During this eight-week internship, I was able to look at black and brown carbon amounts after the Eaton and Palisades fire, compared with a smoke plume we interacted with during our flight campaign. I calculated the Ångström exponents of absorption (AAE) to characterize aerosol type and emission sources (e.g., biomass burning vs. urban pollution) using the data we collected from the plane and three ground stations across southern California. I was able to find markers in the AAE that signified black or brown carbon, which can indicate stronger or weaker burning fires.

I spent 50 days and nights on the summit of Mount Washington, where I conducted research, made forecasts, and bothered Nimbus. During my time there, I participated in a joint research project that aimed to verify and study the different Model Output Statistics (MOS) forecast tools used on the summit. We worked directly with NOAA's Modeling Development Laboratory (MDL) to try to improve the models for the summit based on case studies we identified where the MOS variants acted particularly poorly. 

NEBP was a NASA-funded study of solar eclipses, the largest of its kind ever done worldwide. Aimed at detecting gravitational waves in the stratosphere, it tasked schools across the country with helping. I spent over two years studying eclipses, conducting fieldwork related to them, and preparing for two solar eclipses. We traveled to New Mexico for the annular eclipse on October 14th, 2023, where we launched a weather balloon every 12 minutes for 30 consecutive hours. Less than six months later, we did the same, launching a balloon every 30 minutes for 30 hours straight during the total solar eclipse of 2024.