Engineers Combine Modeling, Satellites to Track Greenhouse Gases
You are here  Daven Henze  Mechanical Engineering  ﻿When NASA's
Orbiting Carbon Observatory, or OCO-2, launches in 2013, there
will be plenty of eyes anxiously watching it from Boulder. Among
its array of followers is Daven Henze, an assistant professor of
mechanical engineering in the department's air quality group.
Henze, who joined the CU faculty two years ago, uses scientific
data from orbiting satellites to maintain and improve an
"adjoint" model of the Earth's atmosphere. An adjoint model is
one that traces atmospheric chemicals, like ozone and other
greenhouse gases, backward to their source.  OCO-2 is one more
Earth science satellite that Henze hopes to use in his research.
A large portion of his research has followed the launches of
other satellites in the NASA constellation, such as Aura and
Aqua. He and his students integrate observational data from
instruments aboard satellites with various atmospheric models to
closely examine the