GML Staff

Staff Listing

Laura Riihimaki

Global Radiation

Mailing Address:
NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory
325 Broadway R/GML
Boulder CO 80305-3328

Phone: 720-263-2016
Email: laura.riihimaki@noaa.gov

A self-proclaimed radiometer geek, Laura Riihimaki was excited to join GML’s Global Radiation group in 2019 to aid in the interpretation, analysis, and scientific vision of the high-caliber measurements made in the Lab’s broadband radiation networks. A physicist by training, she has found her scientific home making and interpreting quality observations to better predict and understand atmospheric processes related to weather and climate and develop solutions to societal challenges.

She has had the privilege of working with long-term observations throughout her career. She currently serves as the Project Manager of the Baseline Surface Radiation Network (https://bsrn.awi.de/), leading international efforts to make high-quality surface radiation budget measurements. She has a long history of working with the US Department of Energy’s Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) facility including managing a team of scientists and software engineers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) that developed and maintained operational retrievals of cloud and boundary layer remote sensing products, as well as using ARM observations to gain insight into atmospheric processes. In graduate school, she analyzed long-term solar irradiance measurements from the University of Oregon Solar Monitoring Laboratory for atmospheric changes in aerosols and clouds, and first came to value the importance of calibration methodologies and good data quality.

RECENT WORK

Dr. Riihimaki’s recent work has focused on using observational data to:

• Interpret the variability of surface solar irradiance by cloud type to improve the ability of weather models to be used for solar forecasting
• Quantify the radiative impact of dust on snow events to better understand the timing of snowmelt in mountainous regions
• Lead community decisions about best practices for making surface radiation measurements on ocean platforms, to better constrain air-sea interactions.