Dr Hugh Mortimer

Developing new instruments to track climate change from space: Hugh Mortimer, STFC

Video credit: UKRI
On-screen captions and an autogenerated transcript is available on YouTube.

In the run-up to the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), we asked our researchers to tell us about their work and the challenges of tackling climate change.

Dr Hugh Mortimer is an Earth observation scientist, which includes many different disciplines of science:

  • biology
  • geology
  • physics
  • engineering.

Hugh’s focus is on developing new types of instruments to be used in space, to help detect different concentrations of gases in the atmosphere. To also map the global temperature distribution of the earth’s surface.

As part of his work, Hugh spends a lot of time in the laboratory conducting experiments, in the clean room to test the instruments, and a quite a bit of time in the field.

Hugh says:

It’s my job to build and develop new types of instruments to be used in space that will give us a view of earth that just isn’t possible from here on the ground. The cameras that I’m developing allow us to see earth in many different wavelengths.

Last updated: 3 November 2021

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