I’ve been on Gan for two days and change now so it’s probably time for an update. I arrived on Tuesday afternoon after ~40 hours of traveling. Luckily all of my flights went smoothly and my bags arrived safe and sound on the same plane as I did. My first impression of the Maldives came as I was getting off of the plane in Male. I had been wearing my glasses instead of contacts so that I could sleep on the plane, and as soon as I stepped out of the plane they immediately fogged up due to the immense humidity. Don’t get me wrong – I’ve lived in the South for almost all of my life so I know what humidity is, but this is unbelievable. I’ve been to the continental tropics before but the oceanic tropics are otherworldly muggy. The worst part is that since we’re in a repressed stage of the MJO the humidity right now is actually relatively low for this area. Gan is very lush, with green trees, plants, and flowers everywhere. Below is a picture of the driveway leading into the Equator Village where we DYNAMO folks are staying.
The hotel is sufficient and simple. My room consists of a bed, a desk, and a dresser. No television, radio, phone, etc. I think that, while this may take some getting used to, I’ll actually enjoy it. It’ll be sort of a monk-like existence for 6 weeks. Just me and my books, thoughts, and work.
I started to work at the radar on Wednesday. So far training for my duties has been going well. I’m lucky to be receiving some very detailed instructions on how to do my job – it’s certainly made it very easy to get up to speed on what’s going on (even when learning while jet-lagged). The radar is situated on a beach 3 islands up from Gan. The workspace is a bit cramped during the transition (scientists overlap for about a week to make the transition) but I think it will be ok next week. Below is a shot of our workstation in the science trailer.
Wednesday was pretty cool because we got invited to tour the French Falcon research aircraft which has been flying out of Gan. Today the Falcon has been flying coordinated flights over the DYNAMO array with the US's NOAA P-3 aircraft. They have a couple of really neat instruments on-board that allow them to measure various parts of the cloud and rain as they fly through it. The coolest was an up/down millimeter wavelength radar with 3 dishes pointed upward and 3 dishes pointed downward. This allows them to back out super accurate vertical velocity estimates to coordinate with the particle probes that simultaneously measure cloud properties. Pretty neat stuff. Here's a shot of the French cloud physicist explaining on of the instruments that counts and sizes cloud and rain drops as the plane flies through the cloud.
The quirkiest thing about my trip so far has been my daily wake-up calls. The closest thing I can relate it to is what Joe Pesci's character in “My Cousin Vinny” goes through in the South. He’s constantly being awoken by cows, chickens, trains, the nearby factory etc. Here my wake-up call begins at 4:30 am when the mosque 50 yards from my room issues it’s island wide call to prayer over a giant loudspeaker. Hearing some guy chanting in Arabic at 4:30 in the morning is not cool. On Wednesday I managed to fall back asleep from that only to be awoken at sunrise by one of the 5 or so roosters that live at the resort. This morning I was up at 5 am by a noise that I interpreted to mean the world soon coming to an end. As it turns out torrential tropical rainfall on a 30 year old tin roof directly over my head sounds like I’m lying underneath a helicopter. Maybe Gan didn’t get the memo but Casey is not a morning person. They’re gonna have to cut this junk out or we’re gonna tango before my six weeks is up.
I’ll leave you with a nice shot of the sunset over the Gan airstrip Wednesday evening. All in all it's been a very nice first few days on the project. I’m energetic and excited about the opportunities to work on some really cool science. Now if I could just get a full night’s sleep.
Cheers,
Casey
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