Prof. Ghislain Picard

Ghislain Picard (PhD awarded in 2005) is a Professor at the Institut des Géosciences de l’Environnement, at Université Grenoble Alpes in France. He has a background in remote sensing and snow science. He has a specific interest in the polar regions, Antarctica and the Arctic, and on the interactions between snow and the atmosphere. Using satellite and in-situ observations, as well as radiative transfer modeling and surface energy budget modeling, he studies how snow is changing on the ice-sheets, on sea-ice, and alpine regions in relationship with climate change.

In remote sensing, he is a specialist of the microwave domain, but also works with visible / near-infrared observations, and more recently started to exploit thermal high-resolution imagery. He is a developer of the Snow Microwave Radiative Transfer model (SMRT), and is P.I. of the Cryosphere Theme for the thermal satellite TRISHNA mission (CNES/ISRO). Regarding snow, his expertise encompasses snow microstructure, snow metamorphisms, and snow surface processes. He is leading a long-term science program on snow in Antarctica.

His research is funded by the European Space Agency (ESA), the French Space Agency (CNES) and other public sources. He was a scientific visitor at the Institute of Marine and Antarctic Science (IMAS), Hobart, Tasmania, in 2015/2016.