Department of Meteorology

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Casey Lehecka provides daily forecast

Meteorology senior starts on-air position six months before graduation

3/20/17

One of Casey Lehecka’s biggest goals before graduating was to get a job as a broadcast meteorologist. Now, with graduation still a few months away, she has already worked as a broadcast meteorologist at WJAC, an NBC affiliate in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, for three months.

WeatherSTEM station with golf courses in background

WeatherSTEM station to help improve golfer safety at Penn State Golf Courses

7/7/16

Halfway through a round of golf at the Penn State Golf Courses, dark clouds gather in the distance. In a few minutes, the sky could unleash soaking rain, dangerous lightning or perhaps nothing at all. But thanks to technology developed by Edward Mansouri, a Penn State alumnus, golfers will receive new and improved weather alerts from course officials.

weather recon plane

Early use of 'hurricane hunter' data improves hurricane intensity predictions

5/25/16

Data collected via airplane when a hurricane is developing can improve hurricane intensity predictions by up to 15 percent, according to Penn State researchers who have been working with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Hurricane Center to put the new technique into practice.

2016 laureates

18 honored as Earth and Mineral Sciences Academy for Global Experience laureates

5/9/16

Eighteen undergraduate students from Penn State’s College of Earth and Mineral Sciences (EMS) were selected as EMS Academy for Global Experience (EMSAGE) laureates. The students received the honor during an EMSAGE ceremony held on May 6. EMSAGE was formed by EMS in 2009 as a vehicle to foster students’ global competencies and to promote a spirit of integrity, service and leadership.

Wx Challenge - Top 5 scorers

Penn State students win fifth straight national weather forecasting contest

4/28/16

For the fifth year in a row, Penn State students ousted more than 2,000 competitors in the national collegiate weather forecasting contest known as Wx Challenge. In the contest, students forecast weather in 10 different U.S. cities across two semesters. The Penn State students leveraged a meteorology course for their success.

Nels Shirer in Myers Weather Center

44-year teaching and research career draws to a close for EMS associate dean

4/20/16

At the end of June 2016, Nels Shirer will be retiring from his position of associate dean for education in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences. In his 44 years at Penn State, Shirer helped improve student experiences and built a reputation for being a reliable administrator, a detail-oriented researcher and, above all, a caring individual.

drone taking flight

A new look at the eye of the hurricane

4/11/16

A lifelong love of studying hurricanes brought Erin Munsell to graduate school at Penn State, where she and other graduate students helped NASA collect data from the eye of a hurricane using drones.

students looking at financial data on laptop screen

Weathering market trends

4/7/16

In a capstone meteorology course, students take on a unique challenge designed to give a preview of how businesses today manage weather risk: They try their hand at trading futures contracts. Throughout the semester, students get feedback on their financial forecasts from industry mentors.

Hurricane over Central America

GOES-R satellite could provide better data for hurricane prediction

3/24/16

The launch of the GOES-R geostationary satellite in October 2016 could herald a new era for predicting hurricanes, according to Penn State researchers. The wealth of information from this new satellite, at time and space scales not previously possible, combined with advanced statistical hurricane prediction models, could enable more accurate predictions in the future.

Titley at lecture

Science can now link climate change with some extreme weather events

3/11/16

Extreme weather events like floods, heat waves and droughts can devastate communities and populations worldwide. Recent scientific advances have enabled researchers to confidently say that the increased intensity and frequency of some, but not all, of these extreme weather events is influenced by human-induced climate change, according to an international National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine report released today (March 11).

temperature map

Odds are overwhelming that record heat due to climate change

1/25/16

Record-setting temperatures over the past century and a half are extremely unlikely to have occurred without human-caused climate change, but the odds of that happening are not quite as low as previously reported, according to an international team of meteorologists.

cloud formation

Storms, ozone may play pivotal role in rainforest cloud creation

1/21/16

Some storms transport ozone molecules to the canopy of the rainforest, influencing chemical processes that ultimately affect cloud formation, according to an international research team led by Penn State. The team conducted a nine-month study in the central Amazon rainforest of Brazil and their findings could be used to improve climate prediction models to more accurately gauge the Amazon's impact on future global weather patterns.

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