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Biographical Information
Dr. Pawan K. Bhartia
Senior Staff Scientists
Laboratory for Atmospheres
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. Pawan K. (PK) Bhartia is a Senior Staff scientist in the Laboratory for Atmospheres (Code 613). He serves as the US Science Team Leader of the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI). OMI is a Dutch-Finnish built instrument currently flying on NASA/EOS Aura satellite.
Dr. Bhartia is an internationally known expert in ultraviolet remote sensing of the Earth's atmosphere. He has written over 75 scientific papers in this area and has been recognized by NASA and international agencies for his contributions to this field. He was a leading member of the Ozone Processing Team (OPT) that was responsible for producing ozone products from the SBUV and TOMS instrument on NASA's Nimbus-7 satellite that was launched in September, 1978. Shortly after the discovery by two British scientists that the ozone layer over a station in Antarctica was rapidly thinning, Dr. Bhartia presented the first scientific paper that showed that the phenomena, which subsequently came to be known as the "ozone hole", covered almost the entire Antarctica continent. Maps of the ozone hole produced by TOMS generated world-wide attention and have played a key role in raising public awareness of the fragility of Earth's ozone layer that protects life on Earth from the harmful effects of Sun's ultraviolet rays. This led to international agreements to phase-out several offending chemicals, such as the CFCs, that were implicated in the formation of ozone hole and for general thinning of the ozone layer over rest of the world. Dr. Bhartia also pioneered the development of a technique to make precise estimates of the cancer-causing ultraviolet radiation that reaches the Earth's surface using satellite data. His current research interest is in measuring atmospheric pollution from space that affects human health and global air quality. He and his colleagues are working on developing techniques to measure the constituents of the urban smog from space, and in tracking inter-continental transport of these pollutants.
Dr. Bhartia received his Ph.D. in Physics and MS in Computer Science degrees in 1977 from Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana. Dr. Bhartia joined NASA in Sept, 1991. Prior to that he worked for various aerospace companies in both technical and managerial positions. He is the recipient of William Nordberg Medal and Exceptional Scientific Achievement award from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and Outstanding Leadership Medal from NASA. The TOMS project that he has led since 1991 received the 2006 William T Pecora group award given jointly by NASA and United States Geological Survey.