{"id":443,"date":"2010-03-01T10:58:47","date_gmt":"2010-03-01T15:58:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inside.nssl.noaa.gov\/nsslnews\/?p=443"},"modified":"2010-03-01T10:58:47","modified_gmt":"2010-03-01T15:58:47","slug":"employee-spotlight-dave-jorgensen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inside.nssl.noaa.gov\/nsslnews\/2010\/03\/employee-spotlight-dave-jorgensen\/","title":{"rendered":"Employee Spotlight: Dave Jorgensen"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Dave<\/a>
Dave Jorgensen is very comfortable doing research with the NOAA P-3 aircraft<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Can you picture it?\u00a0 Distant thunderstorm anvils are glowing orange in the sunset over the arid southwest.\u00a0\u00a0 It rarely rains in the deserts near Indio, California, but the Colorado River Basin has storms?\u00a0\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 This is the question of a future meteorologist, and a young Dave Jorgensen\u2019s attention was captured by the view from his back yard in the desert near Palm Springs.\u00a0\u00a0 He has been trying to figure out how storms work ever since.<\/p>\n

Dave earned his B.S. and M.S. in meteorology at Texas A&M, and his Ph.D. at Colorado State University with a dissertation on the mesoscale and convective scale characteristics of mature hurricanes.\u00a0 His graduate research secured his position at the National Hurricane Laboratory where he logged many hours on the NOAA P-3 research aircraft working on hurricane research including the possibility of seeding hurricanes to reduce their wind speeds.<\/p>\n

\u201cVisitors get sick, but scientists don\u2019t,\u201d notes Dave about flying on the P-3\u2019s.\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s because the scientists are busy operating equipment and directing\u00a0\u00a0 the pilots where to go and are always concentrating on what to do.\u201d\u00a0 He speaks from experience, having flown around and through hurricanes, typhoons, winter cyclones, thunderstorms \u2013 you name it over the last 35 years.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Dave was part of the team that realized the P-3 could be used different kinds of research and helped develop the tail-mounted airborne Doppler radar \u2013 to map the 3-D structure of hurricane rainbands.\u00a0 The process took seven years, but the data provided by the airborne radar was invaluable, particularly in debunking the hurricane seeding hypothesis which directly resulted in the abolishment of the National Hurricane Research Lab.<\/p>\n

Dave was at the hurricane lab for 10 years, then moved to Boulder, Colo. with the Weather Research Program to expand his knowledge and study mesoscale convective systems (MCS\u2019s) under a new research group directed by Bob Maddox. Dave\u2019s expertise was in demand, and became involved in designing airborne field campaigns around the world to study all types of storms<\/p>\n

–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 TAMEX (Taiwan Area Mesoscale Experiment) took him to Taiwan and Okinawa (orographic storms)<\/p>\n

–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 TOGA\/COARE (Tropical Oceans\/Global Atmosphere\/Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere Response Experiment) based in the Solomon Islands in the western Pacific, to study giant \u201cwarm-pool\u201d based convective systems that are key to understanding the upward branch of the Earth\u2019s Hadley circulation.<\/p>\n

–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 FASTEX (Fronts and Storm Tracks Experiment) probed frontal systems over the North Atlantic based out of Shannon, Ireland<\/p>\n

–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 MAP (Mesoscale Alpine Project) was in Innsbruck, Austria looking at orographic storms<\/p>\n

–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 T-PARC project (THORPEX Pacific Area Regional Campaign) to examing typhoon genesis from a base in Guam.<\/p>\n

With international projects come interesting adventures.\u00a0 Guadalcanal was the malaria capital of the world but Dave escaped the disease.\u00a0 Project logistics can be challenging – hotels with tadpoles in the tap water or no running water at all, primitive living conditions, no television\/radio or newspapers to connect with the rest of the world.<\/p>\n

State-side Dave has flown with:<\/p>\n

–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 SWAMP (South West Area Monsoon Project), from Phoenix, AZ<\/p>\n

