Singer Joni Mitchell may have been the first to claim she "looked at clouds from both sides now," but her "up and down" views were metaphorical, dealing with emotions. John Roskovensky has done the real thing. Like most of us, he's always looked up at clouds in all their variety, but along with relatively few others, he's also looked down at them through the eyes of orbiting satellites. Or at least through the lens of computer images those satellites take.

A graduate student in atmospheric sciences, John is part of Professor K. N. Liou's Radiation and Remote Sensing Group, a world-renowned team of cloud researchers. Of particular interest to John are cirrus clouds, thin accumulations of ice crystals five to six miles over the earth, which we usually see as wispy or feathery streaks on a clear day-if we see them at all. The best way to study the crystals that compose cirrus clouds is "to go up there with an airplane and stick an oil canvas outside the window and have these things stick to it and then look at it through microscope," John says. Satellites are "the only way to look at the entire atmosphere in an efficient way."

Because they are relatively inaccessible, cirrus clouds haven't been studied nearly as much as the lower-flying, water-bearing clouds that bring us rain showers and the marine layer. But it is possible that cirrus clouds enhance the notorious greenhouse effect. That's because cirrus clouds let in "a lot of visible light, which heats up the earth, and they absorb a great deal of the infrared radiation the earth emits, so they have a warming effect," John explains. Perhaps ominously, cirrus clouds seem to be "increasing, due to air travel and jet fuel and contrails, especially around big cities with busy airports."

John has been interested in clouds and weather since he was a boy growing up in Chicago, a prime venue for weather watchers since it offers so many varieties of weather. John was particularly taken with the powerful thunder and lightning storms that "would spring up from nothing" on a summer evening.

But when he headed to college at the University of Illinois at Urbana, he studied mathematics and computer science-"computers were the thing to do back in the early 1980s," John says. Not wanting to go directly into the corporate job he'd been groomed for, John joined the Peace Corps after graduation. "It seemed like a good opportunity to do something else, and learn something else, and be productive and help others."

John was sent as a high school teacher to Lobamba National High School in rural Swaziland, where he learned that "I enjoyed relaying information to other people," he says. "It was so different from working with a computer. I think I need to work face to face with human beings."

Returning to the United States with a passion for teaching as his lasting souvenir, John took advantage of a program for former Peace Corps volunteers at Columbia University's Teachers College in New York. In two years, he had a master's degree and more teaching experience, at Boys and Girls High in Brooklyn. To celebrate, John decided to visit some Belgian friends he'd met in Swaziland, keeping an eye open for a teaching position that would let him extend his stay a few months

The position turned up serendipitously at the International School in Brussels, and a few years went by before John realized that "this isn't going to be my home, so I better start making plans to do something else." The nature of that something else became clear one wintry day as John looked out over a snowy Belgian landscape. "I realized I had always liked this, but I hadn't considered that you could study the weather," he says. Some quick research provided you could, and "then I was adamant that I knew what I wanted to do."

Where to go was easily resolved as well. UCLA is among the top schools for atmospheric sciences, offering a full range of concentrations "that gave me an opportunity to see everything, because I hadn't narrowed down an exact field." Being in Southern California also promised relief from the dismal, dreary, rainy weather typical of Brussels. "I know it sounds shallow," John says, "but I wanted to be in a place with good weather."

John received the Neiburger Award as Teaching Assistant of the Year in 1998-1999 and his master's degree in 1999. His research hasn't replaced his love of teaching, just kicked it up a notch to the university level. "I don't like a quiet classroom," John says. Rather, he tries to create a place "where people can ask questions and they feel free to raise their hand at any time." John doesn't mind going off on tangents: "If you excite students about the subject and they're interested, then it's worthwhile."

Now beginning his second year on Dr. Liou's team, John is trying to narrow down a dissertation focus. His first step is looking for ways to sort the data that the satellites deliver to UCLA's computers. Because the satellites look straight down through many layers, it can be difficult to assess exactly what you're seeing, John says. Joni Mitchell knows the problem: "It's clouds' illusions I recall. I really don't know clouds at all."

John is determined to have a better outcome.

Published in Fall 2001, Graduate Quarterly