Goodbye S-PolKa, I will miss you!

I’ve been back in the United States now for 3.5 weeks, although there is definitely no rest for the weary! I left Gan early on the morning of the 10th, snagging this shot of S-PolKa as the plane left the atoll. After 20 or so hours of flying time (not including another 20 hours of layovers), I was greeted to Seattle by a rather nice day–overcast skies in the morning that became mostly clear by the afternoon.

A few of my 2009 AMS Summer Policy Colloquium compadres, with head of the AMS Policy Program Bill Hooke.

After about 10 days at home to get my body roughly back in a United States timezone, I flew off for the American Meteorological Society‘s Annual Meeting, which this year was held in the city of New Orleans. I connected with some good friends, made some excellent connections, listened to some really great talks (and apparently, gave a pretty good one too), and of course got to experience the French Quarter and Garden District. Plus, it didn’t hurt to get back into a climate that was much closer to the Maldives than to Seattle’s. I continued on to Michigan to see my family and to attend a reunion, and I returned back to Seattle early this week. At this point, I’m not exactly sure which American timezone I’m on, but I am on one of them.

A large freshwater lake, and nature preserve, on Hithadoo, Addu Atoll.

Looking back at it all, going on DYNAMO was one of the best things I’ve done, because I grew substantially as a scientist as well as on a personal level. It has definitely given me a different perspective on life back home as I’ve reentered life in the States, with all of the business and cares of a wealthy, technologically-advanced society. As I look forward, I am excited to incorporate the data we collected into my future research goals, but I also hope to incorporate the social lessons I learned as well. Seeing how the Maldivian people are coping with the changes in their environment, both man-made and otherwise, is a real testament to the global impacts of our lifestyle. I hope to continue to travel internationally as much as possible, because those lessons are so incredibly valuable.

A goodbye dinner with my Maldivian friends.

And of course, I miss the friends that I made. One of my Maldivian friends is very excited about the iPad that her husband gave her for her birthday. My sailor friend is soon heading to China as the Volvo Ocean Race continues to work its way east. One technician friend had to go back to Gan to dismantle S-PolKa, another has to head back in March to dismantle the ARM site. Another friend is going to be going back and forth to Hawaii on a cargo ship with another ARM facility. Some of my new, and old, scientist friends I will see at the upcoming AMS Hurricane and Tropical Meteorology conference, including some of the Falcon crew from France. The others I hope to come across as my career and life move forward.

As such, this blog may either take a different turn or discontinue, now that my Maldivian travels are at an end. I am in Seattle for the time being, but I will soon be embarking on a new adventure as I look for a new position. For now, I will continue to post things on Facebook and Twitter as I come across interesting things. Keep in touch!

First of all, Happy New Year to one and all. After a sweaty disco, we said goodbye to 2011 with a burning effigy. I have to admit, there is nothing better then sitting on a beach with friends, listening to the waves and the hush of all around you as you watch the sign quietly burning away. We of course counted down the seconds, and said our Happy New Years…but then this hush fell over the crowd again. I might have to consider it as a celebration technique for the future. Once the sign burned away, everyone went their separate ways, but I was still left with a sense of something profound having happened.

The next day, I had the honor to meet the wife and mother of one of the staff of the hotel that I’ve befriended during my time here. His wife was a little firecracker, and although we couldn’t really speak to one another his mother radiated this warmth and peace that was a joy to be around. Unfortunately, Maldivians tend to do everything overnight, so in this picture I’m just about falling asleep (I think it was about 1am by this point), but I’m grateful for the experience of seeing how folks here live and the opportunity to meet such wonderfully kind people.

Speaking of wonderfully kind people, I had to say goodbye to another friend. Our eggs-cellent (oh yes, I did go there) chef departed Equator Village yesterday to go home to his family in Sri Lanka. His constant smile and upbeat energy made even my most difficult mornings pleasant. I hopefully will be able to be in touch with him in the future, and who knows…maybe I’ll end up in Sri Lanka one day!

