Principal Investigator
Kathleen Schiro
Assistant Professor, Dept. of Environmental Sciences
Education: Ph.D. and M.S., Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles; B.A., Earth and Planetary Sciences, Johns Hopkins University
Email: kschiro@virginia.edu
Full CV
Postdoctoral Scholars
Laura Paccini
Laura joined the department in Fall 2022 after completing her PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany. Laura has broad interests in tropical meteorology and climate dynamics, though her PhD explored Atlantic ITCZ dynamics and Amazonian convection in convection permitting simulations with the state-of-the-art ICON model. Her work at UVA will involve investigating environmental differences in MCS vs. isolated convection in ICON, compared to observations, as well as evaluating the role of land-atmosphere interactions and cloud-radiation interactions in the partitioning of MCS vs. isolated convection and its influences on the diurnal cycle of precipitation and precipitation extremes in Amazonia.
Graduate Students
Sayali Kulkarni
Sayali joined the department in Fall 2021. She has broad interests in tropical meteorology and dynamics, including convective aggregation, ITCZ dynamics, and tropical cyclones. At present, her work examines environmental controls on mesoscale convective system lifecycles, cold pools, and convective organization/aggregation.
Email: ejb6nj@virginia.edu
Emma Dawson
Emma started her graduate work in Spring 2022 after graduating as a undergraduate from the department in December 2021 as an Echols Scholar. She is interested in cloud feedbacks and has been working on improving our understanding of how a model’s cloud climatology relates to the strength of its simulated cloud feedbacks and climate sensitivity using a variety of CMIP6 experiments.
Email: emd6wn@virginia.edu
Logan Longacre
Logan joined the department as an MS student in Fall 2022. Logan is a recent graduate of the University of Kansas and will be working on regional hydroclimatological changes in the tropics and examining cloud-circulation interactions in observations.
Email: anx8td@virginia.edu
Undergraduate Students
Everest Litchford
Everest is majoring in Atmospheric Sciences at Cornell University. His research focuses on studying summertime deep convection in the southeast US using local field observations from here in Charlottesville. Everest is also using reanalysis and remote sensing data paired with mesoscale convective tracking databases to study the thermodynamic controls on MCS lifecycles in the SE US warm season.
Emma Sullivan
Emma is a third year majoring in Environmental Sciences and studying Amazonian hydroclimate using regional climate model output.
Email: eks4cx@virginia.edu
Patrick Roney
Patrick is a fourth year majoring in Environmental Sciences. He is pursuing a DMP (Distinguished Majors thesis Program) with his research on cloud feedbacks.
Email: pcr7fz@virginia.edu
Group Alumni
Piyush Garg – former postdoc, now at Argonne National lab
Rebecca Hall – former undergraduate major in the Distinguished Major’s Program, now in graduate school in the Dept. of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of Wisconsin Madison
Megan Doan – former undergraduate researcher, now pursuing undergraduate major in Statistics
Jennie Lee – former undergraduate summer intern, Virginia-North Carolina Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation