doctoral proposition was accepted in June 1998 and I obtained the 5-year moratorium.
In order to focus myself in the Doctoral Thesis, some papers have been ``frozen'' till May 1998: an improvement to the determination of split-window coefficients by using radiative transfer models (Badenas, a), and the already mentioned comment for JGR-Atmospheres (Badenas, b).
In April 1999 I was nominated director of a new research unit created within the Department of Thermodynamics in order to include my papers in the Department's Research Annual Report since they could not be included with the ones from Dr. Caselles' unit. Later, Dr. Onrubia established his own research unit and my former unit was deleted.
Now I am preparing a set of papers in order to publish first results of my Doctoral Research before the dissertation. First one has already been accepted (Badenas and Onrubia, c) and a computer program has been published meanwhile.
From October 1996 to September 2000 I was hired at the University of Valencia as an Assistant Lecturer. First two years teaching 3 hours a week, and last two years teaching 6 hours a week.
First three years I worked in the Department of Thermodynamics, and taught ``Computer Techniques (FORTRAN)'' within 1st year of Physics degree and ``Laboratory of Thermodynamics'' within 1st year of Chemistry degree. FORTRAN lectures were focused on the basics of programing applications to resolve numeric problems.
Fourth year I worked in the Department of Optics, and taught ``Laboratory of Optics'' within 3rd year of Physics degree.
In 1997 I discovered GNU/Linux for IBM compatible PCs, and installed it into my home computer (Slackware distribution). In my office computer I have Debian distribution since October 1998. I have contributed to this distribution by answering questions of users, and detecting bugs of packages.
My Doctoral Thesis will include a complete set of C programs developed in the Linux environment to process AVHRR data from NOAA satellites, and some others translated from FORTRAN to C. The first computer program implements the algorithms developed in Badenas and Onrubia (c), and its source code (file srf2radi-version.tar.gz) is available via anonymous FTP at ftp://ftp.uv.es/pub/src/.
From July 1993 to February 1998 Dr. Millán Millán hired me at CEAM (Mediterranean Centre for Environmental Studies Foundation, http://www.gva.es/ceam/), firstly (3 years) as a beginner researcher and after that (1 1/2 years) as a junior researcher.
During these four and a half years my principal activities have been focused in the design and development of methodologies and their implementation by programing scientific applications for the treatment of data from meteorological satellites. I also programed less important applications for other sources of data (meteorological towers, radiosoundings, written down field data, etc.) to my colleagues. First I begun with Basic, but since I discovered C in 1994 I have been changing all my programs to this language, and programing new ones directly in C. Also, when CEAM bought an HP workstation in 1996, I studied Unix (HP-UX) and begun to port some of my programs to this workstation in order to make them run faster. My programs for CEAM have not been published, but were essential for the research described in next subsections.
CEAM was interested to corroborate their working hypothesis to explain the adverse meteorological phenomenon of torrential precipitations in the Spanish East coast (Millán and Estrela, 1992). They noticed that they needed maps of Mediterranean SST (Sea Surface Temperature) in real time and also retrospective data, at synoptic scale, and with great detail. Thus, they acquired an APT receiving station and two digital AVHRR scenes. They needed a Physicist to manage all this (and incoming) material.
In July 1993 I started studying the APT transmission from NOAA satellites and the characteristics of CEAM's equipment to capture APT images. I designed the methodology to calibrate APT raw images, to perform atmospheric and emissivity correction of channel radiances to obtain SST by means of radiative transfer models, and to perform geometric correction of SST images so that they could be easily superimposed to meteorological maps. It was finished in May 1994, and then I started writing my Master's Thesis (Badenas, 1994) on this work, whose dissertation took place in September 1994.
The atmospheric and emissivity correction procedures depended on the availability of radiosoundings to fed the radiometric transfer models, which were impossible to obtain in real time. Thus, in October 1994 I started improving these procedures to operate without radiosoundigs. In February 1995 I obtained the simple monochannel equation of correction. Many other improvements were added to the processes of calibration, and geometric correction. Other processes were implemented to detect cloudy pixels and to retrieve SST in these cloudy pixels. I presented this new methodology in September 1995 in a lecture within a National Scientific Meeting (Badenas et al., 1995) and this lecture was published later (Badenas et al., 1997c).
From October 1995 to March 1996 I wrote two papers with the set of improvements developed for obtaining SST from AVHRR data. The paper on APT images (Badenas et al., 1997b) included an extensive section on ``cloud removal'' which had not been published earlier. No more research was performed on APT images because in June 1996 CEAM acquired an HRPT receiving station.
In July 1993 I started studying the format of the files with the AVHRR scenes that CEAM acquired to study the torrential precipitations on the Spanish East coast in December 1992. I wrote some computer programs to decode the Master+ format of the scenes bought to CMS-Lannion, and to handle resulting files/images. The satellite data were already calibrated, and the files also included identification of cloudy pixels, and geographical information. Thus, these programs were only useful for these two scenes. A paper was finished in February 1994 with the SST maps created (Millán et al., 1995), but I did not develop the algorithms used there: split-window, geometric correction, and cloud removing. I just made the computer programs to implement them, and designed the resulting figures.
