Larry L. Gordley

President, CEO

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Larry founded GATS in 1986. The founding was motivated by a request from Lockheed Martin for an algorithm that would supply the radiative transfer calculations necessary for analyzing measurements from their Cryogenic Limb Array Etalon Spectrometer (CLAES). That request was the genesis of GATS, which has performed similar work for a variety of orbiting infrared observation systems for 37 years. Larry had developed such algorithms for the Limb Infrared Measurement of the Stratosphere (LIMS) instrument that was on the NIMBUS 7 satellite. GATS has now supplied similar services for many major infrared sensors observing the atmospheric limb from orbit, including HALOE, ISAMS, SABER and SOFIE instruments on the satellites platforms UARS, TIMED and AIM. GATS also performs sensor operations for many of those sensors, and leads the sensor operations activities for SABER and SOFIE, and the SAGE III instrument on the ISS. The functionality of the core infrared radiation modeling codes used to service those missions are now available to, and used by, hundreds of students and researchers around the world at the GATS website https://www.spectralcalc.com.

In 2010 Dr. David Fritts and his team of atmospheric dynamics researchers joined GATS and motivated ideas for new approaches to observing upper atmosphere dynamics. The most successful development spawned by this merger is the DWTS sensor that employs a new technique for using infrared emission spectra and gas filtering to simultaneously measure wind and temperature, from stratosphere well into the thermosphere (40 to 250 km day and night). This technology promises to provide an unprecedented window to upper altitude dynamics, for not only earth, but other planetary atmospheres, with huge potential for aiding atmospheric forecasting.