Dr. Hartzel E. Gillespie
Postdoctoral Fellow
[email protected]
Curriculum Vitae
Dr. Hartzel Gillespie is receiving his Ph.D. from The Pennsylvania State University in meteorology and atmospheric science. His graduate work focused on various aspects of modern martian weather and climate using the Ensemble Mars Atmosphere Reanalysis System (EMARS). EMARS is a data assimilation system which combines the GFDL Mars global climate model with observations from Thermal Emission Spectrometer and Mars Climate Sounder to provide an improved estimate of the state of the martian atmosphere relative to both the model and observations. In addition to synthesizing the EMARS dataset, Dr. Gillespie investigated traveling mid-latitude weather systems, the 2018 global dust storm, and northern polar water transport during his graduate studies.
At LPI, Dr. Gillespie works with Dr. Germán Martínez to maximize the scientific return of the Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS) instrument, and more generally, the Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA) aboard the Perseverance rover on Mars. Dr. Gillespie’s research focuses on improving both the TIRS dataset and Mars models: the former by using EMARS and other reanalyses as climatologies to test TIRS retrievals within, and the latter by exploiting newly available data from MEDA, particularly temperatures near 40 meters made available by TIRS. Such temperatures are directly comparable with the lowest layer of EMARS and may lead to new understanding and better representation of the martian planetary boundary layer and its turbulence, as well as regular variations in temperature caused by the diurnal tide and its harmonics.
