Thomas Foken, professor of micrometeorology at the University of Bayreuth Center of Ecology and Environmental Research in Bayreuth, Germany, is the 2013 recipient of the AMS Award for Outstanding Achievement in Biometeorology. Specifically, Dr. Foken received this award for many contributions, as a researcher and educator, to the understanding and measurement of atmosphere-biosphere interactions and the surface energy balance.
The Front Page caught up with Dr. Foken at the 2013 Annual Meeting in Austin, Texas, to find out more about his research, including his interests in micrometeorology. His described this area of our science as the physics and chemistry of the boundary layer, which encompasses the lowest portion of atmosphere, and the complicated interactions among plants, soils, the oceans, and the atmosphere. He adds that micrometeorologists investigate all the parameters in the global models that are part of this small-scale environment, known as the biosphere or ecosphere. Moreover, he defines biometeorology as an interdisciplinary science that brings meteorologists, soil scientists, and biologists together to better understand the processes that define all of these small-scale interactions so the problems they present within the models can be resolved.
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Broadcast Meteorologist Explains the Climate Change Impacts Already Affecting His Viewers
Chief Meteorologist Jim Gandy of the Columbia, South Carolina, CBS affiliate station WLTX-TV is the 2013 recipient of the AMS Award For Excellence in Science Reporting by a Broadcast Meteorologist. Mr. Gandy received the award and recognition for pioneering efforts to educate viewers about climate change and explaining how it already affects them.
In an interview with the AMS, Mr. Gandy explains how he developed a climate change segment for his Weathercasts called Climate Matters. Each segment focuses on an aspect of climate change that is already showing up where viewers live, work, and play. The Climate Matters stories, including the segment about Poison Ivy and Climate Change that won him the award are posted online for not just his viewers but everyone to watch. He also mentions that the favorable response from his viewers about the segments sparked the creation of a blog for the station he similarly named Weather and Climate Matter.
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2013 Carl-Gustaf Rossby Award Recipient Strives to Deepen Our Grasp of Earth's Climate System
Dennis L. Hartmann, professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington, is the 2013 recipient of the prestigious Carl-Gustaf Rossby Research Medal—meteorology’s highest honor. Dr. Hartmann is receiving this distinctive award for his significant contributions to the synthesis of knowledge of radiative and dynamical processes leading to a deeper understanding of the climate system.
The Front Page spoke with Dr. Hartmann to learn about his research and how it has evolved and become more interdisciplinary as climate change has grown increasingly important. He explained that he now focuses more on trying to understand Earth’s climate system, blending the traditional disciplines in the atmospheric sciences—radiation, dynamics, and cloud physics and chemistry—because, he said, “they are so interconnected on the long time scales associated with climate change.” With advances in technology, Dr. Hartmann utilized more and better remote sensing data from satellites to make improvements in modeling Earth’s climate—in particular, the approximate interactions between clouds and the global circulation.
“The one thing that I’ve tried to do is to look for simple, fundamental explanations for how things work and that gives us more confidence in the rather complex simulations that we do with global models.”
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2013 Jule G. Charney Award Recipient has an Out-of-this-World View of Earth's Circulations
Alan Plumb, professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), is the 2013 recipient of the prized Jule G. Charney Award. Dr. Plumb is being honored with this award, which is in the form of a medallion, for fundamental contributions to the understanding of geophysical fluid dynamics, stratospheric dynamics, chemical transport, and the general circulation of the atmosphere and oceans.
The Front Page spoke with Dr. Plumb to learn more about his research, including his interests in the dynamics of Earth’s atmosphere as well as the atmospheres of other planets. Though he now mostly focuses on Earth’s circulations, he mentioned that his PhD thesis was on the atmosphere of Venus and interactions of waves on its circulation. More recently, he has been focused on understanding how gravity waves interact with our stratosphere.
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2013 Verner E. Suomi Award Winner Strives for Uniformity in Global Sounding Observations
Richard H. Johnson, professor of meteorology at Colorado State University (CSU) and head of the Johnson Research Group at CSU, which focuses on cutting-edge research of tropical and mid-latitude weather and dynamics, is the 2013 recipient of The Verner E. Suomi Award. He is being recognized with this esteemed award, which is in the form of a medallion, for exquisite design of rawinsonde networks in field campaigns and insightful analysis of interactions between convective clouds and the large-scale atmospheric circulation.
The Front Page caught up with Dr. Johnson to learn more about his research and field programs. He has been working with rawindsonde data for 40 years to study convective processes, including monsoons, which he notes impact more than half the world’s population. He explains that the biggest challenge working with such data is removing biases, due to nations around the world using as many as 30 different sounding systems to gather the observations.
