News

The College of Atmospheric and Geographic Sciences would like to highlight our student award and scholarship recipients from 2021 and 2022.  Scroll down to view the awardees.

Award winners will be announced throughout the month of April.  Please check back often as new content is added!

Thank you to the donors and congratulations to all students on such a remarkable achievement!

The College of Atmospheric and Geographic Sciences would like to highlight our student award and scholarship recipients from 2020 and 2021.  Scroll down to view the awardees.

Award winners will be announced throughout the month of April.  Please check back often as new content is added!

Thank you to the donors and congratulations to all students on such a remarkable achievement!

Researchers from OU and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Severe Storms Laboratory are improving current software to enhance guidance for the categorization of flash flood warnings to increase public response and public safety.

Learn More about Flash Flood Tools

OU and NOAA have developed a free smartphone app called mPING (Meteorological Phenomena Identification Near the Ground) to collect public weather reports. This data will help scientists compare these citizen scientists' field reports to radar detections in order to improve and develop new forecasting technologies.

Learn More about mPING

The American Geophysical Union has named Greg McFarquhar, director of the Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies and a professor of meteorology, among their 2020 AGU Fellows. AGU Fellows serve as global leaders and experts who have propelled understanding of geosciences and have made exceptional contributions in the Earth and space sciences community through breakthrough, discovery, or innovation in their disciplines. Since 1962, AGU has elected fewer than 0.1% of members to join this prestigious group of individuals.

Learn More about the 2020 Class of AGU Fellows

Jennifer Koch, an associate professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Sustainability, and Erin Maher, an associate professor in the Department of Sociology, have been named associate research directors of the University of Oklahoma Data Science Institute for Societal Challenges.

Founded in July 2020, the institute is designed to integrate data science expertise across the university and harness data science innovation to solve real-world problems.

Learn more about Dr. Jennifer Koch's Appointment

The School of Meteorology is mourning the passing of Dr. Fred Brock, who passed away October 21, 2020.

According to his obituary from The Norman Transcript, Dr. Brock completed a Bachelor’s degree in Education, served in the Navy, completed Master’s degrees in Meteorology and Instrumentation Engineering, and finally a Ph.D. in Meteorology here at the University of Oklahoma. He worked at the National Center for Atmospheric Research before eventually returning to OU to teach, research, and lead.

Learn more about Dr. Fred Brock

A $7.4 million grant awarded from the United States Office of Naval Research to the University of Oklahoma will fund the development of a scanner and innovative digital radar solutions to support research, prototyping and testing of advanced digital radar concepts for the Navy and the U.S. Department of Defense. The project will also make OU home to the largest university-based scanner for near-field measurements in the nation.

Learn more about the US Navy Grant

Researchers from the University of Oklahoma and the University of Colorado at Boulder are taking part in a study using drones to study how storms form in coastal urban areas, data that will help improve computer models for weather forecasting and improve meteorologists’ understanding of the processes that lead to storm formation.

Learn more about drones and OU weather research

Everyone has been impacted by unexpected weather events at some point in their life with consequences ranging from being mildly inconvenienced to experiencing life threatening conditions. One community that is particularly susceptible to the weather is aviation. There has been an on-going effort to improve weather awareness for aviators with an emphasis on conditions at airports. Supported in part through funding from NASA, the OU Center for Autonomous Sensing and Sampling is working with individuals at the OU Max Westheimer Airport to conduct novel observations of the atmosphere using state-of-the-art Unmanned Aircraft Systems, or drones. Resulting measurements can be used to improve numerical weather prediction model forecasts or communicated directly to pilots  to help keep them apprised of current weather conditions.

Learn more about drone-based weather observations

As Hurricane Delta lumbers toward the Central Louisiana coast, the University of Oklahoma’s Shared Mobile Atmospheric Research and Teaching radar team, in collaboration with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Weather Service, is deploying a mobile weather radar to the area around Lake Charles, Louisiana.

Learn more about Hurricane Delta research

Researchers at the University of Oklahoma’s National Institute for Risk and Resilience, Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies, and the National Severe Storms Lab recently conducted a transdisciplinary experiment exploring the effect of social and behavioral data on how weather forecasters communicate risk before, during, and after extreme weather events.

Learn more about this interdisciplinary experiment

University of Oklahoma scientists led by Michael Biggerstaff, OU School of Meteorology professor, deployed a Shared Mobile Atmospheric Research and Teaching (SMART) weather radar south of Mobile, Alabama, in advance of the landfall of Hurricane Sally. There they measured the structure of the winds in the hurricane boundary layer, the lowest mile of air above the ground.

