Robb Contreras Robb Contreras came to the University of Washington and APL-UW from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography where he worked as a computer programmer. After being accepted to the university, he drew from his experiences with scientists at Scripps when it came time to choose an advisor and research topics. He knew that it was paramount to have interest in and respect for his mentor's work, but also to be able to establish an easy working rapport. Robb found all of these in APL-UW Principal Research Scientist William Plant of the AIRS Department. Robb recognized that Plant's work in scatterometry was fundamental to how scientists in the discipline of remote sensing interpret the data collected from the instruments, and he knew he had found his academic mission. One project Robb has pursued entailed obtaining a climatology of tropical instability waves (TIWs) from ERS 1 and 2 scatterometer data together with current meter and ADCP measurements from the TAO buoy array, and sea surface temperature data. These data consist of multiple year observations of the waves and have illuminated the annual and interannual behavior of TIWs. Scatterometers operate by transmitting microwave pulses to the sea surface and "reading" the returned "backscattered" radar pulses. They sense the surface wave field, from which surface wind speed and direction can be calculated. TIWs are shear-created instabilities in the ocean currents that propagate westward at speeds from 0 to 0.7 m s-1. They are visible in the sea surface temperature (SST) due to the advection of the equatorial SST front by these waves. The SST signature of TIWs serves to couple the atmosphere to the ocean and as a result, space-borne scatterometers are useful in observing TIWs and analyzing the phenomenon of their coupling. For his master's degree research, Robb analyzed the radar data taken on the R/V Ron Brown during the 1999 TRMM Kwajalein Experiment to determine the effect of rainfall on backscatter from the ocean surface. A number of physical assumptions are made to convert satellite radar backscatter measurements to wind speed and direction. When it is raining, these assumptions are further complicated. His analysis of data from low incidence angles has implications for altimeter and precipitation radars that are commonly used in observing the local weather, while the data taken at large incidence angles has application for space-based scatterometers and their ability to infer surface winds over the ocean. Robb is now enrolled in a doctoral program in atmospheric sciences and wishes to extend his work to obtain a more comprehensive picture on the effects of rain on backscatter from the ocean surface.