On the science side, I finally made the field trip to the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) mobile facility, which is part of the Department of Energy (DoE). Long story short, the DoE is running its own field campaign called the ARM MJO Investigation Experiment (AMIE) alongside DYNAMO. We rely on them for their own suite of instruments, but most specifically their weather station, their weather balloon launching, and a little workhorse of a vertically-pointing radar called KAZR. Their site is down by the Gan airport, so we actually have S-PolKa range-height indicator (RHI) scans that go over their site so that we can calibrate with them. Don’t know what an RHI is? Well, most ground-based radars scan in two modes: plan position indicator (PPI), which is what most people think about with the dish spinning around in a circle; and RHI, which looks like the dish is nodding as it tilts up and down. High-resolution RHI scans give us a lot of information about what’s going on in the vertical, whereas PPI scans give a horizontal (well, really a conical) surveillance scan.

Yesterday I finally did what I think is one of the coolest things you can do around here, which is go on a tour of one of the inhabited islands. We had an excellent tour guide who told us about the culture of the Maldives, about some of the changes that happened as a result of the big tsunami several years ago (they couldn’t drink their groundwater for 6 months!), and filled us in on some of the current changes happening politically.

One thing that has been great has been learning more and more about Islam and how it fits into the culture of the Maldives. One interesting aspect of that is that because of their beliefs, they bury all of their dead; which only struck me because of the limited land and high water table of the country. All children are educated in mixed-sex classrooms. Although in the past marriage of girls at 12 was fairly common, nowadays no one can marry before 18. Politically, the country was ruled by a dictator for 30 years, but had its first free elections in 2008. Currently, there are tensions between the more moderate party that’s in power and the more conservative opposition party. Despite all of this, the Maldivians remain an incredibly friendly and laid-back people, and our welcome here has been generally very warm.

After the tour, they took us to an uninhabited island for some snorkeling, for which I got the use of Wen-Chau’s underwater camera! That was pretty cool, and although the camera was practically dead and we couldn’t see what we were shooting, we got some real gems for pictures.

So all in all, a very bittersweet week…a lot of great experiences, but also a lot of goodbyes. By the time I write next, I will likely be back in the United States, so the goodbyes will continue.

And a Crabby New Year....

I hope you and yours had a wonderful Christmas and a blessed new year. We couldn’t be with our families for the holidays, but we definitely made the most of it. With some help from the staff of Equator Village, we had a pretty great time.

One of the many squall lines we saw this week

The weather during the week leading up to Christmas was pretty insane. After not seeing the sun for several days, we got back into a series of squall-line storms like the ones we saw at the end of the MJO active phase…yet this wasn’t an MJO event! It was really windy here for most of the week, and there were a few days where storm after storm kept ripping through the area. I felt bad for my new surfer friends, because high winds are bad for both surfing and for snorkeling. Without those two activities and without the sun, your options for things to do around here are pretty limited.

Seeing the sun for the first time in days...

What is a squall line? The way that I think of them is that they are a line of thunderstorms that move along at speeds faster than 10 m/s (that’s about 22 mph). Often times, the center storms of these lines move ahead of the rest, making a very pretty arc in the radar image. In radar parlance, we call them “bow echoes.” Sometimes you’ll see little swirlies at each end of the bow, which we call “bookend vortices.” You can almost think of them like the swirly wakes that occur on either side of something pushed through water, if the moving object is going faster than the water is.

What’s really special about a squall line is its ability to transfer high speed winds from above down to the surface, creating intense straight-line winds (instead of strong rotational winds like a tornado). We measured winds of 20 m/s (45 mph) with some of these squalls. For some reason, we have been seeing them a lot during the strong burst of westerly winds that have come at the end of these really big rain events. This tendency is one of the many intriguing patterns we’ve been noticing while we’ve been here.

And yes, we did work on Christmas Eve and Day, but we made sure to make merry after hours. My little tree was completely dwarfed by the completely decked out Equator Village! The staff put up lights and trees everywhere, and had a very special Christmas dinner for all of the guests. Our Santa (a.k.a. John, our NCAR project manager and radar scientist) handed out the presents of the white elephant gift exchange we had in our little group. Popular items included a series of Louisiana goodies one of the ARM techs brought from home, a squeaky rubber chicken (my contribution!), and a Lilo and Stich water gun. After dinner, the hotel had a special disco complete with a dancing Santa.