Learn more about Hurricane Sally data

Congratulations to Undergraduate Research Assistant Ariel Jacobs, who published her first-authored paper, "The Effect of Climatological Variables on Future UAS-Based Atmospheric Profiling in the Lower Atmosphere."  Click below to access the article, and learn more about what CASS is currently researching by visiting their Twitter.

Arial's Article                                                      OU CASS Twitter

OU School of Meteorology faculty member Dr. Pierre Kirstetter is leading the development of probabilistic precipitation retrievals for hazard applications in the National Weather Service.  Progress in precipitation science and applications is critical to advancing weather and water budget studies and to predicting natural hazards caused by extreme events, from local to global scales. It requires more than just one deterministic precipitation “best estimate” to adequately cope with the intermittent, highly skewed distribution that characterizes precipitation. Probabilistic Quantitative Precipitation Estimation (PQPE) is an approach that integrates remote sensing, meteorology, hydrology, and artificial intelligence to advance precipitation estimation, processes understanding, and applications.

Learn more about probabilistic precipitation retrievals

Greg McFarquhar, the director of the Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies and a professor in the School of Meteorology at the University of Oklahoma, will lead a three-year project funded by a $689,082 grant from the Department of Energy. The project uses unique sets of data collected in polar regions that give information on the small-scale properties of aerosols and clouds, data that will provide better insight into weather prediction models.

Learn more about the grant and cloud formation

A team of research scientists from the University of Oklahoma and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration National Severe Storms Laboratory have traveled to Texas near the Gulf of Mexico to collect data during the landfall of Hurricane Laura.

The data collected will allow for a better understanding of hurricane winds and the damage they cause. This knowledge will aid in the development of cost-effective building codes to lessen future damage, provide more data to improve other infrastructure, and increase storm resilience.

Learn more about Hurricane Laura research

The University of Oklahoma is leading a National Science Foundation AI Institute for Research on Trustworthy AI in Weather, Climate, and Coastal Oceanography that is being hailed as a “historic milestone in environmental science.”

NSF recently announced an investment of more than $100 million to establish five AI Institutes to support research and education hubs nationwide. Amy McGovern, an OU professor with dual appointments in the School of Computer Science in the Gallogly College of Engineering and in the School of Meteorology in the College of Atmospheric and Geographic Sciences, will lead the NSF AI Institute for Research on Trustworthy AI in Weather, Climate, and Coastal Oceanography, which received $20 million of the NSF funding.

Learn more about the National Science Foundation Artifical Intelligence Institute

During August 2020, teams from the University of Oklahoma (OU) Center for Autonomous Sensing and Sampling (CASS) and the Oklahoma State University (OSU) Unmanned Systems Research Institute (USRI) joined forces at OU’s Kessler Atmospheric and Ecological Field Station (KAEFS) to conduct innovative atmospheric research using unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) or drones, which could lead to improved weather forecasts. Both the OU and OSU teams are developing and testing state-of-the-art UAS, instrumented with meteorological sensors designed to collect precision atmospheric data in the Earth’s lower atmosphere, which can be ingested by weather forecast models. Despite the challenges of COVID-19, the scientists and engineers from CASS and USRI were able to maintain safe practices and socially distance as they worked to together to push the envelope of UAS atmospheric research. 

Learn more about OU and OSU's Atmopsheric Research

Dear A&GS Friends, Students, Staff, Faculty, and NWC Colleagues--

As we together return to campus for the 2020-2021 Academic Year, OU and the College of Atmospheric & Geographic Sciences (A&GS) remain committed to safety, inclusivity, intellectual growth, and excellence. Even in these trying times, A&GS faculty and staff are committed to making this academic year a fun and rewarding experience for our students.

Our College is unique in that one of our main two academic buildings is the National Weather Center (NWC), a shared facility with NOAA federal partners and several OU and State operational and research units. This adds a bit of “complexity” in safety planning, but “complexity” is not new to A&GS students.

In the COVID-19 environment, A&GS and NWC leaders have focused, particularly and appropriately, on the safety of our students, staff, faculty, and the NWC Community. This is of utmost importance. I should add that this leadership team was enriched by the new leadership of the Department of Geography and Environmental Sustainability (Chair Professor Scott Greene and Associate Chair Bruce Hoagland).

This leadership team has worked diligently on a path forward with a particular focus on NWC specific policies and procedures for the safety of all. We have encapsulated these policies and procedures into a living document that gives guidance to this path. This document (pdf) builds upon and is consistent with OU policies and procedures; it is also sensitive to NOAA and State guidelines. As the environment changes, this document will change as needed. We will be actively watching and planning to help overcome the hurdles of the evolving and changing COVID-19 pandemic. Together we will navigate the paths going forward.

Again, we are all in this together, and we will prevail together. 

Boomer Sooner

Berrien Moore III
Dean A&GS
Director NWC