Department ofAtmospheric and Climate Science

Grad student Chris Wright published a piece in The Conversation on his work related to lightning over the shipping lane. A recent publication, from Chris and his colleagues, has shown that lightning frequency over shipping lanes has dropped by half after international regulations cut ships’ sulfur emissions in 2020. 

Graduate Student Trent Vonich was awarded Best Student 24AI Oral Presentation with his presentation “Pushing the Atmospheric Predictability Limit: Nonlinear Sensitivity Analysis for Optimized Initial Conditions” at the AMS 2025 conference! 

Prof. Rob Wood and Dr. Sarah Doherty were interviewed at AGU 24. Prof. Wood talked about being inducted into the AGU Fellows Program and his research, and Dr. Doherty discussed the Marine Cloud Brightening program in more detail. 

“Since 2015, total Antarctic sea ice area has dramatically declined,” said lead author Zac Espinosa. “State-of-the-art forecasting methods for sea ice generally struggle to produce reliable forecasts at such long leads. 

Christopher Kenseth, a NSF AGS Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Atmospheric and Climate Science, was selected as the recipient of the 2024 Sheldon K. Friedlander Award by the American Association for Aerosol Research (AAAR), which “recognizes an outstanding dissertation by an individual who has earned a doctoral degree.”
Chris received his PhD in Chemistry from the California Institute of Technology in 2022 with Profs. 

In S3 E4 of the FieldSound podcast, ATMOS Graduate Student Trent Vonich, and Marine Biology’s recent graduate Samantha-Lynn Martinez were interviewed. The two talked about blending their interests in science communication and public safety with research, classes, and discovery while laying the groundwork for their future careers. 

Yakelyn Ramos Jauregui, now a postdoc at CICOES and previously a Ph.D. student in Atmospheric and Climate Science, is featured on the College of the Environment news page!
This piece highlights Yakelyn’s decision to pursue her doctoral degree and research to help to produce better weather and climate predictions. 

Congratulations to Prof. Rob Wood for becoming an AGU Fellow and Prof. Shuyi Chen for being selected for the 2024 Jacob Bjerknes Lectureship.
In addition, our adjunct faculty member and close collaborator Prof. 

Professor Dale Durran and Nvidia researchers developed StormCast, a tool that can accurately predict thunderstorms and rainfall within a few miles. StormCast utilizes GenAI, which allows the tool to be operated more efficiently than the existing systems such as HRRR. 

Emeritus Professor Robert Houze became an Honorary Member of the American Meteorological Society. As stated in the AMS Constitution, “Honorary Members shall be persons of acknowledged preeminence in the atmospheric or related oceanic or hydrologic sciences, either through their own contributions to the sciences or their application or through furtherance of the advance of those sciences in some other way.” This is a rare recognition that only a few have been awarded.