Senior Earth Scientist and Remote Sensing professional and project manager with more than 20 years of experience in studying different aspects of Earth System Science. Currently working as a Group Manager cum Project Manager for a leading federal contractor, responsible for managing a task portfolio amounting to several million dollars. Previously, have helmed the role of a Sr. Scientist and Operations Manager in the NASA GSFC Terrestrial Information Systems Lab (Code-619) as part of MODAPS and NASA Land SIPS. Experienced with managing all aspects of a large data production facility. Have experience in leading small to moderate sized teams, managing projects, managing government contracts, science algorithm development and validation, and engaging in Earth System Science research involving land-atmosphere interactions, natural hazards and air quality, long-term change monitoring and implications for climate change.
Sudipta Sarkar
(HBG Group Manager)
| Email: | sudipta.sarkar@nasa.gov |
| Phone: | 301.614.6912 |
| Org Code: | 619 |
| Address: |
NASA/GSFC Mail Code 619 Greenbelt, MD 20771 |
| Employer: | SCIENCE SYSTEMS AND APPLICATIONS INC |
Brief Bio
Research Interests
Research Interests
Earth Science: Remote Sensing- Natural Hazards and Impact of Climate Change
- Long term change detection using Remote sensing
- Land Atmosphere Interactions
- Interannual variability of climate parameteres and role of human impact
Positions/Employment
Terrestrial Information Systems Group Manager
SSAI - Terrestrial Information System (Code 619) GSFC, NASA
January 2025 - Present
Manage overall workings of several HBG Tasks related to the Terrestrial Information Systems Lab in Code 619. The specific responsibilities include:
- Lead and manage the functioning and operation of the two major SIPS or Science Data Systems in Code 619, mainly MODAPS and LandSIPS, and the data archiving and distribution center of LAADS DAAC, along with the management of LDOPE, MODAPS LANCE, and several other smaller tasks.
- Fulfill all federal contracting obligations including, regular reporting on task budgets (533s), forecasts, tracking variances across tasks etc.
- Engage in Task planning along with the NASA Task Monitor during contract renewals and extensions.
MODAPS and LandSIPS Manager
SSAI - Terrestrial Information System (Code 619) GSFC, NASA
April 2022 - June 2025
- Lead and manage the entire data production facility comprising MODIS Adaptive Processing System (MODAPS), NRT LANCE and VIIRS NASA LandSIPS.
- Act as the chief Science SME within the production facility.
- Chief POC for all matters related to data production, availability, and quality.
MODIS/VIIRS QA Lead
SSAI - Terrestrial Information System (Code 619) GSFC, NASA
January 2018 - March 2022
- Lead and coordinate all activities of the Land Data Operational Product Evaluation (LDOPE) group, which is part of the NASA Land SIPS and MODIS processing system (MODAPS).
- Oversee all data production issues and work closely with the data production team, science team, and various other stakeholders to ensure a smooth workflow and satisfaction of all data quality standards.
Sr. Scientist/ Developer
SSAI - NASA GSFC (Code 619)
December 2014 - June 2018
- Develop and validate multiple land science products, derived from NASA EOS and JPSS series of satellite missions like MODIS, Suomi NPP etc.
- Work closely with different science teams and institutions to develop land algorithms, QA/QC of data products.
- Perform systematic data validation and analysis and inter-sensor comparison.
- Research interests include leveraging satellite data to study the impact of climate change on land and atmospheric processes and their mutual feedback. Role of human impact in driving these land atmospheric feedback mechanisms and its steady evolution over the years.
Senior Scientist/Developer
Sigma Space Corp. - NASA GSFC
February 2012 - December 2014
Member of the Terrestrial Information Systems Lab., in GSFC, as part of MODIS LDOPE/NPP LPEATE.
- Responsible for development of land algorithms for development of scientific datasets from L1B - L3/L4 for all land related parameters and covering the entire globe, derived from MODIS Terra/Aqua and NPP VIIRS.
- Responsible for validation of land data products.
- Research focus includes the study of land surface processes and their interaction, leveraging satellite data.
Lead Analyst
Lanworth/Thomson Reuters - Chicago, IL
December 2004 - December 2011
- Develop workflows and algorithms for providing commodity intelligence to hedge fund managers, traders and global food companies for major commodity crops like corn, soybean, wheat, cane, canola etc across diverse regions of the globe in USA, Canada, Russia, India, South America and China using geospatial technology.
- Lead and manage diverse services/consulting projects involving the use of geospatial technology for better supply chain analysis, such as land-cover change detection, HBU potential, natural hazards studies, land due-diligence assessments etc.
