Staff Notes Daily Announcements

Presenting Data and Information: A Summary of the Edward Tufte Course and Its Relevant Lessons for NCAR Scientists

David John Gagne II

National Center for Atmospheric Research

I recently attended the one-day course on “Presenting Data and Information” by Edward Tufte, a major pioneer of data visualization, thanks to generous support from Dr. Doug Nychka and IMAGe. During the course, Tufte covered important principles of analytical design and guidelines for giving effective presentations. He also provided his perspective on a wide range of topics related to data visualization and showcased visualizations that exemplified his design principles. In this seminar, I will highlight important lessons from the course, analyze some of the featured visualizations, and discuss how NCAR scientists can incorporate these design principles into their scientific workflows.

Tuesday, July 25, 2017

12:00pm – 1:00pm

Mesa Lab, 680 - Penthouse

(Bring your lunch)

A Beginners Introduction to the Analog Ensemble Technique

LAURA CLEMENTE-HARDING | THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY, UNIVERSITY PARK, PA, AND THE ENGINEER RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT CENTER, ALEXANDRIA, VA

Have you heard about the Analog Ensemble (AnEn) technique? Would you like to learn more about the technique and its evolution? Want to learn its possible applications and the current state-of-the-art research being conducted using this technique? Then come for a beginners adventure into the AnEn technique brought to you by the Warner Internship for Scientific Enrichment (WISE) Program!

 The Analog Ensemble (AnEn) technique was developed to generate a probability distribution function (PDF) of an expected outcome from a current deterministic forecast and corresponding sets of historical forecasts and verifying observations. The technique has implications in physical science subject areas where: 1) single deterministic predictions, past predictions, and their corresponding observations are available; 2) it is necessary to have quantifiable and justifiable measures of uncertainty; and 3) computational resources are precious.  The AnEn technique provides an alternative option for generating probabilistic forecasts without requiring the computational expense of a NWP ensemble thus allowing scientists to choose between the tradeoff of higher resolution modeling or ensemble modeling at a coarser resolution. The AnEn improves short-term weather prediction accuracy, decreases real-time computational costs, and provides spatial and temporal uncertainty estimation (Delle Monache et al. 2011; Delle Monache et al. 2013; Alessasndrini et al. 2015; Zhang et al. 2015).  Applications of the technique include but are not limited to: a range of weather parameters (e.g., 10-m and 80-m wind speed, 2-m temperature, relative humidity) solar power forecasting, wind power forecasting, air quality forecasting, tropical cyclone predictions, and downscaling of parameters as wind speed and precipitation.  

Tuesday, July 25, 2017 1:00PM-2:00PM FL2-1001

ACOM Seminar

IASI has been probing the atmosphere for 10 years: Highlights and what’s next

Dr. Cathy Clerbaux
Senior Scientist at LATMOS/CNRS and NCAR Affiliate Scientist

The IASI family of instruments has been sounding the atmosphere since 2006 onboard the Metop series of satellites. Using the radiance data recorded in the thermal infrared spectral range concentrations for atmospheric compounds can be derived, and circulation patterns can be followed from space. Now that a ten year record of trends can be determined, we will be able to manipulate the data in near real time to detect exceptional events, such as large fires, volcanic plumes, specific dynamics events, and high pollution peaks. We will also be able to contribute to future forecasting using data assimilation. The talk will present some recent results and also future plans.

Monday, July 31, 2017, 3:30 p.m.

Refreshments 3:15 p.m.

NCAR Foothills Laboratory

3450 Mitchell Lane, Boulder, CO 80301

FL2-1022, Large Auditorium
Live webcast: http://ucarconnect.ucar.edu/live

ACOM Seminar

Title: New Sensors for large-scale air quality monitoring

Speaker: Suresh Dhaniyala, Bayard D. Clarkson Distinguished Professor of Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering, Clarkson University

Abstract: An important air quality parameter, from a human health perspective, is the mass concentration of particles smaller than 2.5μm, i.e. PM2.5.  The importance of this air quality parameter for human health was first established from a series of epidemiological studies in the US and Europe in 1990s and subsequently ,PM2.5 has become globally accepted as one of the critical measures of air pollution. Conventional PM2.5 monitoring by national agencies has been based on techniques focused on accuracy of mass measurements rather than convenience of deployment. With the need for high temporal- and spatial-resolution of air quality data for health effect studies, newer measurement technologies are increasingly being explored and deployed.

In this talk, I will provide an overview of the currently available low-cost monitoring technologies and their advantages and limitations. I will then introduce our efforts to develop a new low-cost aerosol monitoring instrument based on electrical-mobility technique for real-time monitoring of particle size, number ,and mass concentrations over abroad diameter range of 10 nm to 2.5 μm. The combination of existing and emerging low-cost monitoring sensors will help improve our understanding of health effects of aerosol particles and result in the evolution of more locally-appropriate air quality parameters.

Monday, July 24, 2017, 3:30p.m.
NCAR Foothills Laboratory
3450 Mitchell Lane,  Boulder, CO 80301
FL2-1001
Live webcast:  http://ucarconnect.ucar.edu/live