Valery Zavorotny and collaborators awarded 2017 Governor's Award for High-Impact Research

Valery Zavorotny (Credit: Barb DeLuisi, NOAA)
Valery Zavorotny (Credit: Barb DeLuisi, NOAA)

Congratulations to ESRL Physical Sciences Laboratory physicist, Dr. Valery Zavorotny, and three collaborators from the University of Colorado (CU) and the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), who have been selected to receive a CO-LABS 2017 Governor's Award for High-Impact Research. They are being recognized for "GPS Reflections: Innovative Technique and New Data." The award will be presented at a CO-LABS event with Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper and 200+ scientists, civic and business leaders, and professional researchers from across Colorado on October 5 at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

Zavorotny developed the physical model that allowed the award-winning team, which includes Kristin Larson and Eric Small of CU, and John Braun of UCAR, to obtain retrievals of soil moisture, snow depth/snow depth equivalent, and vegetation water content. For this they used the interference pattern created by the direct and reflected GPS signals observed by stationary ground-based geodetic GPS receivers.

Working at NOAA for the past 26 years, Zavorotny's research has focused on the theory of wave propagation through random media, wave scattering from rough surfaces, ocean and land remote sensing applications using radar, and GNSS reflection techniques. He is currently also a member of the Science Team for the CYGNSS satellite mission to study tropical cyclones using GNSS reflections from the ocean surface.