Dr. Alexander Jacques

Research Scientist
Mountain Meteorology Group
Department of Atmospheric Sciences
University of Utah
alexander.jacques@utah.edu

About

My current research portfolio revolves around the analysis of observational and numerical weather prediction data for mountain meteorology, wildfire, and air quality topics. My primary region of interest is the intermountain western United States, with further focus within the vicinity of the Great Salt Lake in northern Utah. These initiatives involve several different ongoing field research and data management projects within our own research group and multiple external collaborators.

In support of the NSF WIRED Global Center on electrical grid resilience in a changing climate, one of my current primary projects involves the utilization, statistical interpretation, and analysis of the operational NOAA High Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) model. This involves the maintenance and usage of a Zarr-formatted Archive of the HRRR model within Amazon Web Services (AWS) through the Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative. Current research I am leading involves exploring methods to reduce the dimensionality of these archived data, with a focus on grid resilience impacts due to threats of wildfire and prolonged extreme heat events.

For air quality research, to better understand how the local mesoscale and boundary layer characteristics can result in prolonged periods of high criteria pollutant concentrations (ozone and particulate matter), our research group has deployed several instrument packages across the greater Salt Lake region for short-term field studies and longer-term monitoring. These include air quality sensors deployed at fixed site locations and on mobile platforms. The mobile platforms are part of the Utah Mobile Environmental Observation Project (MEOP) and are installed on Utah Transit Authority electric light rail vehicles and electric buses traversing the Salt Lake Valley. Current provisional data from these platforms can be accessed through these available web pages.

To support ongoing research of local meteorological phenomena (boundary layer structure, localized terrain flows, lake breezes, etc.) and to provide supplemental real-time observations to the National Weather Service, our group has deployed multiple mesonet stations and surface-based remote sensors across the Salt Lake Valley and on/around the Great Salt Lake. This set of instrumentation is known as the University of Utah Mesonet (UUNET). As a remotely-based member of our team, I serve as the primary software developer for our mesonet and provide remote hardware assistance as well. These weather stations provide valuable real-time weather information for situational awareness in a data-sparse region immediately upstream of the populated Utah Wasatch Front. Current data from the deployed mesonet stations, ceilometers, and sodars can be accessed through the linked products.

Additional projects involve continued support of the MesoWest suite of surface weather station web products, which include handling of data visualizations, user inquiry support, database and processing procedures, and metadata management. I also provide contracted support to Synoptic Data PBC in support of the NOAA National Mesonet Program.

My PhD research, completed in 2016 under Dr. John Horel at the University of Utah, involved the temporal and spatial analysis of surface pressure perturbations from the Earthscope US Transportable Array (USArray) seismic field campaign, which provided pressure data at a sampling frequency of 1 second. While the project has completed, a research website developed for this project remains with available links to data resources and references. Further, the collected USArray pressure observations are accessible via an official NCAR Research Data Archive repository, which was created as a means to further the dissemination of this data to the atmospheric science community.