Alan Nelson's Daily Commentary for 9 September 1999

Kwajalein Island, Republic of Marshall Islands

Paradise was pretty prosaic today. When the processing of files is the major intellectual challenge of the day, one dreams up alliterative statements like that.

I essentially finished the re-processing for the Roi data. It went a bit quicker partly because I'm getting more efficient, and partly because there was only one series of sondes released from Roi. The sondes at Kwajalein were in two different series: one was the series specifically for KWAJEX, the other series was the "synoptic" series.

All over the world, meteorologists try to synchronize measurements twice a day. Those are the synoptic readings. At 11 AM and 11 PM GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) or UTC (Universal Time Coordinates) are the times that have been chosen for synoptic readings. So Kwajalein has a series of balloon ascents that are numbered only for the synoptic releases. The KWAJEX-only balloons were numbered with a different series. It's all perfectly logical and straight-forward. It's just that in the software I am using, I am loading raw data from files that are named according to the date and time of release. An intermediate file is formed that gets named according to balloon ascent number. That file needs to be re-loaded into the software in order to output the file that we really want. But that final file has to be named according to date and time of release again. Those names have to be typed or pulled off of a list of file names. So the intermediate file names would jump back and forth in their numbering from the synoptic series of sondes to the KWAJEX-only series of sondes. The Roi files were all sequential.

That is the sum total of my current intellectual challenge! I also filled up the hard drive that I am working on, so the files that I have been creating will be copied into the data archive overnight. Then I can erase those files and have some space to create new ones. The few dozen files that didn't exist on my hard drive have been retrieved from the archive and will be available tomorrow. If all goes well, I should be able to finish this re-processing tomorrow and then go back to Meck for a bit of snorkeling and helping to tear down the tethersonde site. There are lots of people going to Meck tomorrow, but not many are available to help on Saturday.

All of this reprocessing and equipment trouble with the radiosondes comes from using a system of radiosondes that is admittedly out of date. That is a result of working here at the Kwajalein Missile Range. There are all kinds of radar and tracking devices working at a multitude of frequencies on this island. The current versions of radiosondes would interfere with the tracking frequencies. So we were given a choice of one option when we were planning this experiment! The Aeromet people (the weather forecasters at Kwajalein) have been trying to upgrade this equipment for some time apparently. They are hoping that the NASA experience may help them finally win the argument that they are fighting a losing battle trying to keep this equipment running. Though KWAJEX officially ends next week, Kwajalein remains as one of the "ground validation sites" for the TRMM instrument. So this radiosonde problem isn't going to just go away.

One fun little piece of paradise did intrude on the afternoon's schedule. While talking on the phone, Sandra Yuter noticed dolphins swimming and playing in the breakers by the reef. There were no planes up at the time, so the Ops Center emptied out as we all jogged across the fairway to the seawall to get a better look. I did get to see a couple jump out of the waves. It is possible that there are one or two pixels in this picture that represent dolphins--it is where they were playing but they were too far out to photograph. So I had to be content with this beautiful cloud with two rainbow arcs, one top left and one bottom right.

It was not a great day for collecting data with aircraft, the picture above was one of the bigger clouds of the afternoon. But this morning we had an overpass where the TRMM precipitation radar (which has only a 50-km wide swath) was collecting data right over the top of us. The DC-8 and the Citation were maneuvered so that they were collecting data in the same cloud at the same time as TRMM passed overhead. Those sorts of dead-on comparisons of aircraft and satellite data are critically important for this type of field study. It was a smaller cloud than we would have liked, but nevertheless the timing was perfect. So that is a non-trivial accomplishment.

Alan Nelson