After a five-year break, Popular Science has brought back the Brilliant 10, an annual roster of early-career scientists and engineers developing innovative approaches to problems across a range of subjects.
This year, Popular Science selected CPO-funded scientist Dr. Alison Wing as one of the Brilliant 10. Dr. Wing is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Science at Florida State University studying cloud formation and behavior in climate models. She uses models and simulations that could help predict how a hotter planet will reshape clouds and storms and whether these changes will, in turn, exacerbate global warming.
“When clouds are clumped together, rather than being randomly distributed,” Wing explains, “the atmosphere overall is drier and warmer, and there’s actually less cloud coverage overall. And that affects how radiative energy flows through our climate system.”
Dr. Wing is currently a co-lead of the CPO Modeling, Analysis, Predictions and Projections (MAPP)-funded Model Diagnostics Task Force. This task force was created to coordinate the activities of researchers supported through the MAPP Fiscal Year 2018 grant competition, “Addressing Key Issues in CMIP6-era Earth System Models.” The goal of this research initiative is to develop, coordinate, and implement a framework and metrics in national modeling center metrics packages for evaluating how climate processes are represented in models, to quicken the transition of research innovations into advances in life-saving forecasts and projections. The Task Force is leveraging ongoing efforts at the modeling centers toward advancing model evaluation and development capabilities.
Dr. Wing received her Ph.D. in Atmospheric Science from MIT in 2014 and was a National Science Foundation (NSF) Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, in the Division of Ocean and Climate Physics. Dr. Wing currently maintains an appointment there as an Adjunct Associate Research Scientist.
Read the Popular Science article here.