Latest news: Congratulations to Hao Fu for successful defense of his dissertation, October 19th 2023! He has moved to the University of Chicago as the T. C. Chamberlin Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of the Geophysical Sciences. Hao is the first PhD graduate of the Severe Weather and Climate Group.
This group website is under construction and will be more complete by the end of February 2024. In the meantime please visit our former page at https://storms.stanford.edu.
The Severe Weather and Climate Group is led by Dr. Morgan O'Neill. We study the dynamics and thermodynamics of multiscale severe events, including supercell thunderstorms and hurricanes. The two-way feedbacks between these storms and the climate in which they occur is of importance to meteorologists, climate scientists and planetary scientists. In a changing climate, it is critical to accurately predict how the extremes to which we are accustomed will change in the future. The past and present climates of Earth, as well as those of other planets in our solar system, serve as physical laboratories in which we can observe a range of extreme phenomena.
The tools that our group uses to address these questions are varied, from simple theory and observations to complex numerical models that simulate realistic atmospheric phenomena. Because of the impossibility of recreating all the complexities of the atmosphere in a laboratory, our laboratory is a hierarchy of numerical models that approximate the equations of motion. Ultimately, numerical results and theoretical understanding must be tested against observations. We collaborate with other scientists and institutions to take the observations we need to validate our work. Our focus is on the genesis, evolution and environmental interaction of convective storms in a range of climates.