8 week internship, July - August 2019

After finishing his Bachelor’s Degree program in Geosciences at the University of Bremen, Jan-Niklas was looking for a geophysical related internship which allowed for learning more about the atmosphere. He was able to join Bodeker Scientific for an internship working on the MAPM (Mapping Air Pollution Emissions) field campaign. The measurement devices used in the campaign are located in Christchurch, so Jan-Niklas spent half of his time in Christchurch to download data and maintain the instruments (ODINs and ES642s) and the other half of his time in Alexandra to work on the data, mainly from AWS.

Additionally, weather balloons were launched from the Ilam Fields in Christchurch to determine layers of temperature inversion. Jan-Niklas also wrote Python scripts about the API responds of MetOffice’s website “Weather Observation Website” for certain AWS sites in the area of Christchurch.

After finishing his internship, Jan-Niklas took the opportunity to travel along the picturesque west coast of the South Island of New Zealand for the last two weeks before flying back to Bremen, Germany from Wellington, before starting his Master’s Degree program “Marine Geosciences” at the University of Bremen.

Simon Reifenberg

10 week internship, August – October 2015

Simon joined Bodeker Scientific after finishing the second year of his Bachelor Degree in Meteorology at the University in Mainz and spent his entire semester break (12 weeks) in New Zealand. Together with his supervisor Greg Bodeker, he worked on the project 'Hysteresis in the Climate System'. Using the MAGICC simple climate model, Simon analysed long-term climate simulations with different CO₂ emission scenarios to examine the relation of global mean temperature perturbations (compared to a pre-industrial level) and global CO₂ emissions and whether (and under which conditions) it is possible for the atmosphere to return to pre-industrial state. Aside from the general information about his default project, Simon learnt a lot about simple climate models, the development of emission scenarios, programming in Python, and the Physics of satellite orbits.

Simon shared the office and a room at Marj's place (just lovely) with Lukas, another RISE intern, with whom he travelled around the South Island by foot, bike, bus, and car at the weekends. After finishing at Bodeker Scientific, Simon used his last 10 days to explore the North Island, before returning to Germany to finish his studies.

Lukas Alteköster

8.5 week internship, August – October 2015

Just before starting his Master Degree program in Applied Geography at the technical university in Aachen (RWTH) in October, thanks to the DAAD, Lukas got the chance to join the Bodeker Scientific Team for an internship. The guiding question of his internship was “How uncertain are future projections of climate change?”. Within this theme Lukas worked together with Stefanie and Jared on a project to determine the future occurrence of temperature extreme events in New Zealand at the end of the century. Within the data analysis Lukas also investigated the functionality of Stochastic Weather Generators and their use for climate change prediction. As Lukas plans to focus his future studies at university on climatology and climate change the internship was a perfect practical training for him.

In addition to the work at Bodeker Scientific, Lukas spent the weekends travelling around the South Island of New Zealand together with Simon (the other DAAD intern). They also spent some time exploring Alexandra and the surrounding areas by bike.

After his internship, Lukas spent a week traveling through the North Island of New Zealand, before returning to Aachen in Germany to continue his studies in Environmental Engineering and Applied Geography.

Jan Markus Diezel

8 week internship, August - September 2014

During the semester break before his final year of his Bachelor Degree in Meteorology at the University of Hamburg, Jan Markus had the opportunity to join Bodeker Scientific as an intern for 8 weeks. His task was to write an isentropic trajectory model in Python, thereby contributing to a project which uses trajectories to compare reanalysis data to data obtained by Google [x] Project Loon. In Project Loon, Google is flying hundreds of balloons into the stratosphere to provide internet access to remote areas. The trajectories of these balloons are compared to the trajectories computed from the reanalysis data to reveal errors caused by sub-grid-scale effects and deficient wind fields of the reanalysis model. This in turn will contribute to an improved understanding of the transport processes in the stratosphere, especially the ozone transport and its effects on climate.

Nadja Zeiher

9 week internship, August - October 2014

Nadja was in the final semester of her Bachelor Degree in Physical Geography when she joined Bodeker Scientific for 9 weeks. Her scientific question was: How is the climate over New Zealand expected to change over the course of the 21st century? What is the nature of expected changes in extreme climate events such as floods, droughts, extreme high temperatures and extreme low temperatures? For this aim she used Python to generate a time series of maps showing the frequency of hot, cold, wet and dry days and spells in New Zealand from 2001 until 2099. She used data which was produced by climate pattern scaling, a method which was developed by Bodeker Scientific.

