Atmospheric Sciences

Atmospheric Science at Indiana University is a dynamic program with exciting opportunities to undertake field, laboratory, or modeling research. The program integrates research across scales, from boundary layer turbulence to mesoscale phenomena including deep moist convection to global circulation dynamics. Our faculty members actively conduct research in radiative forcing and climate change, tropical cyclone morphology using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, to global climate researching using state-of-the-art climate models, and satellite remote sensing and GPS occultation methods. We are active users of IU’s high-performance parallel computing facilities, which include two new super-computing machines: KARST and Big Red II, which ranks as one of the world’s fastest 70 supercomputers.

Bloomington Flood Statement

EAS faculty members Travis O’Brien and Cody Kirkpatrick, along with GEOG faculty member Scott Robeson published a statement on the 30-year storms that occurred in Bloomington the evening of June 18 through June 19th, 2021.

Read the statement

Our diverse, close-knit group is exploring interdisciplinary research directions linked to the paleoclimate research and global climate change studies conducted by other members of the Earth and Atmospheric Sciences faculty. The diverse, close-knit group of researchers enjoys a collective expertise in climate-atmosphere-surface interactions with the solid earth. High performance computing is essentially unlimited at IU, offering Atmospheric faculty and students competitive possibility to focus more on needs and opportunities in frontier understanding of the Earth climate system.

Weather and climate affect all of us. To understand the atmosphere and its effects requires a more diverse group of students, faculty, and researchers than ever before. Here at Indiana University, the diverse future of atmospheric science research is taking shape today. With a growing atmospheric sciences faculty in our department, and established groups in both the Geography department and the School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University is committed to performing top-notch atmospheric science research and teaching at both undergraduate and the graduate level.

Climate research

Our climate research focuses on climate dynamics and change, with research studying past and projected changes in large-scale circulations, such as the Hadley cell or global monsoon, which have profound impacts on hydroclimate on large scales. We are also actively studying changes in cloudiness that complicate projections of the global energy budget. These research areas benefit from paleoclimate research conducted by other members of the Earth and Atmospheric Sciences faculty.

Weather research

Our weather research involves the study of both tropical and midlatitude storm systems with the Weather Research and Forecasting model (WRF). Active topics include the character and structure of midlatitude cyclones in the eastern United States, and the physical mechanisms underlying the strengthening of tropical cyclones.

Instrumentation

The Atmospheric Science program also has instrumentation at a number of sites managed by the Integrated Program in the Environment including the Morgan-Monroe State Forest site that was established in 1997 under a grant from the Department of Energy. That site is home to a meteorological tower and provides access to a wide range of research projects and instrumentation.