So we’ve managed to have a good time. Since Christmas Day, the weather has quieted down in our part of the world, although one hurricane has spun up just off of the eastern coast of India. I’m a little concerned for my new Sri Lankan friends’ families, but I think most of them live in the southern part of the country. I just hope all of the necessary warnings have gone to the right people.

Dates!

Looking forward, I’m under the two week mark for my time remaining here. I’m looking forward to a nice big salad when I return, among other foods that I try to not think about that much. Supposedly the hotel has a pretty large New Year’s Eve party as well, which I’m looking forward to. Today I get to see Wen-Chau, my former SOARS mentor, which I’m very excited about, but next week I say goodbye to even more of my new friends. This trip has been a large lesson in living in the moment, enjoying getting to know people in the moment I have with them, and then letting them go. Every time it’s hard, but I hope these are connections that I get to keep for years to come.

A part of her gift that came in very handy against the water gun...

The signal in the atmosphere that tells us when the MJO is active or not petered out some days ago, but things have definitely not been quiet. There are many other types of waves in the atmosphere that can enhance the amount of rain that we get. They can be big or small, and they can hang out for many days or just a few. I will learn more about what the DYNAMO forecasters think about what has been going on during our weekly scientific meeting tonight. It can be a bit difficult to connect back with the mainland, since I think everyone in the Maldives must hop onto the internet at night, but we do our best!

Sunset on Gan

I unfortunately waited too long to get back into snorkeling before the bad weather set in, because lately it has been too windy. I did manage to catch this great sunset before the clouds too over. It was really interesting, realizing that the low roar that I could hear was the sound of the waves crashing on the reef in the distance.

A sky full of altocumulus

One good thing about the weather (if you can call it that) is that I realized that I have a small obsession with altocumulus clouds. I can’t help it, I find them gorgeous. “Alto” means middle, so they are clouds with their base in the middle of the atmosphere; “cumulus” means that they extend vertically into the atmosphere, which they can do because they are convective. Convective just means that in those pockets, the air is overturning; where the air is going up, you get a cloud, and where the air is going down, you get a clear spot.

Oh tannenbaum...

On the personal side of life, things continue to get festive here at S-PolKa as we prepare for Christmas. Lights have now been added to the decorations here at the radar. Finding working batteries here for the tree has been difficult (I keep ending up with crusty ones!); thankfully, some were kindly donated to the Christmas cause by a couple who have since left to go home. We have a White Elephant gift exchange planned, and a little bit of time off planned for the day. So we only be home for Christmas in our dreams (as the song goes), but we are still managing to keep the Christmas spirit alive.

As I mentioned before, this is the second time I’ve spent Christmas in this part of the world. Much like when I was in Australia for the solar car race 10 years ago, it’s a bit funny to be in the tropics listening to songs about it being cold outside, snow, reindeer, Christmas trees, etc. Given that it’s soon the darkest day of the year, where in Seattle we only get 8 hours of sunlight, I can’t say that I miss that aspect of the holiday season in the northern United States.

Wow was this a long time ago!

Funny enough, this is my second experience with the Volvo Ocean Race. Last time, I watched the boats go by on Bondai Beach near Sydney, during what turned out to be some of the worst fires in New South Wales’ history. This time I met a gentleman at Equator Village that is involved with the French team. He does logistical work, which reminds me of the days I did logistics for solar car–it can be a very tough job! He told me that the team is in first place because of a very advantageous change in course that they did, which got them into excellent winds. Yet another example of what having good meteorology information can do for you. Bon chance à eux! I have been getting a lot of practice trying to communicate en français with him, which has been both fantastic and extremely difficult at the same time. I’ve also been learning snippets of German and the local Maldivian language Divehi, which I try to speak as much as possible (which of course, is very little).

