National Aeronautics and Space Administration

For the summer of 2017, GMAO is pleased to host five interns who were selected from NASA’s OSSI program to work on a variety of research topics with our staff.

Ian Hoeck, from the Detroit, MI, area is a rising junior majoring in space science and engineering at the University of Michigan. This summer, Ian is working with Mike Bosilovich and Allie Collow on characterizing extreme precipitation events using MERRA-2 data. His role is to implement self-organizing map software to group similar precipitation events into a set number of characteristic nodes. Each node represents one distinct type of weather condition that leads to these extreme events.

Nicholas Lenssen, from Oviedo, FL (a suburb of Orlando), is a recent graduate of the Florida Institute of Technology. He received his bachelor’s degree in meteorology. During his internship, he is working with Tom Clune on writing a multi-lattice snowflake diffusion model. In the fall, Nicolas plans to begin his graduate studies in Satellite Meteorology/Radiative Transfer research at the University of Wisconsin

David Schurman, from Denver CO, just completed his freshman year as a double major in engineering and computer science at Brown University. David is working with Steven Pawson and Trena Ferrell (610 EPO). He is studying aerosols and trace gases within the MERRA-2 dataset and examining characteristics of their spatial and temporal patterns in relation to large El Niño (ENSO) events. As part of his work, he will also be producing various animated visualizations of his findings.

Jonathan Falk, originally from East Brunswick, NJ, is a rising senior at Cornell University where he is studying atmospheric science. He plans to attend graduate school to continue these studies. Jonathan is working with Will McCarty on assessing potential biases in surface pressure in the GMAO’s GEOS forecasting system. They are examining if a bias exists in the GEOS system and, if it does, whether similar biases exist in other forecast systems.

Christine Bloecker, from Richmond, VA, recently completed her master’s degree in atmospheric sciences at the SUNY University at Albany. She has aspirations of continuing her education to achieve a Ph.D. Christine is working with Anton Darmenov to test some parameterizations used in dust emission models, in order to assess what bin sizes for dust particle diameters return the most consistent output between different parameterizations.

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