Education & Outreach

Summer Engineering Internships

Tom Brimeyer and Luke Swartwood, two of ATD's engineering students, with their mentor Ned Chamberlain, getting ready for BAMEX Mobile GLASS operation.For the last four years, ATD has been developing a small-scale summer internship program for undergraduates in electrical, mechanical and software engineering. These internships are targeted towards introducing undergraduates to various engineering aspects of developing, improving and deploying atmospheric observing systems.

The project started in FY2000 with one undergraduate student from Western Wyoming Community College (WWCC) and has since expanded - in FY03, with additional funding from the NCAR Director’s Office, ATD hired nine students for the summer. Florence Manega, Lloyd Rochester, Cody Rucker and Sears Merritt from the University of Colorado, Tom Brimeyer from the University of Florida, Ellen Reynolds from Hope College in Michigan, Rachel Albrecht from Columbia University in New York, Eric Stith from the University of North Dakota, and Rob Wilmetti from Western Wyoming Community College spent half of their summer in Boulder, working with ATD staff on various electrical and mechanical engineering challenges. Most of them spent the second half participating in the Bow Echo and MCV Experiment (BAMEX) operating two MGLASS systems in the Midwest.

ATD considers this program a large success and several of the students have come back for a second year. Ned Chamberlain and Brigitte Baeuerle are responsible for setting up and running the program; Ned Chamberlain, Terry Hock, Junhong Wang, Tammy Weckwerth, Scott Spuler, Mike Spowart, Shane Mayor, Chris Burghart, Mike Daniels and Tim Lim served as mentors in FY03. In FY04, ATD will once again rely on these students to help with a major summer field project.

HIAPER Educational Documentary

The HIAPER Project Office began work with the UCAR Education and Outreach (E&O) office to develop an educational program for the HIAPER project. Components of this program consist of the filming of two prime-time quality documentaries on the making of HIAPER and the science to be done with the platform and the creation of accompanying web-based educational materials to be used in the classroom and by the general public. Please visit HIAPER's website for more news and upcoming events.

BAMEX Student Participation

Emily Wheeler and Katie Derner with two of the WMI Learjet pilots at the BAMEX Operations Center during the daily project meeting.In addition to the nine engineering students, three other undergraduate students were heavily involved in the BAMEX field project.

Emily Wheeler, a meteorology student from the University of Oklahoma, Katie Derner, an environmental science major from Augustana College and Joe Grim, a meteorology student from the University of Illinois served as dropsonde operators on the Weather Modification Inc. Lear Jet for the duration of the project. Katie spent an additional six weeks in Boulder to work with Junhong Wang and Kate Beierle on data processing and quality control of BAMEX up- and dropsonde data. In addition, Luke Swartwood from the University of South Florida and Eric Debenham from the University of Wyoming helped once again with MGLASS operations.

Instrument Development and Education in Airborne Science
(IDEAS II and III)

ATD conducted Phase II and III of IDEAS in FY 2003, in October 2002 and September 2003, respectively. The programs, which involve the NSF/NCAR C-130, have a strong education & outreach impact as they provide opportunities for university students to learn about observational science by testing airborne instrumentation for future NSF airborne deployments.

The "idea" for the IDEAS program was born in fall of 2000 during a facility review session at UCAR’s annual Members Meeting. Several members expressed a desire to have access to facilities that are not easily available to them, such as research aircraft, but are essential for testing new instruments they have or are developing. Previous UCAR Members' Meetings identified another need: to train students in observational science. There are few opportunities for students to fly on research aircraft and to actually participate in airborne measurements of clouds or other constituents of the atmosphere.

IDEAS students were required to select a mentor from among the participating scientists and then joined the flight crew operating instrumentation and data systems after suitable instruction by NCAR scientists and technicians. Research flights, originating from the RAF facility at the Jefferson County airport in Broomfield, CO, were conducted between 1 and 31 October 2002 and 15 August and 19 September 2003 in both clear and cloudy conditions to test community, NCAR and RAF instruments for airborne measurements. For example, one of the instruments tested was a new CO2 mixing ration/flux instrument, currently being developed by the NCAR Airborne Community Trace Gas Measurement Group (ATD/ACD) as part of the Biogeosciences Initiative.

Student Visits - Scientific

As part of an effort to develop a new Laser Spectrometer for High Precision Measurements of 13CO2/12CO2 Isotopic Ratios, the APOL group hosts each summer two teachers and students from local area high schools to help APOL scientists work on all phases of this project. This effort is in partnership with NCAR’s Education and Outreach Program. The first summer has just been completed, and the students/teachers were exposed to a number of new concepts, including:

a) Carbon dioxide research and the utility of high precision isotopic ratio measurements.
b) Absorption spectroscopy and how one employs laser light sources to obtain quantitative results.
c) Telecommunication lasers, fiber optic technology, and new non-linear mixing processes.

The students/teachers were very enthusiastic about their experiences and are in the process of preparing a presentation/demonstration for the Colorado Science Convention. A demonstration system is being constructed in an effort to allow high school teachers to bring advances in carbon dioxide research, such as the new system being developed at NCAR, into the classroom.

Student Visits - Non Scientific

ATD's Lou Verstaete demonstrates the MGLASS Observing Facility to a group of schoolchildren during LUCIE.During LUCIE, elementary and middle school students visited the MGLASS launching side at the local soccer field of Las Palmitas, Costa Rica on a daily basis. The local English teacher not only used the opportunity to explain the connection between deforestation and change in local climate to her students but also invited the MGLASS operators (Lou Verstraete, Brigitte Baeuerle) to the nearby school to allow her students to practice their English.

When not in the field, ATD continues to support education by giving mobile GLASS demonstrations throughout the year on a non-interference basis. Additionally ATD participated in larger UCAR sponsored events such as Super Science Saturday and other open houses.

UCAR's summer student leadership program began with an introduction and tour of ATD systems including the DFS shop, the APOL lab and a show and tell of the new rapid DOWs. ATD also hosted a visit by 20 students from Augustana College with majors in geology, geography and general environmental sciences. On 7 March 2003, 100 kids from the Rocky Mountain School for the Gifted and Creative, ranging from 4 to 12 visited JeffCo to get a tour of the C-130.

Postdocs and Graduate Students

ATD plays a strong role in traditional graduate student education. Graduate students participate in all programs that use ATD systems, often developing their research and leadership skills by serving as mission coordinators, flight scientists, daily operations managers, etc. Graduate students involved in field projects and many others not directly involved use ATD data sets in their research and Theses.

In FY 2003, ATD hosted Huaquin Cai, a post doc from the University of California, Los Angeles, who is working with Wen Chau on ELDORA data. ATD, together with ASP and MMM, funded Marie Lothon, a visiting scientist from CNRS, France. She was heavily involved in utilizing the Wyoming Cloud Radar (WCR) for turbulence measurements in the stratocumulus-capped marine boundary layer from DYCOMS-II. The results of this study should be of considerable benefit to future applications of the WCR for PBL turbulence research. Amanda Cox from the University of Colorado has been funded by ATD for the fourth year in a row to work on the AIMR instrument. ATD also sponsored Maria Andrea Lima, a PhD student at the University of the State of Sao Paulo (UNESP) in Bauru, Brazil, to work with Jim Wilson on Convective Storm Initiation using data from two Doppler radars with clear air capabilities located near Bauru and S-pol data from LBA/TRMM.