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Kent State Geographers Receive Two Research Grants to Study Climate Change and Weather Patterns

A pair of 5X社区 geographers have teamed up to secure two research grants totaling more than $550,000 for separate projects to study climate change and weather patterns.

Geography Professor and Chair Scott Sheridan, Ph.D., will lead a project titled 鈥淯sing a Synoptic Climatological Framework to Assess Predictability of Anomalous Coastal Sea Levels in NOAA High-Priority Areas,鈥 while Assistant Professor Cameron Lee, Ph.D., will lead another project called 鈥淒eveloping Extreme Event Climate Change Indicators Related to Human Thermal Comfort.鈥 Drs. Lee and Sheridan, of Kent State鈥檚 Department of Geography in the College of Arts and Sciences, will be co-investigators on each other鈥檚 projects, both of which are funded by the (NOAA) at the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Dr. Sheridan鈥檚 project, funded for about $287,000 over three years, focuses on nuisance floods that result from short-term rises in sea level along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.

鈥淓verybody wants to study the big events, like the floods that result from major hurricanes, but these noncatastrophic events are not well-studied,鈥 Dr. Sheridan says. 鈥淎 few centimeters of difference, depending on the coastline type, can mean inland advance of ocean water, which causes nuisance events like blue-sky floods. With global sea-level rise, the frequency of these events is going way up.鈥

Drs. Sheridan and Lee will study local and regional meteorological trends, such as barometric pressure and wind patterns to determine how they affect sea level. Dr. Lee鈥檚 contribution includes self-organizing maps he has perfected through his familiarity with particular software and his understanding of neural network models.

The researchers say the aim of the project is to help meteorologists better understand weather patterns to enable more accurate forecasting.

鈥淔orecasting is the golden egg, of course,鈥 Dr. Lee says. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 part of the grant.鈥

Dr. Lee鈥檚 own project, funded for about $270,000 over two years, will study historic changes in extreme weather events that cause either severe heat or cold 鈥 two major factors that affect human comfort and health.

鈥淲e鈥檙e talking about hot and humid versus cold and dry,鈥 Dr. Lee says. 鈥淲e鈥檙e trying to understand how days of these weather types have changed in frequency.鈥

Dr. Lee says Dr. Sheridan fits his project perfectly.

鈥淗e鈥檚 one of the leading experts in the world on the impacts between extreme heat and human health, and my research looks at both ends of that spectrum,鈥 Dr. Lee says. 鈥淧art of Scott鈥檚 research has been about creating a classification for these weather types in different locations. I created a similar one relative to season and location.鈥

Dr. Lee says other indicators will come from the Climate Prediction Center at NOAA and raw weather station data.

For more information about Kent State鈥檚 Department of Geography, visit www.kent.edu/geography.

POSTED: Friday, December 1, 2017 11:00 AM
Updated: Friday, December 9, 2022 12:20 AM
WRITTEN BY:
Dan Pompili

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