The Gramblinite

Issue date: 9/4/08 Section: Quick Read

Media Credit: Courtesy Photo Grambling student, Selvan Ambrose and math professor, Dr. Gregory Battle stands with Dr. Andy Heymsfield, a researcher and supervisor.

A Grambling State University junior mathematics major, Selvan Ambrose, and Dr. Gregory Battle, associate professor of mathematics, were visiting scholars this summer at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.

The Faculty Fellowship grant was written earlier in the year by Dr. Battle to conduct cirrus cloud research in the Mesoscale and Microscale Meteorology Division of the Earth and Sun Systems Laboratory along with an accompanying Grambling science scholar.

Both Ambrose and Battle wrote extensively IDL (Interactive Data Language) coding algorithms to analyze wave-cloud data gathered from in situ probes on an aircraft which flew through this uniformly distributed cirrus cloud at various altitude penetrations.

The purpose of their data analyses was to develop an accurate numerical simulation of the wave cloud formation with the most accurate approximations to the actual aircraft observations. Wave clouds generally form in a stable layer of the atmosphere where the ambient temperature variation is relatively nil.

All the wave cloud numerical projects were performed for three months under the supervision of the world renowned meteorologist on wave cloud research, Dr. Andrew Heymsfield who has published a prodigious volume of articles on the microphysical structures of such clouds along with Dr. Larry Miloshevich and Dr. Robert M. Sabin, who constructed the "rising air parcel" approach to studying cloud physics and thermodynamics.

Dr. Battle is the first HBCU representative faculty who has been selected competitively to participate in this highly technical program to improve the quality of weather prediction and forecast of atmospheric phenomena, as well as to create a new generation of computational scientists devoted to numerical prediction.

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