Biographical Sketch
National Center for Atmospheric Research
Boulder, Colorado

As head of the InFlight Icing Product Development Team, Dr. Politovich leads in-flight icing research effort under the FAA-sponsored Aviation Weather Research Program. In addition to coordinating activities under this program, her contributions include analyses of weather conditions leading to icing, evaluation of the effects of icing on flight, and the use of combined remote sensors to diagnose icing altitudes. She was also the head of the Scientific Steering Committee for the Winter Icing and Storms Project (WISP), an inter-agency cooperative winter weather project, and has served as Co-Operations Director for the four WISP field efforts from 1990 through 1994. She was Operations Director the follow-on Mt. Washington Icing Sensors Project (MWISP) which took place in New Hampshire in spring 1999.

Dr. Politovich's educational background is in the area of cloud physics. In summer 1976, she was an observer onboard the University of Washington's B-23 research aircraft as part of the High Plains Experiment, and the data collected in seeded and natural clouds formed the basis of her Master's thesis. At the University of Wyoming she worked as a Research Associate and analyzed data sets from the Elk Mountain Observatory, both for evaluation of droplet and ice particle measuring instruments and for weather studies. She was Co-PI (with G. Vali) of the Wyoming Queen Air studies of convective clouds during CCOPE in 1981, and also worked on a project to characterize icing environments at altitudes <10,000 ft. AGL. In 1982 she returned to school to pursue the Ph.D. in Atmospheric Science; her dissertation examined the effect of turbulence on the broadening of droplet size distributions in cumuli.

Current research interests include quantification of atmospheric parameters leading to different icing types and intensities, remote sensing of icing conditions, and further analyses of icing environments and their effect on aircraft. She also teaches aircraft icing basics and forecast techniques to National Weather Service and military forecasters as part of the Cooperative Operational Meteorology Education and Training courses, and is the Subject Matter Expert for the current series on Inflight Icing for Forecasters. She serves as an advisor to the FAA InFlight Aircraft Icing Steering Committee and is In Situ Instrumentation Editor for J. Atmos. Ocean. Sciences.

Marcia lives with her husband, Brooks Martner (a radar meteorologist at NOAA), and their two weather cats Nimbus and Cumulus, in Lafayette, CO.