Feeding time

So life continues to go on here. Momma cat and her babies have been doing well. The sea life made an appearance during the brief lull we had between all of the strong winds we’ve had here as of late, but I have a feeling they’ll be going away again as the winds pick up again. We watch the tourists come and go. Soon, we’ll be welcoming the new year.

The crabs would look tastier if they didn't look so much like spiders.

The passing of the torch.

The big news of the past several days has been the passing of the torch. Hannah, my fellow Houze groupmate, returns to Seattle tomorrow, and Kaustav returned home to India on Sunday. In their place are Casey from North Carolina State University, and Zhujun from the University of Miami. They have been working hard to learn all of our procedures here, and they have taken the mantle well. It can be confusing being thrust into learning about the weather of another part of the world! So I will miss my right-hand-woman, and Kaustav’s tea and constant “snaps” (his term for pictures), but we soldier on here another month.

Things got surprisingly busy at the radar over the past couple of days, even despite the fact that we are in the “suppressed” phase. Other then that, life at Equator Village is getting quiet for us but busy for the tourists. People who are determined to spend their Christmas here are beginning to come in. In fact, I met a lovely woman whose husband was based here with the RAF back in the 70s. She and her husband came back every year after that. She is now with a consortium that, in a contract with the Maldivian government, has leased an island to figure out how to farm fresh fruits and vegetables here on the islands! She’s hit a rough patch with some people, since Maldivians are fisherman and don’t look too highly on farming, but it seems like they’ve made a lot of progress. She also trains the people on hygiene–when I told her I had been sick, she was very interested in what I and the other 6-7 people ate, but unfortunately we couldn’t pin it down.

I wish I could go see the working farm, but I get the benefit at Equator Village. I cherish the nights we get fresh green beans, carrots, and okra, lightly sauteed in butter. If you only knew how much I want salad right now–uncooked vegetables are definitely a walk on the dangerous side. You know I have to be desperate if I’m happily eating okra. Or at least not completely hating it.

In other news, I’m beginning to feel that I may be either unlucky or something. I haven’t been able to see half of the ocean wildlife people see out here at the radar. I did, however, manage to track this bat to its perch as it flew around the airport. The bats are huge, their wingspans can be over a meter (3-5 feet).

I did get to see a baby shark swimming about in the shallows. The occasional turtle pops its head up across the port road from us, and legend has it both rays and an eel have been spotted out here. I keep my fingers crossed.

For now, I’m happy to be back to the land of the healthy, and we’re conspiring for Christmas plans. The batteries on the tree went dead already, so I bought some more today. Another round of people begin to arrive late this week into next week, one of whom is my former SOARS mentor Wen-Chau! In the meantime, we keep on trucking.

Another day in paradise

From this....

...to this.

Even on the clear days, the fun never stops…

For the past few week, we’ve been going from clear, hot, idyllic tropical weather, to stormy, steamy squall lines that race across the sky. As we fully enter the “suppressed” phase of the MJO (see my last post for a very basic explanation), things have been getting increasingly quiet at the radar. However, every few days, we’ve been treated to the occasional squall. Thankfully not of the same severity as the storm a week ago, but enough to keep us busy. On the clear days, we take advantage of how the EM pulse out of the radar bends and scatters off of the atmosphere to get an idea of the changes in humidity with height. On the stormy days, we can use the radar’s dual-polarization to identify the different kind of rain and ice particles in the clouds. How cool is that?

A plucky resident of Equator Village

Life at Equator Village is also getting interesting as more and more holiday tourists start to come in. However, many things stay the same: the cats fight each other, the cats fight the roosters, the roosters compete with the call to prayer, and most people don’t like the Saturday-night disco. I, however, quite enjoy the Saturday-night disco at Equator Village. This was my second opportunity to get a chance to dance, and I quite enjoyed myself.

Dinner at the Royal Palm during an evening out. And no, it wasn't this meal that did it.

