The FIU Hurricane and Remote Sensing Summer Education and Research Program (HRSSERP) is a 2-week program designed for underrepresented meteorology (and other science and engineering majors) undergraduate students to provide them hands-on research and learning experience. For undergraduate college students, the program encourages them to consider a career involving the application of remote sensing observations and/or hurricanes. Each year, 8-10 students (primarily minority and/or female) are selected to enroll the program. The program began in 2011 and will be recruiting students again in the spring of 2012. For more information, see our HRSSERP Page.
The Severe Weather Teaching Module is designed to help younger students learn some basic knowledge about severe weather. We will use a lot of satellite pictures to explain the questions like: what is a hurricane or tornado or flash flood; Could a hurricane cause tornado outbreaks or flash flooding; What is the different between hurricane, typhoon and tropical cyclone; how are tropical cyclones distributed across global basins; how does the storm form, what favors strengthening or weakening, what a storm watch or warning means; when should a location be evacuated; what steps can one take to protect life and property from a hurricane, tornado, or flash flood. We will show students some innovative research results on severe weather and climate change. These will help answering the following questions that the students and general public have: is there any trend showing that the number of most destructive tropical cyclones has increased in the past several decades and/or will be increasing for the following decades? Is this trend related to global warming? What could the public do to reduce human-induced global warming? Hands-on activities, computer lab times and one field trip to NOAA national weather service are included to stimulate motivation and interest.
Every year, a group of 15-20 FIU meteorology undergraduate students, graduate students, and alumni compete in the intercollegiate weather forecasting competition run by the University of Oklahoma through WxChallenge.com. Last year (2012-2013) was a record year for the competition with over 1,400 active participants. From September - April, we forecast the high/low temperature, wind speed, and precipitation for 10 different cities across the country. Each individual forecaster is competing against around 1,500 other forecasters across the nation. The forecasts for everyone at each school are combined into an FIU team score that is compared against other colleges.
Our group members have also volunteered at the following events:
