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Essay about Graduate Studies in Atmospheric Science

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Four NOMAD buoys across the North Atlantic registered a 13-degree drop in SST. And soon a series of extreme weather happened in front of my eyes: hurricanes, snow storms, and even cyclones that rapidly pulled cool air from the upper troposphere which made people freeze instantly. Those were the scenes I saw from The Day after Tomorrow, the film that inspired my curiosity in atmospheric sciences in my seventh grade. Although shocked by the catastrophe caused by global warming in the film, I couldn't help take an eager interest in how freshwater from melted polar ice caps brought a shift in the North Atlantic Current, and how the shifted current brought a change in the earth’s climate. Later, as I gathered more information about the climate, …show more content…

Then the whole process became addictive to me as I indulged myself in writing the program step by step. And after finishing the script of the program, I kept discussing with my teammates on its optimization to make my work professional and precise. When the graphs began popping up on my computer screen one by one, I felt proud of my effort and aspired to face more challenges.
In my third year, I became captivated by the greater challenge and pleasure of developing ideas for research. The experience at the summer course in IMAU, Utrecht University has further motivated me to take this challenge and to conduct studies with greater precision at graduate level. Despite being the only undergraduate in the class, I quickly adapted to the intense format of the course and participated in the project "Radiative-convective equilibrium of atmospheres". New to the field of climate dynamics, I discussed the importance of each factor affecting the climate sensitivity according to the energy budget produced by a simplified model. However, as I reflect my work, I find the climate feedbacks most interesting, and that more work could be done. So I started to ask myself, if permits, wouldn’t it be more precise to utilize sophisticated models with parameters representing water vapor feedback, surface albedo feedback,

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