However, Saturday was also the day that I apparently ate something I shouldn’t have, because Sunday was rough. Monday the dizziness set in, which sent me home early from work. Tuesday I was still in bad shape, so I stayed home from work. I thought I was getting better, until things really took a bad turn Tuesday night. So, out came the drugs, and I was cured by Wednesday morning. One of the few instances where I will wholeheartedly say “Better living with chemistry!” Which is where the naming contest comes in–I’m looking for the best localized name of this particular ailment, because I was one of at least 7 people to get it.  In other parts of the world, there are names such as Delhi Belly, or Montezuma’s Revenge. What shall we call it here in Gan, Addu Atoll, Maldives? Let me know.

Remounting the Ka-band

So I’m back to the land of the living, and things are mostly back to normal. We got our reinforcements on Tuesday, so they’re learning the ropes around here. Ka-band (the baby radar, S-Pol is the big dish) had a bit of trouble, but she got fixed and back online really fast. Another bit of fun that we had is that the UW S-Pol crew went on a field trip to see the Falcon, the plane owned by the French that is out here taking measurements of the cloud and precipitation (ice, rain, etc.) particles. The plane is tiny, they’re very nice, and I’m getting an opportunity to practice my French. Not too shabby!

So, life goes on.

The tiny Falcon

Building clouds signalling a very busy day

A lovely sunset seen from the Gan International Airport tarmac

it's Christmas time at S-PolKa!

It’s the beginning of the holiday season at S-PolKa, and it’s been a busy past few days. And yes, the tree is my fault.

First of all, Thanksgiving marked the beginning of a crazy period of weather. You may be wondering what I mean about the “active phase” of the Madden-Julian Oscillation, or the MJO. Long story short, it’s the part of the signal where the atmosphere (and other things, like the ocean temperature) is very favorable to convection forming, so we get a lot more of it than usual (and when I’m talking about convection, I’m talking clouds–anything from your puffy idyllic cumulus to a thunderstorm to a hurricane). Basically, we get a lot more rain, and things get very busy for me at the radar.

squall line ripping through with ~20 m/s (45 mph) winds

The other side of the MJO is the “suppressed phase,” which is when the situation reverses and the atmosphere becomes unfavorable to convection, so we see less of it. That’s the time to work on my tan a little, because things get pretty quiet at the radar. The picture is a lot more complicated then that, because there are other waves going through the atmosphere at the same time, but that’s the basic idea. The return time of the active phase back to the Indian Ocean is 30-90 days, depending on how long it takes the signal to go around the world.

damage from a tree falling into a housing block

So what happened here? Well, the MJO went into active phase with a vengeance. I saw convection like I’ve never seen it before–short, stubby clouds packing a huge whallop, torrential rains, all sorts of convective lines forming and collapsing on the radar.The unfortunate downside of this particular episode was that one of the storms packed some really strong winds with it. I actually watched the tree that destroyed this apartment come down as I was trying to get into the car.

A lot of trees went down, the dirt roads developed small ponds in them, anything made of fabric shredded…you get the idea.

Since then, things have been quieting down. Cyclone 05A has wandered off to the north, dry air is coming in over us, and after several days of clouds and rain we again saw the sun. Then we got treated to a quick but wicked squall line, but who’s counting.

Finally seeing the sun for the first time in a few days

I’ve been spending the quieter time trying to learn as much as I can from the many brilliant people here, and catching up a bit on my week of very lengthy reports. I’ve learned so much over the past few days that my head is swimming a bit.

Today was a return to the idyllic blue skies and puffy clouds. Hopefully soon the water will follow suit and warm back up, the MJO has a habit of making all of the warm water go away.  I’m looking forward to better snorkeling and the arrival of fresh recruits next week!

return to paradise at the radar.

But for now, in my constant effort to add more cats to the internet, I present you…the Equator Village cats! They now come to the front of my room every day, how can I not share the cute?

And no, I don’t feed them…the lady staying next to me does.

Visible satellite image of a really big cyclone!

I know, I know, I’m supposed to be focusing on the MJO, but it’s just so darn pretty!

To be fair, the MJO probably played a role in this soon-to-be cyclone. And when I say cyclone, which is how they’re known in this part of the world, I mean a hurricane (for us Americans). Or a typhoon, if you’re in the NW Pacific.

