GLOBE Scientists' Blog

This week we have a guest blogger.  Emily Robitschek is currently a senior at Arvada West High School near Denver, Colorado.  Emily worked in the GLOBE Program Office (GPO) in the summer of 2011 as part of a high school research internship program (HIRO) at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR).  Emily is currently applying to college and plans to double major in biological sciences and foreign language.

I’d never really thought of doing a scientific project before, in part because my school doesn’t put a big emphasis on science projects and science fairs.  However, after I found out about the UCAR HIRO internship (now SPARK Pre-College Internship) by accident, I really wanted to apply to the program so I could learn about atmospheric science. The HIRO internship gave me opportunities to participate in actual research and work with established scientists and was a very fulfilling experience. As a young, inexperienced yet enthusiastic scientist, it helped me get a sense of what working in a science field would actually be like, which is how I first landed at the GLOBE office. I remember being very intimidated the first day by meeting all these scientists and getting my first office all to myself in the GLOBE headquarters. At the time I was thinking, “Wow. All these people actually do this for a living. I bet they have all probably published papers or aided in research and improved society in some way.” I was slightly scared, but the GLOBE office was a welcoming environment and with the help of my mentors and the staff there I quickly settled in, becoming close with many of my co-workers. (They’re all so nice and wonderful!)

Collecting GLOBE data with Gary Randolph (GPO).

Dr. Sarah Tessendorf and Jessica Mackaro let me pick my topic for research with the suggestion that it be related to Colorado climate. That’s how I first started doing research on pine beetles and their impact on climate. Specifically, I looked at how trees dying because of mountain pine beetle could change the amount of sunlight that reaches the ground, and the possible implications of that on hydrological processes. Although at first the topic seemed rather inconsequential, I started to become more and more interested in it as I learned about the impacts of the pine beetle epidemic. Armed with raw data from Dr. Dave Gochis, I began the laborious process of learning what science is like in the “real world.” These processes were both more tedious (with data screening and the inevitable multitude of sources of error) and more enjoyable (discussing results and exploring possibilities with scientists who seemed suspiciously like normal people) than I expected them to be. I learned that while television shows like NOVA and CSI might portray research as being a very speedy process, it’s actually quite slow. But from my internship I learned the valuable skill of thoroughness, and tried my best to carefully consider every possibility within my project, from data screening to analysis and conclusions.

Presenting a poster of my results at the UCAR symposium and the 2012 American Meteorological Society Conference in New Orleans was nerve-wracking.  However, as a student scientist these experiences were some of the most enjoyable things I did in connection with UCAR and GLOBE, and well worth any nervousness I experienced. I learned a lot about science and scientific instruments at the conference, even as my journey between conference booths devolved into a search for candy and pens. I talked to a guy at one booth about pyranometers, which are the instruments I used in my data analysis.  We talked about how they work, what the advantages of certain models are, and how error can be minimized for over half an hour, and then he gave me a book to read more about it.

UCAR symposium poster presentation

Looking back I am really happy that I met the people I did, and got the opportunity to research the climate effects of pine beetles. I can’t believe they even let me have my own office—I was 17 and I had my own office, a computer, and a badge that unlocked doors. That’s basically what this research internship did for me—unlock doors, not just in a physical sense, but in an intellectual sense as well; I grew even more passionate about science and confident that I could actually do research. Pretty cool.

–Emily Robitschek

In December 2007, I arrived in Australia for the first time ever.  It was a critically dry period for the region, as they were in the midst of a terrible drought.  Immediately upon my arrival, there were signals of a community in dire straits.  Instead of advertisements for products and services, the signs in the airport were encouraging water conservation.  My hotel bathroom had a message affixed to the mirror asking me to limit my shower time and water usage.  The dams were drying up and many communities faced running out of water in just mere months.  As a result, the local governments had enacted extreme water restrictions, and whether you were a resident or a visitor, you could not escape the reality of the situation: water was scarce.

The reason I was visiting Australia was not for a vacation to see kangaroos and koalas and drive on the left side of the road (although I certainly had several opportunities for all of this during my visit).  Rather, I had been given the exciting opportunity to participate in a field campaign that was taking place along the coast in southeast Queensland, based out of Brisbane.  The purpose of the field campaign was to study how rain forms in the local clouds and investigate if seeding the clouds with giant salt particles could help enhance the amount of rain that they produce [For more about this topic, see About Cloud Seeding].

The field campaign involved an aircraft outfitted with a variety of instruments to measure the clouds from the inside and a sophisticated, dual-polarization weather radar to remotely measure properties of the clouds.  Every day I went to our project airport hangar and briefed the pilots and flight crew on the weather forecast for the day, and then I went to the radar facility to watch the day’s weather unfold.  When the clouds started to form, I got on the radio and spoke to the pilots to direct them to the clouds.  The aircraft flew below the clouds and then into the clouds at a variety of heights, sampling the atmosphere and cloud properties along the way.

Research aircraft with close-ups of the instruments mounted under the wings.

Photo of a cloud that the research aircraft is about to fly through.

This was a typical day for me during two austral summers between December 2007 and March 2009.  We are still analyzing all of the data that was collected during the field campaign, but one thing that we learned is that aerosol particles in the region are quite variable from day-to-day.  The aerosol conditions in this coastal region are sometimes influenced by the adjacent ocean (which brings clean maritime air, with few aerosol particles, onshore) and on other days the aerosol concentrations are higher due to influences from urban pollution, sugar cane fires, and dust from the interior of the continent.  Because cloud droplets cannot form in our atmosphere completely on their own (they need an aerosol particle to condense onto), aerosol conditions can have impacts on the way a cloud, and rain, forms.  The dual-polarization radar data from the field campaign is showing signs of just that: the sizes of the raindrops are forming differently under maritime influences than the influence of the city or interior continent.  Working to understand these kinds of local impacts on rainfall is important when rain is desperately needed.

CP-2 dual-polarization radar antenna.

Suggested activity: Monitor drought with long-term precipitation measurements.  Use a long-term observation station near your school and look at precipitation trends over the past few decades and calculate the normal (average) precipitation over that period (for climatological studies use at least a 30-year period of data).  The GLOBE website provides long-term data via Google Earth.  Was there an extended period of below normal precipitation?

-ST