Meteorologist Measures Climate Change

By Dottie Evans

Everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it.

––Attributed to Mark Twain

 

When Dr James P. Boyle, assistant professor in the physics, astronomy, and meteorology department at Western Connecticut State University, says that he has a keen interest in the weather, he is not just talking about the possibility of rain tomorrow.

Unlike all the people Mark Twain complains about, Dr Boyle actually does do something about the weather –– although he insists his contribution is purely theoretical.

Put most simply, what Dr Boyle does about the weather is, he measures it. At sea level. When he has the opportunity.

When he is not doing research, Dr Boyle is teaching physics and meteorology.

As one of five in what he calls a “very active department” at Western Connecticut that is “heavily into” the meteorological sciences with both theoretical and broadcast applications, Dr Boyle finds the academic atmosphere challenging.

“The university is growing and there is a new science building under construction,” Dr Boyle said.

A new science degree, a BS in astronomy, was added to the curriculum just this year, he noted.

It is an exciting place to work, he added, but unfortunately there are only 24 hours in a day and “it’s amazing how hard it is to think when you’re tired.”

A New Family On  Meadow Road

James Boyle and his wife Priscilla can be excused for being short of sleep. Besides being parents of a daughter, Clare, 4, they have just welcomed a new son, Patrick, 3 weeks, into their family.

They moved into their 5 Meadow Road home only six months ago, and while there are still boxes to unpack, and the inside of the house needs painting and there is talk of needing a new roof, they are settling in very quickly, mainly because they had no choice with the baby due.

Mrs Boyle had been teaching second grade in a Westport School. Since the birth of their son, she is home with the baby and the two have been juggling errands, shopping, and childcare.

It helps that Clare has already made friends on the quiet street off Glover Avenue. And when Dr Boyle is not holding the baby, he takes his daughter fishing down in the Ram Pasture creek, where he claims they always catch something with their nets.

“But we always throw it back.”

Their house is the oldest on the street in the residential neighborhood tucked between Queen and South Main streets. Set back on a sloping lawn and deeply shaded by tall maples, it was built in 1940 by longtime Newtown residents Patrick and Alice Houlihan Carroll. The three Carroll children, Mary Pat, Jim, and Judy, grew up there, riding their bikes through the borough and climbing apple trees in an old orchard.

Sixty years later, Meadow Road is still a nice place to raise children.

Measuring Heat  Exchange

On a recent May afternoon, Dr Boyle walked the few blocks from his house to The Newtown Bee for an interview. On his way, he returned a book at the Cyrenius Booth Library and enjoyed the opportunity to stretch his legs.

He would not have much time, he said, but was glad to talk briefly about his teaching and his research on heat exchange between the atmosphere and the ocean.

He was involved in testing an experimental device that he and others had designed, he said, while he was at the Space Science and Engineering Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison obtaining his PhD degree.

Before then, he spent five years in Arlington, Va., as a nuclear engineer for the US Department of Energy.

The device, which records short-term changes in temperature, could provide important data, he said, about weather patterns and weather prediction, and he praised the Space Science Center with providing the concept and the engineering.

“I respect their work immensely. They deserve the credit because they took the risk.”

But it was his idea, he explained, to attach the measuring device to one of hundreds of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) globelike flotation spheres that are freely drifting across the world’s oceans. In fact, he won a $183,000 NOAA grant to pursue the project.

“These spherical buoys are already transmitting information to satellites in space. They provide scientific data about water flow, direction, currents –– called ‘ground truth data.’ Our device is attached to the buoys and it measures the temperature of the water and the temperature of the air,” he said.

The grant project includes redesigning and testing the instrument in sophisticated wind-wave tanks, and field-testing it in the waters near Martha’s Vineyard, in western Long Island Sound and in the Gulf Stream.

“We’re trying to show how much heat is moving between the air and the water and noting the direction of the flow.”

Dr Boyle explained that the problem of turbulent fluid flow is the last unsolved classical problem in physics.

“We’re still trying to understand what happens in a pot of boiling water,” he added.

“If fully developed, this instrument could help us better understand our changing global climate,” he said.

Is The Climate Changing?

The research will be conducted in partnership with the Bridgeport Regional Vocational Aquaculture School (BRVAS), a magnet high school with a curriculum focus on the Long Island Sound; Sound Sailing Center, a private boat charter company in Norwalk; and the NOAA Global Drifter Buoy Program. Personnel at NOAA headquarters in Miami will track Dr Boyle’s deployed instruments.

“I am particularly looking forward to working with the folks in Norwalk and Bridgeport,” Dr Boyle said.

“This combined effort will enhance the visibility of WestConn and provide an interesting research experience for high school students from BRVAS.”

Although, Dr Boyle seems to consider that the research is still in the experimental stage and is modest about prospects for success (“It may not work, by the way!”) he is hopeful that the data will be reliable. When considered alongside all the other data that weather scientists are constantly analyzing, he feels it will someday help in the understanding of how weather patterns work.

 About the possibility of global warming, Dr Boyle was careful not to draw broad assumptions, but at the same time, he seemed in no doubt the climate was changing.

“I don’t have any grand theories, but from the evidence I have seen it is very clear that it [global warming] is happening.

“In fact, the meteorological community is meeting right now at the world level to address ways to prepare for the effects of climate change. They are considering questions of how to protect people from typhoons and flooding, El Ninos, rains or floods.

“It’s not a question any longer of whether or not it’s happening, but of what we should do about it.”