In October 1994 four scenes were acquired to study two torrential precipitation cases in September 1989 and October 1990. I wrote again some computer programs to decode the SHARP format of the scenes bought to INTA-Maspalomas, and to handle resulting files/images. In this format the satellite data are not calibrated, there is no information on cloud cover of the pixels, but there is geographical information. Thus, I developed algorithms to calibrate infrared channels, to make geometric correction (without using SHARP geographic data), and to make atmospheric and emissivity corrections (a new split-window equation very robust for large zenith angles). I also wrote computer programs to perform all these processes to SHARP files. All this work was finished in September 1995 and the results used in a poster presented in an International Scientific Meeting (Estrela et al., 1995) to illustrate changes of SST. Later, in April 1997 I gave a lecture in another International Scientific Meeting (Millán et al., 1997b) in which the meteorological aspects of cases of September 1989 and October 1990 were studied in depth.
From October 1995 to March 1996 I wrote two papers mentioned before. The paper on HRPT images (Badenas et al., 1997a) included the description of methodologies developed to process digital raw data from NOAA satellites. The paper was written for raw data (HRPT files/transmissions) although I used the results from SHARP files to illustrate explanations. It could be done because SHARP files include large parts of HRPT data concerning AVHRR sensor.
From February to May 1996, thirty-four HRPT scenes were bought to the NERC Satellite Receiving Station at Dundee in HRPT format. The computer programs had to be slightly changed to manage the new format, and the files were processed to study the resulting SST maps.
By June 1996 CEAM obtained 10,000,000 pts ($67,000) from the Spanish and Valencian Governments to buy an HRPT receiving station. In August 1996 it started receiving data. Then, I designed a new software system to handle as fast as possible the AVHRR data received in real time in order to get SST maps immediately. When I obtained enough computational speed, I worked to improve again the methodologies, the processes and their implementation into computer programs till September 1997. Nevertheless, no more papers were written with the new methodologies and/or SST maps obtained.
In January 1995 CEAM obtained a 3 year long research project funded by the Valencian Autonomous Government named ``Forecasting System of Meteorological Risks (FOSMERIS)'' (original name in Spanish: ``Sistema de Predicción de Riesgos Meteorológicos''), in which I worked till December 1997. These risks included torrential precipitations and forest fires. First, I worked in the meteorological conditions that could cause torrential rains in the Spanish East coast, which included a training as a short-range local weather forecaster, and afterwards as a writer of these forecasts for the Valencian Autonomous Government. The experience gained in the day-to-day forecastings helped to know quite well the characteristics of the weather in the Valencian Region. The parallel work with remote sensing data was crucial to forecast an episode of torrential precipitations in September 1996. In June 1997 I gave a lecture within a National Scientific Meeting on this case (Badenas et al., 1997d), in which AVHRR data from CEAM's HRPT receiving station were used. Nevertheless, only in other two Scientific Meetings digital AVHRR data were used to study cases of torrential precipitations (Estrela et al., 1995; Millán et al., 1997b).
In the summers of 1995-1997 I was focused on meteorological conditions that could ignite and/or propagate forest fires in the Valencian Region. I helped the regional office of Civil Defence to fight against forest fires by evaluating the areas of larger risk of ignition, and by forecasting their possible evolution when ignited. With the experience gained, two papers (Millán et al., 1997a; Millán et al., 1998a) and one chapter of a book (Millán et al., 1998b) regarding meteorology applied to forest fires were written.
In January 1998 I started studying the possibility to obtain water vapour and ozone profiles from TOVS data included in HRPT transmissions. One week later I was dismissed, and I couldn't start the research. I have not been interested in ozone since then.
From October 2000 to September 2002 I am hired at the University Jaume I as an Assistant Lecturer within the Department of Experimental Sciences, teaching 6 hours a week.
First year I taught ``Electricity and Magnetism'' within 1st years of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering degrees, and ``Physical Foundations'' within 1st year of Industrial Technical Engineering degree.
This second year I am teaching ``Electricity and Magnetism'' within 1st years of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering degrees, and ``Physical Foundations'' within 1st years of Industrial Technical Engineering, Industrial Engineering, and Management-Computing Technical Engineering degrees.
In September 2001 I was appointed to an Assistant Professorship within the Department of Computer Languages and Systems, but I had to resign because I had another full-time job. In September 2002 I will resign from my post of Assitant Lecturer, in order to focus on High School teaching.
In July 2001 I was successful in a public competition to be admitted to the public body of high school teachers specialised in Physics and Chemistry within the Valencian Autonomous Region.
This first year (2001-2002) I am working at the I.E.S. Alto Palancia in Segorbe (Castellón). I am teaching ``Biology and Geology'' within 1st year of baccalaureate, ``Physics'' within 2nd year of baccalaureate, and ``Revision of Physics and Chemistry'' for 2nd year of baccalaureate students with the corresponding 1st year subject failed. I am also the form master of a group of 1st year students of baccalaureate, and I am occasionally supporting other teachers in their subjects: ``Physics and Chemistry'' within 1st year of baccalaureate, and ``Biology'' within 2nd year of baccalaureate. Also, some teachers and I have been developing the ``unofficial'' web site of the center (at http://www.uv.es/~conrad/iesaltopalancia until this site is merged with the ``official'' site at http://intercentres.cult.gva.es/intercentres/12003663).
This second year (2002-2003) I will be working at the I.E.S. in Benaguasil (Valencia). I still do not know what I will teach.
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