My name is Matthew McCabe and I work jointly in the Hydrology, Geochemistry and Geology (EES-6) Group and International Space and Response (ISR) here at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

My background is in Civil and Environmental Engineering, majoring in Hydrology and Remote Sensing. I completed my undergraduate and postgraduate training in Engineering at the University of Newcastle in Australia, also spending time at the University of Melbourne with Prof. Rodger Grayson and at the CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research with Dr Fred Prata. The focus of my PhD research was the uncertainty modeling of land surface schemes for prediction of evapotranspiration (ET). The motivation was to improve estimation of aquifer recharge using knowledge of land surface variables derived through remote sensing.

Since then, I have extended my interest in the remote sensing of the hydrological cycle. I left Australia in January 2003 to start a post-doctoral position with Prof. Eric Wood at Princeton University. Here I focused on estimating evapotranspiration and soil moisture using a variety of remote sensing platforms. I am also involved with the development of the NASA MODIS-ET product and validation of the AMSR-E Soil Moisture. The development of an operational, satellite only ET product continues to be a research interest. The work at Princeton centred around the development of operational remote sensing based hydrological products and their integration into land surface models for improved prediction.

Here at LANL I spend most of my time involved in two major research themes. I'm working in the Hydrology, Geochemistry and Geology (EES-6) Group, seeking to understand the role of aerosols on the water and climate systems - in particular, their influence on surface fluxes. Most recently, I've been working on the development of a melt-area index to identify changes in ice-sheet dynamics over Greenland. For the other half of my time, I'm associated with the Space and Remote Sensing Sciences (ISR-2) Group, undertaking fundamental research on hyperspectral remote sensing; in particular the forward and inverse modeling of interactions of thermal infrared radiation with solid surfaces.

You can find further information on me and details on my research here on my LANL web-site

Publications

In Review/Preparation

McCabe, M. F., Pan, M., Wojcik, R., Sheffield, J., Su, H., Gao, H. and Wood, E. F. (2006). “Multi-sensor remote sensing data for water and energy balance studies: towards hydrological consistency through observation and data assimilation.” Remote. Sens. Environ. (in review).

Su, H., Wood, E. F., McCabe, M. F. and Su, Z. (2006). “Evaluation of remotely sensed evapotranspiration over the CEOP EOP-1 reference sites.” J. Met. Soc. Japan. (in review).

McCabe, M. F., Balick, L.K., Gillespie, A.R., Mushkin, A. (2006). “Forward modeling of linear mixing in thermal infrared temperature retrieval” (in prep).

Wojcik, R., McCabe, M. F. and Wood, E. F. (2006). ”Using mixtures of Gaussians to characterize relationships in land surface variables from remote sensing observations” (in prep).

Chylek. P., McCabe, M. F. and Dubey, M. K. (2006). “A new approach to determining the melt-area over the Greenland ice sheet using MODIS data” (in prep).

Journal Publications (top)

McCabe, M. F. and Wood, E. F. (2006). “Scale influences on the remote estimation of evapotranspiration using multiple satellite sensors.” Remote Sens. Environ (in press).

Manfreda, S., McCabe, M. F., Wood, E. F., Fiorentino, M. and Rodriguez-Iturbe, I. (2006). “Scaling characteristics of spatial patterns of soil moisture from distributed modelling.” Adv. Water Resour (in press).

Gao, H., Wood, E. F., Drusch, M. and McCabe, M. F. (2006). “Copula derived observation operators for assimilating TMI and AMSR-E soil moisture into land surface models.” J. Hydromet. (in press).

McCabe, M. F., Franks, S. W. and Kalma, J. D. (2005). “Calibration of a land surface model using multiple data sets.” J. Hydrol., 302(1-4): 209-222.

McCabe, M. F., Gao, H. and Wood, E. F. (2005). “An evaluation of AMSR-E derived soil moisture retrievals using ground based and airborne data during SMEX 02.”J. Hydrometeorology. 6(6): 864-877.

McCabe, M. F., Wood, E. F. and Gao, H. (2005). “Initial soil moisture retrievals from AMSR-E: Large scale comparisons with SMEX02 field observations and rainfall patterns over Iowa.” Geophys. Res. Lett. 32, L06403, doi:10.1029/2004GL021222

McCabe, M. F., Kalma, J. D. and Franks, S. W. (2005). “Spatial and temporal patterns of land surface fluxes from remotely sensed surface temperatures within an uncertainty modeling framework.” Hydrol. Earth Sys. Sci. 9(5): 467-480.

Su, H., McCabe, M. F., Wood, E. F., Su, Z. and Prueger, J. H. (2005). “Modeling evapotranspiration during SMACEX02: comparing two approaches for local and regional scale prediction.” J. Hydrometeorology. 6(6): 910-922.

French, A. N., Jacob, F., Anderson, M. C., Kustas, W. P., Timmermans, W., Gieske, A., Su, B., Su, H., McCabe, M. F., Li, F., Prueger, J. H. and Brusnell, N. (2005). “Surface energy fluxes with the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection radiometer (ASTER) at the Iowa 2002 SMACEX site (USA).”Rem. Sens. Environ. 99(1-2): 55-65.

McCabe, M. F., Prata, A. J. and Kalma, J. D. (2002). “A comparison of brightness temperatures derived from geostationary and polar orbiting satellites.” CSIRO Atmospheric Research Technical Paper. (31). Aspendale, Victoria, Australia

McCabe, M. F., Franks, S. W. and Kalma, J. D. (2001). Improved conditioning of SVAT models with observations of infrared surface temperatures. Soil Vegetation Atmosphere Transfer Schemes and Large Scale Hydrological Models. A. J. Dolman, A. J. Hall, M. L. Kavvas, T. Oki and J. W. Pomeroy. Wallingford, UK., Int. Assoc. of Hydrol. Sci. (IAHS). Publ. 270: pp. 217–224.

Books, Reports and Invited Chapters (top)

McCabe, M. F. (2003). "Uncertainty modeling and regional scale estimation of evapotranspiration: improving predictions using remotely sensed surface temperatures" Dept. Civil, Surveying and Environmental Engineering, University of Newcastle, NSW Australia. Unpublished PhD Thesis

McCabe, M. F. (1997). "Topographic analysis and an assessment of terrain based erosion indices in the Williams River Catchment" Dept. Civil, Surveying and Environmental Engineering. Newcastle, Australia, University of Newcastle: p120. Unpublished Honours Thesis

Kalma, J. D., Franks, S. W., Van Den Hurk, B. J. J. M., McCabe, M. F., and Feddes, R. A. (1999). "Estimating large scale landsurface fluxes: the use of remote sensing data with SVAT and NWP models" Report No. 90, Department of Environmental Sciences, Wageningen University, Netherlands, 24 pp.

Kalma, J. D., Feddes, R. A., Boulet, G., McCabe, M. F., and Franks, S. W. (1999). "Towards effective land surface parameters for use with SVAT models: the use of similarity scaling and inversion techniques" Report No. 89, Department of Environmental Sciences, Wageningen University, Netherlands, 21 pp.