Young elected Fellow of the American Meteorological Society

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- George Young, professor of meteorology and geoenvironmental engineering in the Penn State College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, has been elected a 2014 Fellow of the American Meteorological Society (AMS).

Fellows are recognized for “outstanding contributions to the atmospheric or related oceanic or hydrologic sciences, or their applications, during a substantial period of years.”

Election as an AMS Fellow is an elite honor and this distinction is awarded to only two-tenths of one percent of AMS members annually. Including Young, the Department of Meteorology boasts seven AMS Fellows among its active faculty.

"To be named a fellow is quite an honor," Young said. "It is a privilege to have worked with all the superb graduate students who helped make this possible."

An AMS member since 1986, Young has served on many AMS committees including the mountain meteorology committee and the boundary layers and turbulence committee. He also has served on various AMS conference planning committees, been published in many of the society's journals, and currently serves as an associate editor of the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences.

Founded in 1919, AMS promotes the development and dissemination of information and education on the atmospheric and related oceanic and hydrologic sciences. It has a membership of more than 14,000 professionals, students and weather enthusiasts.

Young will be formally announced as a fellow at the AMS 94th annual Meeting, taking place Feb. 2 to 6 in Atlanta.

Young joined the faculty at Penn State in 1986 and conducts research on a wide variety of topics including atmospheric dynamics, boundary layer turbulence, mesoscale meteorology, remote sensing, statistical meteorology and weather risk. He is the author of nearly 100 papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals and of several book chapters. He also served as on-board meteorologist for the Lockheed Martin/Penn State team developing the first ship-borne phased-array Doppler weather radar and as a mission scientist on a number of airborne and shipborne meteorological experiments.

He has been a member of the National Weather Association since 1988 and currently serves on its membership and marketing committee. He also serves on the National Weather Service’s Meteorological Development Laboratory high level advisory committee and on the Unidata strategic advisory committee for the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR).

Young earned a bachelor's degree in 1979 and a master’s degree in 1982, both in meteorology at the Florida State University. He earned a doctoral degree in atmospheric science at the Colorado State University in 1986.