• 2017 – present: Division Director, NOAA Air Resources Laboratory Atmospheric Sciences and Modeling Division, College Park, MD, USA
• 2014 – present: Adjunct Research Associate, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand
• 1997 – 2017: Climate Scientist and Program Manager, National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service
• 1986 – 1999: Program Manager, National Weather Service
• 1981 – 1986: Cartographer, National Ocean Service

• Ph.D., Geography and Environmental Science, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
• M.S., Management, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA
• B.S., Biological Sciences, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, US

Climate change has significant effects on all sectors of society. It is not just about rising air temperatures and global warming, but a warming atmosphere has been shown to have tremendous effects on ecosystems, the transmission of disease, human infrastructure, transfer of that heat to the oceans and economic viability. Therefore, it is of vital importance to better understand how climate change is impacting “normal conditions”, what the statistically significant deviations or anomalies for various factors are, and how they may or may not be directly related global climate change.

Questions related to this include but are not limited to investigating whether:

1. Events such as rainstorms, droughts and heatwaves are longer and/or more severe
2. Impacts from melting land ice affects sea-levels and the salinity of oceans, and if that infusion of freshwater effects global circulation patterns impacting weather events (e.g., the Polar Vortex from the boreal winter of 2015/16 that had major impacts on North American weather patterns)
3. Background changes in the state of the environment are affecting the behavior and characteristics of tropical cyclones
4. A warming ocean having impacts on the migration and economic viability of fisheries (e.g., the New England and Canadian lobster industry)

The ability to monitor changes in variables such as sea surface and sub-surface ocean temperature; sea ice extent and thickness; sea-level heights; and the behavior of tropical cyclones and how these changes may be related to large-scale global phenomena, such as ENSO, which are a critical piece in the overall fabric of climate change research conducted by climate scientists across the globe.