Gilles Lecomte

Background

• BA in chemistry, ULB (2013-2016)
• MA in chemistry, ULB (2016-2018)
• Master thesis: Détermination de l'altitude de panaches de feux de végétation à l'aide des mesures du sondeur hyperspectral IASI, ULB (2018)
• PhD student in Sciences, ULB, (2018-present)
• Teaching assistant, ULB, CHIM-F101 : chimie générale, (2018-present)

PhD project

Innovative retrievals of trace gas from IASI.

The remote sensing of atmospheric composition from satellites has reached a high level of maturity in the last couples of years and the products that are retrieved from the suite of dedicated instruments in orbit are starting to be used for surveying the environment in an operational way: e.g. for the monitoring of volcanic activity and volcanic plumes, of active fires, of air quality, etc.
Recent work has shown, however, that the potential of thermal infrared (TIR) sounders is not yet fully exploited, especially with respect to their profiling capabilities for the major trace gases and to the sounding of the planetary boundary layer.
The project focus on two aspects of trace gas retrievals, which together aim at enhancing the measurement capabilities of the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI, flying on Metop suites of satellites) for atmospheric composition applications.
Specifically, the objective is to develop innovative retrieval strategies to be applied on the IASI level 1C radiance spectra to obtain precise information on the altitude of fire plumes using the CO signatures and monitor the composition of the tropical tropopause layer (TTL) and upper troposphere (UT) by exploiting above-clouds measurements.

Publications

See here.

Contact

Spectroscopy, Quantum Chemistry and Atmospheric Remote Sensing (SQUARES) (https://squares.ulb.be//),
Université Libre de Bruxelles, CP160/09
50 Av. F.D. Roosevelt, B-1050 Belgium
E-mail