Cohort Level: Cohort - III

Career Goal: Either working for a New York city/state agency or NOAA where I am doing flood prediction and hazard mitigation, or continuing education for a PhD. This will depend on my confidence in becoming a tenure track professor within the NYC metro area.

Expected Graduation Date: December 31, 2021

Degree: M.S Geology

Research Title: Extreme Flood Risk: Improved Understanding of Meteorological Precursors

Research Synopsis: There are many hydrologic and meteorological variables that will affect the probability and characteristics of flooding in a basin. Hydrologic variables include streamflow, volume of floodwaters, duration of floods, soil moisture, and snowmelt. Meteorological variables include volume of rainfall and temporal and spatial imprint of Simultaneous Heavy Precipitation Events (SHPEs). This research will examine the atmospheric conditions associated with extreme flooding for the Northeastern US. This work will build on previous research by Najibi et al. (2019), which identified simultaneous heavy precipitation events (SHPEs) for the contiguous US for 1900 - 2010. The work presented will connect the temporal and spatial imprint of SHPE’s to atmospheric circulation phenomena, and then link these processes to the probability of flooding. A statistical analysis will be performed to examine the link between flooding to persistent atmospheric circulation anomalies (e.g. blocks and serial clustering of storms) as well. Ultimately, the results of this research may be used to guide improvement of a hydrometeorological model.