So I may be the only one really jazzed, but I don’t care. To have all of this instrumentation sampling the genesis of a tropical cyclone by pure proximity is pretty awesome for me. It makes me giddy! It doesn’t have a name yet, and fortunately it’s heading into the Arabian Sea and away from land, so I can feel giddy with minimal guilt.

Thanksgiving dinner with friends.

In other news, the active phase of the MJO has been keeping us busy at the radar. At points, there’s so much eye candy on the radar that it’s hard to choose what to talk about. Yesterday, after a really long day of putting a really long report together, I was very pleasantly surprised. I walked into dinner and found a giant table pulled together with everyone sitting at it, a centerpiece made out of snorkel gear, a little screen showing a fireplace, and the Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack playing. We toasted to Thanksgiving with champagne, and after our dinner of usual Equator Village fare we ate ice cream with M&Ms and real American chocolate-flavored sauce! That and a special video chat with my husband made me so happy I nearly cried.

A convective cell that developed off a cold pool. My little baby grew up so fast!

So to everyone back home, Happy Thanksgiving! I miss all of my family and friends, but I can’t regret my time out here. I’m very grateful for a family that is safe and happy, wonderful friends both old and new, a working radar, the opportunity of a lifetime, and a daily reminder of why I love what I do.

S-PolKa back in business, scanning a RHI

Just a quick note to say that yesterday afternoon, they were able to fix the problem with the air conditioning, and S-PolKa came back online! Whew! I’ve never been so happy to see a radar dish scanning in my life.

Me and Bob the evening of his last day at the radar.

It’s been a few days since I last posted, since I’ve been spending the past week getting the lay of the land here in the Maldives, adjusting to my new job, and getting over jet lag. My advisor has since returned back to Seattle, leaving me in charge of the UW S-Polka operations and the writing of the daily summaries. That was probably the quickest job training in my life!

On my second day of writing independently, we had the first major rain event since late October, which is a very exciting time here at the radar. We spend the day looking at the radar output, watching satellite images of the large-scale weather features, and going outside and taking lots of cloud pictures. At the end of the day, we meet to discuss the day and decide upon a theme of what we’ve seen. I then spend that evening and the next morning writing up the events of that day.

Sunrise at the snorkel beach

I think I’ve adjusted to life here, although it took a few days of relearning how to drive on the left (look right!), getting used to island time (8am really means noon), getting used to eating huge breakfasts and much smaller other meals, and adjusting to the changing availability of everything from food to machine parts, since everything in the Maldives is shipped in from outside. I usually go to bed just after dinner (which is late; they don’t serve until 7:30pm) and wake up at 4:30am to work on the previous day’s summary. I then either go snorkeling or work out in my room, have a chat meeting with my advisor, have breakfast, and then head to the radar. We usually stay at the radar until between 5:30-6pm. Occasionally there are evening science meetings just before dinner. The drive back to Equator Village has to be my least favorite time of day, because the evening is the maximum time for pedestrians, cylists, and moped traffic. Understandably, most of the people here come out in the evening when the temperatures start to cool off.

One sad thing about the islands is the way they dispose of garbage–they either burn it at the dump, and the smoke blows into the SPol-ka site, or the locals toss it into the ocean to then wash up on the beaches. If I had to pick a lesser of two evils, I would say I prefer the burning, but it’s still sad to see.

S-PolKa stowed while we wait for its a/c to be fixed. Otherwise known as "birdbath mode".

Anyhow, the weather is starting to get exciting here–word on the street is that we may be in the buildup to the active phase of the Madden-Julian Oscillation here, which is the process we’re here to study. Since that event on the 18th, things have been quiet, but it does feel like we’re building up to some serious action. Unfortunately, the air conditioning that cools the computers and transmitter for S-Polka is out, so the radar has been down since yesterday afternoon. Given how hot it is here already, there’s nothing like waiting anxiously for an a/c repairman!

So we anxiously await S-PolKa to be back up in running, but we’re finding plenty to keep us busy with all of the other instruments. Never a dull moment.