Physics Professor Receives $250K from NSF to Help Advance Climate Science

Sacred Heart University has received $252,060 from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to help advance climate science. This grant will help fund an undergraduate physics research program introducing juniors and seniors to cutting-edge scientific research, intended to bridge major gaps in climate modeling.

Professor Frank Robinson

The initiation of powerful thunderstorms by sea-breezes is currently poorly represented in most Global Climate Models (GCMs), with models only just starting to incorporate the impacts of sea breezes and boundary layer particles (such as soot or ash). This is particularly problematic over island-rich ocean regions, in which islands with a range of sizes, terrain and particulate emissions, can determine storm severity, precipitation rates and cloud type.

The principal investigator, Frank Robinson, director of SHU’s 3+2 engineering program and assistant professor of physics, said, “In our warming world, the strength and frequency of extreme weather events are likely to increase. However, current global climate models have difficulty predicting such events, in part because [the events] are often triggered by processes unresolved in the climate models. The ultimate goal of this project is to improve the physical representation of two potential triggers of severe storms, namely, sea-breezes and atmospheric aerosols (such as soot or ash). Better prediction of severe storms around the planet could have a huge impact on society, both in terms of storm preparedness and in building public acceptance of society’s impact on current climate.”

Three SHU undergraduates will be recruited to work on observational and numerical modeling tasks. They will be simulating storms by running scientific computations on The National Center for Atmospheric Research’s supercomputer Cheyenne—one of the world’s most powerful computers. They also will work with MATLAB, learning how to manage and analyze gigabytes of satellite and radar data. Thus the program will appeal to those looking to enter data science professionally, as well as those passionate about climate change. The student researchers likely will come from the 3+2 engineering program, though they could come from other related programs at SHU.

The students will also learn how to detect trends in observational data, merge data with a satellite simulator and attempt to identify causality mechanisms in simulations and observations. This will require them to look for statistically robust patterns in the data and will familiarize them with the way atmospheric science can progress. The students will be required to enroll in a selection of computational boot camps offered by the computer science department and attend a workshop on using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model held in Boulder, CO. Robinson expects them to base their senior thesis on their research.

Before coming to SHU, Robinson was a research scientist and lecturer in Yale University’s department of geology and geophysics for 16 years. At Yale, he received a $350,000 NSF grant to study how tropical islands affect storm severity.

“Since cloud processes remain one of the ‘Achilles’ Heels’ in global climate modeling, this program may ultimately contribute to improved simulations of future climate by shedding new light on processes governing convective clouds and improving their representation in global climate models. This is an exciting opportunity for undergraduates at Sacred Heart,” Robinson says.

Students interested in this opportunity should contact Robinson at robinsonf3@sacredheart.edu or 203-371-7711.