Sad News

My adviser's son was in a really serious car accident early Tuesday morning. I don't know all the details but it sounds like he was thrown from the car and has several broken bones. :( He's had surgery and is in stable condition but probably has 6-12 months of recovery ahead of him. This is really sad news, and I feel really bad for my adviser. He's had to deal with lots of frustrations and set backs in the last year and this must be really hard.

Now I am even more convinced that I will be getting very little input as I go forward on my PhD, at least for a few months (which of course I completely understand, he should be with his son right now). Becoming more independent is the point of the doctoral degree anyway. Today I took part in a poster session being held for the National Science Foundation's review team - they are determining whether or not CMMAP (where my funding comes from) will be renewed for the next 5 years. I hope so - I'm enjoying the research here and the opportunities to interact with other grad students and scientists, and the educational and outreach activities. Anyway, doing the poster made me realize how many different things I am interested in right now, and it's hard to decide which topics to focus on. I am feeling pessimistic about the feasibility of my proposed doctoral research. The model I'd like to use is still being developed, and could take a couple of years to be ready. But, like I said, I still have lots of interesting things to do and maybe that project can still happen one day.

I went to a meeting at NCAR last week on their land surface model and had a couple of good conversations. I met a PhD student from Arizona, who is analyzing observations and dynamic vegetation models in the Amazon. We are both interested in the drought sensitivity of the Amazon so it was useful to meet him. I also talked with someone who used to be in my research group about looking at a vegetation model forced by future climate scenarios. This sounds great to me b/c I could look at the Amazon forest's response to a range of possible climates, giving an envelope of possibilities. (Some models predict the Amazon forest will disappear by 2100 because of climate change. I am dubious of this result. However I'm also dubious that people will stop cutting down the forest, unfortunately.) Also the model he uses does a good job of representing the current Amazon, which is something lots of land surface models don't do. That is a pretty important first step before predicting the future!

Ok, I've rambled, which is ok because the server with all my data is down right now. But now that I've reminded myself of all these research interests, I'm sure I can find something productive to do, other than writing on my blog. :)