- Lead R&D efforts and work with BD team on pursuing opportunities involving assessment studies and harnessing of environmental and atmospheric parameters across diverse geographic scales using a plethora of sensors operating in visible to microwave ranges.
Graduate Research Assistant
School of Computational Science, George Mason University - Fairfax, VA, USA
March 2001 - December 2004
- Designed and executed a number of critical and pioneering research studies aimed at better understanding different aspects of the biosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere with their respective interactions over inter- annual to decadal time scales. Specifically: • Performed extensive research focusing on possible feedback of land cover and soil moisture on the hydrological cycle and monsoon rainfall over South East Asia. This research combined observational data analysis with comprehensive land surface modeling in an effort to understand the scale of coupling and underlying physics. A part of this research was carried out in NASA Goddard (GSFC).
- Investigated the inter-annual variability of vegetation and aerosol radiative forcing over Indian sub-continent.
- Investigated the variability of monsoon rainfall over South Asia and decreasing influence of ENSO vis-à-vis monsoon rainfall.
Internship
Hydrological Sciences Branch, NASA GSFC - Greenbelt, MD, USA
May 2004 - August 2004
Perform land surface modeling to understand the interaction between land-cover and atmosphere. The research was aimed at better predicting the changes in hydrological cycle and monsoonal precipitation because of changes in Land Surface.
Sr. Project Associate
Dept. of Civil Engineering, IIT Kanpur - Kanpur, India
October 1999 - July 2000
Involved in extensive research of climate parameters and their variability over the Indian sub-continent, specifically snow-cover, tropospheric ozone and aerosol. The possible teleconnection pattern of pacific disturbance over Indian sub-continent was thoroughly explored with the aid of datasets from SSM/I, TOMS, GOME etc.
Systems Engineer
Tata Infotech Ltd., (Now part of Tata Consultancy Services, TCS) - New Delhi, India
July 1998 - September 1999
Responsible for development of a complete Hydrological Information System (HIS) for Ground Water Board of the Government of India. The back-end RDBMS used for the project was ORACLE 8.0 and Spatialware. C++, MapInfo 5.5., Visual Basic 5.0 and Map Basic 5.5 were used to develop the forms for HIS user interface extensibility and Crystal Report for generating MIS reports from Hydrology Database. Vertical Mapper 2.1.1 was used for spatial analysis. Certain Statistical Parameters were calculated through a seamless integration of SPSS with MapInfo 5.5. The development platform was Windows -NT 4.0 Workstation and Server.
Education
PhD in Computational Sciences with specialization in Earth Observation and Remote Sensing - 2004, George Mason University
M.S. in Computational Sciences with specialization in Earth Observation and Remote Sensing - 2003, George Mason University
M.tech in Earth Sciences - 1998, IIT Roorkee, India
B.Sc in Geology - 1995, University of Calcutta, India
Professional Societies
American Geophysical Society
2014 - Present
Professional Service
Former Member of the Editorial Board:
Reviewer for Several Peer reviewed Journals like:
- Remote Sensing of Environment
- Journal of Climate
- Remote Sensing
- International Journal of Remote Sensing
- Geomatics, Natural Hazards and Risk
- Water, Air, & Soil Pollution
- Sustainability
- International Journal of Geo-Information
- The Scientific Pages of Forest Research
- Indian Journal of Remote Sensing
- Environments
Awards
- NASA GSFC HOBI Annual Award for Technical Support, " NPP VIIRS Land Support Team", 2016
- Terra Mission 2019 Pecora Team Award
- NASA 2024 Robert H. Goddard Award winner as part of "MODIS and VIIRS Data Support Team"
Other Professional Information
News Item Links:
For work on Biomass burning
- Times of India (https://goo.gl/14UvpM)
- The Hindu Business Line (https://goo.gl/wAezUD)
- Weather.com (https://goo.gl/ZNZdL1)
- Nature Asia (https://goo.gl/ppXN7t)
- Firstpost (https://goo.gl/wY8JxL)
- Paper Dabba (https://goo.gl/XUNu2k)
- Firstpost Hindi Version (https://goo.gl/rm61zo)
- The Hindustan Times (https://goo.gl/RNaQEe)
For work on Dust storms over India
Selected Publications
Refereed
