My New Postdoc

I had been working at NSSL only since last September. My work has gone well. I’ve learned a lot of new skills that are important skills for doing independent research, like keeping up with literature, using and editing other peoples’ software, visualizing complex model output, and trying to find interesting questions to ask. More specifically to atmospheric science, I have learned a lot about how atmospheric models work, and how the data assimilation problem is much more complex when you are dealing with such complex models.  These are things that are not at all apparent from the mathematical formalisms.

I am transitioning to a new project, one that is very different than my previous experiences, because the spatial and temporal scales are so much bigger in magnitude.  My new project involves estimating the sources of carbon dioxide at the surface using concentration measurements from satellites. The mathematics of this problem are almost the same as the short range initial condition estimation, except that we’re interested in the lower boundary condition rather than the initial condition.

I’ll write more in a future post about the formal problem.  For now, just let me say that I’m excited about the opportunity, partly because it’s closer to the problem of global climate prediction, and partly because it’s a chance to learn about large scale atmospheric fluid mechanics.  I’ve spent the last couple of years on the small, short time scale events, and now I’m ready to learn about global, long time scale events.