HAPpy Hour- CONUS404 and WyACT: Precipitation and Water Balance over the Mountains in the Interior West
3:30 – 4:30 pm MDT
Dr. Bart Geerts
Bio - Dr. Bart Geerts received his PhD from the University of Washington (Atmospheric Science, 1990), and MS (Irrigation Engineering, 1985) and BS (Physical Geography, 1984) from the University of Louvain in Belgium, his country of origin. He conducts research into cloud-scale to mesoscale atmospheric processes through observations and modeling. Much of his research builds on field campaign observations, and he led several multi-institution field campaigns. In recent years, his research has partly pivoted towards regional climate modeling in the interior western US. He has been the PI of ~$25M in funding from federal agencies, and has co-authored over 140 papers in the peer-reviewed literature. He has advised and graduated 36 graduate students, and is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society.
Abstract - WyACT (Wyoming Anticipating the Climate Transition) is a $20M NSF award to the University of Wyoming to build nationally competitive capabilities and infrastructure that improves predictive understanding of the coupled human-environment impacts of climate change on water availability. Our focus is on the Intramountain West, esp. the transition from snow to rain dominated orographic precip, and our approach is highly interdisciplinary, linking the atmosphere to streamflow and aquatic ecology through modeling. This talk will illustrate how we have been using CONUS404 and other datasets to validate dynamically downscaled CMIP6 GCM historically, especially in terms of precipitation, daily temperature extremes, and the snowpack. This talk also examines CONUS404’s ability to capture warm-season convective precipitation, in the Arizona monsoon environment.