Transitions Newsletter Header

Who's Who: LinLin Pan

NOAA
Spring 2020

LinLin was born into a family of farmers in Southeast China where the weather is dominated by the Asian Monsoon. “I can’t remember how many times my parents sighed gravely in front of the ruined crops because of the wrong prediction of Mei-yu – endless rainy days during the summer. My family would starve in this case.” LinLin was determined to study weather to help farmers, and now he works to make sure severe weather events are forecasted accurately.

Diligent and determined, Linlin was accepted into the Department of Geophysics at Peking University, one of the best universities in China. After a few years of teaching, lecturing, and research Linlin came to the U.S. to expand his interest in weather forecasting and modeling. Linlin earned his Ph.D. in Meteorology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa within 5 years and came to Boulder to work at NCAR for 10 years before landing at NOAA. “Now I am working at the NOAA Global Systems Laboratory (GSL) with the Common Community Physics Package (CCPP), FV3-Stand-Alone Regional model, and physics across scales. My typical daily tasks include running the model, investigating model outputs, and providing user support for CCPP related questions. I am currently working to use CCPP in the coupled model.” One of LinLin’s biggest challenges is to help folks using other platforms to run the model outside of NOAA. “It runs fine on NOAA HPC, so we need to help them debug,” says LinLin.

“If I was not a meteorologist, I would become a builder or constructor.” Linlin likes to do yard work and help around the house in his spare time. Other fun facts are that he would like to travel to the Arctic and Antarctic to study ways to help animals survive if our country suddenly turned icy cold. His favorite quote is “the early bird catches the worm,” and he wishes he had the power to predict the future.

LinLin Pan