ATOC in the News

Changes in the terrestrial water balance are expected in many regions, but small islands remain difficult to assess. Research now reveals a tendency towards increased aridity in over 73% of island groups (home to around 16 million people) by the mid-century.

ATOC congratulates Assistant Professor Julie Lundquist, who has just won an NSF CAREER award. CAREER awards are the NSF's most prestigious awards, and are offered only to junior faculty "who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research within the context...

Michael King and Cora Randall of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Colorado Boulder, have been named Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Election as a AAAS Fellow is an honor bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers.

The Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (ATOC) at CU Boulder is pleased to welcome new Postdoctoral Research Associate Lei Zhang. Dr. Lei Zhang joins the Oceans and Climate Lab from the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Hawaii. Previously, Lei earned bachelor's and master's degrees in Atmospheric Sciences from the Ocean University of China. Lei is a climate dynamicist interested in large-scale tropical ocean and atmospheric circulations, and will join a project focused on the impacts of changing climate on Pacific island-based defense installations funded by the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP) in collaboration with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI).

When it comes to climate change, Antarctica is one of the world’s major places of concern, mostly because of the sheer amount of ice it contains — enough to theoretically cause about 200 feet of sea-level rise if it were all to melt — not that anyone thinks that will happen anytime soon. Still, smaller parts could be destabilized, and understanding how the Antarctic ice sheet will react to future climate change is a big priority for scientists.

Ice shelves modulate Antarctic contributions to sea-level rise and thereby represent a critical, climate-sensitive interface between the Antarctic ice sheet and the global ocean. Following rapid atmospheric warming over the past decades, Antarctic Peninsula ice shelves have progressively retreated, at times catastrophically. This decay supports hypotheses of thermal limits of viability for ice shelves via surface melt forcing.

The storm that upended the lives of thousands of Front Range residents almost two years ago was nearly unprecedented for the area, so much so that it largely confounded the best efforts of those charged with forecasting its scope and impact.

The Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (ATOC) at CU Boulder is pleased to welcome new Postdoctoral Research Associate Sloan Coats. Dr. Coats joins Assistant Professor Kris Karnauskas' Oceans and Climate Lab from Columbia University's Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences (DEES) and Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO). Sloan is a climate dynamicist who employs paleoclimate evidence and climate modeling to better understand past changes to the means and extremes of climate.

Though precipitation and evaporation are ubiquitous phenomena across the globe, they are infamously difficult to measure and forecast. Dr. Katja Friedrich, Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (ATOC) Professor, is investigating the microphysics of clouds and precipitation, with specific attention to snowstorms, thunderstorms, and floods in mountainous and alpine regions. Her latest research focuses on measuring and forecasting evaporation from reservoirs in Colorado.

By its nature, the study of climate is an interdisciplinary endeavor, necessitating the union of diverse and oftentimes disparate fields. Dr. Kris Karnauskas, new ATOC Assistant Professor and CIRES Fellow, is investigating climate dynamics and impacts, specifically in the tropics, by blurring the lines between oceanography and atmospheric science.