Hal Woolf
1940 – 2009

The following tribute to Hal, an active member in the ITWG, was presented at the ITSC-17 (Monterey, CA) in April 2010.

During the conference special evening session, Bill Smith, Paul Menzel, John Eyre, Roger Sanders, Allen Huang and Tom Achtor recalled Hal’s life and his contribution to NESDIS/NOAA, ITWG and to the development and use of direct broadcast processing packages and radiative transfer models.

Hal Woolf, a lifelong NOAA scientist, made significant contributions to the meteorological satellite remote sensing community, both nationally and internationally. Hal was a pioneer in atmospheric sounding and fast radiative transfer modeling. His collection of meteorological data spanning more than 30 years was of unique importance in efforts to validate satellite sounding profiles and which also provided climatology data for the development of various sounding and imaging sensors’ statistical/physical forward models.

At ITSC, Hal continued his leadership role in introducing new satellite systems into operations and assisting the international user community in achieving regional applications. He is remembered globally for the timely update of his data processing packages with each new sensor system.

Hal set a high standard for scientific competence and professionalism. We, his colleagues, knew we could rely on him and often did. His contributions to environmental remote sensing have played a significant part in advancing weather monitoring and forecasting in the past decades.

He will be sadly missed by the ITWG. Hal’s legacy is carried into the future by a remote sensing community that has so richly benefited from Hal’s many decades of devoted effort.