Reflections on becoming a NASA physical research scientist

As young elementary school students in an obscure town in the Philippines we were told by our teachers that we should dream big.  I indeed tried to dream big and even more ambitiously than what I thought possible, thinking that if I manage to reach just halfway, I would already be happy.  Never did I realize that I would become a senior physical scientist at NASA and be able to collaborate or compete with top scientists around the world.  NASA is among the most prestigious technical institutions globally, and I have been lucky to be part of their Earth Sciences Division that is also regarded as having one of the best programs on Earth Sciences in the world.   

I received a Bachelor of Science degree in physics from the University of the Philippines (UP), Diliman and was fortunate to be offered right away a position as a junior scientist at the then newly created Philippine Atomic Research Center.  I became a faculty member at UP shortly after but a year later, I decided to pursue graduate studies at Florida State University in the US and received my Master of Science degree in Physics in a year and a half.   I then went to UCLA at Los Angeles California to pursue my Ph D in Physics and did my thesis experiment at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory at UC Berkeley on “Time Reversal Invariance in Electromagnetic Interactions.” The subject was a hot topic at that time since time reversal invariance is one of three fundamental symmetries in nature called CPT, where C is charge conjugation, P is parity and T is time reversal.  Two theoretical physicists at Columbia University won the Nobel Prize for correctly predicting the violation of Parity while shortly after, University of Chicago scientists also won the Nobel Prize for discovering a violation in Charge Conjugation. Despite our team’s efforts to do our experiment as accurately as possible, we did not find a violation of time reversal invariance. This was disappointing but it was gratifying that our results yielded a significant phenomenon that was independently confirmed by experiments at Brookhaven National Laboratory and at the University of Tokyo. After graduation, I was offered a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Virginia where the research focus was to better understand strong interactions in the nucleus using the then new Pi-Meson linear accelerator at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where the first atomic bomb was developed, and the NASA Synchrocyclotron Facility in Newport News, Virginia, where we studied alpha induced reactions at 720 Mev and photoproduction of protons. I was then attracted to a new program at NASA called Mission to Planet Earth.  The discovery that greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have been increasing at a much higher rate than expected led NASA to focus their attention to studies of the Earth’s Climate and Environment.  The prime argument is that we should take care of what could be the only entity in the universe with intelligent life.  

I felt fortunate to be offered by NASA a physical scientist position in the Earth Sciences Directorate.  Our team concentrated on studying the polar regions because it is the place where climate signals are expected to be first detected because of snow cover and feedback effects in the region.  We put together the first climate data set and an atlas of the global sea ice cover and also made assessments of the state of the snow cover, glaciers, permafrost and the ice sheets. Analysis of the data revealed an unusually large seasonality of the sea ice cover especially in the Antarctic region and the existence of a large polynya (open water within the ice pack) in the Weddell Sea that stayed open during the entire winter for three consecutive years despite surface air temperatures that are way below freezing. We also discovered that a large fraction of the ice cover is formed at the coastal polynyas that are sustained by the winds and become the source of cold dense water that becomes part of the bottom water that is circulated globally through the thermohaline circulation.  In the Greenland Sea, we also discovered the true characteristics of a unique feature called the Odden ice tongue that is adjacent to an embayment considered as one of only four deep ocean convection sites in the world.  These discoveries are important because of profound impacts on the physical characteristics of the ocean which is a key part of the Earth’s climate system. To be able to utilize satellite data, I developed a unique technique for converting the data to sea ice concentration, sea ice extent and sea ice area.  The technique is now used to generate sea ice climate data sets by NASA, the European ESA, the Japanese JAXA and similar agencies worldwide. I have used these data sets to analyze long term changes in the sea ice cover and enabled me to discover and report that the Arctic perennial sea ice cover has been declining rapidly.  The study turned out to be one of the most visible indicator of Climate Change and made scientists to realize that the summer ice that has been observed in at least 1,450 years may disappear within a century.   Another report I published one year later attracted even more attention.  The report indicated that as observed by satellite data the Arctic has been warming at a rate that is 3 times higher than that of global average.  These observations are expected to cause profound changes in the environment and ecology of the Arctic region, including a decrease in volume of North American glaciers, Greenland ice sheet and snow cover as well as thawing of the permafrost.  These papers caught a lot of attention not just by other scientists but also by policy makers and politicians. I was asked to give talks by many institutions about these results, appeared in TV interviews and press briefing on climate change sponsored by NASA and in a special video for National Geographics.

Overall, I have been productive as a scientist, having been the author or co-author of 7 scholarly books, more than 20 book chapters and more than 130 refereed publications the impact of which is quite significant considering that these publications were cited more than 36,000 times by other authors. I have been listed by Google Scholar as having an H-index of 81 and an I-10 index of 163, which are relatively on the high side achieved by only a few scientists in the world. This have been possible because of having had the opportunity to collaborate and co-author papers with outstanding scientists.  I received several outstanding performance awards including the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal which is recognized as one of the most prestigious award a NASA scientist can get.  I felt honored as well when I was selected as a coordinating lead-author of one of the chapters of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report which is regarded as the most authoritative report on climate change. I was involved in the WG1/AR5 report published in 2014 which addressed the physical basis of climate change.  I was also a contributing author of the 2007 IPCC report which won the Nobel Peace Prize together with Vice President Gore in 2007. 

I retired and became a NASA senior scientist emeritus in 2017 and continued doing research but started focusing on doing more research work in the Philippines.  I have been visiting the Philippines since 1995 as a participant in the Balik Scientist program and had served as visiting scientist or guest professor in various universities including the University of the Philippines in both Diliman and Los Banos campuses and the Mariano Marcos State University.  I was the lead author of a book on “Changing Philippine Climate: Impacts on Agriculture and Natural Resources,” which came out in 2014 and won the NAST outstanding book in science award in 2015 and was exhibited in a book festival in Europe.  I have been giving series of lectures on climate change and satellite remote sensing in various local institutions and have helped start many projects including the use of satellite data to detect drought, fire and deforestation in the country as well as finding schools of fish in the ocean. I am also currently a consultant in the analysis of data from the recently launched Diwata 1 and 2 satellites which are the first Philippine satellite projects and in the planning of a third satellite. I am currently involved as a lead editor of a book on “Rediscovering Laguna de Bay: A Vital Natural Resource in Crisis,” and a lead author of some of the chapters.  The book, which is nearing completion, is meant to provide the pathways to the rehabilitation and restoration of a large lake which is a national treasure and which a few million people, including those in Metro-Manila depends on as a source of food and livelihood. I am also honored to have been selected as a Corresponding Member of the National Academy of Science and Technology.  I hope to be able to continue being productive in academics as well as in social and cultural activities.