I’m a scientist at the NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, USA. As a kid, I was always fascinated by the weather, especially thunderstorms during the humid Virginia summers, and this led me to pursue an Environmental Science BS in college, a MS in Atmospheric Science at the University of Albany, and a PhD in Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University. I love the Colorado lifestyle and stayed in the area after my PhD as an Advanced Studies Program (ASP) postdoctoral fellow at NSF NCAR, then transitioned into a scientist.
I became involved in InPRHA soon after starting my scientist position at the urging of a coworker involved in WMO who knew I specialized in hydrometeorology. My work ranges from studying future changes to precipitation in km-scale models, coupling hydrological models with atmospheric models, and studying the impacts of precipitation enhancement on the hydrological response. Given my role straddling atmospheric science and hydrology at timescales ranging from short-term to subseasonal-to-seasonal (S2S) to multiple decades in the future, I was interested in InPRHA’s goal to better integrate hydrology and meteorology (as well as social science) to better predict floods and protect communities.
Through my role in the Steering Committee, I hope to contribute my knowledge of how extreme precipitation could change in the future and coupling atmospheric and hydrological models together to more accurately predict floods in a current and future climate.
My work currently sits more on the research side of the research-to-operations pathway by evaluating the performance of hydrological models under different scenarios and projecting future changes to precipitation in specific regions. However, I am currently wrapping up a project that couples the WRF-Hydro model to NOAA’s Unified Forecast System (UFS) model globally that could become operational in the next phase of the project. The goal of this project is to dynamically input freshwater discharge to the ocean through a hydrological model with active river routing in order to improve S2S forecasts, though this could also be applied at shorter timescales. We have iterated with NOAA on this project over many years to learn more about how to make this operational, which has been a challenge given the hurdles in different operating systems.
I am very grateful for the opportunity to be part of InPRHA and learn more from the deep expertise in this group and look forward to tackling the challenges associated with improving flood early warning systems.
Outside of work, I enjoy running, skiing or hiking in the Colorado mountains, baking, embroidery, and playing with my dog.
