Dr. Thijs Heus, an associate professor in the Department of Physics, is leading Cleveland State¡¯s activities funded by two new grant awards, which together total over $1 million in funding, focused on improving climate and weather modeling.

In collaboration with Dr. John Peters of Penn State University and CSU postdoctoral researcher Dr. Girish Raghunathan, Dr. Heus is investigating both shallow clouds and deep convective thunderstorms under a project titled, ¡°Contrasting Shallow and Deep Convection over Bankhead National Forest.¡± The goal is to apply lessons learned from one field to the other, with a focus on mixing between clouds and environment, the onset of rain, and transition of one type of clouds to the other. The team will combine large-scale climate models with highly detailed simulations using the recently updated MicroHH model. The MicroHH simulations will utilize observations from the Department of Energy measurement site in the Bankhead National Forest in Alabama. Dr. Heus developed part of the original MicroHH model with support from Cleveland State¡¯s Faculty Research and Development (FRD) program. Dr. Peters and Dr. Heus are both members of Site Science Team for the Bankhead observatory.

Dr. Heus is also part of a team led by Dr. Tim Wagner of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and including collaborator Dr. Dave Turner from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that is working on a project titled ¡°Characterizing Boundary Layer Processes During Transition Periods with Observations and Modeling.¡± The work focuses on the morning and evening transitions of the atmospheric boundary layer (i.e., sunrise and sunset). During these periods, temperature and turbulence in the atmosphere rapidly changes, which causes challenges for weather and climate modeling. The details of the atmospheric flow depend strongly on the interaction with the land, including moisture content and vegetation among other factors. The study of these interactions also utilizes the MicroHH model and observational data from the Department of Energy¡¯s Bankhead National Forest site and the Southern Great Plains site in Oklahoma.

Early results from this grant include the PhD work of 2024 CSU graduate Dr. Tessa Rosenberger, who developed an improved method of detecting heat and moisture variability in a changing atmospheric boundary layer, and studies on how the atmosphere responds to rapid changes, such as the solar eclipses we saw last year.

CSU¡¯s High Performance Computing Resource, the Viking Cluster, is powering the modeling and data analysis performed by Dr. Heus¡¯s lab.