ATD Educational Activities


The ATD Director's Office and the University of Porto, Portugal jointly funded Luis Manual Frolen Ribeiro, a Ph.D. student in the Engineering Department, for a six-month visit with ATD. During his stay, Mr. Ribeiro collaborated with ATD scientists Tom Horst and Steve Oncley in the Energy Balance Experiment (EBEX 2000) and the Subgrid Scale Study (SGS 2000). Both field experiments deployed sonic anemometers in conjunction with other scientific instrumentation to measure atmospheric turbulence. Mr. Ribeiro was intimately involved in the set-up and operation of these instruments, and in the collection, processing and quality control of sonic anemometer data.

The ATD Director's Office also funded Curtis Martin, an undergraduate student from South Western Wyoming Community College for a three-month visit with ATD/SSSF. Mr. Martin was trained by and worked with Ned Chamberlain and Tim Lim in support of MGLASS operations in STEPS.

Ned Chamberlain took advantage of Mobile GLASS's mobility and used this tool to bring weather research to schools around Colorado. In conjunction with the NSF sponsored LEARN project, he visited seven schools in western Colorado where he spoke about research tools and the process for getting data from the instrument to the scientists. At each school a sounding was made so the kids could see the data and watch the balloon disappear into the sky. These types of presentations are also done in the local metro area when time permits.

Steve Cohn held several lectures and worked with undergraduate and graduate students from the University of Michigan as part of the PROPHET field experiment. From June 25 to August 15, 2000, one ISS was deployed at the University of Michigan Biological Station near Pellston, MI. Jennie Moody (University of Virginia) for this educational project, which instructed students in making meteorological measurements.

Wen-Chau Lee and Craig Walther, both RSF, organized the NCAR Airborne Doppler Radar Data Analysis Workshop in March 2000. The organizers, other ATD staff, and several outside PIs talked about airborne Doppler operations and presented analysis cases to approximately a dozen students. The feedback received after the workshop was full of praise.

Wen Chau Lee has acted as an advisor to Pao-Liang Chang, Ph.D, 2000, National Taiwan University, Peter D.-G. Pan, Ph.D, 1999: St. Louis University and Hua-Qing Cai, Ph.D candidate, University of California, at Los Angeles.

Steve Semmer helped Scott Laursen, a graduate student in the Botany Department of the University of Wyoming to use the ATD wind tunnel facility. Laursen is attempting to model pollen flux through Wyoming's Shirley Basin and needed to calibrate his anemometer to receive accurate micromet data.

Volker Wulfmeyer gave several seminars on lidar measurements during a visit to Germany from end of June until end of August 2000. He talked about Doppler lidar technique and measurements at the Institute for Meteorology and the Institute for Laserphysics at the University of Hamburg, Germany, at the Institute for Tropospheric Research in Leipzig, Germany, and at the German Aerospace Agency in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany.

Lawrence Radke was interviewed by a variety of television and radio stations, including: Discovery Channel (Storms December 1999), National Public Radio National News (Wildfire Hazards September 2000), and Grenada Television's Savage Planet Series (Fire October 2000). Larry also provided technical information, equipment, and acted as a presentor with M. Celaya from the Denver Museum of Natural History for a public forum on global change in October 2000.

Tammy Weckwerth ran the ATD seminar series that in addition to several seminars from ATD staff and others within NCAR, included: David Dowell (OU), David Tan (Penn State), Patrick Ponsardin (UW-Madison), Mark Tschudi (CU-Boulder), Rob Newsom (CSU/CIRA & NOAA/ETL), Paquita Zuidema (CU/PAOS), Stephane Oury (CETP, France), Isztar Zawadski (McGill University), Andreas Fix (DLR, German), Pierre Flamant (CNRS, France), Eszter Barthazy (ETH, Switzerland), and Dirk Klugmann (Institute for Tropospheric Research, Germany).