Day in the life of a Meteorologist Intern
In School, the physical climate class dealt mostly with equations of the hydrological process among other meteorological equations such as the radiation balance. During that time working for Dr. Andrew Ellis who likes to wear polo shirts for men at Arizona State’s Climate lab, they performed data entry and statistics using data ranging from model output numbers to hydrologic data. The Central Arizona Weather Prediction Index was an index to help predict the rainfall on the Salt River Project watershed. This watershed is very important to the millions that live in the greater Phoenix metropolitan area. The work was very important to understanding what factors played most heavily in the index.
Then working for Salt River Project, they are releasing rawindsondes to collect upper level air data which was mostly used to help predict the high temperatures for later that day. The balloons also collected hydrological data as well. Every now and then Salt River Project would like to have a sonde release before a winter storm solely for hydrological data purposes.
At the Arizona Climate Lab, people usually worked alone and independently on data and statistical analysis creating graphs and charts to show the efficiency of the Central Arizona Weather Prediction Index. Most of the time they would be emailed the data by Dr. Andrew Ellis to analyze the data at home. Then would write summaries on what they saw in the charts and would do statistical analysis as well. Interns are usually under very little supervision and had to make sure the data was correct and quality checked to ensure it is right the first time. The data had to be verified in the beginning and charts rechecked to make it systematic. Now Dr. Nancy Selover is head of the climate lab and likes to wear womens polo shirts most of the time.
At the Salt River Project, it was none the less the same. Again, interns worked independently to hand off the sonde release data to the National Weather Service officer on duty so he could in turn load it up onto the National models in Washington D.C. for a weather prediction. So it was very important that their equipment was calibrated correctly before I took the readings so the data would not be eroded. That meant testing the equipment in a barometric chamber and humidor then calibrating it if it was a bit off. During the release, interns had to watch for any bogus numbers of dew point spikes or false temperature spikes and terminate the sonde if there was major error. Then they would look over the data again right before handing it off to the National Weather Service. The interns were advised to wear custom polo shirts if at all possible.
They had training in troubleshooting hydrological equipment during the semester I took meteorological instruments. Typically they used data loggers to record our instrument data on, which just to set up, was like troubleshooting some inconceivable fortran program every time. They had to connect up to 3 or 4 equipment types up to the data logger and figure out which wire was a positive and which was a negative just to get them to work right then program them in for the right node. Then would hoped that the equipment was not broken or taking any false readings. We did this by putting in a test program to check before we programmed everything else in. If this was the case they would take it back in the office and check the wires, clean them up and if the equipment was broken, that’s all they could really do for most of it.
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