Program Objective: Advance discovery and understanding while promoting teaching, training, and learning. Provide high school or undergraduate students an opportunity to conduct cutting-edge research under the guidance of experienced mentors at UCLA/JIFRESSE, and help with the training of students to attract them to STEM fields. Broaden dissemination to enhance scientific and technological understanding.
In the summer of 2019, three high school students have been selected for their outstanding academic performance and passion for science and engineering. They were supervised by Dr. Jonathan Jiang (JPL) & Dr. Yu Gu (UCLA).
What Did the High School Students Do?
The high school students did a wonderful job in evaluating cloud and water vapor fields simulated from various climate models that participate in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) under the auspices of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) using satellite observations.
During the program, the students gave several project updates and a final presentation. In the final project report, each high school summer intern gave a talk for about 10 minutes to showcase what they have completed during the 8 weeks and summarize their research activities and findings. The program was successfully completed on August 16, 2019, with written report submitted by each of the high school summer interns.
Some Scientific Results produced by the High School Students:
Figure 2. Left and Middle: Multiyear (2010-2014) mean 150 hPa and zonal mean distribution of IWC from UKMO simulations; Right: Vertical profile of IWC from ISPL, UKMO, and BCC models (by Jonathan Qi)
Figure 3: Seasonal variations of IWC at 300 hPa from A-Train satellite observations (by Anna Yu).