June 2019. After a semester of burning out, writing like crazy, attempting to balance classes and research, endless days of frustrating coding, and then finally deciding I hit a wall and needed to start over programming in a different language… and then I learned that my FINESST grant proposal was awarded! Out of 428 Earth Science proposals, only 60 were selected (~14%). I am immensely proud and honored that my proposal was selected. This award will provide support for my dissertation research, including the travel assistance so I can eventually present and network at conferences and workshops.

Here’s a brief summary of a piece of my project:

The Impact of ENSO Flavors on Atmospheric Blocking Occurrence and Interhemispheric Atmospheric Pathways.

Atmospheric blocking events are persistent, synoptic-scale weather phenomena that divert the polar jet streams (a.k.a. storm tracks) from their typical paths. This often results in extreme weather, such as heat waves, cold spells, droughts, and flooding, depending on the displacement of typical rainfall. The El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) affects weather patterns both inside and outside of the tropics, including the frequency of blocking events in the mid- to high-latitudes. However, we know that no two El Niño events are alike. Events are differentiated into “Central Pacific” (CP) and “Eastern Pacific” (EP) types depending on the location of the peak sea surface temperature anomalies, and these “ENSO flavors” have very different global impacts. The overarching goal of this research is to assess the relationships between ENSO flavors and the characteristics/dynamics of blocking events and impact these relationships have on extreme weather occurrences.

See the announcement on the SOEST website. Featured image taken from science.nasa.gov/earth-science.