Leslie Hartten

When I arrived in Boulder in 1993, my work focused on the weather over the tropical Pacific and its interactions with the underlying ocean and with global climate. This led me to involvement in various investigations into the uses and abuses of data collected by wind profiling radars, as well as into calibrating a wind profile after it had been decommissioned.

In early 2016 I spent 5 weeks on Kiritimati (pronounced "Christmas") Island in the equatorial central Pacific (2.01°N, 157.4°W).  My colleagues and I launched twice-daily radiosondes as part of the El Niño Rapid Response (ENRR) field campaign.  Afterwards I led the effort to quality control the surface and upper-air data collected from Kiritimati and the NOAA Ship Ronald H. Brown during ENRR, working with colleagues to disseminate our data and initial results.

Most recently I've taken my experience collecting, evaluating, and documenting wind profiles and "moved" into the Arctic, becoming involved in the Year of Polar Prediction (YOPP) supersite Model Intercomparison Project (MIP), aka YOPPsiteMIP.  I am collaborating with CIRES, ESRL, and international colleagues to create Merged Observatory Data Files (MODFs) for YOPP's Arctic Special Observing Periods.  These files, whose specifications are being refined in close collaboration with numerical modelling and research partners, have a format and contents very similar to the model forecast files being created by the participating numerical weather prediction centers, and are designed to facilitate process-based studies of model performance.