Project Grant 2343772

This $470,539 federal Project Grant awarded by the National Science Foundation's Geosciences Program (CFDA 47.050) supports collaborative research between Penn State University and the goal of enhancing understanding of extratropical storm track dynamics and their links to tropical heating and planetary stationary waves. The project will train two Ph.D. students in meteorology and expand an existing partnership between Penn State and rural high schools to engage economically disadvantaged students through a hybrid STEM learning program. The research aims to demonstrate causal relationships between tropical heating, planetary stationary waves, available potential energy, and extratropical storm track activity using observational data and idealized modeling studies. The findings will then be evaluated against representations in climate and subseasonal-to-seasonal prediction models. No federal grant sub-awards are planned for this project, which has an award date of September 1, 2024 and ultimate completion date of August 31, 2027.