Professor Hartmut Boesch

Hartmut is a Professor and the head of the Earth Observation Science (EOS) group of the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Leicester, and a Divisional Director of the National Centre for Earth Observation (NCEO).

Hartmut has worked for several years at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory on the development of NASA’s first dedicated CO2 satellite mission, the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) mission.

He joined the EOS Group at University of Leicester as a RCUK research fellow in 2007 focusing on the analysis of greenhouse gas observations from satellites and on the preparation of future greenhouse gas missions.

He is a Science Team member of the NASA OCO-2 and OCO-3 missions, and of the French/UK MicroCarb mission, and a member of the ESA Advisory Group for Copernicus CO2M mission. He is an investigator for the Copernicus Climate Change Service and the ESA Climate Change Initiative.

Hartmut’s area’s of research include:

• Satellite-based remote sensing of atmospheric greenhouse gases
• Development of ground-based and aircraft instruments for greenhouse gas remote sensing
• Design of new satellite missions for greenhouse gases

He teaches:

• Dynamics (PA1110)
• Thermal and Statistical Physics (PA2720)
• EO of the Atmosphere (MSc Satellite Data Science)

Satellite-based remote sensing of atmospheric greenhouse gases

Development of ground-based and aircraft instruments for greenhouse gas remote sensing

Design of new satellite missions for greenhouse gases

Takagi H, Houweling S, Andres RJ, Belikov D, Bril A, Boesch H, Butz A, Guerlet S, Hasekamp O, Maksyutov S, et al.. Influence of differences in current GOSAT XCO2 retrievals on surface flux estimation. GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS 41(7):2598-2605 16 Apr 2014 

Chevallier F, Palmer PI, Feng L, Boesch H, O'Dell CW, Bousquet P. Toward robust and consistent regional CO2 flux estimates from in situ and spaceborne measurements of atmospheric CO2. GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS 41(3):1065-1070 16 Feb 2014 

Buchwitz M, Reuter M, Bovensmann H, Pillai D, Heymann J, Schneising O, Rozanov V, Krings T, Burrows JP, Boesch H, et al.. Carbon Monitoring Satellite (CarbonSat): Assessment of atmospheric CO2 and CH4 retrieval errors by error parameterization. ATMOSPHERIC MEASUREMENT TECHNIQUES 6(12):3477-3500 01 Jan 2013 

Oshchepkov S, Bril A, Yokota T, Wennberg PO, Deutscher NM, Wunch D, Toon GC, Yoshida Y, O'Dell CW, Crisp D, et al.. Effects of atmospheric light scattering on spectroscopic observations of greenhouse gases from space. Part 2: Algorithm intercomparison in the GOSAT data processing for CO2 retrievals over TCCON sites. JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH-ATMOSPHERES 118(3):1493-1512 16 Feb 2013 

Reuter M, Boesch H, Bovensmann H, Bril A, Buchwitz M, Butz A, Burrows JP, O'Dell CW, Guerlet S, Hasekamp O, et al.. A joint effort to deliver satellite retrieved atmospheric CO2 concentrations for surface flux inversions: the ensemble median algorithm EMMA. ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS 13(4):1771-1780 01 Jan 2013 

Hewson W, Boesch H, Barkley MP, De Smedt I. Characterisation of GOME-2 formaldehyde retrieval sensitivity. ATMOSPHERIC MEASUREMENT TECHNIQUES 6(2):371-386 01 Jan 2013 

Fraser A, Palmer PI, Feng L, Boesch H, Cogan A, Parker R, Dlugokencky EJ, Fraser PJ, Krummel PB, Langenfelds RL, et al.. Estimating regional methane surface fluxes: the relative importance of surface and GOSAT mole fraction measurements. ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS 13(11):5697-5713 01 Jan 2013 

Ross AN, Wooster MJ, Boesch H, Parker R. First satellite measurements of carbon dioxide and methane emission ratios in wildfire plumes. GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS 40(15):4098-4102 16 Aug 2013 

Boesch H, Deutscher NM, Warneke T, Byckling K, Cogan AJ, Griffith DWT, Notholt J, Parker RJ, Wang Z. HDO/H2O ratio retrievals from GOSAT. ATMOSPHERIC MEASUREMENT TECHNIQUES 6(3):599-612 01 Jan 2013

Buchwitz M, Reuter M, Schneising O, Bovensmann H, Burrows JP, Deutscher NM, Heymann J, Noël S, Notholt J, Warneke T, et al.. The Greenhouse Gas Climate Change Initiative (GHG-CCI): Comparison and quality assessment of near-surface-sensitive satellite-derived CO2 and CH4 global data sets. Remote Sensing of Environment 2013

Modules that I delivered in past academic years include:

• Dynamics (PA1110)
• Planetary Remote Sensing (PA2610/20 – opt 2604)
• Spacecraft Imaging Systems (PA2930 – opt 2904)
• Earth System Science (CH4203)

Divisional Director, National Centre for Earth Observation (NCEO)

Science team member of the NASA OCO-2 project

Member of Mission Advisory Group (MAG) for ESA Earth Explorer 8 Candidate Mission Carbonsat

Co-chair for IWGGMS-7 and session organizer for EGU General Assembly

Member of  scientific committee for IWGGMS-9, IWGGMS-10 and ESA Living Planet Symposium 2013

Member of the NERC Peer Review College

Administrative duties

Head of Earth Observation Science (EOS) Group

Department Research and Strategy committee

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