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Python Town Hall: AMS Special Meeting to Highlight Next Wave in Earth Sciences Computing
Perhaps you’ve heard about this modern, open-source programming language, Python. Maybe you’re wondering what it’s all about and how it relates to the atmospheric and oceanic sciences (AOS). If so, an AMS Town Hall meeting on Monday January 7 is for you.
From 12:15 to 1:15 p.m. local time at the convention center in Austin, Texas, this meeting will describe what Python can do for AOS users. Attendees will learn how Python meets needs and provides abilities in scientific computing that are currently unavailable in existing languages and how, as a result, Python enables AOS researchers to write modeling and analysis programs that enable better and more science to be done. The meeting will also include time where you can ask questions about implementing and supporting Python for AOS modeling and analysis.
Organizers note that this Town Hall meeting will be geared toward non-programmers and decision makers and will focus on how Python can help institutions be more productive.
2013 AMS Teaching Excellence Award Winner Developed University of Miami Meteo Program
Bruce A. Albrecht, professor of meteorology and physical oceanography at the University of Miami, is the 2013 recipient of The AMS Teaching Excellence Award. With this award, Dr. Albrecht is being recognized for dedicated and innovative teaching inside and outside the classroom, and for his leading role in developing a dynamic undergraduate and graduate meteorology program within UM’s world-renowned Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences.
The Front Page spoke with Dr. Albrecht to learn what makes UM’s meteorology program dynamic as well as the challenges of improving on such success. With regard to full disclosure, the interviewer is a former student of Dr. Albrecht’s when he taught at Penn State. Find out why the interviewer wasn’t at all surprised to learn of his former professor’s notable recognition.
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NCAR Director is Recipient of the 2013 Charles Franklin Brooks Award for Service to the Society
Roger Wakimoto, Director of NCAR and an expert on severe convective weather is the 2013 recipient of The Charles Franklin Brooks Award for Outstanding Services to the Society. Specifically, Dr. Wakimoto is being acknowledged for improving AMS processes through unselfish and highly effective service on numerous committees and as Councilor of the AMS as well as Commissioner of the AMS Scientific and Technological Activities Commission (STAC).
Dr. Wakimoto spoke with the Front Page to share his vision and motivation for commanding these services. He also discussed his on-going research of tornadoes, severe thunderstorms, and downbursts, and he mentioned that he will be stepping down as NCAR’s director to focus on his recent appointment to the National Science Foundation as head of the Directorate for Geosciences.
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2013 Kenneth C. Spengler Award Winner Designed AMS Commission on Weather & Climate Enterprise
John Snow, a veteran professor of meteorology at the University of Oklahoma (OU), retired dean of the OU College of Atmospheric and Geographic Sciences, and a founding member of the OU National Weather Center, is the 2013 recipient of The Kenneth E. Spengler Award. He is being recognized this year for his exceptional foresight and leadership in melding a diverse group of people in designing a new Commission of the AMS—the AMS Commission on the Weather and Climate Enterprise—to meet ever expanding weather and climate enterprise needs.
The Front Page caught up with Dr. Snow to learn about his role in the formation of the Commission, which now encompasses a number of committees and boards to focus on specific disciplines and interests. He also shared his special interest and active involvement with the Board on Enterprise Economic Development, which he says not only fascinates him because of the private sector’s solid foundation but also because of its dynamic growth.
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2012 Rossby Medal Goes to Turbulence Researcher
John Wyngaard, professor emeritus of meteorology at Penn State, is the 2012 recipient of The Carl-Gustaf Rossby Research Medal. He earned this distinction—meteorology’s highest honor—for outstanding contributions to measuring, simulating, and understanding atmospheric turbulence.
Wyngaard received the medallion at the AMS Annual Meeting in New Orleans.
The Front Page corresponded with him via email to learn more about his research interests, his academic career, and the experiences that brought him to this pinnacle of a life-long career in meteorology. The following is our Q and A session:
Tell us a little about your research accomplishments and how they relate to ongoing challenges with atmospheric turbulence.
Since the advent of numerical modeling in meteorology a principal challenge has been representing the effects of turbulence in the models. My colleagues and I have often presented and interpreted our turbulence studies in that context. I have also worked in what I call “measurement physics,” the analytical study of the design and performance of turbulence sensors. It has been somewhat of an under-appreciated and neglected area.
What events or experiences sparked your interest in meteorology? How about atmospheric turbulence?
My interest in meteorology developed relatively late, when I was well into in my 20s and enrolled in a PhD program in mechanical engineering. I think that is not unusual; as I look around our meteorology department here at Penn State I see that a good fraction of the faculty do not have an undergraduate degree in meteorology. Thus I’ll relate my story in some detail because it touches on an important point that might not be well known—the great career opportunities that exist in meteorological research for people whose backgrounds are not particularly strong in meteorology.
