People

Prospective students interested in pursuing undergraduate, graduate (M.S. or Ph.D.), or postdoctoral research are encouraged to contact Christina Patricola at cmp28@iastate.edu.

Research Areas:

  • climate variability and change
  • climate dynamics
  • tropical cyclones
  • extreme weather/climate events
  • atmosphere-ocean interactions
  • high-resolution climate modeling
  • paleoclimate

Current group members

 

Chris Patricola - Professor and Principal Investigator

I am an Assistant Professor at Iowa State University and an Affiliate at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.  I received my PhD in Atmospheric Science from Cornell University.  My research focuses on variability and change in extreme weather events on future to paleo timescales.  I enjoy designing and running high-resolution climate model experiments to understand how large-scale drivers and local-scale feedbacks in the Earth System influence extreme weather, especially tropical cyclones.

Teryn Mueller - concurrent BS/MS student

I am a concurrent MS/BS Meteorology Student at Iowa State University.  My MS project focuses on how greenhouse gas emissions will impact future ENSO projections and teleconnections with the Atlantic tropical cyclones. I am using the Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF), which is a high-resolution numerical climate model that has the ability to simulate large scale climate patterns along with extreme events, such as tropical cyclones. 

Dakota Forbis - graduate student

Dakota is a graduate student at Iowa State University investigating future changes in tropical cyclone characteristics using convection-permitting regional climate model simulations.

Tyler Mercurio - graduate student

Tyler is a graduate student at Iowa State University investigating future change in Midwest flood events using regional climate models.

Nathan Erickson - graduate student

Nathan is a graduate student at Iowa State University investigating future change in convective storms using regional climate models and machine learning.

 Juan Pablo Mangual - graduate student

JP is a graduate student at Iowa State University investigating global tropical cyclone frequency from a paleoclimate modeling perspective.

Derrick Danso - postdoctoral researcher

I am a postdoctoral researcher at Iowa State University under the supervision of Christina Patricola. I received my Ph.D. in Ocean, Atmosphere, and Hydrological Sciences from the Université Grenoble Alpes, France. My research focuses on understanding how tropical disturbances, specifically the African Easterly Waves, control the intensity and variability of tropical cyclones using high-resolution climate models.

Ana Sena - postdoctoral researcher

I am a postdoctoral researcher working at Iowa State University. I received my PhD in Earth System Science at University of California Irvine. My research focuses on understanding the mechanisms by which climate change may affect the global distribution of tropical cyclones, by performing experiments in global climate models.

​Emily Bercos-Hickey - postdoctoral researcher

I am a postdoctoral researcher working at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. My research interests include working with large sets of global and regional climate model data to examine how climate change will affect the complex meteorology over North Africa, specifically focusing on African easterly waves, as well as severe storms over the United States. 

Lab profile: https://eesa.lbl.gov/profiles/emily-bercos-hickey/ 

Undergraduate researchers

  • Kyle Curry
    • Meteorology Senior Thesis (2023)
  • Grace Hansen
    • Meteorology Senior Thesis (2023)

      Group photos

      Fall 2022: (left to right) Dakota Forbis, Derrick Danso, Ana Sena, Teryn Mueller, Christina Patricola, Nathan Erickson, JP Mangual, Tyler Mercurio
      Spring 2022: (left to right) Derrick Danso, Ana Sena, Teryn Mueller, Nathan Erickson, Christina Patricola, JP Mangual, Danny Cassidy, and Dakota Forbis
      2019: (left to right) Emily Bercos-Hickey, Christina Patricola, and Huanping Huang (with the Cori supercomputer at NERSC).

       

      Alumni

       

      Huanping Huang

      Huanping is now an Assistant Professor at Louisiana State University: https://www.lsu.edu/ga/people/faculty/huanping-huang.php

      Huanping was a postdoctoral fellow in the Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, under the supervision of Christina M. Patricola and William D. Collins. He received his PhD in Earth Sciences from Dartmouth College. Huanping's research focused on the detection and attribution of hydroclimate extremes, as well as the physical mechanisms through which natural variability and anthropogenic forcing alter hydroclimate extremes.

      Previous undergraduate researchers

      • Lexie Merley
          • Meteorology Senior Thesis (2022)
        • Delenn Palmer
          • Meteorology Senior Thesis (2022)
        • Nathan Erickson
          • LAS Dean's High Impact Award (Spring 2022)
          • Meteorology Senior Thesis (2021)
        • Juan Pablo Mangual
          • LAS Dean's High Impact Award (Spring 2022)
          • Meteorology Senior Thesis (2021)
        • Daniel Cassidy
          • Undergraduate researcher (Spring 2022)
          • Meteorology Senior Thesis (2021)
        • Jared Schadler
          • Undergraduate researcher (Summer 2021)
        • Grace Hansen
          • First-Year Honors Program (Spring 2021)
        • Allysa Dallman (now graduate student at UT Austin)
          • LAS Dean's High Impact Award (Spring 2021)
          • Meteorology Senior Thesis (Fall 2020)
        • Flor Vanessa Maciel (now graduate student at UCLA)
          • Berkeley Lab Undergraduate Research program, LBNL (Summer 2020)

        updated 3/15/2023