Splitting the ATom

Week three of TDA research has come and gone, and we're still having fun. This week was filled with lots of Datacamp again, more atmospheric chemistry learning via Jacobs, and a fun surprise that I'll save for the end of this update.

Datacamp for week three was largely focused on more data visualization in order to improve our capacity to display and analyze the data we plan on plotting. In addition, we also had the pleasure of learning how to tidy data. Untidy data can fall victim to multiple variables in a column within a table, multiple values of a variable as separate columns, or data observing multiple different things in the same table. In order to be properly analyzed in R, data needs to be in the correct format (aka tidy), and we learned functions and features to achieve this. This knowledge is incredibly useful to us in our adventures with ATom data, due to its sheer size and complexity.

Considerable time was also devoted to learning about atmospheric transport, and how air (and the chemical species held within) moves around the globe. We read about simple atmospheric models and how they are used to track both species within in a fixed environment as well as fixed species in a motile "puff" of air. This knowledge provides excellent context for the data we're looking at, how we're analyzing it, and why this project is relevant.

Lastly, the fun surprise I teased in the intro: we finally cracked open the ATom data itself and have the scaffolding for a plan of attack for analysis. Initially intimidated (it's not a small dataset), Katie and I persevered and began to break down what exactly we were looking at. We've since been matching instruments and what they measure to the data and their labels in order to better understand what exactly each data point represents. In addition, we've been parsing exactly which measurements we're going to analyze for our purposes and which we plan on ignoring.

In summary, this week has been one to solidify our foundation and background in preparation for finally looking at the data and determining our plan going forward. There's a palpable sense of excitement in the room for the next steps.