He built up and leads a team that develops meteorological satellite applications and is responsible for the scientific and meteorological requirement aspects of current and future satellite programmes. This work is performed in close cooperation with the user community. The team also serves as EUMETSAT in-house scientific support for all aspects of the development of meteorological satellite programmes.
Before joining EUMETSAT, Johannes Schmetz was a senior scientist at the European Space Agency (ESA) and then a Section Head in the Meteosat Programme. He was responsible for satellite calibration and the development of operational applications of Meteosat data. The time at ESA was preceded by work at the University of Cologne as Researcher and Assistant Lecturer and then as Research Scientist at the Max-Planck-Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg from 1983 - 1984, working on cloud-climate problems.
Johannes Schmetz studied physics, mathematics, geophysics, meteorology and law at the Universities of Cologne and Bonn. In 1977, he earned a master degree in meteorology and, in 1981 he received a doctoral degree. His PhD thesis covered cloud-radiation interaction, development of radiative transfer models and the validation based on an aircraft experiment.
In 1998 he obtained at the University of Frankfurt the ”Habilitation” title, a pre-requisite qualification for lecturing and professorship at German Universities.
His professional interests are, in addition to guiding a team of scientists, using operational meteorological satellite data for weather and climate applications. He has authored or co-authored more than 60 peer-reviewed journal articles and various chapters in text books. He also served and serves on various international committees, including the International Radiation Commission, the Satellite Meteorology Committee of the American Meteorological Society, COSPAR, the German Meteorological Society and the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO).
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