Sean W. Freeman
Sean Freeman is an Assistant Professor of Atmospheric and Earth Science at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), having started that appointment in Spring 2023. Before coming to UAH, he received undergraduate degrees in Computer Science and Meteorology from Florida State University and MS and PhD degrees in Atmospheric Science from Colorado State University. Sean's research interests are primarily in clouds and storms, in particular, understanding the kinds of environments that support cloud development and severe weather. He uses numerical weather modeling and advanced data science tools such as cloud tracking to uncover the basic building blocks of convection from models and observations, as well as new measurements of convective inflows and outflows with drones. He has served as a tobac lead developer since 2021 and has chaired the tobac steering committee since 2023. Outside of work, he enjoys photography, hiking, traveling, baking, curling, and watching college football.
Sessions
Tracking and Object-Based Analysis of Clouds (tobac) is a Python package that enables researchers to identify, track, and perform object-based analyses of phenomena in large atmospheric datasets. Over the past four years, tobac’s userbase has grown within atmospheric science, and the package has transitioned from its original life as a small, focused package with few maintainers to a larger package with more robust governance and structure. In this presentation, we will discuss the challenges and lessons learned during the transition to robust governance structures and the future of tobac as we incorporate new techniques for using multiple variables and scales to track the same system.