Senior Bates College 21 Years Biology

"Hi!  I’m Erika and this trip was my first time in China and my first time on this side of the date line.  I have one and a half years of school left, am a biology major, and studied monsoon climate variation while in China.  I enjoyed my research, and although I knew very little about atmospheric science and monsoons when I came to China, I learned a lot about monsoons and rainfall variation through my mentor and through my research. 

Qingdao is a beautiful city.  Old European architecture is interspersed with a modern, more Chinese style, and the cities winding, well-shaded streets provide great places for people-watching.  I found the people of Qingdao to be extremely friendly, engaged, and patient with our group’s inability to speak Chinese.  Store and restaurant owners often entered into games of miming and guessing, bringing whole rooms into the action, in order to communicate. 

My favorite day in China was the day the Dalian group visited Qingdao and we hiked the much less touristy side of Mt. Laoshan.  I also loved going to the botanical gardens in Shanghai.  The hardest part of the experience was being isolated in our small group of seven for most of the summer, since we cannot speak the local language fluently and there aren’t many other internationals around.  This summer has been one of the best, most interesting summers of my life, and I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to come to China, do research, meet very new and very different people, see an amazing and dynamic country, and get paid for all of it. If you have any questions, please email me!"

Monsoon regions around the world are largely characterized by rainfall variation. Our study’s objective was to understand differences between rainfall variation over the entire North Pacific and rainfall variation in smaller regions of the North Pacific.  Patterns in rainfall variation regime change in regions spanning west to east across the North Pacific were also examined.  Up long wave radiation flux (ULWRF) was used as a measurement of rainfall and data was provided by the monthly and seasonal NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis ULWRF dataset (www.cdc.noaa.gov/cdc/reanalysis).  EOF analysis separated modes of variation in the ULWRF variation data.  Results showed that ULWRF variation in regions bordering continent was not in accordance with the whole North Pacific, whereas ULWRF variation in regions surrounded by ocean was.  Therefore, we conclude that ULWRF variation is affected differently in regions bordering continent and regions surrounded by open-ocean.  This conclusion lends strength to the importance of the land-sea interaction in the weather-systems affecting coastal communities.  In addition, the first major ULWRF variation phase change occurred sequentially from west to east in a northern and southern band, suggesting that climate change epochs progress westward with time over the North Pacific.  This progression was also cited in the rainfall variation over India and China (Kripalani et al 2001).