The National Hurricane Center will implement a new technique this summer, developed by researchers at NCAR and the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), to continually monitor landfalling storms in the United States.
As the city of New Orleans struggles to rebuild from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, researchers are learning more about weather and climate and their impacts on society.
Aaron Pratt, Howard University • Pratt became hooked on hurricanes when the one named Hugo took aim at the Carolina coast 18 years ago. Now, the Ph.D. candidate is studying how dust affects the birth of such storms on the other side of the Atlantic.
Christopher Castro, University of Arizona • Castro always had what he calls a passing interest in weather, but he never thought of his hobby as a career path. Now he’s a professor of atmospheric science and a researcher working on better forecasts of the Southwest's torrential summer rains.
Ying-Hwa "Bill" Kuo, UCAR's COSMIC Program • Bill is a meteorologist leading UCAR's deployment of an array of satellites that use the Global Positioning System (GPS) to provide a wealth of data about the atmosphere.
David Gochis, NCAR's Research Applications Laboratory • For Gochis, a day on the job as an NCAR scientist might mean driving around the rural backroads of northern Mexico, setting up dozens of gauges the size of cookie jars that record rainfall to the nearest millimeter.
Fei Chen, NCAR's Research Applications Laboratory • When the Cultural Revolution ended, people started standing in line to buy textbooks to help their children catch up on schooling. Overnight, there was huge pressure to study, as universities reopened and competition for admissions resumed.
Christopher Davis, NCAR's Mesoscale and Microscale Meteorology Division • An expert in formation of hurricanes, Davis remembers being interested in weather as a child. He was especially fascinated by winter storms, and in high school he hung out at the local weather station, watching balloon launches.
Matthew Kelsch, UCAR's COMET Program • It's no fluke that Kelsch is a meteorologist. He was so interested in weather as a child that his fourth grade teacher actually wrote him special tests on the subject.
