Jared Entin

Jared Entin is the Program Manager for the Terrestrial Hydrology Program (THP) in the Earth Science Division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. He is Program Scientist for the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission and Deputy Program Scientist for the Surface Water Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission. Jared is the Research and Analysis program lead for the High Mountain Asia program.

Jared oversees THP support of scientific research to better understand remote sensing approaches and how they can help us assess the stores of water on and in the land. The research covers water in: soil (soil moisture), snowpacks (e.g. snow water equivalent and snow albedo), rivers (discharge), surface water and groundwater. The THP program invests in water quality remote sensing focusing on in-land water and coastal regions. The program supports land surface modeling and the use of data assimilation, and more recently machine learning approaches, to fuse multiple sources of environmental information into a holistic assessment of the water entering, residing in, and leaving the land surface.

As water is a fundamental component to many earth, human, and societal systems, Jared coordinates with other NASA Earth Science programs, Federal agencies, and international organizations to improve the use of NASA data and models in better understanding and predicting the role of water in extreme events (e.g. floods, droughts) and critical society activities (e.g. agriculture, drinking water).

Jared received a B.S. in meteorology from the University of Michigan, and a Masters and PhD in meteorology from the University of Maryland. He started as a contractor at NASA Goddard, working on the beginnings of the Land Data Assimilation System (LDAS) before moving to NASA HQ in 2002 to become the THP manager. Jared led the definition and beginnings of the Water and Energy cycle focus area and the Water Resources program (within the ESD Applied Sciences program) in the mid-2000s. Over the years, he has represented NASA to OSTP as the NASA representative on the Subcommittee for Water Quality and Availability and as a co-lead for water cycle interagency groups of the United States Global Change Research Program (USGCRP).