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from the issue of October 7, 2004
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Faculty success stories abound at UNL - CAREER grant allows study of thunderstorms
They are familiar to anyone who's watched a weather report in the spring or summer: those big angry gashes of yellow, red and orange with trailing green, slashing from the southwest to the northeast, often across several states, filling the TV screen with thunderstorm warnings.
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| | | Matt Brown Parker, assistant professor of geosciences has received an NSF CAREER grant to study what organizes and maintains the giant thunderstorms that produce a large percentage of the Great Plains' rainfall during the growing season. Photo by Alan Jackson/Jackson Studios.
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These giant storms, called mesoscale convective systems, fascinate meteorologist Matthew Brown Parker. An assistant professor at UNL, Brown Parker has won an NSF CAREER grant to study the mechanisms that govern the organization and maintenance of these storms. Hundreds of miles long, these storm systems are long-lived and particularly dangerous as they spawn off dozens of storms and produce flash floods.
In the Great Plains, these large storms produce 60 percent to 70 percent of the rainfall during the growing season, making them important players in the region's delicate water balance.
"They cast a huge footprint of severe weather and are almost a nightly process on the Great Plains in the spring and summer," Brown Parker said. Yet despite their importance and frequency, relatively little is known about them, he said.
These storms have three typical structures, and Brown Parker will focus on two that are the least studied. Using super-computer models, he hopes to explain the key environmental and storm-scale processes that lead to these types of storms and look at how they change given different atmospheric situations. The ultimate goals are to improve forecasting, giving people several hours of warning as opposed to the current 60-minute or less window of warning and increase public awareness of the kinds of threats they are likely to face from these storms, particularly flooding. With study, the public is more likely to pay attention to weather information, even when the tornado threat is unlikely.
In addition, Brown Parker will develop a curriculum for use by high schools that will enhance meteorological education and help recruit high school students to the discipline.
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