Getting to Know You

Hello, everyone. My name is Harrison Sincavage, a junior here at Penn State University main campus. I am majoring in Meteorology with a minor in Geography, and may also dual-minor with an additional minor in Geographic Information Systems. I currently live in State College, PA, but am originally from the small town of Wyomissing, PA, just outside the city of Reading, PA, located about two hours east-southeast of State College. I intend on pursuing graduate work in Meteorology or a related STEM field to study mesoscale meteorology (severe weather) and become apart of NOAA or NASA. Ultimately, my goal is to become a qualified astronaut with NASA to study space weather such as solar wind from our Sun, and weather on other planets. Besides taking this course for completion of my Geography minor, I took this course with interest in the correlation between human and environmental interactions on a geographic spectrum. I previously took a human geography based course that helped me develop an understanding of the different cultures around the planet and how they interact with their respective environment, and wanted to dig a little deeper as to how natural phenomena affects their populations and/or lifestyles on a time scale from a daily basis to annual, and beyond. When I am not studying my coursework, I usually spend my time working on independent research that I conducted in the Great Plains last Spring. I am currently interested in researching lightning within severe convective storms. Besides the scientific realm of my life, I enjoy acting, live theatre performances and am a fan of British actor Ralph Fiennes.

A concept that is often misunderstood by the general public in some ways is climate change. I try to emphasize to people that they need to understand the climate of which they live before they can understand climate change. The atmospheric is chaos; it never stops moving. One problem that does not receive as much attention as it should is the air quality around the globe that has had an uptick in the frequency of its concentration over the past couple of years/decades. For example, the 2008 Beijing Olympics were likely to be under the influence of dangerous air quality with thick smog and haze. However, the upper air patterns changed in time for the poor air to clear, resulting in a more pleasant experience for athletes and spectators. Penn State actually did some research on the aerosol content of the Beijing Olympics. I think more provisions to better or air across the planet are needed, similar to the Clean Air Act of 1971 in the U.S., but on a global scale.

Cheers,

Harrison Sincavage

2 thoughts on “Getting to Know You

  1. Hello Harrison, this is a great post! I think that Meteorology is one of the more interesting subjects that I’ve ever taken a course on, I love learning about stuff that you can apply to your daily life. I truly wish you good luck in all of the endeavors that you listed, being an astronaut would be amazing, and it definitely sounds like you’re on a good path! Hopefully I’ll see your name again in the future, maybe when the U.S. gets our space program back on track. I hope you enjoy the rest of the class!

  2. Hello Harrison! I actually took an introductory Meteorology course (METEO 003) last year, and we talked a little bit about climate change! I agree that not many people think about it or understand their own climate. In fact, I used to next think about it until I took METEO 003. It’s interesting how much the atmosphere is changing and moving. I’m sure since you live in Pennsylvania as well, you have experienced the odd climate we have had recently. Records were broken in my area because of how warm it was in December. I am still very curious as to what caused the climate change in our area.
    Here’s a link to my introduction blog:
    http://geog030.dutton.psu.edu/2016/01/16/getting-to-know-me-2/

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