Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences

Ralph Milliff
CIRES Visiting Fellow
2012-2013

Sabbatical
Ph.D., University of California, Santa Barbara

Project: Development of the TropSat Observatory

Ralph Milliff is an adjunct associate professor with the Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Department at the University of Colorado Boulder and a senior research scientist at Colorado Research Associates (CoRA). Milliff's research interests focus on air-sea interaction processes on regional and global scales. 

Milliff is the science team lead for a new earth-observing satellite mission concept called the TropSat Observatory. TropSat is intended to measure properties of convective-system evolution in the mesoscale (meaning weather systems measuring horizontally five to several hundred kilometers and often involving heavy rainfall, wind, hail, and lightning)—system by system—throughout the global maritime tropics. This is achieved in part by a very low-inclination orbit and broad-swath design. 

Milliff originally came to Boulder for a postdoctoral fellowship in ocean modeling with Jim McWilliams at NCAR in September 1989. Boulder has been home for Milliff and his family ever since.

Sponsor: Baylor Fox-Kemper