Two students, Mark Santana-Crespo from Harrisburg High School and Malika Williams-Brooks from Harrisburg SciTech High School, mentored by a team of meteorology researchers in Penn State's College of Earth and Mineral Sciences (EMS), took overall first place at the Upward Bound Math and Science (UBMS) Summer Residential Program’s Awards Ceremony held on Tuesday, July 22, at The Nittany Lion Inn on the University Park campus.
The students were mentored by meteorology graduate student Alison Stidworthy and faculty members David Titley, director of the Center for Solutions to Weather and Climate Risk, and Jon Nese, associate head of the undergraduate program in meteorology and host and producer of Weather World, on the research project "A Weather Forecast Verification Study."
Santana-Crespo and Williams-Brooks were given four months of high-temperature forecasts for several U.S. cities (at various lead times) and were challenged to assess whether the forecasts had any skill – essentially, to determine how good the forecasts were.
The forecasts, assembled and quality-controlled by Chad Bahrmann, senior research assistant in meteorology, came from several commercial weather providers and from the National Centers for Environmental Protection’s long-range CFS (Climate Forecast System) model. The forecasts spanned from one day to many weeks into the future, so both short-term and long-term forecasts were analyzed. Santana-Crespo and Williams-Brooks computed various measures of forecast accuracy and made conclusions regarding how far into the future weather forecasts are accurate.
Their efforts on the research project were rewarded with a first-place finish out of 19 teams: five teams from EMS, 11 from the Eberly College of Science and three from the College of Agricultural Sciences.
“It was a great collaboration between two enthusiastic students, a graduate student mentor who was a former high school teacher, and faculty members with lots of data to analyze,” said Nese. “And to top it off, who doesn't like to talk about the weather!”
Santana-Crespo said, "This award took a lot of hard work and dedication. The fact that we won overall really is exciting. I appreciate all you have done for us."