Monday, April 2, 2012

6th NOAA EPP Education and Science Forum

Sunday March 25, I left for the 6th NOAA EPP Education and Science Forum in Tallahassee, FL. The forum was held at Florida A & M University. There I attended talks in the Climate and Mitigation technical session as well as the Weather Ready Nation technical session. I also presented some of my research on The Economic Value of Air Quality Forecasting in the poster session. My results are in the preliminary stage as I am comparing air quality measurements to model forecasts. I still have more to review for the economic value. The region I'm observing is the Washington, DC metro region and Baltimore, though I plan to look at more cities in the near future.  I'm studying the Summer 2011season for both cities and the high air quality days during the season. Certain precautions are implemented on very high air quality days and I'm trying to see how much the city is losing on days which turn out to be false positives. I got a lot of feedback on my poster and I'll take that all in towards the progression of my research.

The campus was nice and so was the weather. I missed the DC cold snap. Going to Tallahassee was a bit of a hassle. Before the 25th, in the afternoon, there was no direct nonstop flight from DC to Tallahassee. I left early that morning and had to go to Charlotte, NC then take a flight from there the destination. I can not remember the last time I felt so much turbulence as I did on that morning flight (darn the mixing). The pilot told us it was light to moderate turbulence. Let me just say I was clutching my seat. From NC to Tallahassee it was smoother. The plane was a cute 30 or so seat plane for that flight. I remember being on a flight like that before. I mentioned the afternoon because some of my classmates were on an afternoon flight, 2:30 PM to be exact. When they landed they were greeted by the mayor of Tallahassee, water cannon salutes from firetrucks and news crews. It was the inaugural flight from DC to Tallahassee, so they had a wonderful welcome. There was even cake at the airport. I thought that was awesome.

At the forum, some of my classmates won awards for their presentations. My classmates and I took a direct flight in another 30 or so seat cute plane, going back to DC. We made up about more than half of the flight. In DC for the first time, I took a bus to the terminal. That was cool too. Here are some pictures from the forum.

By my poster.

 Explaining my research.

With some of my classmates and professors at the forum.

View from the plane on the way to NC.

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