Scientific Visualization
Parting the Red Sea
YouTube
Parting the waters, Part 1: The physics of a land bridge
Parting the waters, Part 2: Carl Drews on wind setdown research
Parting the Red Sea, about publications and media coverage.
Boulder - Whiterock Ditch
There is an irrigation ditch to the east of UCAR's Foothills Lab named "Boulder and Whiterock Ditch." I am measuring the water level in this creek every day at lunchtime. I measure from the footbridge at 40 degrees 02.212 minutes North, 105 degrees 14.438 minutes West. The creek is human-controlled for irrigation purposes, but it does react to heavy precipitation (note the spike of 34 cm on March 5, 2004). It's unlikely that I can extract any useful climate information from these controlled water levels, so the purpose of this project is more to investigate the issues of human data collection. The photo below shows me taking the measurement at the bridge:
The project is also a nice introduction to data collection, graphing, and display over the Internet. I created the graph above with IDL and used a simple Linux shell script to transfer it to the web server.
Boulder - Whiterock Ditch begins at Broadway and Canyon in Boulder as a spur canal off Boulder Creek. One can go inner-tubing from there all the way to Mitchell Lane during high water, but the low bridges are dangerous. The canal runs by Hayden Lake, but does not normally drain into the lake unless a certain gate is open. Boulder and Whiterock Ditch eventually runs through Gunbarrel and Niwot all the way out to Panama Reservoir Number 1.
Other Interests
During 2002-2004 I identified and named the highest lake in the United States: Pacific Tarn at 13,420 feet near Breckenridge, Colorado. You can read all about it at highestlake.com. The picture below shows me standing on the summit of Pacific Peak at dawn on July 14, 2002 during the CHAOS scientific expedition to the lake. Pacific Tarn and Quandary Peak are behind me.
I maintain a web page on hurricane metrics with an emphasis on separating the ACE index into its components. I contribute to a personal blog, funmurphys.com, that sometimes contains posts of scientific interest. Funmurphys: The Blog is independent of and not endorsed by NCAR.
Areas of Expertise
