ESSIC Task Sponsor and former UMD Professor Dr. George Huffman is the newest recipient of the 2022 William Nordberg Memorial Award for Earth Science.
Dr. Huffman is being recognized for outstanding contributions to, and leadership of, algorithm development, science, and applications of the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) and Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) multi-satellite precipitation analyses.
Dr. Huffman received his B.S. in Physics at The Ohio State University (1976) and a Ph.D. in Meteorology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1982). He then was an Assistant Professor at University of Maryland, College Park, then moved to GSFC in 1988, where he consulted until entering government service in 2012. Dr. Huffman’s primary focus has been the design, implementation, and extension of combined (satellite-gauge) estimates of global precipitation. The resulting data sets include the Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP) monthly and daily products (carried out as a contribution to the World Climate Research Program, WCRP); the NASA Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis; and the successor NASA Global Precipitation Measurements (GPM) mission’s Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for GPM (IMERG). Allied work includes estimating errors and extreme precipitation event statistics. Dr. Huffman is the Project Scientist for GPM, as well as the lead for the GPM Multi-satellite Algorithm Team. His research has resulted in 145 publications, 15 as first author, and numerous presentations. As well, he is the Chief for the Mesoscale Atmospheric Processes Lab, Code 612, at GSFC. Recent awards include NASA/GSFC Special Act Team Award, Earth Sciences Division Lab Management, 2021; NASA/GSFC Robert H. Goddard Group Award for Science, IMERG Development Team, 2019; Fellow of the American Meteorological Society, 2019; and NASA Exceptional Service Medal, 2018.
Dr. Huffman will be presented with the William Nordberg Memorial Award during a future Scientific Colloquium.
