Outreach

Clouds

What is a cloud? A cloud is the apparent fluffy things we see in the sky, or more commonly in the UK, the great suspended grey mass blocking the Sun!

Fluffy (Cumulus) Cloud courtesy of the Met Office

However that answer isn't very helpful. A cloud is made up of either water droplets, water droplets and ice, or just ice crystals. There are many different types of cloud, which are split into different 10 groups.
Low Clouds: Cumulus, Cumulonimbus, Stratocumulus and Stratus
Medium Clouds: Altostratus, Nimbostratus and Altocumulus
High Clouds: Cirrus, Cirrostratus and Cirrocumulus

For more information you can go to Clouds. For more detailed information you can go to Met Office And if you just really like clouds go to Cloud Appreciation Society .
Now the clouds I am interested in are called mixed-phase clouds. Clouds which aren't really sure what they are. They have three distinct layers as pictured below. The bottom layer is water droplets, the top layer is ice, and the middle layer is the ice warming up to become water droplets, and helpfully called the melting layer or band. This middle layer is very thin, unlike the image.

Now why are these mixed-phase clouds important? We always like to know when it is going to rain, and these types of clouds produce the most amount of precipitation, rain, snow, hail, globally. So how do we observe them? Satellites are very useful for imaging clouds but it is radar which gives us a detailed view.

Radar

Now I am up at the University of Leeds, where I am part of the Radar Group. The radars are all based down at Chilbolton Observatory. I currently work the "big" radar; CAMRa which is the largest fully steerable meteorological radar in the world. It used to be a radio astronomy telescope, which explains its size but has had many upgrades and modifications over the years.

What is radar?
Radar is an active remote sensing piece of equipment, originally an acronym for RAdio Detection And Ranging. Radars have a specified frequency band which they emit at. CAMRa emits at 3GHz. Traditionally radars are polarised in one direction so they emit a waves usually in the horizontal plane, and we get reflectivity back from the object it hits. However CAMRa has dual-polarisation capabilities. If we look at the diagram below, as you can see as soon as we add another polarisation we are getting more information about the targets.

Dual-polarisation Diagram of CAMRa radar
There are several ways to take measurements with a Radar. Below is an example of the two directional observations the first is called an RHI, (Range Height Indicator), the top image shows horizontal reflectivity of the target, and the bottom shows the difference in reflectivity between the horizontal and the vertical. The bright band at around 2km, is the melting band, it is very distinctive. The right hand image is of a PPI, the red sector is the melting band which is, again, very distintive.

Types of Scans of Radar (CAMRa)

If you would like to know more about radar I recommend this website: Radar Tutorial.

FAAM

What is FAAM?
FAAM is an acronym standing for Facility for Airborne Atmospheric Measurements. It is the collaboration between the Met Office and NERC (National Environmental Research Council). It operates a modified BAe-146 Atmospheric Research Aircraft.

FAAM aircraft courtesy of the (Met Office, 2014)

It can hold up to 4 cloud physics probes under each wing and has an array of chemistry instrument racks. The aircraft is also covered in "inlets" or lots of holes! These are usually for chemistry, to take air samples but some are cloud physics based and others just general information such as turbulence.
What does FAAM do? They are a flying laboratory. They are able to take in-situ measurements. They fly all over the world. Most campaigns are well planned, where they go somewhere for up to 2months and fly every day when the weather conditions are right, but some are ad-hoc. For example a few years ago when the Icelandic volcano erupted FAAM flew up there, taking measurements, and was able to confirm when there would be safe levels for airports to be reopened.
My involvement in FAAM:I did an 8 week internship through SEPnet at FAAM where I was part of the upgrade to the turbulence probe. The instrument was unreliable for flights, data was invalid due to frequent overpressure, the fact it was analogue meant it was subject to additional noise, plus it now required specialist parts because it was so old. What I did was research new parts and ran a Monte Carlo Simulation to compare the improvement of replacing the old ones with the new and to find out which instrument would be the best fit. This instrument was bought, and then tested by another SEPnet student the following year. I also got to experience scientific flights, and was on COMMs (communicated from the aircraft with the ground) for a week away. For a more details you can visit SEPnet Internship at FAAM Blog.

My current involvement is using the Nevzorov Probe to calibrate CAMRa for Ice Water Content see the next section for more details.

Ice Water Content Calibration

And then there was none. Initially when I checked for coincident flights and radar just by looking at flight plans, and knowing when the radar was on, I had a total of 17 flights. Then I checked for working data on the FAAM flights, for which I had 3 flights plus another 4 backups which had some missing data. I then created RHIs to check for "good" days on CAMRa and I was down to one day: 3/3/2009 flight B343. Now one flight would be good enough to start. I created my code and then I saw I was getting some odd values for IWC. After some investigation it turned out to be that the instrument was not calibrated and could not have a calibration offset applied, it did have some processed okay data but there is no way of knowing which bits are true values. On 17th May 2017, FAAM were doing a science test flight and were able to do three Chilbolton Runs. Both the CAMRa radar and the X-band ran. The Nevzorov probe has to be calibrated for clear air at the beginning of each flight which was done, so we should have some good science data. In addition on some of the RHIs from CAMRa the plane can be seen which means I can check my co-incident code for accuracy. This is really positive and I am looking forward to validating my research.