Before she started her time at Bodeker Scientific, Nadja travelled with a friend in a hired car for two weeks and enjoyed the beauty and the variety of New Zealand. During the internship she did weekend trips with Jan Markus, the other intern, hiking, skiing and kayaking. Both stayed at Marj’s place, which is a very cute backpackers, in a shared flat style, which is run by the amiable owner Marge.

Nadja was very grateful for this chance which was made possible by the RISE weltweit program from the DAAD. She was delighted by the little farm which surrounds the office and especially by the internship at Bodeker Scientific, where she gained a lot of experience.

Jan Nitzbon

10 week internship, August - October 2013

After finishing his Bachelor degree in Physics at the University of Göttingen, Jan joined Bodeker Scientific (BS) for a 10 week internship. He worked on an update of the BS total column ozone database which contains observational data from different satellites spanning a period from 1978 until today. The aim of the project was to generate a completely new version of the database using improved statistical methods to correct for offsets and drifts between the different datasets. Additionally a detailed consideration of instrument errors was performed so that the final data product also contains uncertainties on the total column ozone values. The final ozone database can be used to analyse global or local ozone trends, for example the evolution of the ozone hole over Antarctica, or scientific questions related to ozone as an essential climate variable.

Apart from the work at BS, Jan spent a lot of time doing the numerous outdoor activities New Zealand has to offer together with Patrick, another DAAD student. They went hiking, kayaking, biking and visited several places and cities in the South island. After the internship he spent two more weeks travelling before returning to Germany. There Jan has continued his studies of Physics in Göttignen, undertaking a Master's programme specialised on the physics of complex systems. He is still interested in the broad field of environmental science on which he is also going to write his PhD thesis.

To view Jan's DAAD report, please click here.

Patrick Stoll

12 week internship, July - October 2013

Patrick came to Bodeker Scientific during the final semester of his Bachelor Degree in Physics (from the University of Konstanz). He worked on two projects while at Bodeker Scientific, and then used these projects for his bachelor thesis. In his first project he programmed an algorithm to merge temperature data from 6 satellites to one temperature time series. This supported a work package Bodeker Scientific was involved in with the ESA SPARC (Stratosphere-troposphere Processes And their Role in Climate) Initiative.

In the second project he used an object oriented approach to analyse precipitation development of climate models. He created an algorithm to combine the data from a spatial and temporal grid to objects, which can be understood as precipitation events. He then analysed these objects to look for characteristics and trends.

More information can be found in Patrick's DAAD report.

The internship showed Patrick that his interests lie in the climate sciences. So after he finished his bachelor thesis in Germany in December 2013, he started his Master's studies in Energy and Climate at the University of Tromsø in Norway. As with Jan (see above), Patrick spent most of his weekends doing outdoor activities in the lower South Island, and then spent a further 9 days after his internship exploring the South Island.

10 week internship, August - October 2012

Thanks to a DAAD RISE scholarship, Ludwig was able to complete a 10 week internship at Bodeker Scientific and gain practical experience to enrich his studies of Applied Computer Science at University of Heidelberg, Germany. His main work consisted of two tasks. Firstly, he implemented software for creating temperature climatologies based on large databases of satellite-measurements from different instruments (CHAMP, GRACE, COSMIC, NCEP-CFSR). Those climatologies could then be compared with existing climatologies derived from radio occultation measurements to determine potential biases. Secondly, trajectories for air-parcels with an assigned ozone-value were created and a search for coincident trajectories was performed. This information could then be used for further analysis of possible anomalous trends in the time-series of ozone-measurements recorded by GOMOS and SAGE2 and to finally be able to merge them after removing drifts and offsets. He also created several utility tools and maintained some of the related source-codes developed at Bodeker Scientific.

During his spare time, Ludwig enjoyed the remoteness and quiet of Alexandra in contrast to his life back in Germany. As well as lots of reading, he explored the area around Alexandra through some hiking and biking (although the winter didn't allow for too much outdoor activity). He also did a couple of trips in the southern part of the island to meet a friend and do some longer hikes with him.

After the internship Ludwig continued his studies in Heidelberg to finish his Bachelor Degree and worked as a research assistant for the GIScience departement at University of Heidelberg in the area of trajectory analysis of agricultural machines. To further improve the above mentioned trajectory-software, Ludwig collaborated with Bodeker Scientific until January 2013, to speed up the coincidence-detection.

To view Ludwig's DAAD report, please click here.