Charles Gatebe

Dr. Gatebe is the Chief of Atmospheric Science Branch at NASA Ames Research Center.

He received his Bachelors’ degree (B.S. in meteorology, mathematics, and physics) and his Masters (M.S. in meteorology) degree from the University of Nairobi, Kenya, in 1990 and 1994, respectively. And his Ph.D. degree in atmospheric physics from the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1999.

For a brief period in 1995, he worked as a research meteorologist at the Kenya Meteorological Department and then joined the University of Nairobi from 1995-1999 as a lecturer, where he taught courses in air pollution using nuclear related techniques at the Institute of Nuclear Science. He came to NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in 1999 as a Resident Research Associate of the Universities Space Research Association (USRA). He later became a research scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center under two cooperative agreements between NASA and University of Maryland, Baltimore County (2001-2011) and USRA (2011-2020).

His research focus is on clouds, aerosols, ecosystem structure and function, albedo, and feedbacks to climate using a well-calibrated, atmospherically corrected and feature-rich airborne dataset (https://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/datasets?keywords=CAR). He has flown on many NASA aircraft missions to validate satellite measurements in southern Africa, US East Coast over the Atlantic Ocean, US West coast over the Pacific Ocean, Alaska, Greenland and Canada. He leads the NASA’s Cloud Absorption Radiometer (CAR), which is flown aboard NASA P-3B aircraft (https://car.gsfc.nasa.gov), and NASA’s SaSa program, comprised of six minority serving institutions (Howard University, Morgan State, Coppin State, University of Maryland, Baltimore County and Hampton University, and University of Maryland Eastern Shore) and three NASA centers (NASA Ames Research Center, Goddard Space Flight Center and Langley Research Center). SaSa is seeking to offer students access to summer seminars and hands-on learning experiences with airborne science flight programs at NASA.

His work has received many awards including the prestigious World Meteorological Organization Young Scientist Award (2000) and NASA’s Robert H. Goddard Award for Outreach (2013) for leading and founding a spectacularly successful “Maniac” series of talks (https://earth.gsfc.nasa.gov/maniac/talks) at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (NASA/GSFC).