Scott Spuler

Research Eng IV

303-497-2014

Information

Bio

Scott Spuler is a Research Engineer in the Earth Observing Laboratory of NCAR. He holds a B.S. in Civil/Environmental Engineering from Virginia Tech and received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Applied Optics/Engineering Systems from Colorado School of Mines in 1999 and 2001; respectively. His research interests include the development of innovative optical and laser-based instrument systems that can be applied to enhance the understanding of the atmosphere. His work encompasses a portfolio of 12 patents issued, along with one pending patent, accompanied by 36 refereed scientific publications.

Scott's contributions to atmospheric science include his role in the design of a rapid-scanning eye-safe lidar system capable of atmospheric flow visualization which garnered multiple patents and found practical utility in the realm of U.S. national homeland security between 2007 and 2012. Moreover, he designed the optical and laser delivery system for a unique holographic cloud particle probe. Using this instrument, scientists could for the first time study the local structure and spatial distribution of cloud particles. Scott served as the principal investigator for the creation of a laser-based instrument to measure wind velocities in the undisturbed flow ahead of aircraft. This innovative instrument played a pivotal role in calibrating aircraft sensors and facilitating unprecedented accuracy in airspeed, pressure, and temperature measurements.

In more recent years, Scott has led a team in the creation of a cost-effective laser remote sensor for profiling atmospheric water vapor, quantitative clouds/aerosol properties, and temperature. This advancement is critically needed for a national mesoscale weather observation network and is of particular importance to the National Weather Service and other Federal agencies for forecasting severe weather and for improving quantitative precipitation forecasts.