As I grew up Madison, Wisconsin, an idyllic town in the 1950s, I came to know that I would study engineering at the University of Wisconsin. I loved my years at UW—I worked half-time in the student bookstore, pursued my car-building hobby, had a few girlfriends, and probably drank too much beer—but I made sure to do well in my classes. When I received my BS in mechanical engineering in 1961 I did not even consider getting a job; I loved my student life too much, so I entered the MS program in mechanical engineering.
This was during John Kennedy’s presidency, when the funding for National Science Foundation (NSF) graduate fellowships was increased because of the perceived threat from the Soviet Union. In early 1962 I spent a cold winter Saturday in Science Hall taking the NSF graduate fellowship exam. I was awarded a three-year NSF fellowship. My father was incredulous: “They’ll pay you to go to school?”
I was then finishing my MS under a professor who was about to leave UW for a position at Penn State. In June of 1962 I followed him there. That fall I enrolled in a course in turbulence taught by John Lumley, a young professor of Aerospace Engineering. Turbulence was then seen as a murky and difficult field; it was not yet possible to calculate it through numerical simulation. But I was intrigued and asked Lumley if he would be my graduate adviser. He agreed, and my academic course changed.
Under Lumley’s guidance I did experimental work—measurements in a laboratory turbulent flow—which suited me well, but I also developed some confidence with the theoretical side. My introduction to atmospheric turbulence was Lumley’s course that gave rise to his 1964 monograph, “The Structure of Atmospheric Turbulence” with Penn State Meteorology professor Hans Panofsky.
Lumley was on sabbatical in France when I finished my PhD, so I asked Panofsky, whom I knew only by reputation—I took no classes of his—for job leads. Panofsky graciously gave me four names. I made four interview trips and soon had four job offers, which was not unusual then.
The most enticing offer was from Duane Haugen’s group at the Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratories in Bedford, Massachusetts. They were setting out to do the most complete micrometeorological experiment up to that time, in the surface layer over a Kansas wheat field. I had studied the surface layer and I saw this as a great opportunity. I took the job (which I later learned had been open, without applicants, for several years) and participated in the 1968 Kansas experiment. It was an overwhelming success; the resulting analyses and technical papers represented a significant advance in micrometeorology. I was hooked.
In 1975 our group was put at risk by a scheduled downsizing of the lab, and I joined the NOAA Wave Propagation Lab in Boulder; in 1979 I moved across the street to Doug Lilly’s group at NCAR. Much of my NCAR research was collaborative with Chin-Hoh Moeng and focused on the then-new field of large-eddy simulation—numerical calculations of turbulent flows such as the atmospheric boundary layer.
In short, the key experience that sparked my interest in meteorology was my involvement in the 1968 Kansas experiment and the subsequent data analyses and journal publications.
What then brought you to, or drove you to pursue, the current facet of your career?
After many years of research I joined the Department of Meteorology at Penn State in 1991, when the opportunity for teaching was attractive to me. I developed and taught an atmospheric turbulence course, did research with students and post-docs, and did my best to express my long experience with turbulence and micrometeorology in the textbook, “Turbulence in the Atmosphere” (Cambridge, 2010). I retired in 2010.
You stated, “Turbulence was then seen as a murky and difficult field;” was it the challenge of working to understand the so-far undefined field of turbulence that you found so intriguing?
Richard Feynman, the famous American physicist, called turbulence “the last great unsolved problem of classical physics.” That underlies my comment “a murky and difficult field.”
Also, you mentioned that you did experimental work under Professor Lumley on laboratory turbulent flow, and stated that this “suited me well.” How so, or why—was this the connection back to your mechanical engineering experience you had been seeking (knowingly or unknowingly)?
Before we had computers the main approach to turbulence was observations— i.e., measurements.
My mechanical skills allowed me to build and use turbulence sensors to make the measurements I needed. I was good at that—in part, I think, because I had all that car-building experience, which I now realize does translate to doing turbulence measurements. (One doesn’t often think about these kinds of things, but when I was a child—4 or 5—I began building “shacks” [little clubhouses] in our back yard, using crates from grocery and furniture stores. My mother fostered that, God bless her.)
With an interest in NEW observational approaches to remotely sense turbulence, what has you most excited?
There is a long history of theoretical studies of the effects of turbulence on the propagation of electromagnetic and acoustic waves, and this underlies the field of remote sensing. Detecting turbulence remotely is relatively straightforward; obtaining reliable quantitative measurements of turbulence structure in this way is much more difficult. It remains an important challenge.
What would you say to colleagues as well as to recent graduates in the atmospheric and related sciences asking about the importance of such achievement?
It demonstrates a life lesson: If you find a job that you can immerse yourself in, you’ll draw on energy and skills that you might not know you have and you’ll succeed beyond your dreams.