Altering Course: How GATE Changed the Professional Trajectory of an Accidental Student Participant

Altering course: How GATE changed the professional trajectory of an accidental student participant

My aleatoric professional life was deflected by GATE toward a life of field observations. The project did not so much instill in me a particular desire to be in great planning committee meetings, or to be part of organizations in general, but rather sparked an impulse toward doing field work in all its aspects: Instrument design and selection, data acquisition systems, data analysis & modeling. Another motivation was to travel to new places, interact with new cultures, and, in my case, learn and teach in new languages. To be there. The firm foundation in relating surface fluxes to changes in the convective boundary layer I first studied in detail using GATE data became a foundation for my contributions to later projects in the Amazon Basin, and in the boreal and midlatitude forests.

The extensive GATE Student Observer Program administered at NCAR offered a grand opportunity for those just starting out in the field. I was a ‘walk-on’, whose initial motivation was for a trip to West Africa, where I had recently been a secondary school teacher. I was selected to be a student participant and assigned to the US Coast Guard Cutter Dallas, under Chief Scientist M. Garstang. Rumor was that no other graduate student from UCLA applied because the justifiably famous tropical meteorology professors there preferred that their students to stay at work. Though I have witnessed this happen several times since, I still believe that such a decision is short-sighted. There is great value to having students out in the field to witness, regardless of their inclinations for theory, modeling or observation. Ideas are sometimes born in contemplation.

My job was important but not intellectually challenging: Along with the others, I sailed from Miami to Dakar on the Dallas, and then I sat in a windowless container on the Dallas fantail for each of the three GATE phases on 12-hr shifts, making certain that the magnetic tapes that were recording all of the GATE data were operating and changed at the proper time. Adjusting to the long hours and shipboard life was a challenge for most. The stress of the 12-h shifts onboard a small ship manifested itself in some interesting ways. As GATE wore on, there was some wavering of sanity.

I draw on contemporary daily-updated notes in cursive scrawl kept three yellow legal pads. These pads have moved with me as I have worked in field experiments on three continents, five countries over the last 43 years after leaving the University of Virginia, where after GATE I had found myself back again in graduate school studying under Garstang, analyzing GATE boundary layer observations. Reviewing these notes, it has been humbling to ‘interact’ with my very much younger self. One notable entry: “For the attention of all hands: The President of the United States has resigned.”