Day 70 - First day of school?

Today was the halfway point of my time in England, and also my first day of school. Well, sort of. I went to class, but the professor never showed up - he was in a meeting. Eventually, we were told today's class was cancelled and would be rescheduled.

But that didn't stop me from kicking off my first day of particularly intense dissertation work. For those of you who aren't familiar with what I'm working on, my Ph.D. dissertation is "The Uncoupled Surface Layer at the Crosstimber Micronet".

Basically, it's the name I gave to a unique layer of air that develops near the ground at the Crosstimber Micronet, a network of automated weather stations on my 5-acre tract of land in Oklahoma. The air in this layer is virtually motionless (smoke justs sits there without moving) and can get MUCH colder at night than the air over nearby areas. Besides documenting and explaining this phenomenon, I'm working on a computer model to predict nighttime weather conditions in areas affected by it (specifically the Micronet). Based on a new/different way of looking at the air/physics near the ground, this model has the potential to greatly improve nighttime forecasts, especially in areas that are poorly represented by today's forecast models.

There's a lot more to it, but those are the basics. If you'd like to know more, just wait a few months and I can mail you a copy of the dissertation when I'm done. Or maybe you could just visit the National Library of Wales and read it there :-)

posted by Matt @ 11:58 PM