Co-incident Measurements

Co-incident Measurements between Atmospheric Research Aircraft and CAMRa radar

Women in Science

Even in today's society, even in the UK, women are still not equal. Figures from 2013 from Higher Education Survey ( HES )
Women hold less than 40% of academic positions at top universities in Europe
18% hold full professor positions in the UK (further 4.4% for partial)
Earn 11.3% on average less than male academics in the UK
In 2005 the Athena Swan Charter were established for STEMM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (and Medicine)) employment, championing equality. It has been recommended to choose an institution which has at least a Silver Award.
In 2015 I attended CUWiP (Conference of University Women in Physics), the first in the UK. It was very bizarre being surrounded by only females, but speakers were of all genders. When we spoke to the female academics, leaders of their fields about how they balanced having a family with their career; one turned to me and said "Don't do it!", another said you have choose but they had a great boss so it worked out for her but some of her colleagues were not so lucky, another said it was hell and recommended to choose either between a family or a career in academia, that nothing was really changing. In 2015 I had an internship, and a women in the office, was going to lose her funding as a grant she applied for last year, required her to attend a meeting on a set date, which was when she would be on maternity leave, and they wouldn't change it or let another member of the team take the meeting in her place, and were going to withdraw the funding. She did not know she was pregnant when she was applying for the grant, and even if it was in her first trimester, then so many things can go wrong, that's why you don't tell people. I don't know what happened in the end, whether she came in during her maternity leave or if another member of her team took her place but the audacity that she should haven't applied and secured for her team, not her, but her team as she was pregnant is incomprehensible and just shows how much needs to change.
A few years ago I attended a workshop run by Professor Averil MacDonald, who taught us about Unconcious Bias, and I have heeded some of her advice. Now this is all coming from a physics background, and I can already see a much better representation of women in Earth and Environment than I did in physics. But none the less it is important to have gender equality in the workplace. By the age of 11, (end of primary school), girls have already decided that they don't want to do science, it is much later for boys. This is such a shame, and shows how important Outreach is. Girls don't necessarily need a female role model but they do need people to show and share their passion for science and that is the great thing about Outreach.

Work Experience and Internships

Events
http://www.rigb.org/whats-on
https://www.britishscienceassociation.org/citizen-science
http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/visitmuseum
http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/visitmuseum/plan_your_visit/lates
http://msimanchester.org.uk/schools
http://msimanchester.org.uk/whats-on
http://www.discoveryplanet.co.uk/about-us
http://www.sepnet.ac.uk/outreach/schools/
https://www.wisecampaign.org.uk/resources/2015/04/stem-education-and-outreach
...and many more! Check out your local museum, school, university or library for events local to you.

Work Experience
https://www.bas.ac.uk/jobs/work-experience-opportunities/
If you are in London the Royal Astronomical Society's Library offer work experience placements. All schools will also have a citizenship booklet dedicated for work experience week, these organisations may also offer longer positions over the summer too. Most universities will offer work experience so it is worth asking.

Summer Schools
Most universities offer summer schools so it is always worth looking up your local university to see what they have on offer; the same for work experience, try speaking to your science teacher first because they might know the best person to contact.
http://www.rigb.org/families/summer-schools
http://summerschools.suttontrust.com/
University of Kent Space School (15-18yr olds)
http://www.stem.leeds.ac.uk/events/summer-schools/
University College London Summer School
Nuffield Foundation Research Placement (year 12) - I can personally recommend
CERN Summer Camp (16-19yr olds)

Undergraduate Placements
CERN Summer Student Programme
SEPnet Internships
http://www.nerc.ac.uk/funding/available/postgrad/advanced/experience/
Met Office is a popular but highly competitive choice but their website is rubbish, you can put out a job alert but the rmet society usually put out notifications when the placements are open: https://www.rmets.org/summer-placements-2017 or http://www.metlink.org/careers-and-courses/work-experience/ (you have to go to http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/careers/current-vacancies and click on Placements/Graduates and Work Experience)

Graduate Network and Opportunities
SEPnet Gradnet

Interesting Science Websites

https://www.galaxyzoo.org/:Galaxy Zoo, fancy classifying galaxies? This is a citizen science website which means that anyone can sign up, learn a skill and start contributing to science.
https://www.zooniverse.org/Zooniverse, galaxies not your thing? How about counting penguins? Identifying solar flares? Looking at plants? There is something for everything on here.
http://scaleofuniverse.com/Scale of the Universe
http://discoveringantarctica.org.ukDiscover Antarctica
http://www.suntrek.org/Solar Physics