–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 BAMEX (Bow Echo and Mesoscale Convective Vortices Experiment), out of St. Louis, MO.<\/p>\n

–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 NSSL dryline projects in the early 1990s<\/p>\n

–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 MEaPRS (MCS Electrification and Polarimetric Radar Study) and<\/p>\n

–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RAINEX (Hurricane Rainband and Intensity Experiment).<\/p>\n

Surprisingly though, Dave\u2019s first flight through a category \u201c5\u201d hurricane was Hurricane Rita in 2005 he experienced 180 mph sustained winds and dramatic eye structure first hand.<\/p>\n

Dave has been with NSSL for over 20 years years, 12 of those affiliated with NCAR in Boulder. His current role at NSSL is Division Chief of the Warnings Research and Development Division.\u00a0 His team works to capitalize on the current Doppler radar system through product and performance improvement, and \u201ctrying to get the last second of warning time out of the existing system\u201d.\u00a0 The next big jump is hydrometeorology, particularly in improving quantitative precipitation estimation using dual-pol – improving flash flooding warnings.<\/p>\n

Another facet of his career is Dave\u2019s involvement with AMS publications.\u00a0\u00a0 He was co-chief editor of \u201cMonthly Weather Review\u201d for ten years, and helped implement the current online system with the goal of \u201cnot using one piece of paper\u201d to get work published.\u00a0 He is now the Publications Commissioner, choosing editors for the nine AMS journals, and continues to fight for cost reductions particularly for color figure publication.<\/p>\n

Dave admires forward thinking and open-mindedness \u2013 his favorite book is \u201cThe Defining Moment<\/em>.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s the story of FDR\u2019s first 100 days in office as President and how he built coalitions to affect amazing change,\u201d says Dave.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m inspired by how FDR got things done by putting aside his political thinking.\u00a0 We develop things by trying something different, like Roosevelt did.\u00a0 New ideas generally pay off \u2013 the area is wide open.\u201d \u00a0Dave is passionate to \u201cidentify mission-driven folks early in their career and invest in their scientific talent\u00a0 – those who want to provide a service to their country.\u00a0 I want to see NSSL become a world-class research organization.\u201d<\/p>\n

In spite of his extensive travel, describes himself as a \u201chomebody.\u201d He and his wife prefer to work in the yard (they are still clearing broken tree limbs from last winter\u2019s ice storm) and around their house (which they say is too big since their sons graduated college).\u00a0\u00a0 The Jorgensen\u2019s are big supporters of the University of Oklahoma arts, and enjoy reading, the History Channel, and old movies.<\/p>\n

Dave\u2019s curiosity and love of field work has lured him back to Southern California the past five winters, though north of where he grew up.\u00a0 He works with a Shared Mobile Atmospheric Research and Teaching Radar (SMART-R) as part of the NWS\/USGS Demonstration Flash Flood and Debris Flow Early Warning System Project to relay radar information about rainfall to the NWS\/Oxnard forecast office in near real-time.\u00a0 The data is used in USGS models of debris flows to improve the rainfall thresholds used by the NWS in flash flood warnings for debris flow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dave Jorgensen, Chief of the Warning Research and Development Division at NSSL is in the spotlight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":444,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_eb_attr":"","ghostkit_customizer_options":"","ghostkit_custom_css":"","ghostkit_custom_js_head":"","ghostkit_custom_js_foot":"","ghostkit_typography":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[220,253],"class_list":["post-443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-people","tag-issue-february-2010","tag-jorgensen"],"acf":[],"wps_subtitle":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.nssl.noaa.gov\/nsslnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.nssl.noaa.gov\/nsslnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.nssl.noaa.gov\/nsslnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.nssl.noaa.gov\/nsslnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.nssl.noaa.gov\/nsslnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inside.nssl.noaa.gov\/nsslnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.nssl.noaa.gov\/nsslnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.nssl.noaa.gov\/nsslnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.nssl.noaa.gov\/nsslnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.nssl.noaa.gov\/nsslnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}