Two New Mexico Tech researchers to unveil secrets of ever changing weather by flying high in the skies
Drs. Fuchs and David J. Raymond, from the newly formed Climate and Water Center at New Mexico Tech, received approval for $2.8 million in funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for the field project Organization of Tropical East Pacific Convection (OTREC). To improve weather prediction over the whole planet, researchers at Tech will study atmospheric convection, a process important for New Mexico, that creates cumulonimbus clouds responsible for violent storms, heavy rain and lightning. They will be flying into convection on a high-flying aircraft owned by the NSF over the tropical East Pacific Ocean and Caribbean.
The OTREC project will take place in the summer of 2019. The operational center will be in Costa Rica. The core group scientists are from Harvard University, the University of Wisconsin, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Colorado State University, the University of Washington, Columbia University and New Mexico Tech. International collaborators are from Mexico, Costa Rica, and Colombia.
Fuchs is the director of the newly formed Climate and Water Center at New Mexico Tech and a graduate of that institution. Raymond is Professor Emeritus of Physics at New Mexico Tech, the 2017 recipient of the American Meteorological Society’s Jule Charney Award (recognition of highly significant research or development achievement), and a vital part of the Climate Center. The Center’s goal is to bring the fundamental science learned from projects like OTREC to the “real world”, i.e. to apply science to the problems we are facing in our every day lives due to weather and climate change.
Climate & Weather Consortium 