I really mean to update this more often than once every three months. But this semester has proven to be very busy, so this has fallen down my priority list.
While I'm here, and before I recap this semester so far, I want to point anyone whose interested to my new Twitter account (www.twitter.com/benjamonian), where I will be linking to interesting atmospheric/climate/science articles, as well as posting what beers I drink, and other twittery things.
I'm taking three classes which are time consuming and challenging. The first is a graduate Advanced Atmospheric Dynamics, which is more a math (calculus) class than anything else. It's all about fronts, waves, cyclones, momentum, vorticity, circulation, and atmospheric processes, but it heavily (very) focused on the math and derivations, rather than contemplation of the processes in a conceptual framework. Therefore, it's rather dull. Math is all well and good, but pages and pages of symbols doesn't satisfy me.
The second is a graduate Multivariate Statistics class, which is great. It's all about how to look at datasets that are too large to easily visualize (e.g. 50 years worth of daily maximum and minimum temperatures over the entire globe) and figure out what patterns exist, how to find them, and how to decide what's an important signal or not. It's also math (linear algebra) intensive, but has more information that I'll actually use.
The third is a one-credit class called The Scientific Method in Practice, and is basically a walk through of Hugh Gaugh, Jr.'s book of the same name, taught by him. It's a wonderful break from all the math, and explores some of the philosophy, methods, thinking, and reasoning behind all the science that I've been using. It's like a breath of fresh air.
In other news, I submitted my first paper to the Journal of Geophysical Research. It took me nearly two years (but there were HUGE learning curves in that time). Hopefully, my other two papers will take only a year (or so). The manuscript is about 6,000 words, with 6 figures, and 2 tables. I'll hear back from the three reviewers in several weeks, and I'll post more on that process to show a slice of the scientist's life. :)
And my current work is starting new simulations with the global climate model, starting a long-term project looking at the emission possibilities for the northeastern US out to 2050. The current task is to compare a model run where we provide observed winds (that's called an offline run) to a run where the model calculates its own winds (called online). Then we'll compare both of those to available observations, to see how well the model does. This should take a long time, but I'd like to tackle it all sooner, rather than later.
There's a quick update. I'll have more soon, like another post regarding the Japanese nuclear power plant, and why we shouldn't worry about the effects here in the US.
