Possible New PhD Topic

I’ve discovered today that it’s really fun to get new ideas about my research, and to decide to move in a new direction. During today’s research group meeting, when I was giving an overview of my presentation for the upcoming IPR, Dave raised an excellent point that really resonated with me, and which Sue agreed with as well. I’m pretty sure I would’ve arrived at the same conclusion eventually myself, but it was good to get a nudge anyway. I’m not entirely sure what precisely I want to do, but I do know that I’m now planning to move away from using the CAPTEX-83 (1983 Cross-Appalachian Tracer Experiment) field study. I’ve been using CAPTEX in all my research in grad school until now, and I just think it’s kind of overused and that our group has milked this enough that it’d be hard for me to make this a substantial part of my Ph.D. project.
So at this nascent stage I’m pretty sure that what I would like to do for my PhD project is to set out to develop a configuration of an NWP (numerical weather prediction) ensemble that, when used to drive an AT&D (atmospheric transport & dispersion) model like SCIPUFF, will result in a larger spread in concentration predictions than would result from some operational NWP ensemble, which we suspect is configured with obtaining spread in QPF (quantitative precipitation forecasts) as a goal instead. By comparing my new to-be-developed ensemble configuration with an operational ensemble over several cases, I can maybe have a leg to stand on down the road in my Ph.D. defense (or in my oral comprehensive exams, for that matter, or my pre-defense) if I try to claim that my ensemble configuration is better for AT&D applications than other ensembles already in operational use. I still have to figure out pretty much all of the details of how I want to accomplish that (what regions, dates, synoptic/mesoscale regimes, etc. to use for my case studies), but right now I’m actually kind of excited about where my research might be going in the new year!
In other research-related news, my first journal article, “Improving SCIPUFF Forecasts with NWP Ensembles,” on which I’m the lead author, was finally submitted to the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology yesterday!! It’s basically my entire M.S. project, and we submitted an earlier version of this manuscript to Atmospheric Environment last October, only to have it rejected by the editor at the beginning of January this year. Ever since then we’ve all been putting a lot of work into this, and it really is a significantly better paper now than it was then. I’m just so glad to have that submitted at long last! It’ll be awhile before I can officially say I have an article published in the literature though, because JAMC (and all the AMS journals, for that matter) tends to take a long, long time. As in, it will probably be 2010 before this article actually gets published. But hey, at least it’s finally submitted!
Switching gears, can I lodge an official protest at the weather? I think it’s ridiculous that I should ever have to use my umbrella in mid-December. Isn’t this the time of year it’s supposed to snow? And speaking of that, last night I got my hopes up when the State College NWS issued a Winter Storm Watch for the region from Thu night through Fri morning, that we might at long last get perhaps 4-6 inches of snow. But now it looks like it’ll be primarily a rain and freezing rain event. 🙁 Winter without snow is lame!!
And congratulations to Rob C. for passing his Ph.D. defense today, and to Jacob for passing his comprehensive exams today! Good job, guys!
Well, I should probably get to bed soon. My last 8am class is tomorrow! I can only hope it’s my last 8am class EVER. I’ve enjoyed the class (Forecasting Practicum), but not the 8am aspect of it. It’s hard to believe that by 10am tomorrow I will have completed my seventh semester of graduate school(!). Have I really been here that long already?