2024. "MCD18 V6.2: A New Version of MODIS Downward Shortwave Radiation and Photosynthetically Active Radiation Products.", IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, 22 1-5 [10.1109/lgrs.2024.3507822] [Journal Article/Letter]
2024. "Continuity between NASA MODIS Collection 6.1 and VIIRS Collection 2 land products.", Remote Sensing of Environment, 302 113963 [10.1016/j.rse.2023.113963] [Journal Article/Letter]
2024. "Transitioning from MODIS to VIIRS Global Water Reservoir Product.", Scientific Data, 11 (1): 209 [10.1038/s41597-024-03028-2] [Journal Article/Letter]
2021. "NASA’s MODIS/VIIRS Global Water Reservoir Product Suite from Moderate Resolution Remote Sensing Data.", Remote Sensing, 13 (4): 565 [10.3390/rs13040565] [Journal Article/Letter]
2019. "Impact of Deadly Dust storms (May 2018) on Air Quality, Meteorological and Atmospheric Parameters over the Northern Parts of India.", GeoHealth, [10.1029/2018gh000170] [Journal Article/Letter]
2018. "Toward Long-Term Aquatic Science Products from Heritage Landsat Missions.", Remote Sensing, 10 (9): 1337 [10.3390/rs10091337] [Journal Article/Letter]
2018. "Increasing health threat to greater parts of India due to crop residue burning.", The Lancet Planetary Health, 2 (8): e327-e328 [10.1016/s2542-5196(18)30166-9] [Journal Article/Letter]
2018. "Crop Residue Burning in Northern India: Increasing Threat to Greater India.", Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, [10.1029/2018jd028428] [Journal Article/Letter]
2018. "NASA's Black Marble nighttime lights product suite.", Remote Sensing of Environment, 210 113-143 [Full Text] [10.1016/j.rse.2018.03.017] [Journal Article/Letter]
2018. "Anomalous changes in meteorological parameters along the track of 2017 Hurricane Harvey.", Remote Sensing Letters, 9 (5): 488-497 [10.1080/2150704x.2018.1441562] [Journal Article/Letter]
2017. "Sentinel-2 MultiSpectral Instrument (MSI) data processing for aquatic science applications: Demonstrations and validations.", Remote Sensing of Environment, 201 47-56 [10.1016/j.rse.2017.08.033] [Journal Article/Letter]
2017. "Phenology and carbon fixing: a satellite-based study over Continental USA.", International Journal of Remote Sensing, 39 (1): 1-16 [10.1080/01431161.2017.1378457] [Journal Article/Letter]
2017. "Methane and Carbon Monoxide emissions associated with Aliso Canyon ground storage blowout.", 2017 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS), Austin, Texas, 2017 5950-5953 [10.1109/IGARSS.2017.8128364] [Proceedings]
2017. "June 19 2015 Rainfall Event Over Mumbai: Some Observational Analysis.", Journal of the Indian Society of Remote Sensing, 45 (1): 185-192 [10.1007/s12524-016-0572-7] [Journal Article/Letter]
2017. "Impact of wildfires on some greenhouse gases over continental USA: A study based on satellite data.", Remote sensing of Environment, 188 (1): 118--126 [10.1016/j.rse.2016.10.047] [Journal Article/Letter]
2017. "Impact of Spatial Sampling on Continuity of MODIS–VIIRS Land Surface Reflectance Products: A Simulation Approach.", IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, 55 (1): 183-196 [10.1109/tgrs.2016.2604214] [Journal Article/Letter]
2016. "Uncertainties in coastal ocean color products: Impacts of spatial sampling.", Remote Sensing of Environment, 181 14-26 [10.1016/j.rse.2016.03.022] [Journal Article/Letter]
2008. "Temperature extremes, density dependence, and southern pine beetle (Coleoptera: Curculionidae) population dynamics in east Texas.", Environmental Entomology, 37 (3): 650--659 [Journal Article/Letter]
2007. "Sensitivity of rainfall on land cover change over South East Asia: Some observational results.", Advances in Space Research, 39 (1): 73--78 [Journal Article/Letter]
2007. "Inter-annual variability of vegetation cover and rainfall over India.", Advances in space research, 39 (1): 79--87 [Journal Article/Letter]
2006. "Variability of aerosol optical depth and aerosol forcing over India.", Advances in Space Research, 37 (12): 2153--2159 [Journal Article/Letter]
2005. "Declining trend of total ozone column over the northern parts of India.", International Journal of Remote Sensing, 26 (16): 3433--3440 [Journal Article/Letter]
2004. "Comparison of aerosol radiative forcing over the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal.", Advances in Space Research, 33 (7): 1104--1108 [Journal Article/Letter]
