Weather Expert to Speak at USA by the Bay in August

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Posted on July 24, 2024

Lance Crawford

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Dr. Sytske Kimball, University of South Alabama earth sciences department chair and professor of meteorology, will highlight the USA by the Bay Eastern Shore Speaker Series on Thursday Aug. 8, 2024, from 5:30 p.m. until 7:30 p.m. at the Baldwin County Campus, 111 St. James St. in Fairhope.

Kimball teaches dynamic meteorology and meteorological instrumentation at the University. Her research interests revolve around hurricane landfall, local north-central Gulf Coast weather and meteorological instrumentation. 

She began working at South in 1999. In 2004, Kimball founded the South Alabama Mesonet, a network of research-quality weather stations. In 2006, using funding from the National Science Foundation and direct appropriation from Sen. Richard Shelby, the Mesonet was expanded from four to 26 stations. Recently, Kimball received a $3 million grant from NOAA for further expansion, which will place 20 more rural locations to cover the data-void Black Belt region of Alabama.

The weather stations, which record atmospheric and soil parameters in the north-central Gulf Coast area, have led to numerous research projects including hurricane landfall, Gulf Coast Sea and bay breeze activity, low-level temperature inversions, rain gauge and thermometer comparison studies, and testing and validation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle-based atmospheric sensors. Real-time, archived and metadata from the Mesonet are used by local forecasters, in K-12 and college teaching, emergency management, in university research, agriculture, fire weather, electrical load forecasting and numerous other purposes in the community. 

Admission to the Eastern Shore Speaker Series is free, but attendees are asked to register prior to the event.

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