Student Chapter of the American Meteorological Society
University of Oklahoma
Minutes for General Meeting
November 5, 2013
This meeting was held in Room 1313 of the National Weather Center.
Addison welcomed everyone back to the meeting. He discussed paying dues,
incentive points and a few upcoming events.
Mr. Meteorology will be November 22 and we need volunteers to participate
as contestants and freshman to dance. We currently have 4 contestants and need
more. We also need volunteers for the freshman dance.
The December SCAMS meeting will be a Social Movie night watching
Sharknado. This will be during Dead Week and is not mandatory.
Addison then introduced our speakers, Owen Shieh and Staff Sergeant
Michael Lanzetta II. They will be presenting on Tropical Cyclone Operational
Forecasting and Research. Mr. Shieh will be presenting first then SSG Lanzetta. Mr.
Shieh discussed the Joint Typhoon Warning Center between the United States Navy
and the United States Air Force. They use different satellites to study the storms in
the pacific all year long. Since they are based in Hawaii and the Pacific bases are
spaced far apart, there are no aircraft recon flights into these storms. On the
research side they track forecasts improving and research the intensity forecasts.
The intensity forecasts they currently use have not changed much since they were
first issued. Mr. Shieh believes that research will be focused on this aspect within
the net 15-20 years.
SSG Lanzetta then discussed how microwave satellite was better than
infrared for position tracking. The multiple images on a system are very useful to
see how things are changing and tracking. The Dvorak technique is currently used
for positioning. The intensity is estimated with this technique using enhanced
infrared or visible satellite. The Dvorak intensity measurement types are very
subjective.
The meeting was then dismissed. Our next meeting will be in January at 6:30
in NWC 1313.