Paul Markowski, professor of meteorology in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, was honored with the 2013 T. Theodore Fujita Research Achievement Award by the National Weather Association (NWA).
The award, the NWA’s only research-related award, is presented to an NWA member whose research has made a significant contribution to operational meteorology. Markowski was selected “for incisive research directly applicable to operational forecasting which has allowed significant advances in our understanding and forecasting tornadic and nontornadic thunderstorm environments.”
The NWA is one of the two main meteorology professional organizations in the United States. Markowski received the award at the 2013 NWA annual meeting held Oct. 12-17 in Charleston, South Carolina.
The award, initiated in 2000, was named in honor of Tetsuya Theodore "Ted" Fujita (1920-1998), a prominent University of Chicago Japanese-American severe storms researcher. Often referred to as “Mr. Tornado,” he developed the Fujita Scale, which is used to rate tornado intensity.
Markowski's research focuses on convective storms and their attendant hazards using state-of-the-art observations and computer simulations. His most recent research projects involve analyses of data from the second Verifications of the Origins of Rotation Experiment (VORTEX2), which was highly publicized on The Weather Channel in 2009 and 2010, and high-resolution computer simulations designed to explore the sensitivity of tornado formation to the temperature of downdrafts and wind shear in the storm environment.
Markowski has won numerous honors and awards including the Alumni Achievement Award from Penn State, the inaugural Nikolai Dotzek Award from the European Severe Storms Laboratory, an Editor's Award from the American Meteorological Society, and a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation.
Markowski received a doctoral degree in 2000 and a master’s degree 1997, both in meteorology from the University of Oklahoma and a bachelor's degree in meteorology from Penn State in 1996.