Matthew's Journal

Wired has a great article about the anti-vaccine movement and how fears over autism, fueled by few if any scientific facts, have the potential to lead to outbreaks of almost forgotten diseases because more and more parents are choosing not to vaccinate their children. At the heart of the matter is the battle scientists must wage against pundits and misguided advocates who use unsupported claims and sensationalism to further their agendas. If scientists (or any truly credible advocate) are going to maintain legitimate credibility, the only recourse is carefully researched and verified logical reason. However, the sad truth is that sensationalism usually trumps reason in the realm of public attention. After all, there hasn't been a single scientific study that ties vaccines to autism, yet the debate rages on. In fact, the scientific evidence suggests that their shouldn't be a debate in the first place.

When it comes to my field of atmospheric science, a similar cloud surrounds the debate over climate change on both sides of the debate. Careful reason is often overshadowed by anecdotal data and conclusions based on ideology and not facts. Because of this, I often ask myself as a scientists, "What can I do to ensure that good science prevails over the bad?" How do you assert credibility as an legitimate expert when true experts are constantly vilified as biased mouthpieces with evil hidden agendas; particularly when, in an ironic twist, it's biased mouthpieces with evil hidden agendas that do the vilifying. The internet, despite being an invaluable tool for research and data dissemination, in many way compounds the issue. After all, how to you know if the blog post your reading is being written by an experienced researcher or a corporate marketing executive? How do you know that the author has done their due diligence in assuring that their claims are valid and robust.

The pro-vaccine camp has more-or-less been beat down to the point where they state that when enough children die, the public will finally understand their message that the risk associated with vaccines is far outweighed by the risk from the diseases they protect against. Perhaps the climate change debate will only be settled in one hundred years when we can see if the sea-level rose as predicted. Off the top of my head I think the most recent IPCC report predicted a sea-level rise on the order of three feet by the year 2100. If the sea-level only rises one foot will the debate rage on?

[An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All]

I was reading an article about NASA crashing the LCROSS satellite into the moon to try and detect the presence of water in lunar soil when I started to think: What does it mean for America when we're effectively the first country to bomb the moon?

A few nights ago, the Ronald Brown stopped so we could perform what is called a CTD. CTD stands for conductivity, temperature, depth and is a tool to measure those and other physical characteristics of seawater. In a way, you can think of a CTD as the ocean equivalent of an upper-air sounding for the atmosphere. Scientists gain information about ocean characteristics for a variety of depths.

The CTD device itself, is actually a host of instruments attached to a large metal rosette. There are various sensors and probes. As you can see, arrayed around the rosette is a series of gray cylinders. These are called Niskin bottles. Each bottle fills with water as the CTD is lowered into the ocean, often to depths exceeding 4000 meters. Each Niskin bottle is set to close at a different depth and they allow scientists to collect samples of water from a variety of depths that can then be subjected to laboratory analysis.

The first CTD the Ronald Brown attempted wasn't actually able to be conducted. The overhead boom that extends the CTD over the side of the ship wouldn't properly extend. However, the crew managed to get it fixed the next day and they proceeded to conduct the CTD.

Chief Survey Technician Jonathan Shannahoff (in the orange work vest) supervises the deployment of the CTD

Kind and heartfelt statements of love, joy, and mutual admiration are exchanged among the involved parties once they realize the boom arm won't extend

The boom now functioning, the CTD device is lowered into the water

Now that the ship is in full research mode, we're launching balloon upper-air soundings six times per day. That's every four hours around the clock. Some of my readers are probably asking themselves right now, "What's a balloon upper-air sounding?" Let me explain.

Meteorologists need to have information about the wind, temperature, and pressure structures in the atmosphere not just at the surface, but throughout the whole troposphere and well into the stratosphere. To obtain the information we need, we take a device, called a sonde, which has a temperature and humidity probe, a GPS antenna, and a radio transmitter and strap it to a balloon that travels high into the atmosphere recording information and transmitting it back to the surface. When it's all said and done, for the launch location you will be able to see the temperature, humidity, wind speed, and wind direction for any given height or pressure level that the balloon passed through.

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Good morning everyone. The Ronald Brown is now is Peruvian waters, a place we actually have permission to take data. So, from now on, all the data we collect we can use for publishable research. Both of the radars that I've been tasked with overseeing are up and running, we're currently launching balloon soundings every fours hours around the clock, and I'm taking photographs of the clouds 360 degrees around the ship in 30 degree intervals. The other scientists on board are running more instruments that I can count measuring everything from seawater salinity to DMS concentrations. Things on the board our going to start getting real interesting and very busy. All the oceanographers are itching to start throwing instruments into the water, a process which always involves a lot of the deck crew. I'll start posting pictures as some of the more interesting experiments get underway. Expect pictures of us trying to release balloons from a windy deck in the near future.

I received some new information about the VOCALS research cruise I'll be going on in the fall. It looks like we'll be leaving from Charleston, SC on September 29th instead of Miami or Key West, Florida the 1st or 2nd of October.

My article for Geophysical Research Letters was published today! The full citation is:

Miller, M. A., and S. E. Yuter (2008), Lack of correlation between chlorophyll a and cloud droplet effective radius in shallow marine clouds, Geophys. Res. Lett., 35, L13807, doi:10.1029/2008GL034354. [link]

The full online version of the article is only available for reading if you have an AGU membership or you are visiting the GRL website from the network of an educational institution with an online subscription. Nevertheless, you should be able to view the abstract via the link I provided above.

Today I got a look at the proposed cruise track for my leg on the Ronald Brown for the VOCALS project.