EAS Seminar: Andrea Lopez Lang (Albany)

A multiscale perspective of winter extreme events

To date, the U.S. experienced 341-billion-dollar weather and climate disasters, with greater than 25% (n = 98) of these occurring in the cold season of December–March. These events can have lasting societal and economic impacts that make diagnosing their likelihood of occurrence in the next week, season, or decade an important problem in the context of our changing climate. This talk will provide a multiscale overview of the dynamics and prediction of winter extreme events and highlight the role of several winter-season phenomena of interest. We will explore the role of variability in the high-latitude stratospheric flow and the role of long-lived coherent vortex features, known as tropopause polar vortices (TPVs), in the development of winter extremes.

Bio:
Dr. Andrea Lopez Lang is an associate professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences at the University at Albany, SUNY. She is an active member of her department, where her research expertise spans synoptic to large-scale dynamics on the weather to subseasonal-to-seasonal (S2S) timescales. Outside of her recent role in developing a new M.S. Program in Applied Atmospheric Sciences, Andrea also serves on the Council of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) and is the current Chair of the AMS Board on Enterprise Economic Development. Dr. Lang has mentored students to successful careers in the public, private, and academic sectors.