Johnathan Rogers

AMS Summary

This January from about the 21st to the 27th I was selected as in Intern for the Annual
American Metrology Society (AMS) conference in Seattle, Washington. I was selected last
November. The position came with hotel paid for, and a $25 dollar a day stipend. The Purdue
EAS department paid for the plane ticket. As in intern I was placed with the network, audio and
visual team. My responsibilities included helping to setup the networks in each room in the
conference as well as performing an initial audio test in make sure audio was being recorded
and the projectors were working as well. I also had to complete a check on the backup audio
devices to insure they were working as well. Once the initial setup was complete my
responsibilities included turning the backup audio recording devices in rooms once
presentations were scheduled to start and turning them off once presentations were complete.
During the down times in my shifts I was able to sit in on some of the presentations. The last
thing I was responsible for was helping with tear down which consisted of disconnected all the
equipment owned by the AMS in each presentation room.

During the conference I was not working as intern the entire time. The shifts were only
5 hours so the other half of the day I was free to attend to career fair and continue to network
which may have helped me as I’ve now received admissions offers for both Texas A&M and
Penn State and one that I’m expecting from Oklahoma in the very near future. I was also able
listen to talks by professors from all over the world. During these presentations I learned a lot
more about the field of atmospheric science but it’s harder for me to summarize everything
that was presented because a lot of the material was above my level of knowledge since I’m
only currently a getting a minor here at Purdue and have only taken the basic course. The
presentations were given with the assumption that people had a good understanding of some
of the material presented.

One of the first presentations I was able to sit in was given by Professor Russ
Schumacher from Texas A&M. He was talking about modeling heavy rainfall using an ensemble
of different models and comparing the accuracy of each of these models. He talked about the
correspondence of the models using three case studies that happened over the past two years.
The first case study was an severe flood that occurred in Arkansas last summer that killed a
number of people due to the fact the amount of rain that happened was significantly more than
most of the models and the area were the heavy rain occurred was only a small area but it was
near a campground in remote area with limited cell phone coverage. As a result warnings that
were issued did no good since the people who needed the information were not able to receive
them. As far as the models went I believe he said the Worf model performed best in simulating
a heavy rain would occur but the areas where it simulated the event were too broad and it
under predicted the amount of rain. The second case study also happened last May in the
Oklahoma City area where over seven inches of rain occurred over a two day period. The
models were able to successfully predict that heavy rain would occur within the window of
Johnathan Rogers
AMS Summary

certainty but the only problem that occurred in this test case was that people did not listen to
some of the warnings that were given which leads to one of the forums I was able to attend
which talked about informing the public hazards. I will talk about this later. The models were
able to better predict this event because of the size of the system that produced the rain event.
Isolated smaller sized storm systems are harder to model and as a result the severity of the
precipitation gets underestimated. The problem is cause by the resolution the models use. The
grid spacing is 10 km by 10 km and such a large resolution allows some of the systems to be
misrepresented or ignored. The San Antonio event was the third case study and was similar to
the Oklahoma City event with the only difference between it was from left overs of a land
falling tropical storm.

Another presentation I was able to attend was a presentation on the sensitivity of long
range climate models and tropospheric ozone. I forgot the professor who presented this
because I came in a little after it began, but right now most climate models do not include
tropospheric ozone in their models and if they do they keep it constant. The work that was
presented showed the effects of the tropospheric ozone actually increase the temperatures
because ozone also absorbs radiation. There was additional atmospheric chemistry that was
presented that was a little above my knowledge but because most climate models do not
include the ozone in them the affects of warming may be a bit greater than expected. As a
result the 2100 model he created with the effect of ozone increasing the temperatures were
about 0.5 to 1 degrees Celsius warmer than the models without or with a constant ozone value.
That in turn would mean that the other effects of climate change should also be change and the
changes would accelerate.

The last of many presentation and forums I was able to sit in on was the communication
of weather hazards to the general public. This presentation was more open than most and
allowed the attendees to actually express their opinions. One of the overarching things
discussed in the forum is that many citizens either do not heed the hazardous warnings such
flood warnings and hurricane warnings or other times are either misinformed about what they
mean or not even know about them. Someone suggested in the event of very hazardous
warning such as a blizzard the wording actually needs to be blunter and to the point. About a
week later I actually read one of the most vivid warnings that I can recall regarding the blizzard.
I don’t know if it had to do with someone who attended the conference but the warning said
“Before making the decision to travel consider if getting to your destination is worth putting
your life at risk” (Chicago NWS Blizzard Warning). The forum also deviated to hurricane
evacuations and some of the problems such as everybody leaving at once to people
endangering themselves by not leaving.
Johnathan Rogers
AMS Summary

The basic conclusions that I was able to take away from most of the presentations is
that there is a lot of things that still are unknown in the field of atmospheric science.
Somebody was talking about the ENSO oscillations and a new method to predict them but still
there’s uncertainty. That’s part of my decision to go to graduate school and hopefully I will be
able to learn something that helps fill in a gap.