• After witnessing the continued decrease of involvement in the SpotterNetwork staff in serving SN members with troubleshooting issues recently, I have unilaterally decided to terminate the relationship between SpotterNetwork's support and Stormtrack. I have witnessed multiple users unable to receive support weeks after initiating help threads on the forum. I find this lack of response from SpotterNetwork officials disappointing and a failure to hold up their end of the agreement that was made years ago, before I took over management of this site. In my opinion, having Stormtrack users sit and wait for so long to receive help on SpotterNetwork issues on the Stormtrack forums reflects poorly not only on SpotterNetwork, but on Stormtrack and (by association) me as well. Since the issue has not been satisfactorily addressed, I no longer wish for the Stormtrack forum to be associated with SpotterNetwork.

    I apologize to those who continue to have issues with the service and continue to see their issues left unaddressed. Please understand that the connection between ST and SN was put in place long before I had any say over it. But now that I am the "captain of this ship," it is within my right (nay, duty) to make adjustments as I see necessary. Ending this relationship is such an adjustment.

    For those who continue to need help, I recommend navigating a web browswer to SpotterNetwork's About page, and seeking the individuals listed on that page for all further inquiries about SpotterNetwork.

    From this moment forward, the SpotterNetwork sub-forum has been hidden/deleted and there will be no assurance that any SpotterNetwork issues brought up in any of Stormtrack's other sub-forums will be addressed. Do not rely on Stormtrack for help with SpotterNetwork issues.

    Sincerely, Jeff D.

Model Suggestions

Joined
Jun 19, 2005
Messages
884
Location
New Mexico
I am currently taking classes as apart of being a graduate student at NMSU. While I am working towards an astronomy PhD (in a few years), I decided that despite not currently doing research in atmospheres, that I would like take a planetary atmosphere's class. The class will not be completely centered on earth, since allot of the people in my class study the atmosphere's of mars and the gas giants. So far just a week in, I am enjoying it... fun to think of what the lapse rates of Jupiter or Mars is.

Anyhow, at the end of the year we need to develop some sort of computer model. Nothing too over the top, since they're not emphasizing the modeling. The professors suggested using something that you already use in your research. Given that I don't do research in the area... I have a little wider range in what I may end up doing.

I have made some code in MATLAB, that I have been playing with since fall. However, I have had many challenges with it. Being ambitious when I started, I began in 3d. Noticing this is quite computationally challenging for my desktop I switched to 2d. I also had tried to allow every variable to change (P, T, vapor density, air density). During the runs I have been haunted by large gravitational waves forming, and other computational instability. However, I did have brief success, and was able to form a cloud from a region of air that that had had a higher potential temperature, before the model went hay wire.

Because of all of these difficulties I was thinking of going more back towards the basics. Since gravity has been a pain, since even in 2d I always kept the vertical component, I was thinking of perhaps playing in 2d but with N-S, E-W grid. Also, perhaps keeping it isothermal. However, it doesn't seem like you could make as much fun stuff from such a model. Therefore I wanted to ask you guys. What would you think be fun to model? If the model requires the vertical axis, do you have an suggestions to mitigate gravity waves from forming? Thanks for any suggestions.

P.S. For a non planetary model, I was thinking modeling the collapse of interstellar gas may be interesting, but I need to do a little more research before deciding. Also, not sure if this would be a good model for a planetary atmosphere class.
 
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