Congratulations to Lionel Arteaga Quintero (610.1/UMBC), who recently was promoted from Assistant Research Scientist to Associate Research Scientist within GESTAR II. We asked him about his roles and research at NASA GSFC as well as what drives him.
Dr. Arteaga is an ocean biogeochemist with an interest in understanding climate impacts on marine ecosystems and carbon cycling. At NASA, his main work is focused on the development and use of the NASA Ocean Biogeochemical Model (NOBM), which uses satellite observations of ocean color to estimate the oceanic production and sequestration of carbon, as well as the diversity of surface planktonic ecosystems in the global ocean.
Dr. Arteaga is currently the PI of a NASA Carbon Monitoring System (CMS) grant, awarded in 2023, and is actively involved in preparing the NOBM to assimilate hyperspectral data from the soon-to-launch PACE mission.
Earth's oceans are vast and severely under-sampled. What keeps Dr. Arteaga engaged as a research scientist is the challenge to understand the oceans through remote sensing observations and unveil their biogeochemical relevance and sensitivity to Earth's climate.