Why we're here

On the spit with SMART-R

      Courtney is a tropical meteorologist who is using radar to collect data about the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO, the first of many acronyms in this post.) The Madden-Julian Oscillation is a 30- to 90-day tropical weather cycle in which  in which periods of enhanced tropical rainstorms alternate with intervals of little or no rainfall.  It originates in the Indian Ocean, near the Maldives, and travels eastward.  It affects many other climate patterns worldwide, including El Nino, Asian monsoons, tropical storm development in the Atlantic, and the Pineapple Express.  The MJO has a kind of domino effect around the globe, affecting fisheries in Chile, agriculture in Bangladesh, and heavy rain and flooding in the Pacific Northwest.
     Courtneys' radar is here as part of a large international project called DYNAMO.  The DYNAMO project will enable researchers to understand more about the MJO, and to produce more accurate  models to help predict changes to our climate.  For more information, charts, and maps, see http://www.eol.ucar.edu/field_projects/field-projects/dynamo.

Port of Hithadoo

  

S-POL with Jon

     Here on Addu Atoll, there are three DYNAMO facilities which will gather data over the next six months.  About three km south of us, on the wharf of the Port of Hithadoo,  is a facility called S-POL, which uses a a double radar with specialized scanning to study precipitation characteristics.   

At Gan Airport, 30 minutes south of us, the U.S. Department of Energy also has two radars to study cloud characteristics and has a group that launches 8 weather balloons. Soon there will be a French aircraft at Gan which will fly into the clouds to measure directly the size and shape of ice particles 

     Courtney runs a meteorological radar that collects information about what is happening inside the clouds and rainstorms that lead to the development of the Madden-Julian Oscillation. Her equipment is called SMART-R, or Shared Mobile Atmospheric  Research and Teaching Radar.  It is parked on spit in the lagoon of the atoll.  Courtney and her graduate student Jon Fliegel keep the radar running to ensure a steady stream of data and then  report and analyze the data. Courtney's students back at Texas A&M also monitor the radar.
       One night, during the heaviest rainfall I have ever heard, Courtney got a phone call from Texas--the radar had stopped transmitting data.  So Courtney drove out to the spit in the the deluge to check on it.  It is quite a feat in the dry daylight to turn a car around at the end of the spit without falling over the edge of the sand where the narrow road has been undercut by about three feet.  Courtney maneuvered the car in the dark and the rain, and found that the problem was in the communications, not the radar.  She came home safely, and SMART-R radiated on.