Publications

Spuler S., M. Linne, A. Sappey, S. Snyder, 2000: Development of a cavity ringdown laser absorption spectrometer for detection of trace levels of mercury. Appl. Optics, 39, 2480-2486.
Dreyer C.B, S. M. Spuler, and M. Linne, 2001: Calibration of Laser Induced Fluorescence of the OH radical by Cavity Ringdown Spectroscopy in Premixed Atmospheric Flames. Combust. Sci. Technol., 171, 163-190.
Spuler S. and M. Linne, 2002: Numerical analysis of beam propagation in pulsed cavity ringdown spectroscopy. Appl. Optics, 41, 2858-2868.*
Mayor S. and S. M. Spuler, 2004: Raman-shifted Eye-safe Aerosol Lidar. Appl.Optics, 43, 3915-3924.
Spuler S. M. and S. Mayor, 2005: Scanning eye-safe elastic backscatter lidar at 1.54 microns. J. Atmos. Oceanic Technol., 22, 696-703
Huang X. P, S. M. Spuler and A. D Sappey, 2007: Varied Line-space grating for flat spectral response of coupling to single mode fiber. Appl. Optics, 46, 147-153
Mayor S. D., S. M. Spuler, B. Morley, E. Loew, 2007: Polarization lidar at 1.54 um and observations of plumes from aerosol generators. Opt.l Eng., 46, 096201-11
Refaat, T. F., S. Ismail, T. L. Mack, M. N. Abedin, S. D. Mayor, S. M. Spuler, 2007: Infrared Phototransistor Validation for Atmospheric Remote Sensing Application using the Raman-Shifted Eye-Safe Aerosol Lidar (REAL). Opt.l Eng., 46, 086001-8.
Spuler S. M. and S. D. Mayor, 2007: Raman shifter optimized for lidar at 1.5 microns. Appl. Optics, 46, 2990-2995.
Warner T., P. Benda, S. Swerdlin, J. Knievel, E. Argenta, B. Aronian, B. Balsey, J. Bowers, R. Carter, K. Clawson, J. Copeland, A. Crook, R. Frehlich, M. Jensen, Y. Liu, S. Mayor, Y. Meillier, B. Morley, R. Sharman, S. Spuler, D. Storwold, J. Sun, J. Weil, M. Xu, A. Yates, Y. Zhang, 2007: The Pentagon Shield Field Program – Toward Critical Infrastructure Protection. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 88, 167-176
Refaat, T. F., S. Ismail, M. N. Abedin, S. M. Spuler, S. D. Mayor, U. N. Singh, 2008: Lidar backscatter signal recovery from phototransistor systematic effect by deconvolution. Appl. Optics, 47, 5281-5295
Spuler, S. M., J. Fugal, 2011: Design of an in-line, digital holographic imaging system for airborne measurement of clouds. Appl. Optics, 50, 1405-1412.
Spuler, S. M., D. Richter, M. P. Spowart, and K. Rieken, 2011: Optical fiber-based laser remote sensor for airborne measurement of wind velocity and turbulence. Appl. Optics, 50, 842-851.
Lewander, M., A. Fried, P. Weibring, D. Richter, S. Spuler, and L. Rippe, 2011: Fast and sensitive time multiplexed gas sensing of multiple lines using a miniature telecom diode laser between 1529 nm and 1565 nm. Appl. Phys. B, 104(3), 715-723.
Patton, E, T. Horst, P. Sullivan, D. Lenschow, S. Oncley, W. Brown, S. Burns, A. Guenther, A. Held, T. Karl, S. Mayor, L. Rizzo, S. Spuler, J. Sun, A. Turnipseed, E. Allwine, S. Edburg, B. Lamb, R. Avissar, R. Calhoun, J. Kleissl, W. Massman, K. Paw, J. Weil, 2011: The Canopy Horizontal Array Turbulence Study. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 92, 593-611.
Hayman, M., S. Spuler, B. Morley, and J. VanAndel, 2012: Polarization lidar operation for measuring backscatter phase matrices of oriented scatterers. Opt. Express, 20, 29553-67.
Repasky K.S., D. Moen, S. Spuler, A. R. Nehrir, J. Carlsten, 2013: Progress towards an Autonomous field deployable diode-laser-based differential absorption lidar (DIAL) for profiling water vapor in the lower troposphere. Remote Sens., 5, 6241-6259.
Hayman, M., S. Spuler, and B. Morley, 2014: Polarization lidar observations of backscatter phase matrices from oriented ice crystals and rain. Opt. Express, 22, 16976-90.
Cooper W. A., S. Spuler, M. Spowart, D. H. Lenschow, and R. B. Friesen, 2014: Calibrating airborne measurements of airspeed, pressure and temperature using a Doppler laser air-motion sensor. Atmos. Meas. Tech., 7, 3215-3231.
Richter, D., P. Weibring, J. G. Walega, A. Fried, S. M. Spuler, and M. S. Taubman, 2015: Compact Highly Sensitive Multi-species Airborne Mid-IR Spectrometer. Appl. Phys. B., 1-13. (doi:10.1007/s00340-015-6038-8)
Spuler, S. M., Repasky K.S., D. Moen, B. Morley, M. Hayman, A. R. Nehrir, 2015: Field deployable diode-laser-based differential absorption lidar (DIAL) for profiling water vapor. Atmos. Meas. Tech., 8, 1073-1087. (doi:10.5194/amt-8-1073-2015)
Beals, M. J., J. P. Fugal, R. A. Shaw, J. Lu, S. M. Spuler, J. L. Stith, 2015: Holographic measurements of inhomogeneous cloud mixing at the centimeter scale. Science, 350 (6256), 87-90 (doi: 10.1126/science.aab075)
Mayor, S. P. Derian, C. Mauzey, S. Spuler, P. Ponsardin, J. Pruitt, D.l Ramsey, and Scott Higdon, 2016: Comparison of an analog direct detection and a micropulse aerosol lidar at 1.5µm wavelength for wind field observations – with first results over the ocean. JARS, 10, 016031-1-16. (doi: 10 .1117/1.JRS.10.016031)
Weckwerth, T. M., K. Weber, D. D. Turner, S. M. Spuler, 2016: Validation of a Water Vapor Micropulse Differential Absorption Lidar (DIAL). J. Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology (33) 2353-2372 (doi: 10.1175/JTECH-D-16-0119.1)
Hayman, M., and S. Spuler, 2017: Demonstration of a diode-laser-based high spectral resolution lidar (HSRL) for quantitative profiling of clouds and aerosols. Optics Express, 25(24) A1096 (doi 10.1364/OE.25.0A1096)
Bunn C., K. Repasky, M. Hayman, R. Stillwell and S. Spuler, 2018: Perturbative solution to the two component atmosphere DIAL equation for improving the accuracy of the retrieved absorption coefficient, Appl. Opt. 57(16), 4440-4450. (doi: 10.1364/AO.57.004440)
Fernando, H., J. Mann, J. Palma, J. Lundquist, R. Barthelmie, M. BeloPereira, W. Brown, F. Chow, T. Gerz, C. Hocut, P. Klein, L. Leo, J. Matos, S. Oncley, S. Pryor, L. Bariteau, T. Bell, N. Bodini, M. Carney, M. Courtney, E. Creegan, R. Dimitrova, S. Gomes, M. Hagen, J. Hyde, S. Kigle, R. Krishnamurthy, J. Lopes, L. Mazzaro, J. Neher, R. Menke, P. Murphy, L. Oswald, S. Otarola-Bustos, A. Pattantyus, C. Rodrigues, A. Schady, N. Sirin, S. Spuler, E. Svensson, J. Tomaszewski, D. Turner, L. van Veen, N. Vasiljevic, D. Vassallo, S. Voss, N. Wildmann, and Y. Wang, 2018: The Perdigão: Peering into Microscale Details of Mountain Winds. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc. (doi: 10.1175/BAMS-D-17-0227.1)
Hayman M, R. Stillwell, and S.Spuler, 2019: Fast computation of absorption spectra for lidar data processing using principal component analysis. Opt. Lett. 44, 1900-1903 (doi: 10.1364/OL.44.001900)
Repasky, K. S., C. E. Bunn, M. Hayman, R. A. Stillwell, and S. M. Spuler, 2019: Modeling the Performance of a Diode Laser-Based (DLB) Micro-Pulse Differential absorption Lidar (MPD) for Temperature Profiling in the Lower Troposphere. Optics Express, 27(23), 33543-33563 (doi: 10.1364/OE.27.033543)
Stillwell R. A., S. M. Spuler, M. Hayman, K. S. Repasky and C. E. Bunn, 2020: Demonstration of a Combined Differential Absorption and High Spectral Resolution Lidar for Profiling Atmospheric Temperature. Opt. Express, 28(1), 71–93 (doi: 10.1364/OE.379804)
Hayman, M., R. Stillwell, and S. Spuler, 2020: Optimization of linear signal processing in photon counting lidar using Poisson thinning. Optics Letters, 45(18), 5213-5216 (doi: 10.1364/OL.396498)
Spuler, S. M., M. Hayman, R. A. Stillwell, J. Carnes, T. Bernatsky, and Repasky, K. S., 2021: MicroPulse DIAL (MPD) – a diode-laser-based lidar architecture for quantitative atmospheric profiling. Atmos. Meas. Tech., 14(6), 4593–4616. (doi: 10.5194/amt-14-4593-2021)
Spuler S., M. Hayman, T. M. Weckwerth, 2021: Water Vapor Differential Absorption Lidar, In: Foken T (ed.), Handbook of Atmospheric Measurements. Springer Nature, Switzerland, 741-757. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52171-4_26

Curriculum Vitae

Spuler_CV_Sep_2024.pdf

Interests

Scott's research is focused on the development of innovative optical and laser-based instrument systems and the study of the atmosphere using those systems.

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