2004. "Rain gauge derived precipitation variability over Virginia and its relation with the El Nino southern oscillation.", Advances in Space Research, 33 (3): 338--342 [Journal Article/Letter]
2004. "Further evidences for the weakening relationship of Indian rainfall and ENSO over India.", Geophysical Research Letters, 31 (13): [Journal Article/Letter]
2004. "Anomalous changes in column water vapor after Gujarat earthquake.", Advances in Space Research, 33 (3): 274--278 [Journal Article/Letter]
2004. "Interannual variability of vegetation over the Indian sub-continent and its relation to the different meteorological parameters.", Remote Sensing of Environment, 90 (2): 268--280 [Journal Article/Letter]
2003. "Remote sensing and GIS for regional environmental applications.", Remote Sensing for Environmental Monitoring, GIS Applications, and Geology II, 4886 [10.1117/12.463316] [Proceedings]
2003. "A multisensor approach to dust storm monitoring over the Nile Delta.", IEEE Transactions on geoscience and Remote Sensing, 41 (10): 2386--2391 [Journal Article/Letter]
2002. "Use of multi-sensor data for mapping of thar desert.", Advances in Space Research, 29 (1): 51-55 [10.1016/s0273-1177(01)00627-5] [Journal Article/Letter]
2002. "Effect of El Nino on inter-annual variability of ozone during the period 1978-2000 over the Indian subcontinent and China.", International journal of remote sensing, 23 (12): 2449--2456 [Journal Article/Letter]
2000. "Effect of El Niæo observed over Indian continent from satellite‐derived ozone data.", Eos, Transactions American Geophysical Union, 81 (36): 409-413 [10.1029/00eo00304] [Journal Article/Letter]
2000. "Effect of El Niaeo observed over Indian continent from satellite-derived ozone data.", Eos, Transactions American Geophysical Union, 81 (36): 409--413 [Journal Article/Letter]
2000. "Inter-annual variability of total ozone deduced from GOME and its relation to observed El Nino of 1997-1998.", Current Science, 79 (1): 79--81 [Journal Article/Letter]
Non-Refereed
2018. "Crop residue burning affects large parts of India.", Nature India, [10.1038/nindia.2018.78] [Magazine]
Talks, Presentations and Posters
Other
LONG RANGE TRANSPORT OF AIR MASS FROM THE CROP RESIDUE BURNING (WESTERN PARTS OF INDIA) DURING WINTER SEASON AND ITS IMPACTS ON HUMAN HEALTH AND WEATHER CONDITIONS OVER THE INDO-GANGETIC PLAINS (IGP)
July 16, 2018
Chauhan A, Sarkar S, Gautam G, and Singh R. 42nd COSPAR Scientific Assembly, 2018, Pasadena, California
Changes in Land, Ocean, Meteorological and Atmospheric Parameters Along the Harvey Hurricane Track Observed from GPS, Buoys and Satellite Data
May 22, 2018
Singh R, Sarkar S and Chauhan A. JpGU 2018 (Japan Geoscience Union) at Chiba, Japan
Landsat-Sentinel-2 for aquatic science: Steps towards transitioning from research to operations
December 2018
Pahlevan N, Sarkar S, Chittimalli S and Subramanian S. Pecora 20, November 13-17, 2017, Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
Over-water inter-calibration and atmosphere correction for Landsat-8/Sentinel-2
September 19, 2017
Pahlevan N, Sarkar S and Chittimali S. Recent Advances in Quantitative Remote Sensing (RAQRS) Torrent, Spain 2017
Methane and Carbon Monoxide Emissions Associated with Aliso Canyon Ground Storage Blowout
July 2017
IEEE IGARSS 2017, Austin, Texas, USA
Towards Consistent Landsat-Sentinel-2 Products over Coastal/Inland Waters
May 16, 2017
Pahlevan N, Sarkar S, Chittimalli S and Subramanian S. Third International Ocean Colour Science Meeting (IOCS) Lisbon, Portugal, 15-18 May 2017
Urban area monitoring using MODIS time series data
December 2014
Sarkar, S, Devadiga, S and Masuoka, E., AGU Fall Meeting - 2014
Spatial-Temporal-Vertical Variations of Total Ozone Concentration (TOC) and its Relationship to Other Meteorological Parameters Over the Indo-Gangetic Basin
March 2006
Sahoo, AK and Sarkar, S and Singh, RP and Kafatos, M, AGU Spring Meeting
Vegetation Variability And Its Effect On Monsoon Rainfall Over South East Asia: Observational and Modeling Results
December 2005
Sarkar, S and Peters-Lidard, C and Chiu, L and Kafatos, M, AGU Fall meeting - 2005
Land cover change and its impact on annual rainfall over South East Asia
December 2004
Sarkar, S and Chiu, L and Kafatos, M and Singh, 35th COSPAR Scientific Assembly
Early Warning of Coastal Earthquakes Using Land, Ocean and Atmospheric Parameters
December 2003
Singh, RP and Dey, S and Sarkar, S and Kafatos, M, AGU Fall Meeting - 2003